“After the show, when it was time to leave the venue for our hotel, Pac jumped in the van with us. Now, with 30,000 people at the show, we got stuck in traffic trying to leave. Our driver was this young Caucasian girl who liked the Pharcyde. She’d been cool to us when she drove us to the show. Well, she must have loved Tupac, because as soon as he got in the van, it was obvious how giddy she was. Pac was in form, clowning and being loud. He was hopping around between the seats in the 15-passenger van we were in. Then, we got into some hard traffic.

Tupac wanted the girl to bounce out of our lane into the lane of oncoming traffic, which was empty, to pass all of the other traffic. I guess Tupac was too much to resist. The next thing we knew, she had whipped into the oncoming traffic lane. We were passing every car that was waiting to get on the highway. The reason everybody was at a standstill was that there was a police officer that had the street blocked off and was mandating how the traffic funneled onto the highway. When he saw this…van driving the wrong way down the street, he put his hand out and used his flashlight to pull us over. I felt badly because our driver only broke the law because Tupac told her to, nut now, she was going to be the one who got in trouble. I tried to help her out. I leaned over and talked to the officer through the driver’s side window.

‘We got the headliners in the van,’ I said.

He didn’t want to hear that.

‘Let me have your license and registration,’ he said to the girl.

When the girl handed them over, the officer walked over to his car. This whole time, Tupac was being cool.

‘We’ve got time,’ he said. ‘We’ve got time.’

The officer wrote the girl a ticket and made us get back into the line of traffic, which was at a standstill. People must have started to figure out that Tupac was in our van because we started to get a few people around us, trying to look in. just as Tupac pulled out a joint, there was this young girl- she looked about nine years old- outside the window, peering in at him. So he leaned out his window and pulled her close to him.

‘What you are about to see me do, I shouldn’t have done,’ he said. ‘This is very wrong. You can’t tell anybody what you seen. This is going to be your secret and my secret- our secret.’

Her eyes got so big. She nodded her head yes. To this day, I’m sure she tells this story about her moment with Tupac. And I’m sure the girl who was driving the van that day still tells her story about Tupac…I’m still telling it. Why? Because he’s a legend.

In his twenty-five years, he did so much. But there was more that he could have done and more we could have learned from him. I don’t think the masses had a chance to understand what this dude’s role could have been. Not to put him on the level of like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, but I can’t help but think of the similarities. Malcolm X was a former hustler and drug dealer who did his time in prison. He spoke to and for the people. Pac spoke to and for the people. Also, a lot of those leaders died young. A lot of Pac’s accolades were posthumous. But even now that he’s been gone for a decade, his power hasn’t dimmed. When I listen to albums like ‘Thug Life’ or songs like ‘Dear Mama,’ it’s clear that we had a leader there. I can see it the way that people hang onto his words, wear their Tupac tattoos with pride, call him preacher, saint, and revolutionary, that he still represents something beyond himself or his music. To me, that’s real leadership. Like he said in his own book of poetry, he was ‘The Rose That Grew From Concrete.’ This dude knew what he was talking about. Passing so young, and leaving the legacy that he did, I’m not surprised that people still say that he’s their favorite artist. In everything that we have from Pac that was released posthumously, people could still understand the message, which has become all the more powerful since he passed on. I’ve also heard rappers say that they hid their beef because of Biggie and Tupac; I really think some lives got saved because of that. Given the small time that we did have Pac, his message and his purpose will outlast his so-called days on earth.” -From, “An XL Life” By Big Boy

“That’s the thing about living in a world in which we’re all connected. Research even proves that babies born in the same nursery absorb each other’s pain. When one starts to cry, the others start wailing as well. I don’t care if it’s a hard pill to swallow. You’re responsible to someone. People can’t just go around pissing wherever they want. It will stink. Your actions affect the lives of others.” -From, “Magic City: The Trials of a Native Son” By: Trick Daddy w/ Peter Bailey

“In the early days, blacks weren’t allowed to own businesses in downtown Miami. After working all day at the white-owned businesses, black workers headed across the railroad tracks to Colored Town. The neighborhood was a shantytown. With no running water or proper sanitation it reeked of rats and disease. Nevertheless, the residents turned something out of nothing. Kind of like the way slaves used to sing those Negro spirituals to get them prepped and primed to pick cotton for hours in the grueling sun, folks in Colored Town turned a negative into a positive. We’ve been doing that ever since we got dragged here from across the Atlantic. We somehow turn our pain into joy, our cries into smiles, then get the world dancing.

Look at the blues. B. B. King looks like he’s going through hell on that guitar, but go into any swanky spot like South Beach’s Prime 112 or Rue 57 in Manhattan and look at the smiles on those rich folk’s faces as they wash down filet mignon with cabernet while King plays in the background…

The folks there somehow turned that rat infested [hole] into a piece of paradise. D. A. Dorsey was one of the main movers and shakers. He used his skills as a carpenter to build homes for blacks much like E. W. F. Stirrup did several years before. Stirrup left the Bahamas at fifteen and soon started mixing in real estate and ended up buying out a white dude he worked for. He rented the homes he owned to the newly arriving Bahamians so they could get their foot on the door.

Dorsey took it further. He started buying land throughout the country, even some close to Fisher Island. A brother living close to the ocean was unheard of in those days. Blacks weren’t allowed to go to the public beaches, so Dorsey brought it to them. He even opened a hotel, bank, and school for blacks on his way to becoming the city’s first black millionaire. Colored Town’s main strip was booming.

In the 1930s folks called it Little Broadway. Northwest Second Avenue was what people called the center of the “Harlem of the South.” All the greats from Billie Holiday to Count Bassie flocked there after finishing their shows down in Miami Beach, where blacks weren’t allowed to stay ate the hotels. They got rocking and grooving right there in the shadows of downtown. The soul food cafes and jazz lounges made Northwest First Court from Second to Twentieth streets the place to be. But the real VIPs hung at the Sir John.

The good times wouldn’t last long. Officials decided to run the I-95 expressway right through the heart of Overtown for a faster route to South Beach. Thousands of folks were forced out when the place was flattened. Many moved to Liberty Square, but those white folks in Liberty City saw us coming and freaked out. They built a wall at the south end of the projects to keep us out of their section. Other folks moved to Scott-Carver Houses. Harlem died. In place of those famous nightclubs, crack houses now stand. Homeless folks sleep on flattened cardboard boxes in the vacant lots.” -From, “Magic City: The Trials of a Native Son” By: Trick Daddy w/ Peter Bailey

“It is so easy for two parties to argue and fight about truly nothing, but in realty no one really wins, and the losses can be huge. Aside from embarrassment, a public display of disrespect can cause you to lose your dignity and the respect of your peers. By choosing to always maintain a certain level of professionalism, you can actually prevent yourself from sinking down to the level of someone who is disrespecting you in front of others. In the long run, the negative consequences of acting out could far outweigh the temporary satisfaction you may feel by putting someone else down.” -From, “Player HateHer: How To Avoid The Beat Down and Live In A Drama-Free World” By: Tamara “Taj” Johnson-George and Katrina R. Chambers