At an early age, Shane Price realized he could pour on the charm with women, and at 16 years old he started his career as a pimp. After a violent incident left him shaken, Shane made changes to his life. Today, he works in Black communities as a leading figure in advocating for prison reform. He’s also the director of Power of People Leadership Institute in Minnesota, which offers support to ex-offenders. This is the story of how his transformation came together.
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Host: Vic Vela
Lead producer: Jo Erickson
Editor: Erin Jones
Mixed by Matthew Simonson
Additional producers: Rebekah Romberg, Luis Antonio Perez
Music: Daniel Mescher, Brad Turner
Executive producers: Brad Turner, Rachel Estabrook
Thanks also to Kevin Dale, Hart Van Denburg, Jodi Gersh, Clara Shelton, Matt Herz, Martin Skavish, Kim Nguyen, Arielle Wilson.
On Twitter: @VicVela1
Transcript
Vic Vela:
Just a quick note before we get started, this episode contains strong language and graphic descriptions.
In 3, 2, 1.
Shane Price:
I almost have to crawl into an old skin that doesn't fit this body that you're hearing from today. So it's a transition, but I think that I'll be able to handle it.
Vic:
It's hard to imagine that Shane Price, a 69-year-old lovable grandfather-type figure could ever hurt or exploit anyone. Folks in Minneapolis know him as Pops, not just because of his white hair, but for his work with the group that he founded, the Power of People Leadership Institute.
Shane:
From the days of crack wars, there has been some fallout from that, that materialized in the population of young people that we see right now from these broken and destroyed families.
Vic:
Over the last 25 years, he's helped thousands of people in prison. Price believes that people deserve a second chance, just like he got. Shane's comfortable in his new skin, but that wasn't always the case. Street life in the 1960s was too good for a teenager to pass up.
Shane:
It’s just like you're going on an adventure, thinking, “Oh, I'm just gonna try this out. And I'm gonna go home here in a minute.” But it just doesn't work out that way.
Vic:
Life was exciting back then. The music and the drugs made it a wild time. And Shane went all in. But like all good things, there's a time when it stops being fun, and reality kicks in, and you're left with a choice: keep doing what you're doing or change. This is a story of how one man's recovery gave him strength to help thousands of ex-offenders stay sober.
I'm Vic Vela. I'm a journalist, a storyteller, and a recovering drug addict. And this is “Back from Broken”: stories about the highest highs, the darkest moments, and what it takes to make a comeback.
Shane Price grew up in 1950s and 60s segregated America, where many Black men didn't have a lot of options for careers.
Shane:
The African American community was stifled in a way, stifled into these subservient roles. The role of maid or butler or house person.
Vic:
Shane was born and raised in a very tough north Minneapolis neighborhood. His mother was a sex worker. This was no place for a young boy to grow up, and his mom couldn't raise him. So she left Shane with a couple that Shane calls his grandparents.
Do you have any early memories of your mom?
Shane:
Oh, I do Vic. Only in that my mother would come to visit. And I remember at night my mom would come in the back door, and she had a room back there, and I could hear her, but I would be too sleepy. And I also kind of understood I wasn't supposed to bother her during those times. So she would come and go, but mostly be gone.
Vic:
Though he had a good home and people who cared for him, Shane missed his mom. The only time he felt close to her was when he was out on the streets where strangers filled in the gaps of his history.
Shane:
And as I got older, I began to go out into the street myself and look for my mother. I never found her, but I did find others who knew me by my name and who began to prophesy over me that I was gonna become X, Y, and Z. I had no idea what they were talking about, but somehow they were planting some seeds in me that would come alive in me at some point.
Vic:
What were those seeds?
Shane:
Well, you know, this was a community of sports. Sports, meaning that they were in the life. Uh, African American men were pimping at that time. And pimps at that time were really an antihero in the community. When I say that, what I mean is they seem to prosper. They had dollars. They had visible means of material things, big cars, pretty cars and flashy things, diamonds, things that still attract the attention of many even today. These guys showed that, and they were also givers. They provided dollars for starting churches, fledging churches. They supported families in some ways. They believed really what they were doing was right and wrong at the same time. If that makes any sense.
Vic:
That goes to your point about being an antihero.
Shane:
You know? Absolutely. And so I began to look up to them in a way, because they treated me so fondly. They seemed like they knew me. My mother and I look a lot alike. And then, I think somehow they could see something developing in me that I couldn't see myself.
Vic:
Shane was attracted to the local fame and notoriety that surrounded pimps. To a 16-year-old boy, these hustlers seemed powerful and independent. They rejected the constraints of 1960s segregated America and did things on their own terms. They also seemed to have the answers to the only question that mattered.
