Money rock : a family's story of cocaine, race, and ambition in the new South / Pam Kelley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kelley, Pamela Sue, 1959- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Platt, Belton Lamont.

Drug dealers--North Carolina--Biography.

Drug dealers.

Criminals--North Carolina--Biography.

Criminals.

Discrimination in criminal justice administration--North Carolina.

Discrimination in criminal justice administration.

North Carolina.

Genre:

Biographies.

Nonfiction.

Physical Description:

xiii, 282 pages : illustrations, map ; 22 cm

Other Title:

Family's story of cocaine, race, and ambition in the new South

Place of Publication:

New York : The New Press, [2018]

Summary:

Meet Money Rock. He's young. He's charismatic. He's generous, often to a fault. He's one of Charlotte's most successful cocaine dealers, and that's what first prompted veteran reporter Pam Kelley to craft this riveting social history--by turns action-packed, uplifting, and tragic--of a striving African American family, swept up and transformed by the 1980s cocaine epidemic. The saga begins in 1963 when a budding civil rights activist named Carrie gives birth to Belton Lamont Platt, eventually known as Money Rock, in a newly integrated North Carolina hospital. Pam Kelley takes readers through a shootout that shocks the city, a botched FBI sting, and a trial with a judge known as "Maximum Bob." When the story concludes more than a half century later, Belton has redeemed himself. But three of his sons have met violent deaths and his oldest, fresh from prison, struggles to make a new life in a world where the odds are stacked against him. This gripping tale, populated with characters both big-hearted and flawed, shows how social forces and public policies--racism, segregation, the War on Drugs, mass incarceration--help shape individual destinies. Money Rock is a deeply American story, one that will leave readers reflecting on the near impossibility of making lasting change, in our lives and as a society, until we reckon with the sins of our past.

Contents:

Money rock and big Lou

Showdown at Piedmont courts

Carrie Platt and the American dream

Candy kingpin

The dealer's mother

What went wrong with Piedmont courts?

State of North Carolina versus money rock

Convictions

Heavy in the weight

Going down

United States versus money rock

Coming of age in a world-class city

The Christian inmate

Sentencing a generation

Lost boys

The love of his life

Freedom

Trying to make a change

Susan and Mashandia

Homecoming

Life on the outside

Uprising

Southside homes

Epilogue

Where they are now

Acknowledgments

Notes.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9781620973271

1620973278

OCLC:

1049577176