To my eternal love and gratitude, Venus Ebony Starr Williams arrived in this world on June 17, 1980, and Serena Jameka Williams arrived on September 26, 1981.
I had my game and I had my girls. It was time to put them together. The trouble was, I didn’t know that following my plan was about to expose us to the worst side of life, and put our very lives in danger. I really had no idea of the hell to which I was initially consigning my family or the pain I would suffer as a result. What I also did not know was that from here on in, tennis wasn’t going to be a game. Not anymore.
Not when you play it in the ghetto.
In the third week of March 1983, I moved my family from Long Beach to Compton in South Central Los Angeles, to a house I bought at 1117 East Stockton Street. It was a terrible change from the tranquility of Long Beach. Compton was lost in a murder spree that would last for twenty years and leave 1,397 people dead from gang- and drug-related violence. It was a world of crime and bloodshed and soon we were trapped in the middle of daily gun battles and shootouts. We quickly learned how to escape the bullets that flew through the air unconcerned about their next victims—we fell to our knees in the posture of prayer and crawled like defenseless children to safety.
There is no real hiding place in a war zone. Gang members controlled the city and put its citizens under martial law. For almost all the senior citizens, it was total lockdown. The gangs preyed on their helpless victims through intimidation, threats, violence, and murder. They ruled the streets of Compton, shooting people without hesitation. Thugs commanded every corner, willing to kill or be killed, just to protect their territory. Life had little meaning. People died just for the hell of it.
What led me to Compton was my belief that the greatest champions came out of the ghetto. I had studied sports successes like Muhammad Ali, and great thinkers like Malcolm X. I saw where they came from. As part of my plan, I decided it was where the girls were going to grow up, too. It would make them tough, give them a fighter’s mentality. They’d be used to combat. And how much easier would it be to play in front of thousands of white people if they had already learned to play in front of scores of armed gang members?
Venus was almost three years old and Serena was nearing two. Before Compton, we were living about a block from the beach. It was beautiful. So when the family learned I was moving us, Oracene said, “I’m not gonna move to Compton. There’s a limit, Richard!”
I told her she didn’t have to move, but I was going, and we could visit each other as often as she liked. In Long Beach, I was paying a huge house note of over one thousand dollars a month. In Compton, the house I bought was twenty-five thousand dollars and the monthly payment was around $135.00. That freed up a lot of money so I could spend less time earning, and more time training the girls. We talked about it a lot and Oracene still didn’t want to move, but my mind was made up.
After a while, she decided she would move to Compton and asked me what the house was like. I did not want to tell her the truth. It was a mess.
“You have to see it for yourself,” I said.
When Oracene and the older kids saw it for themselves, only Lyn, Venus, and Serena didn’t have a problem because they were too young to understand what a drop their lifestyle had taken. Oracene, Yetunde, and Isha balked major league. When Oracene saw people shooting up drugs, and gang members standing on the corner, she refused to stay. She remained in Long Beach while I took the girls with me.
Now I had the type of environment I wanted—the kind I grew up in. I’d always felt that the ghetto makes you tough and strong—unless it doesn’t do anything for you at all but get you killed. I needed to have my girls around kids who were already where I was trying to take them. They had to learn to be rough, tough, and strong. Anyway, that was the main idea for moving to Compton. The result? I got more than I bargained for.
After two days in this hellhole, I was ready to move. I had never been in a war before. Here I was at forty-one years of age and I felt like I had been drafted into the U.S. Army and dropped into hostile territory. Near as I could tell, Compton was held by the enemy, and the president and his cabinet were members of the most notorious and ruthless gangs in the nation.
The president of Compton was 2-Evil, a young man about twenty years old. His destiny was to be a gang member. His father, Evil-One, and his mother, Angie-B, were gang members, too. When 2-Evil was just four years old, he helped his dad in a robbery. Using his small size, he crawled through a window and unlocked the door so his father and his homeboys could rob the place. This was just the beginning of his downward spiral in and out of juvenile detention centers for crimes ranging from petty theft and burglary to strong-arm robbery.