Shane:
By that time, I had floated into the streets for the notoriety and the recognition, the I-am-ness, right? The question: who am I? I'm still wrestling with the vicissitudes of that question. And I looked for my I-am-ness in the very place that I should have never looked. I began to look there, and I was accepted. I was accepted in that space. And so slowly I got into the street life.
Vic:
You were finding your identity.
Shane:
I was finding a identity that I was willing to say was mine.
Vic:
Shane was just 16 years old when he decided he wanted to become a pimp. He was very popular and really charming. And he would pour on the charm to get what he wanted. Now, all he had to do was convince his girlfriend that she could earn money for sex.
Shane:
I had a young girlfriend at that time, and she loved me. She just cared for me, and she wanted me to act and do these other things. And I tried some of that, but I just couldn't be still, right? I had too much energy, and I just couldn't be still. She really wanted something that was good for me, but what I wanted was the notoriety that I started to receive in the street. And so my first girlfriend is really also the first person who I turned out to the life of the streets.
I think because I brought her around some of the people that I'm telling you about that became more important to me in my life who were all in the street, she got comfortable with them. And it made the transition process for her easier than it would've been had I not set that stage for her. I didn't really know I was doing that. I mean, I can't go back and say at that time I really knew what I was doing. But I knew that I was falling off into it, and she was following me. And so in whatever way I was going, she was prepared to go there, bless her heart. She was prepared to go there. You know, I really was saying, “Honey, this is where I'm going. And I want you to come with me.” And I wasn't violent or any of that kind of thing. But you know, this is what I'm getting ready to do. And she was like, “Look, I'm going with you.” And that's how we got there.
Vic:
You must have had such a charm over her, for her to go that direction. Right?
Shane:
I think it was –- I was popular. Yeah. You know, in the community at that time, I was popular.
Vic:
And when you're popular, people follow you.
Shane:
You know, that's a…that's a scary trait.
Vic:
As Shane got deeper into this lifestyle, he saw the potential of hustling and exploiting his girls so that he could earn big money on the Chitlin’ Circuit. This was a collection of African American performance venues scattered throughout the country. Motown greats like James Brown and others toured regularly. As the crowd followed the artists, street workers would follow the crowd.
Shane:
People came from all over everywhere in Minnesota. When you came to Minneapolis, the fun or the partying would take you to the Chitlin’ Circuit, which was there on Highway 55. And that was where we had it going on, as we say back in those days. Ladies might get out about seven or eight o'clock in the evening and walk a particular beat. We called it the stroll. And there would be particular stroll-designated streets where this was allowed. And police knew that. Police in some cases were customers. We would come in and congregate and everybody would, you know, have drinks. Of course, there's also drugs involved during those times. And illicit drugs would be cocaine, which at that time of course was a powder form. Heroin was on that scene. I never experienced it, but I knew of it. I knew it when I saw it. Something about me knew not to go that direction. However, I went in so many other directions. I really can't claim any, you know, any victory in that way.
Vic:
You talked about the drug starting to show up. Is this around the time, Shane, when you started taking cocaine?
Shane:
Yes it was. Just as a snorting, what we called tooting. It was like a delicacy in some ways. It was classy, or at least it had the representation of class in those days. At that time, it didn't cause great hardship — at that time. These were some roarin’ days, man. And in the sixties, and then into the seventies, cocaine was abundant. And we just used that as a snorting tool or something to add flavor and swag to what we were doing. And I got into it and began to use it freely. Not of course seeing that it was addictive at all because it was so much fun. It was so cool at that time. But later on in the later years and later seventies and the early eighties, it was very addictive for myself and for the larger community.
Vic:
They stop getting fun after a while. But, at first it's a blast because you're having a good time. You're full of energy. You're also pretty young at this time. So it's just kind of enhancing that lifestyle for you.
Shane:
Yep. Absolutely.
Vic:
Shane had been doing this for a long time. Then in the late seventies, he moved his girls to Anchorage, Alaska, and things took a turn for the worse. One night, the mother of Shane's baby and another girl working for Shane started drinking heavily. They had Shane's newborn daughter staying with them, and they got into a fight.
Shane:
The argument was supposed to be about some money. One of the girls got stabbed. The other girl was under arrest. My daughter was in child protection, right.
Vic:
Well, yeah. What was going on through your mind when you heard that news?
