Columbia Center for Oral History Portal > Oral history interview with George J., 1981Biographical NoteGeorge J. was born on June 6, 1904 in Wilmington, North Carolina. He was the second oldest of six children in his family. From a young age, George worked as a shoe shiner in his father's barber shop. He first encountered drugs at nine years old when he was working in a pharmacy delivering prescriptions, and began to experiment with marijuana and cocaine. George dropped out of high school in ninth grade, and continued working in his father's barber shop before moving to New York City in 1921, where he lived with his aunt and worked odd jobs. He was formally reintroduced to drugs around age sixteen and began to use cocaine every day. He was introduced to heroin at age twenty when the woman he bought his cocaine from, a nurse at Harlem Hospital, mixed the cocaine with heroin without George's knowledge. He became a casual user after that, and within two years, he was addicted. He sold heroin and cocaine from the late 1920s to the early 1950s. In 1932, he learned how to tailor while incarcerated, and found work tailoring and pressing garments, as well as making and selling his own clothes. George J. was interviewed for the project that led to the book Addicts Who Survived. The name is likely a pseudonym for the project. In the book, George J. was referred to by the pseudonym "Curtis"
Scope and ContentsIn this interview, George discusses his life in New York City, focusing especially on his drug dealing. He describes how he prepared heroin for sale, its prices, the quantities it was sold in, and its packaging into capsules, bags, and envelopes. He comments on the various substances that were used to cut heroin like milk sugar and quinine. He also mentions green dragon and white horse, two different factory-grade strains of heroin that were sold in the 1920s and 1930s. George discusses the 1939 police raid of San Juan Hill, a predominantly black neighborhood in the Upper West Side of Manhattan which was a significant drug hub at the time. He describes the raid's consequences, including many dealers becoming police informants, and the price of heroin skyrocketing overnight. He cites both Jewish and Italian populations as key players in drug commerce in New York in the 1920s through the 1950s. He describes the impact of World War II on the New York drug scene. George also delves into the trends he has noticed in his over twenty year long drug dealing career, including the declining quality of heroin, the increasing price of heroin, the increasingly young average age of users, and the increasing usage of heroin among poorer classes
SubjectsAccess ConditionsCopyright by David Courtwright
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