A street-smart, high-ranking member of the Bloods and always a step ahead of the police, 2-Evil ruled Compton. He used drugs like weapons. Rock cocaine was an explosive device and heroin turned heroes into zeroes. PCP was the mind destroyer, a drug so powerful it could tranquilize an elephant. It was one of the worst drugs on the street, and yet young men and women took it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, slowly destroying their minds and, ultimately, their lives.
There was no law and order in Compton. A little black girl was shot in the back of the head by a storeowner who killed her for stealing a bottle of orange juice. Commerce was warfare. It was impossible to free the city from control by the Crips and Bloods, who occupied it like a military force. Crime was central to life here.
It took me only a couple of months to realize I was in the middle of hell and only God could help me now. I prayed without ceasing. I prayed hard that gangs would not kill my children. I cried to the Lord, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” Despite my prayer, I did want. I was not content. I wanted to run. Yet, I wanted things to change. I wanted to make a difference. I didn’t know how. It was easy to see I would need the strength of Samson, the courage of Daniel, the wisdom of Solomon, and the power of Almighty God to fight the gangs that infested Compton.
In the depths of my heart, I wished God would rain down brimstone and fire and totally consume every gang member and cast them into the pits of hell. Maybe the police could line them all up and sentence them to death by firing squad. Kill all of the bastards. Was I insane? Were these the thoughts of a rational man? How could a man of kindness and humility change so quickly?
I hated President 2-Evil. He loved to ride in the neighborhood in his chauffeur-driven limousine. A crowd always surrounded the car and treated him like a foreign diplomat, which he was, because he was from East Compton. He was the government, and he got more respect in Compton than the president got in Washington. His bodyguards packed weapons and were not afraid to use them. They had an arsenal the LAPD was unable to match. To command respect, the bodyguards fired off rounds to see people crawl on their knees for safety. Many times, I was one of those helpless people desperately trying to escape the fire.
Nobody in Compton was prepared to deal with the gangs because it was just too easy to get killed. Blacks, whites, Mexicans, teachers, preachers, deacons, church members, city officials, the police, and the sheriff’s department—they all ignored the fact that Compton was in serious trouble. Many years before, I had battled the Ku Klux Klan, but this was going to be much tougher because I would be fighting my own people. Where did I start? Who would I get to help me? How could one man stand against a gangster militia? Was there anyone who gave a damn except me?
My crusade began in earnest. My goal was to see not one more child killed in Compton. City Councilwoman Patricia Moore did all she could to help me, and we got to be friends. She was a hard worker, and I really appreciated it, but little came of our efforts. I visited more than thirty preachers, the police department, city council members, and even the mayor, to no avail. The mayor got so aggravated by my visits, he told his secretary to tell me he wasn’t in. My face became a familiar sight, but pleas for help were hopeless.
One day I saw the mayor in the car next to mine, stopped at a red light. I yelled out my window, “Why don’t you try to stop the gangs from taking over Compton?”
At first, he just stared ahead as if he was afraid to look my way. I repeated the question, knowing he recognized me.
He replied angrily, “Keep going the way you’re going and you’re going to be taken over, too. There’s nothing I can do. There’s nothing anyone can do.”
When the light turned green, he accelerated as if a gang member was chasing him. I pulled my car over and cried. It hurt me immensely to see such a lack of concern. I grew convinced nothing and no one could change Compton. I decided to get out of this killing field where blacks had no respect for their own humanity. I rented a U-Haul and raced home to get my family packed so we could leave immediately.
As we headed north on Long Beach Boulevard, I stopped at a light and looked over when a commotion started at a Mobil gas station. Suddenly, a young man was shot down before my eyes. It was senseless. I could barely believe it. Yet, at the very moment that ambulance and police sirens began to wail in the distance, I knew I could not leave Compton. I might die in the war zone because every evil force of hell existed all around me, but I couldn’t run away and give up. Someone had to change the community. Someone had to give the children hope. I was willing to die to stay in hell. I would continue to run my security business and save money, not to move out of Compton, but to remain in it.
My decision to train my daughters on the courts of Compton was a battle not only for tennis, but for my very life. Going to the park was like going to Wall Street where bankers did business. Unfortunately, instead of bonds and stocks, they were pushing rock cocaine. It was sold on every corner, in every market’s parking lot. The street vendors sold hot dogs and hamburgers from their carts, and cocaine as a condiment. How could I train my daughters here?