Shane:
Yeah. Well, you know, somebody called me — a neighbor who also lived in that place and who I kind of had watching that location for me a little bit — and said, “Hey man, you better get down here. Something terrible is going on.” And I drove down. I got there pretty quick. It was ambulance, police, and just a scary scene. But my daughter was there.
Vic:
What did it feel like to have your newborn daughter taken away?
Shane:
Yeah, that, I mean…I can give the feeling now more than I could then, because then I just was like robotic. I knew I had to recover wherever she was. That was gonna happen. My mind was one-track about it. And so I just focused in on that. It was frightening, but I just didn't have time to deal with the fright. I had to find where she was located and get her back. That I did within the next day. She spent one night with a nice lady outside of Anchorage. Then I went to the hospital and located the woman who was stabbed. It was serious. She was in recovery, but was gonna take a while for her to recover. Tried to make sure she had everything that she could possibly want. And then after about a week, I was able to bail out the person who committed that offense. So everybody was on the street so to speak. But it changed my karma. Things went downhill there from that point. You know, not right away. But slowly it changed the atmosphere we were living in at that time.
Vic:
It stopped being fun.
Shane:
Right, right. Wow.
Vic:
Shane was at a crossroads in his life. Does he continue and possibly end up dead in a fight? Or does he change his ways — but change into what? That's coming up after the break.
Sometimes in life, you have to lose everything you care about before you can move forward. Or so it seemed for Shane. He'd risked the life of his newborn daughter as she was swept up in a domestic fight. And shortly after this incident, he was about to lose the woman who raised him, his grandma.
Shane:
My brother Floyd called me to say that my grandmother was very sick. And he said, “Man, if you wanna see her alive, you better come home right now.”
Vic:
This was the woman who raised you.
Shane:
It was the woman who raised me, Beula Mae Dubois. And she would always tell people, “Shane is smart, and he's gonna be something in his life.” And I would try to tell her, “Mom, don't. Calm down with that.” You know, it would, it would shame me. She'd say I was a good boy - “Shane is a good boy.” It wasn't nothing good about me at that time. You know? So I didn't want her to embarrass herself.
Vic:
Shane returned to Minneapolis with one of his daughters. He rented a small apartment for the two of them, but Shane was a mess. The way he had been living had finally broken him.
Shane:
So something had developed while I was away. Cocaine use had become first freebase and then crack after that. Now the crack is becoming more and more addictive, and I'm starting to fall into that. And so I'm losing that, that swagger. Whatever it was that people said I had, I'm losing that. And it's just becoming an addiction, dope-feed behavior. Right? And now you're chasing.
Vic:
You know, that's such a good way to put it. Yeah. Shane, that's such a good way. You lose the swagger, the things that you used to do that people liked about you, the things that you used to do, that you liked about yourself, all that is slowly disappearing because of that pipe.
Shane:
Absolutely.
Vic:
What did your daily use look like at that time?
Shane:
Yeah, I was strung out really bad. I would just guesstimate that I was smoking up a hundred dollars a day, which at that time was a lot.
Vic:
Yeah. That is a lot — still a lot.
Shane:
The addiction had become so compelling that my scruples were challenged. And I inhaled some cocaine in front of her. And she said to me — in her sweet voice — she said, “Dad, when I grow up, I'm gonna do that too.”
Vic:
Shane could see where he was heading, but he felt powerless that he could change anything. He didn't want his daughter to get addicted to drugs or become a prostitute. Then out of the blue, something happened. His six-year-old daughter refused to let him waste his life away. She refused to let him sleep all day and snort cocaine all night. She forced him to be a dad.
Shane:
She wanted to go to a park that was not far from our apartment. It was a face painting, and they couldn't paint any of the children's faces unless she went and got the parent. So in those days, Vic, I slept until just before six. The 6:00PM news would be my kind of morning news, so to speak. She came and got me in the bed. She said, “Dad, Dad, you gotta come to the park.” And she said it so sweet, by the way. So sweet. She was a sweet girl. She still is. She said, “They're doing face painting, but they won't do it unless your parent comes.”
And I think now, talking to you, that it was God the whole time, because she just was not going to let me sleep this one off, you know? And so I said, “Okay, well, give me a few minutes and let me just pull myself together and I'll meet you over at the park.”
And so I got situated and cleaned up and walked over. And to my surprise, it was a revival meeting. And the pastor was a pastor from New York. I wish he could hear this. I don't know his name. I wish I knew his name. This pastor from New York got everybody in a big circle. Now these are all the parents who the children were able to put together to come so they could have their faces painted. It was a great strategy. And I'm standing there kind of, you know, whatever…what's going on here. And the guy said, “I'm not gonna ask you if you want to join church or if you want to join my church. I'm not asking you for any money. I don't want anything from you, but I just want to know: does anybody here want to be totally free of drugs and alcohol right now?”
