The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates

Moore and his friend Justin attended the Riverdale County School, a “predominantly white private school” with a proud history (49). Even though it was located in the Bronx, it was “its own little island of affluence” (47). The Moores couldn’t really afford the school, and his mother was scared. In regular public schools, “Things were falling apart, and the halls of the school were no exception or refuge from the chaos outside” (47). His “mother saw Riverdale as a haven, a place where [he] could escape [his] neighborhood and open [his] horizons” (48). Moore’s mother worked several jobs to meet the family’s increasing expenses.

His mother had every right to be frightened. To further illustrate the dangers of his Bronx neighborhood in the early 1980s, Moore provides some startling details about drugs, namely crack, which had “[placed] a stranglehold on [the Bronx]” (50-51). It was easily accessible and taunted those of all ages and circumstances. The deaths that came about because of it were of one “single demographic: young black men” (51).

Though Riverdale seemed like a solution, it was still difficult for Moore, who constantly felt like an outsider among his rich white peers. He emphasizes how much poorer he was than his fellow students, recalling how he had to rotate his “good clothes” and avoid talking about how he “summered.” He never invited Riverdale friends over to his home, always visiting their houses instead. Because of the stress, his grades slipped. Justin warned Moore that he would need to pick it up or he would be placed on probation. Moore tried making excuses but soon realized that “Justin had it worse than [he] did but was still one of the best-performing kids in the class” (54). Moore’s academic performance was so poor that his mother threatened to send him to military school.

The story turns to the other Wes Moore and his family’s move to another new neighborhood in Baltimore: Dundee Village on the border of Baltimore City. Baltimore had a new mayor (Schmoke) who was determined to improve the school system and fix the drug problem, but reality was still grim. Wes’s brother “Tony hadn’t seen the inside of a classroom on a regular basis since eighth grade” (57). He had also been shot. Wes had failed the sixth grade. Moore notes that “Baltimore had a 70% dropout rate at the time” (57), and the brothers were just part of the sorry statistics.

Dundee Village seemed like a safer place to live, but Wes was still taunted by the drug trade. A young man in the neighborhood had a flashy ring and a headset. Wes approached him to ask where he could get one, and the guy gave him instructions about wearing the headset. If Wes pressed a button on the headset whenever he saw police around, then he would get paid. Wes knew this was “the same game that had consumed Tony and put a bullet or two in him” (58). His own first drug experience was with marijuana, which he found in his mother’s room. This experience taught him “for sure how powerful drugs could be […] he understood how easy it would be to make some money off selling that feeling to people who needed it” (62). This, along with his desire to avoid school and launch his football career (with a little money behind him), convinced him to join the game and put his headset on.