Every day I left home, I didn’t know if I would return. I kissed my wife and children as if each day was my last. I didn’t know where to start but I knew City Hall was not going to help me. No one was on my side. After considering all my options and facing the fact there were none, I realized I had to free up the tennis courts in the local park so I could proceed with my plan to train my daughters to be the greatest tennis players who ever lived.
I went to Paramount Sports, owned by Ted and Bill Hodges, where I always bought used balls, and bought three hundred more for thirty dollars. I wanted to use old balls to train the girls, ones without much bounce, so they would have to build up the speed to get to anything. They didn’t know a new ball from an old ball, so it wouldn’t bother them. They’d have to generate their own power and run even harder, just like I did when I was fleeing white people in the South. I also bought twenty-nine Cobra racquets made by Wilson and some big Prince racquets. I added some racquets from a company called Yonex to my supply. When certain models were discontinued, the store drilled holes in them so they would break if you hit a ball. For almost nothing, I bought a bunch to use for swinging practice.
I now had almost all the parts of the plan. I had studied tennis and mastered the game. My daughters were strong and healthy and ready to be trained. I had the environment to make the girls tough. I had the equipment and the training plan that I was now putting into effect. Only one more thing remained—a place to play.
I needed tennis courts I could use whenever I wanted, for as long as I wanted—and I wanted them to be free. There was a gentleman named James Powers who taught at Inglewood High School in Inglewood, California. I knew him from when I was learning to play. His sister worked at the park in Compton where there were abandoned tennis courts. They had broken glass all over them. They were dirty. There was human waste on them, along with needles, condoms, and anything else you could think of that was filthy or contaminated. They were exactly what I needed.
I asked James’s sister if I could clean them up and use them.
She said, “If you can get on the courts, you can use them as much as you want to.”
I immediately got a broom to sweep them, and used a hose to wash them, but hygiene was not my biggest problem. My problem was the gang members. This was their area to sell drugs, and the territory all around the tennis courts was theirs. Perhaps naïvely, after I cleaned the courts, I asked them to move elsewhere so we could use them.
“No, man, we ain’t movin’,” they told me flatly.
The more I talked to them, the more they insisted they weren’t going anywhere. I said, “Well, someone is going to have to take the tennis courts from you, then.”
“It won’t do no good to call the police,” they told me, smiling.
In this, they were right. Calling the police was useless. The relationship between the gangs and the police was one of indifference, corruption, and crime. Most cops’ attitude was “let the niggers take care of themselves.” I believed they were paid off from drug profits, so there was no profit in interfering. Gang members had Tec-9s and other automatic weapons. They didn’t mind shooting you, either. Unlike the cops, they had no paperwork to fill out, or citizen review boards to worry about.
In the process of trying to get the gang members to move on, I got my teeth knocked out, my nose broken, my jaw broken, and my fingers dislocated. I took a beating almost every day. They beat me so badly I could barely walk, but I kept on coming back until they finally started saying, “Old man, do anything hurt you?”
I said, “Yeah, I hurt, but damn if I’m going.”
“You better go,” they warned me.
I said, “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
And every day I’d go back.
A year later, I had not gained any ground. The gangs were still in charge of the park, still selling drugs. My activity was stressing out my family. The children were constantly asking, “Why do you hang in the streets so much, Daddy? Why do you take a stick with a piece of pipe on the tip everywhere you go? Why do you come home with blood on your clothes? Why is your head always wrapped in white bandages? Why do you wear shades in the house?”
My explanations always upset them, especially Oracene. She was totally against my risking my life in Compton.
“Richard, what about your family? What are we going to do if something happens to you while you’re out there fighting with gangs? You’re too old for that. If they won’t let you use the court, go somewhere else. Let’s move out of this crazy place.”
My response was simple. “Nothing can hurt me because God is on my side.”
Disgusted, she said, “Let’s see if God is on your side when they’re kicking in your ribs.”
Trying to teach tennis and help the people in the community was a full-time job, but I had to find a way to do it. As always, my security company was a perfect business for me. I could provide a valuable service, make money, and create my own schedule to work with Venus and Serena.