Vic:
Wow.
Shane:
And man, Vic, this was a large circle of maybe 30 people. You could hear a pin drop on the grass. It was just deadly silent because now everybody in town is smoking dope. I mean, crack is all over everywhere. And he says, “Does anybody here just want to be free?”
And I looked around like, “Man, who are you to ask such a thing? What do you have that would allow you to believe you could do such a — that you could rid someone of this?” And out of absolute spite and disdain, I raised my hand. I was the only one in the circle who raised their hand, even though I know there was some other people there he was talking to. I raised my hand, and he brought me into the middle of the circle, and he prayed for me. And I don't wanna say that I heard anything or I felt something, or I got goosebumps or any of that. I didn't get none of that. I just felt it was a waste of time. I just wanted to get through. So my daughter could get her face painted.
Vic:
After this revival meeting, Shane got high with a guy he didn't even like.
Shane:
Yeah, I didn't have any peace. So I just got up and walked outta his house and went on home. The next day, I'm in this apartment building on the third floor. The next day I woke up to a sunshine morning. I have my windows completely blocked off. Yet the sun is still finding a way to peek through. So I know it's really sunny. And the birds are singing this song: chirp-chirpity-chirp. [Chuckles] I mean, they're just, like, in unison, like they're a choir and they're being directed and it's great. And I'm thinking, “Wow, it's so loud. It must be directly outside my window.” So my perception of sound told me they're right here. And you should see them when you open up the shade.
Well, I opened up the shade Vic. I saw nothing. And they're still chirping away. And I can't believe that I don't see 'em. So I opened up the window. Now the window has a screen in it. So I still can't — and I'm on the third floor — so I still can't see up or around, and they're singing louder. It intrigued me so much that I took the screen out and stuck my head out and turned my body around to see what's making this sound. While I was hanging outside, a voice said to me, “Now, did the birds just start singing? Or did you just start listening?”
Vic:
Oh man.
Shane:
I was thinking, “Wow, all of these years that I have gone and run the streets and ran the country, I forgot about the squirrels. And I forgot about the birds. And I forgot about nature and any of those things.” I was just so busy living this night life. And it just struck me when I came inside and closed up. I never did see a bird, right? So now for me — I don't know what your listeners might think. And I can appreciate you for whatever you think. But for me, it was as real as anything. I knew it was God's voice. I knew it.
Vic:
This was a spiritual intervention.
Shane:
It was a spiritual intervention. And so for the next three weeks, I had absolutely no taste for drugs and alcohol.
Vic:
This spiritual intervention forced Shane to quit drugs. He was desperate to change his life. And he knew he had to stay clean.
Shane:
I knew that if I didn't make a change, if I didn't change everything — not just not get high — if I didn't change everything about myself, I would pass all of it on to her, and potentially she would pass it too. And so I said, “I'm done. I'm done with this. I'm not chasing money or females.” And I mean, I was addicted to females. I was addicted to the street life. I mean, this is separate from a drug.
Vic:
That's a real good point because it's all part. It's not just the drug, it's everything involved with it.
Shane:
Absolutely. And I was addicted to all of it. Now I was saying, “I'm gonna never do this again. I need to take care of myself.”
Vic:
But as soon as Shane began to change his life, fate had a way of pulling him back. Players from his old days were calling.
Shane:
Some of my friend-girls who I had left or who had left me in other parts of the country started to call me saying, “Are you alright? Shane, are you alright? I just got a feeling, you know. I'm in New York, I'm doing good. You don't need no money. Just get a ticket. I'll send you a ticket and come on out here to New York and let's just work it out. Whatever it is we'll figure it out.” And I got these calls from other locations, from people — not just females, but other guys who I ran with. We had a clique so to speak. And they're like, “Man, what's wrong with you?”
And I was like saying, “Nothing! I'm good. I'm just laying dead. You know?” So three weeks had passed. I got all these calls. I had no taste for anything. I mean, I never had a urge ever again for crack cocaine, never.
Vic:
A big part of his change was to stop abusing women. Shane apologized to all the women he exploited as a hustler. And he got in touch with the first girlfriend he turned into a sex worker.
Shane:
We still have a strong appreciation for each other. And we talk about this stuff sometimes. And I was able to apologize to her in a way I think was meaningful.
Vic:
Now Shane had to rebuild his life, but he was clueless on what he should do. He wanted to learn more about the effects of drugs and how they controlled him. So he enrolled in college.
