Jackie White

Photo Credit: Joe Budd

“It was really a war on us.”

Update: Unfortunately Jackie White has recently passed away. Our condolences to his family and friends, and we hope his story continues to inspire.

I was born in Dallas, Texas. Then my people came to California and we settled down in Stockton.

I grew up in a middle class, Black family. Father was an engineer, mother was a registered nurse. Then overnight my world was turned upside down - my father was killed in an automobile accident.

I was nine. Eight or nine. My world was a two story house, two car garage, literally a white picket fence. My only problem was what kind of tennis shoes I was gonna wear that day and could I get past the Jones boys that stayed down the block from me that was always chasing me.

But when my father died, my mother also died mentally. We wound up losing everything, went from that two story house to homelessness. We moved out to California because my father's mother stayed in San Francisco. So we came out to San Francisco, and wound up moving to the Valley, to Stockton.

I remember seeing weed in Dallas, but not using it. I remember seeing my father’s…they used to sell it in these match boxes for five dollars. A joint cost you a dollar. That's what I experienced when I was in Dallas, but when I came to California, it was a different thing. The Haight-Ashbury thing was going on, and Stockton, in the late 60s, early 70s, there was drugs everywhere, from joints to pills to hardcore stuff.

So I began to dabble in drugs. My first joint was when I was 10. I remember that distinctly.

It made me eat Corn Flakes without milk. We had to use water, couldn’t afford milk, but after that joint it got me the munchies so bad I ate a whole box of Corn Flakes without any sugar or milk. It had me giggling and everything, laughing. That was my experience with marijuana.

Looking at my world from the eyes of a nine, ten-year-old, you can imagine what it was like. My two older brothers went to stay with my grandmother,  my mother's mother. Our family had to split up. Since I was the baby I stayed with my mother, but she was delusional, she had lost it man. Naturally it affected me, I needed something to cope. I found out that this marijuana was a good way to escape. I could giggle and laugh at everything. Everything was funny. I can escape from this world that I detested with a passion.

At 12-years-old, as I got older, I began to keep late hours. My mother, she was at the point where she'd just stay at the house. And so the trouble with the law came with the rebellion. Hey, I just started to rebel against everything, everybody. Anything that was the authority and white, I fought against. The first time I went to juvenile was when a friend of mine stole a car down in Oxnard and drove it all the way up to Northern California. We were arrested. That was the first time I experienced any kind of incarceration.

We were released the next day to our parents, and I thought, you know, this ain't bad. It ain't. As I grew older it was juvenile hall, then eventually youth authority. It was a little bit harder, but I thought, I can handle this. As my burden got heavier, my smoking and drinking got heavier. Then one time, a guy laced a joint with cocaine - it went from zero to sixty in a couple of seconds man. The next thing I knew I was actually shooting heroin and cocaine. That was my drug of choice.

I was also into music, I liked entertaining. I got with a group and we traveled locally, California, and we started traveling the United States, then we went overseas. We started opening for certain acts that in the late 60s and early 70s, was really popular. As we got to that next status, my drug habit got to that next status.

A lot of my friends was white because a lot of them played in the bands, and a lot of them came from good families. I noticed with the War on Drugs, my white friends would get busted with marijuana, and next thing I know they had probation. Then some of the dudes I grew up with was going to prison. Some guys would get caught with a match box, that’d be a big bust. Over there, guys were getting busted with pounds - but he's white. His family got money and his Daddy's a lawyer. Come on man, what else do you expect? They ain't gonna do nothing to him.

You could see the difference, where people of color was treated differently when it came to the War on Drugs. Cocaine - here's a pound of powder and you’d get probation, or a drug program. But if you got caught with a rock, you’d get 20 years. It was really a war on us. That's the way we really looked at it.

Now, we see that with opiods. Now that a lot of kids from families with money are hooked, now it’s, ‘we gotta stop this thing.’ Now it's an epidemic. It's no longer a crime, it's a sickness.

To be clear, I never did go for the lock 'em up thing. It never works man, that was never the solution. People come into jail, they kick for three or four days, and then they’re in a whole jail wing full of dope fiends. Ain't nobody but some people using drugs.

They finally realized they gotta do something else but lock people up cause there’s no more room in prisons. Everything's about to explode and burst. They needed to put a bandage on it, so they say, let’s create this law, let’s legalize weed. It's just all out in the open now, it's acceptable. You go to some of the weed stores, you look up and see - don't he work in the DA's office?

But now there's another problem. All these regulations you gonna have to put on this marijuana now. You don't even know how driving under the influence works, you know? Cop says I'm driving under the influence - okay, I smoked a joint four days ago and it showed up in my urine. But it was four days ago. God in heaven know that it was four days ago.

That's why I tell my boys, my grandsons, come on man. You gotta let them windows down. When cops drive up on you and they smell weed, they’re going to say they have cause. They're gonna trick you cause you really don't know the law. You're ignorant to the law. Long as you’re ignorant to the law, you're gonna be susceptible to their tricks. You know they can lie? Even though they're telling a lie, the law will believe them. You should know better by now.

I’m seeing that even though weed may be technically legal, the cops are still looking for ways to come after us as much as possible, especially for Black people. Ain’t nothing changed yet for people of color yet. Nothing.