My security firm had a contract with a check-cashing business, and the owner paid me to provide security. Security meant something quite different in Compton than most places. Sometimes, while checking on my men guarding the building, we’d have to jump into an old steel shed where they kept pipes and construction materials because gang members doing target practice shot their automatic weapons and bullets came flying by.
One evening at work, I realized I had forgotten to go to the pharmacy to pick up some medication. Just after dark, I saw an old black man walking down my side of the street. He was probably in his late sixties. He looked honest and was decently dressed, and I thought he might help me. I stepped out from the building and said, “Excuse me, sir?”
As soon as I spoke, he crossed over to the other side of the road.
I caught up to him and said, “Why are you dodging me? I never did anything to you.”
He said, “Son, where I come from in Alabama, you see a black man, you get yourself happy. Now when I see one it scares the livin’ shit outta me. And you black.”
I felt bad. I said, “I understand what you’re going through, but I’m not that way.”
He shook his head sadly. “Well, I won’t take the chance.”
That’s how frightened he was, that was the climate of fear. What made it worse was we were all black. We were doing it to each other in the same race, within the same community. Hurt and violence was not an outside threat anymore. It was us.
It was the only time I was ever ashamed to be black.
It was a dark time, for sure. Why was it so hard to live among my own people? One night when I was checking my security guards, I saw a building on fire on Wilmington near Compton Boulevard. I ran up and saw the owner just watching it burn. Like a fool, I started to run to call the police and fire department.
He said, “Hey, wait. Whatever you do, don’t stop it.”
“Don’t stop it?” I repeated, shocked.
He shook his head. “If you do, I lose money.”
It took me a moment to realize he was letting it burn for the insurance money. That was Compton.
Yet, the truth was that a spark of ambition also lay under the surface, dying to get out. It was part of why I stayed. I knew two young men who were coming up strong. They vowed they would someday gain world attention. One was a boy called Eazy-E. The other was called Snoop Dogg. They sold their records from the Thrifty Drugstore and out of the backs of their cars to the neighborhood people. It made me see that no matter how much I thought I was the only one trying to do something in the neighborhood, other people were, too. There were young people with aspirations, wishing to break free and refusing not to try.
I spent a lot of time building relationships with the gang members. Learning to talk to them and listening to them. In some ways, I was a bit of a father figure. Most had never known one. Many of them reminded me of the time when I was much younger and just living to die, caring about nothing, convinced the future held nothing but my doom. Their eyes were dead, without hope. Yet, as different as we were, a fragile trust began to grow. It made things a bit easier, but never easy. It was commonplace for me to get to know a young man, only to have him disappear soon after, and be told when I asked where he was that he was dead.
I wanted to start working with Venus on the Compton tennis courts when she was five years old, but I realized the park was still too dangerous. I had to find a way to persuade the gang members to release their hold on it. It was an impossible task but one I had to accomplish. I went to the park every day. Drug transactions were continuous. Buyers came on bikes, motorcycles, and cars, and on foot, from the best neighborhoods to the worst. There was a drug empire operating in the heart of Compton and the park was its main headquarters, their Main Street. Asking the gang to give up part of the park was asking for a death sentence.
After many months of ineffective negotiating and getting into arguments and fights, I decided to take Venus to the tennis courts anyway. She was past five and already way behind in her training. Going to the courts was a risk I had to be willing to take. Feeling a little apprehensive, I took my broomstick with me just in case. It was three feet long, with a four-inch piece of steel pipe stuck on the end. Cracking one of those gangbangers across the head was not a problem for me if it protected us.
Venus and I walked through the park holding hands and singing. She was aware of the gang activity in the park, because drugs were sold everywhere in the neighborhood, including right in front of our house. While I was showing Venus how to swing her racquet, two rival gang members got into a fight outside the court. One of them pulled a knife, stabbed the other one, and then started kicking him. Everyone else retreated. It was obvious no one was going to stop them. I tried to ignore it and keep pitching balls over the net to Venus. Suddenly, she motioned me close.
“Daddy, why are those men cutting each other up?” she asked innocently. “Is this where you get cut up?”
“Venus, I’ll explain that to you when we get home. Stay here on the court. I’ll be right back.”