Shane:
As I went to school, I began to learn some of the nuances of how narcotics affects the brain and the neurological components that take place, and the misfiring of neurons, and why you can get stuck in a place where messages aren't connecting in your brain. I began to learn all of these things, and they were fascinating to me, fascinating in a way that they were so logical. And for me, if you can make your message make sense, logical sense, it's attractive to me. And I could almost take what I was being given in the medical model and then put my other hat on and my other eyes and look and see how it impacted me, where it impacted me, when the neurological damage had taken place.
Vic:
Shane didn't go to rehab to quit drugs. For most African Americans hooked on drugs there was only one type of rehab: prison. The war on drugs had a huge effect on the community in the 1990s. Crack cocaine was widely available on the streets of Minneapolis. And when people got hooked on it, they would do anything for a fix.
Shane:
We had 95 homicides in 1995 in Minneapolis. And that was an atrociously high number then or now. The reason for gun-carrying increased 200% because of that crack epidemic. People began to carry guns and have weapons. But crack was such a powerful drug that you would want it and want it now and be willing to stick somebody up for it and even hurt them if you couldn't get what you wanted. So I said, what could I do?
Vic:
I can't even put into words the disappointment in our society at that time, during the crack epidemic. When Black folks were dying from crack, nobody cared. Right? And so it's no wonder that in communities where folks who looked like you were dying, that there weren't many places to get help. Where did Blacks get help?
Shane:
Exactly. The help we got was the war on drugs that turned into incarceration of African Americans, wholesale incarceration. And I think the population of African Americans in prison during those times of the eighties and the first part of the nineties went up 120%. And we've never recovered from that, the losses that we endured during that time. I don't wish drugs on any family or any community because I know the devastation.
Vic:
Shane finished his studies in chemical dependency and went to work with Hennepin County government. He worked on outreach programs in prisons and with state representatives on initiatives to get guns off the streets in Minneapolis.
Recording of Shane speaking at an outreach event:
“Have you got high enough? No, it's a question for everybody in the room.” [Attendees responding.] “Everybody in the room who know what I'm talking about, raise your hand.”
Vic:
Now he runs the Power of People Leadership Initiative. Most people call them POP guys. It's a group that gives ex-offenders the opportunity to start their lives over, free of drugs, while providing work opportunities, family support, and housing.
Recording of Shane speaking at an outreach event:
“You gotta break it. You gotta break it for yourself. You are better than that, man. You are smarter than that. You got more going on than that. I'm just telling you directly.”
Shane:
We started a reentry group, started with three people, four. Now we have the largest reentry group in the state of Minnesota. And on any given Tuesday, we can have upwards of 30 people, 35 people.
Vic:
That's incredible.
Shane:
Yeah. And of all nationalities. And they all have language, this POP language, that they can structure their commonality around.
Vic:
Both you and your mom got out of a line of work, a lifestyle, that a lot of people don't survive.
Shane:
Right. Wow.
Vic:
How does that, what does that do to your heart?
Shane:
You know, I just have to think that if you're listening and you're struggling, and you believe that there's no way out – there is a way out for you. And you don't have to give up. And you are not the sum total of your worst day. You've gotta rise up now and be strong. The strength is there. Hold on to it. And don't doubt it, that it belongs to someone else. It's you trying to get outside of your old skin. This is me in my new skin talking to you about what it's like to be in that old skin. You don't have to stay there. You have to demand something of yourself. Get up and try it again.
Vic:
Shane, that was…I can't think of a better way to end this. Thank you for sharing your voice. And thank you for talking to me today.
Shane:
Thank you, Vic.
Vic:
Shane Price has helped thousands of ex-offenders reclaim a new life in society. One of the first people he helped was Tierre Caldwell, a foot soldier in the Minneapolis gang world. Back in the late nineties, Minneapolis earned the title as the country's murder capital, and Tierre was part of this crime scene. You can listen to Tierre's incredible journey on a previous episode of “Back from Broken.”
“Back from Broken” is a show about how we're all broken sometimes, and how we need help from time to time. If you, or someone you know, are struggling with addiction in prison, you can find a list of resources at our website backfrombroken.org.
“Back from Broken” is hosted by me, Vic Vela. It's a production of Colorado Public Radio’s Audio Innovation Studios and CPR news. Our lead producer today was Jo Erickson. Matthew Simonson was also a producer. Find a list of everyone who helped make this episode in the show notes. This podcast is made possible by Colorado Public Radio members. Learn about supporting “Back from Broken” at cpr.org.
