Cspan leon dash, who was Rosa Lee Cunningham . Guest Rosa Lee Cunningham was a woman that i met in a dc jail in january, 1988 and who i followed until her death from aids in july 1995. Cspan whos the fellow in the picture here . Guest thats her oldest son he also died of aids. He died in january. Bobby cunningham. He died in january, 1994. Cspan why did you do this book . Guest i was interested in whats happening with the underclass the american underclass. I had read studies by the urban institute that said that the underclass in size has tripled in the United States since 1970 and i was interested in the reasons why, and why it was perpetuating itself. Why this poverty a very deep and distressful poverty as well as criminal deviancy was going on from one generation to the next so i went into the dc jail literally in the summer of 1987 and interviewed, over an 18 month period, 20 men and 20 women inmates who fit the profile the urban institute had established of what constitutes an underclass family. And in that process i also met Rosa Lee Cunningham. I selected four families to follow. Three of the families were dropped for it just became impossible to follow four families at one time. And i concentrated solely on rosa lees family from september of 1990 until the series was published by the Washington Post in september of 94. Then i took a leave of absence to write a book about her and her family. Cspan where was Rosa Lee Cunningham born . Guest here in washington, dc, october 7, 1936. She was born a year after her parents and her grandparents arrived here. They were sharecroppers who came out of deep rural isolation in Northampton County in north carolina, a section just north of the north bank of the roanoke river. They had been on the bishop and powell plantation at least since they were emancipated as slaves in 1863. And they left that area because the depression had forced down prices for the major cash crops in that area peanuts, ground nuts and cotton. And the person that they were working for on the plantation lost the plantation because of the depression. So they ended up migrating to washington looking for work and a better life. Cspan how many times did she marry . Guest once. She married when she was 16 years old she was pregnant with her third child a man named alvin cunningham. And the man who was the father of the child married her because rosa lees mother told the man he was then 21 albert cunningham, that if he did not marry her, she would inform the police because rosa lee was underage. Cspan how many children did she have in her life . Guest she had eight children with six different men. Cspan and whats their basic outline on those eight children . Where are they today . Guest oh, today. The oldest, as weve mentioned, bobby, he died of aids in january of 1994. The second born, ronald wright, works as a cook in a suburban maryland restaurant and lives in an abandoned house in southeast washington. Hes both a heroin and crack addict, a criminal recidivist. The third born, alvin, just recently became a station master in the metro rail system, but had been before that a metro bus driver since 1980. And then the one that follows alvin, richard cunningham, he was a couple of years ago shipped off to an inpatient drug Treatment Facility in denver, colorado, but violated parole and is now back in the dc prison system at the Central Prison in lorton, virginia. And after richard is eric. Eric works for the us park service, which he does today, and lives in suburban maryland. After eric is patty. Patty is in prison. I just recently saw her. And she has now moved in she was hiv positive when she was arrested in connection with a murder in december of 1992. But shes now moved into full blown aids. Every day is a question of whether or not she can get out of bed, she is at times, so weak and so ill. Cspan how old is she now . Guest she was born in 1958, and this is. Thirtysix. Cspan negative. Thirtyeight . Guest thirty eight, yes. And then after patty is ducky, rosa lees youngest son. He is in jail, a long term crack addict and petty thief. He is presently in jail. And then her youngest daughter, who asked that her name not be used in connection with the book or with anything that i write, she is in her sixth year of recovery from a long term period of heroin and crack addiction crack cocaine addiction. Cspan how many different places in washington did rosa lee live . Guest she lived in 18 different places over her lifetime, twice in shelters for the homeless. She grew up in poverty very deep poverty here in washington and never really got out of it. Either her dwellings were either slum housing or Public Housing of the 18 places that she lived in, including the two homeless shelters. Cspan how did you go about doing this . Guest i use a methodology where youre supposed to. I try to get as close to the people that im interviewing as close as possible, spend a lot of time with them, many repeated interviews over the same material over and over again because, from experience, ive learned that you dont really begin to get the truth of a circumstance or a persons life from that person until youve known that person for at least four to six months. And generally then they begin to really open up about their motivations and the kinds of things that have created their outlook on life. Cspan theres a picture we were just showing here of you and rosa lee where . Guest at a mcdonalds, at first and new york avenue northeast, where we spent a lot of time. She went to a methadone clinic near there every day every morning to get her methadone dose to block her craving for heroin. And we would generally meet there with other people who also frequented the methadone clinic, people that she had known for most of her life and who also were heroin addicts and now on methadone. And everyone would gather there after they got their methadone to have breakfast because almost all of them could not keep any food down on their stomach until they had had their methadone. Cspan what is