1973

The opening chapter from Freeze Bailey's unfinished autobiography.

Freeze was a motivated workshop participant and class leader for over a year until he was released from prison a few months ago. His writing tells the story of growing up breakdancing and being involved with gangs, but also about his love for family, pet dogs, and friendship.

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1973

My father was lying in his bed at home with a bullet in his arm and another in his shoulder. My mom was hanging out with her best friend, dad’s younger sister, my Auntie Eunice May. My auntie told my mom, “Girl, my big brother is laid up in his room with bullets in him.”

My mother already thought my dad was cute and she loved gangstas. My dad was the true epitome of a gangsta.

Dad and mom were born in Phoenix, Arizona, and both of their families moved to Denver, Colorado (that’s where they met), then to Oregon. In Portland my dad’s family was nicknamed “The Arizonians.”

When my auntie and mother got to my grandmother’s house my auntie asked mom if she wanted to say hi to my pops. She said, “Hell yes!”

Mom walked in the room and saw him laid up with those bullet holes and at first she felt sorry for him, then she fell in love with him.

I was born in Denver General Hospital at six in the morning on Dec 2, 1973. My mother had already had a child at sixteen with an old-school trick named Curtis who had a lot of money and fifteen kids. He just so happened to be one of my father’s most hated enemies too. But my big sister Crystal, may her soul rest in peace, was that child mom had with Curtis.

My father also had a kid by another woman--my older brother, named Lil’ Joe, just like my father. My father’s first name was Little, his middle name was Joe, and his last name was Bell. My mother named me Michael Joe Bailey. She wanted me to keep her last name to help the Bailey family continue the tradition.

I was eight years old when my father was killed. It’s a day I’ll never forget. He was living back in Arizona because my parents had split up. I was visiting him and my stepbrother there in Phoenix.

Dad was an original Black Panther, and him and his people did not believe in selling drugs or doing drugs or giving them to their own people. They also did not approve of Black and white relationships, but dad had a white girlfriend named Brenda anyway, and she was pregnant with his baby. Dad knew that Brenda had a heroin problem but thought she’d stopped.

Well, it turned out that my dad’s so-called homeboy, John, was selling heroin to Brenda, ‘cuz she was white, and he felt like that made it OK. She got into a deep debt with him. When my father found out he went to beat John up, and he took me and Brenda with him. But as my dad was doing the whooping, John’s lil’ brother ran and got a gun.

I was in the backseat of our car watching when my father got gunned down. He was shot three times in his neck and head area. Brenda was shot in the arm. She and my lil’ sister, who was still in her belly, made it out of there OK, but my father died that day, while I was still just a kid, on Buckeye Road.