As James Howard, Jr., wiped the fingerprints off his second carjack job, police surrounded the Crips’ leader and yelled at him to throw his hands in the air. He fumbled for a non-existent gun, hoping they would fire. Instead, he heard a strange voice in his head: Pray.
Startled, and slightly irritated, by the foreign command, James shrugged it off. He felt trapped in the hustling, the gangbanging, and the double life. This was his out. He held his breath for the shot that he hoped would end his life.
Becoming “the Man”
Fifteen years earlier, James moved from Philadelphia’s organized crime scene to the scrappy streets of south L.A. An experienced criminal at 21, James soon learned he had to play by a new set of rules.
“You can’t just go into a neighborhood and do what you think you want to do and think you’re gonna get away with it,” he explained. “The neighborhood is run by somebody. And those people who run a neighborhood are not going to allow you to be makin’ all the money and them not any money.”
To survive on the streets and earn respect, he had to join a gang. He chose the Crips. From the get-go, it was always about the money—money that just happened to arrive on a drug wagon. James insists he was never a user. Power and greed were the only addictions that fueled his successful “career.”
Starting out as a “thug,” he threw his 6-foot-2-inches and 280 pounds around easily and lucratively, advancing from selling drugs to “running” drugs to stealing semis filled with anything he could sell quickly: electronics, truck tires, toys. Every morning, he woke up ruminating on the next thousand dollars around the corner. It was nothing for him to make $20,000 in a week. He even once landed $60,000 in a day.
But he was known as “the Man” and the “shot caller” (a high-ranking gang member who “calls the shots”), and any gangster who wanted to make some cash knew he had to talk to James. At any given time, he could have between 20 to 25 thugs at his disposal.
On the side, he worked as a licensed truck driver, which provided an easy cover if he ever got caught. And on the other side of town, he played the family man in a nice condominium that he had purchased in Long Beach for his then girlfriend Mary, her three daughters—Jessica, Tiffany, and Shavannah—and his daughter, Anjolique. Despite his reckless lifestyle, James considered his daughters his most valued possessions and saw his lucrative lawlessness as a way to provide them with a comfortable life.
“People would say, ‘If he loved them so much, why did he do the things he did?’ ” he said. “I can’t explain it ’cause I was stupid, because I didn’t know what real love was. I didn’t know how to love.”
By this time James had so mastered the art of façade that Mary was stunned when he was arrested for his second carjacking, a charge that could have given him 18 years to life behind bars.
“It was really surprising, and I was pregnant when I found all of this out, too,” Mary explained. “He was working and I never knew all of the other stuff that was going on.”
A New Shot Caller
The police never shot James that day in 1998. Instead they attacked him with pepper spray and threw him in the slammer, where worries of growing old in prison haunted him and thoughts of suicide tempted him.
I’m not going to die of old age, James promised himself. I’m gonna go in there stealing, killing, whatever it would take for somebody to kill me, but I’m not going to die of old age.
But then James heard the voice again. Pray. He couldn’t refuse God again.
Although James, who frequently leads Bible studies with his daughters, is stepdad to three, "You would never know," Mary says.
“I felt God’s hand come through and touch my heart,” he said. “I just stood up and I said, ‘Whatever You want, I’ll do it.’ ”
Even 10 years later, the memory of that moment chokes James up.
Since it was his second carjacking charge, James knew he was facing 18 years to life, so, when he was offered a plea bargain that would give him six years at the most (he ended up serving only four), he took it. Once at the Correctional Training Facility (CTF) in Soledad—one of California’s oldest prisons, with an inmate population of 7,000—James faced a potentially dangerous quandary: Associate with his gang brothers in prison or break away and take his stand as a Christian—leaving him unprotected and at the mercy of enemies from rival gangs. And he had many.
“If you leave a gang because you become a Christian, you’re gonna be tested the whole time . . . You’re gonna be looked at. Every move you make is going to be evaluated.”
Taking the risk of his lifetime, he registered on the prison books as “not affiliated” and headed for the chapel, now a marked man.
Chaplain Judge Lindsey saw “shot callers” and lower-level gang members in his pews every week.
“You could tell part of it by where they sat,” he explained. “They sat in groups.”