methadone . Guest methadone is a synthetic drug that was introduced in the early 1970s to block a heroin addicts craving for heroin in an effort to cut down on burglary and theft that was being conducted by heroin addicts. It was felt that if we gave them a synthetic drug that would block the craving for heroin, then that would have a substantial impact on and reduction on crime. Cspan how do you take it . Guest orally. And you take it in front of a nurse because there also is an illicit methadone market. So the nurse has to see you swallow it. You have to stand there and drink it down in front of her, so that she knows that youre not holding it back and then taking it outside the clinic to sell. Cspan what would happen if someone who doesnt take drugs took methadone . Would it give you a high . Guest i dont know. I really dont know. I think it would be kind of dangerous because it has the effects; methadone in and of itself is addictive. People get addicted to it and cant get off of it or are reluctant to get off of it. In a number of hospitalizations that rosa lee went through at Howard University hospital, her doctors talked to her about getting off of methadone, then weaning her off of methadone. But she didnt want to. She saw it as a replacement for her heroin addiction, and she no longer now had to go out and steal and hustle to get the money for heroin because she could get the methadone free. So she saw it as a maintenance drug. Cspan how did she get aids . Guest she got aids either through prostitution or sharing needles with four of her children. Four of her eight children were drug addicted, two daughters and two sons, in terms of intravenous drug abuse. And one of the daughters also was involved in prostitution. And the oldest son was involved in male prostitution bobby, the boy that died of aids in 94. And she shared needles with all of them, and she either got it directly herself from her prostitution or it was passed on to her by sharing needles in intravenous drug abuse. Cspan you say that she had eight children by six different men . Guest yes. Cspan married only to one of them . Guest yes. Cspan when did he die . Guest he was just killed in 93. He was killed by a woman who had a long history of crack addiction in a relationship that they had, where he would pay her for sex. And she beat him to death with a hammer. She was later convicted of murder, and shes now in prison for albert cunninghams death. Cspan you say that in spite of the fact that she had eight children by six different men, she also had a lesbian relationship. Guest exactly. Cspan . Meaning rosa lee. Guest rosa lee. She had a lesbian relationship that began in 1972, when she moved into a federally subsidized apartment complex called clifton terrace. And she met a young girl she [rosa lee] was then in her early 30s she met a woman who was 18 years old, lucky, and established a relationship with lucky. And then lucky moved in with her and her eight children and lived with her for three years. And what i got out of that was rosa lee was very needy, emotionally needy. And any man or any woman who was willing to Pay Attention to her and give her the love and affection that she felt was missing in her life was welcome any person like that was welcomed in her life. Cspan you paint i dont remember what this scene was, but i remember i think it was rosa lee who was having a sexual relationship as a prostitute in the bed with her daughter next to her . Guest exactly. When her daughter was growing up, rosa lee would have her tricks she worked in a nightclub called the cocoa club, which here in washington was located at eighth and h streets northeast. And oftentimes the male customers would approach her for sex when she was getting off from work, and she would tell them very boldly, well, i have eight children at home and so be clear on what this relationship is and i will need money from you tonight. And often when she came home, patty was in rosa lees bed. And. Cspan how old then . Guest this started when patty was about five years old and continued until patty was about 10 years old. And rosa lee then would have sex with the customer, and patty would wake up in the course of this and watch the whole thing. Cspan was there ever a time when a sex partner wanted to have sex with her daughter . Guest exactly. When patty was 11, rosa lee prostituted patty with an adult customer of rosa lees. A man who she knew as a regular customer came by and asked her one day could he have sex with her daughter. And rosa lee went then and approached patty and asked patty would she be willing to have sex with this adult man. The man was in his 40s, and patty was 11 years old. And patty agreed because her mother had asked her to. When patty first told me about that, she felt that she was helping her mother bring income into the house because the man was willing to pay twice as much to have sex with her than to have sex with her mother, which was somewhere in the area of i could never really pin down the exact amount, but it was somewhere between the area of 40 or 50 to have sex with patty, 20 to 25 to have sex with rosa lee. Patty had also at this point gone through three years of sexual abuse by two male relatives. She had been raped at age 8 by a male relative who had continued to rape her. Cspan how old was the male relative . Guest at the time the rapes began, he was 14; she was 8. And also an adult male relative who was in his 30s raped patty on a number of occasions. And all of this had occurred and all of this had occurred even before she was 11. Cspan at any time in this process, did you just say, i cant take any more of this . Guest no. I understood what i was getting into. The studies are done about the sexual abuse of children. Ron mincy, the director of poverty programs for the ford foundation, had done a study at the urban institute where he looked at the children that were going into foster care and what kind of communities were they coming out of. And when he correlated the statistics, the children that were