With a quizzical look in her eyes, Venus held her racquet against her chest and stood by the fence. I grabbed my broomstick and walked over to the fight. For a moment, I hesitated. I looked back at Venus. I kept telling myself, “She will be okay.”
My life had turned into a game of Russian roulette and it was only a matter of time before the hammer struck the wrong chamber. The fight was none of my business, but I felt a need to stop it, to get involved. People had crowded all around them but no one dared say a word or intervene. It was important to set an example. Black people could help black people, not just hurt them. As I went to break it up, a flashback exploded in my mind. Back in Shreveport, I had been stabbed trying to break up a fight just like this. Since then, I learned never to step between two people fighting. It always left your back exposed and made you an easy target.
The gang member was still kicking his fallen enemy. Making my way through the crowd, I appealed to his better nature. “Come on, young man. You can’t keep kicking a man when he’s down. He’s had enough.”
“Yeah, whatever, old man. Next time, I’m gonna stomp that nigger’s brains out.” He looked at the kid on the ground. “Let that be a lesson to you. Don’t fuck with me.” He kicked him again and walked away, laughing and joking with his homeboys.
I said, “Somebody go call the police.”
The young man was bleeding from his chest. The left side of his face was swollen and blood spilled from the side of his head. Three of his teeth were on the ground, coated in blood.
He moaned. “Thank you.”
I went back on the court and hit balls to Venus. I waited for the sound of the ambulance but it never came. Fifteen minutes later, I looked over to where I left the kid. He was gone. No ambulance, no police, and no police report. This would be settled on the streets.
Venus and I stayed on the court for an hour. After practice, we picked up the balls, the racquets, and my broomstick. We walked hand in hand through the park. When we approached where the fight had taken place she said, “Oh, Daddy, you’re so brave. The other people were scared, but not my daddy. I’m gonna be just like you when I grow up.”
I asked, “What do you mean by that, Venus?”
She answered, “I’m going to be the champion of tennis and queen of the court. No one will ever be able to beat me, just like they can’t beat you.”
I laughed aloud, lightly squeezed Venus’s hand, and walked home.
Maybe all those cuts and bruises I carried were worth it.
Two weeks later I was on the court with Venus and saw three gang members take an old man’s walker from him just outside the gate. He just stood there. He couldn’t move without his walker. It brought tears of rage to my eyes. Finally, helpless, the old man fell to the ground and the gang members just left him there.
I told Venus sternly, “Sit down until I come back.”
I ran up to the gang members to ask them to give the walker back, or give it to me and I would give it back.
“Why did you take his walker?” I asked.
One answered, “I was gonna rob him but he didn’t have any money, man. I can sell this for a few dollars and get me some stuff.”
I said, “Give that man his walker back.”
He said, “Nigger, I’ll give you my foot in your ass.”
So I said, “Tell you what, I give you my foot first,” and I went to take the walker from him and the two other kids.
The three of them jumped me. They shoved me. They punched me. I lost my balance, fell to the ground, and they started kicking me. I could hear Venus’s small voice in the background yelling, “Don’t hit my daddy.” After it was over, I picked myself up and headed for Venus. Why had I tried to stop them? The same reason I had for staying in Compton—an old man on a walker who couldn’t do anything but stand there when the gang members took it.
I helped the old man to his feet. Then I got Venus, collected our gear, and walked the old man to our old Volkswagen bus. I said, “Sir, I’ll have another walker for you before the day is over.”
Hopelessness is a heavy weight on your shoulders, sometimes too heavy to carry. I saw it in the old man’s eyes. I felt it inside me. I wanted it away from Venus, worried it could infect her like a disease. I was humiliated. No father wants his child to see him beat up. But Venus saw things her way.
She said, “Daddy, you can really fight. I want a heart like yours. I want to be just like you, Daddy.”
I neglected to mention that winning might be the better goal for her, and just shook my head. “Venus, I don’t ever want to see you fighting like I was doing. I don’t ever want you around dangerous criminals. I just want you to work on your tennis and get the best education that’s possible.”
She looked at me with a devilish grin and said, “I want to get me some boxing gloves so I can learn how to fight just like you.”