suffering the most from familial sexual abuse, neighborhood sex abuse, psychological and Emotional Abuse or just neglect were all coming out of underclass urban areas. So we were very clear. And i knew that going into this project. I didnt know that i would run across it in this particular family, but i did. I ran into all the ills that ive run into or read about in studies on the underclass were encapsulated in this one family cspan how many underclass are there . Guest today there are over 3 million. About 57 percent of that three million is black; 20 percent is white; 20 percent is hispanic; and the remaining 3 percent is Asian American or native american. Cspan what do you define as underclass . Guest a family that is female headed, chronically unemployed. The adults in the family ages 18 to 65 are chronically unemployed. Marginal Educational Achievement throughout the family. Welfare dependants and criminal deviant or criminal deviancy running through the family, criminal recidivism, going in and out of prison continually. A major supplement to the welfare dependents being criminal activity. Cspan your full time job . Guest im a reporter with the Washington Post on the investigative desk. Cspan how long have you done that . Guest since 1984. But ive been at the post for 30 years. Cspan where did you go to college . Guest i graduated from Howard University in 1968. Cspan studying what . Guest a major in history and minor in political science. Cspan where did you grow up . Guest in new york city, in harlem and the bronx. Cspan what was that like . Guest it was great. I didnt know that there was another life until i left new york at age 21. And now i have no interest in moving back to new york. But i grew up traveling on the very crowded subways and engaging in life in new york, which can be hectic and contentious, thinking that this is what the world was like. So i didnt know there was any difference until i left new york. But i still have a lot of fondness for new york. Cspan what did your parents do . Guest my father was a postal clerk when i was a young when i was a teenager or a young boy and eventually became a supervisor in the post office. And my mother was a visiting home nurse. In fact, she visited for new york citys health department. She was a registered nurse. And she started out visiting welfare mothers to help them look after their Young Children and she eventually became a supervisor in the new York City Health department. Cspan how many brothers and sisters . Guest one younger brother. Hes 9 years old. He works for ibm in san jose, california. Cspan are you married . Guest no. Married and divorced, two children. Cspan how old are the kids . Guest my oldest daughters 34; i have a 5 year old grandson. And my youngest daughter is 16. Cspan who in your life affected the direction you took . How did you end up in journalism . How did you go to howard . Guest well, i went into journalism because i was interested in that. Actually, i was a transfer student to Howard University. I started out at Lincoln University in pennsylvania. And while i was there, i was the editor of the school newspaper. And i took a course in journalism at lincoln, and that sparked my interest in journalism. And then i transferred to howard because i wanted to do a wide range of courses in African Studies, which were not available at lincoln, but were available at howard. After i graduated from howard, i took these courses in African Studies and i joined the peace corps and went off to live in kenya, east africa, for two years, 69 and 70, and was a Rural High School teacher in kenya. Now i think those two years have had the most dramatic impact on me because there i lived with the nandi people who were pastoralists, cattle herders. And they lived on homesteads and not in villages, so there were long distances between the homes and an elevation of 6,000 feet above sea level, which was on the equator, but the temperature was moderate all year round, or was temperate all year round. Thats where kenyas great runners come from. All of kenyas great runners come from that area of kenya, the western escarpment of the rift valley. And i think that that had the most dramatic impact on me in learning another culture and beginning to understand that culture is relative. For instance, when applied here, when i talk with colleagues and friends, a lot of people who were in my social circle, everyone assumes that middle class values are universal. And theyre not. The middle class dominates American Life and american culture, but our values are not universal, as is particularly shown with rosa lees family. Her family lived by a different code, a different value system, a value system that said anything is acceptable for survival, even prostituting an 11 year old girl. Cspan when did rosa lee first shoplift . Guest she was a teenager. Oh, she was about 13. She shoplifted a gray skirt and a white blouse to work as an usher in the Family Church, Mount Joy Baptist Church on capitol hill here in washington she wanted a stylish skirt and a stylish blouse to work as an usher in her church, and she knew her mother, from rosa lees viewpoint, her mother wouldnt buy her those kinds of things. But from my viewpoint, her mother couldnt buy her those kinds of things. Her mother didnt have the kind of income that rosa lee felt that she had. So her mother did all of the shopping at Secondhand Stores in washington secondhand clothing stores. And rosa lee didnt want her mother buying any secondhand goods for her to wear when she worked as an usher at the Family Church. So she shoplifted successfully a skirt and a blouse. Cspan we were looking at a picture that i want you to identify here, that rosa lees there on the right. Who else is in the picture . Guest on the far left is ducky, her youngest son, and in the middle is her daughter patty, talking on the telephone but what ducky and rosa lee are doing are examining goods that ducky has burglarized from someones home because theyre taking them that morning to the mc