I took the old man home and then we went home. I told Oracene what happened and that I intended to replace the walker. She wasn’t happy, but when I made my mind up about something, there was no stopping me. I went door to door through the neighborhood collecting money. People in the neighborhood were very understanding, and after a few hours, I had enough for a new one. I put the money in an envelope, drove to the old man’s house, and slid the envelope under the door.
* * *
The training continued. Every day I took Venus to the court to work out. Serena always wanted to go along because she and Venus were so close, a bond that would last a lifetime. I was afraid to bring them at first, but soon began a routine of taking both girls to the court. For a while, things were okay, but it was just a matter of time before a confrontation took place.
In December 1985, alone, I got the worst Christmas gift I ever received. In my continuing effort to get the gangs to stay away from the courts, I got into a fight with six or seven gang members. To this day, the details are hazy, but I do remember when I woke up that ten of my teeth were missing from being kicked in the mouth. Over the years, I have grown accustomed to not having teeth, and to this day wear my “toothlessness” as a badge of courage. On top of that, however, I had a sprained arm and broken ribs. Breathing caused me excruciating pain. I had to go to the hospital to be treated. It was embarrassing—black eyes, broken ribs, missing teeth, and swollen jaw. To make matters worse, the tires on my Volkswagen bus were slashed and the windshield smashed. How could I go home this way?
I looked around. My tennis balls were scattered everywhere and my racquets were cracked. I was lost. My dreams were smashed like my body. How could I face my family? I thought things over. It took a while for me to see the bright side of things, but I decided I came out ahead. I was alive. However, I wasn’t able to go to the tennis court for weeks. Days seemed like months as they dragged by. Anxiety consumed me. Every night I would lie awake in bed thinking about all the money I had to spend to fix my bus and replace the balls and racquets. I stayed awake plotting my revenge.
The day would come when I would return to the courts.
Finally, I was able to go back, but this time I didn’t take Venus and Serena. Instead, I took my twelve-gauge pump shotgun. Nothing’s as scary as the click-chunk sound of that pump driving a shell into the breech. I drove up to the court and saw some of the gang members that had beat me up selling drugs. They had stomped the teeth out of my mouth. They had kicked me in the head and broken my ribs without hesitation or remorse. Enough was enough. I couldn’t take any more. Not one more day. It was the second time in my life I was too damn tired to stand it. I was too tired of fighting. My shoulders couldn’t carry the weight any longer. My mind couldn’t fight the fury. I was worn out and worn down. My life in Compton was a nightmare. The arguments, the fights, the beatings—they were torture. I was about to end it, or end someone’s life.
I stepped out of the VW. The gang members saw the shotgun and took off. I was disgusted and filled with rage. I went hunting and I do believe I would have killed every one of them that day if I had found them. Finally, exhausted, I went back to my VW and proceeded home. It took a while; there were police cars and an ambulance on Atlantic Avenue blocking traffic. I parked the VW to look at the cause. Lying dead in the middle of the street was one of the gang members who had beaten me. Gathered around his body were his friends and family. I heard the screams and cries of his loved ones. There was so much grief and pain. I had no idea what had happened, but at that moment, I knew I never wanted to cause that type of pain. I promised myself I would never take the shotgun out again. I did not want to kill anyone. If I got beat up again, they might kill me, but I would rather have that than kill one of them.
The next day I got to the tennis court, they were waiting for me. I went up to the gang leader and said, “You know, you’re much younger than I am; you think you could beat me?”
He said, “I’ll be honest with you, I’m scared of you. Man, if I start shootin’ you in your ass or hurt you, you the kind of a nigger could die, come back, and hurt someone.”
“No one’s comin’ back,” I said.
He just looked at me. We both knew where it was going. I wanted the court. He wanted the court.
“Why don’t you and I do this?” I said. “And if you see I’m getting the best of you . . . ,” and before he could answer, I started to fight. I beat him for everything I was worth, until he started yelling, “Man, get this old devil off me. Get this old devil off me. Stop it, man.”
His boys pulled us apart. I didn’t have to say anything. He and I both knew he would have to shoot me. It would take that to stop me.
He shrugged and walked off, and his boys followed. Was it respect, or indifference, or just convenience? I would never know.
It had taken two years and almost destroyed my body and my spirit. But in that moment, none of that mattered.