But to go to church without any gang affiliation—to have faith for real and not just for gang cred—set James apart. When Judge met James, he recognized a genuine heart despite James’s inexperience as a Christian. On what Judge says was a tip from God, he appointed James as the head deacon of the prison chapel.
“I just know beyond a shadow of a doubt when God pointed him out that I was to make him head deacon,” Judge said. “And, at that time, it caused me a lot of grief, because he was so new, so green, that he wasn’t really even quality for a deacon, let alone head deacon. But because I know the voice of the Lord, I did, and he blossomed beautifully.”
James continued to blossom under the guidance of more mature deacons as well as volunteers from Prison Fellowship who led weekend seminars.
“You can get taught by somebody that’s in prison, but there’s going to be something missing,” James admitted. “But when you get taught by the people of God . . . volunteers who are taking time and showing you and asking questions, it’s very vital.”
Jim Romig is one volunteer who took time to get to know James. And although they interacted only a few times in prison, they touched base several times after James was released. To this day, Jim returns to CTF regularly to lead Bible studies and corresponds with numerous prisoners by mail.
As James grew in his faith, he became a modern-day Joseph at CTF. As far as he remembers, not only was he never directly threatened by members of his former gang or rivals, but he also gained so much credibility on the yard that he began to act as a go-between for correctional staff and gang leaders.
“If the gangs wanted the yard open, they would have to convince me that the conflict was over,” James explained. “It was like God had put me in a position where those people who didn’t respect me came to respect me.”
Judge remembers an occasion when an unruly gang member threatened Judge to his face. Before he was forced to hit the security alarm button, James had rushed to the prison yard and brought back another prisoner, who told the disruptive inmate to leave Judge alone. Later, Judge learned the guy was the shot caller.
“That’s why, I think, James was to be head deacon from the beginning, ’cause God had His hand on him to give him wisdom and guidance to know what to do, how to do, with the gangs.”
Presence in Poverty
Meanwhile, Mary, pregnant and alone with her daughters, had slipped off the ledge of upper-middle-class living and fallen into poverty and homelessness. Pregnancy forced her out of work and out of the family’s apartment. Mary and her four daughters shuttled from family member to family member. Jayne was born in 1999, right after James went to prison and right after the family moved in with Mary’s sister. That Christmas, the family received a visit from two Angel Tree® volunteers who brought gifts to the girls on James’s behalf, and something else.
“I didn’t want them to leave,” Mary said. “They had such a graceful presence to them that it was wonderful . . . it was just the godly presence that they brought. Not the presents, the presence.”
She wished she could have stood there and talked to them all day long, Mary now remembers. It was in moments like these that Mary began to rediscover the faith of her childhood, but it wasn’t until the family ended up in a homeless shelter in 2002 that belief in God became a necessity.
“Terrible” is the only word Mary can find to describe what it felt like to be under the rules and regulations forced upon them by the transitional home—when to come home, when to sleep, when to eat. But it was in the grit of this demeaning poverty that Mary truly found Christ’s love. She took the girls back to church and got involved in Bible studies, meanwhile going back to school to get her culinary arts license. In September 2003, after eight months in the transitional home, she was able to move into a new apartment.
Four days later, James came home.
Cred on the Home Front
Neither James nor Mary wanted the worldly relationship they had once had. Having married in prison, the couple was excited to begin raising their family in a godly way. James started leading his daughters—four of whom are now in their early twenties and late teens—in evening Bible studies that today can sometimes go on for several hours.
“The way he presents it is very fun, so the times go by very fast . . . and even though he’s stepdad . . . you would never know,” Mary said, adding that the girls frequently consult James when their friends are having problems.
James also began attending Harvest Bible University so he could build a foundation for his new dream to become a pastor to ex-prisoners. And he found a job with Systems Transport trucking company, this time with no ulterior motives.
But James always wanted to go back to prison—as a volunteer. Because of his record, James was told that 10 years was the earliest he could hope to receive clearance. But this past March, he bumped into a correctional officer from California State Prison who told him that Prison Fellowship might help him get in. The officer gave James contact information for PF Field Director Jon Lowry.
On June 6, James, now 46, returned to prison for the first time as a trained mentor with Prison Fellowship, for an Operation Starting LineTM evangelistic outreach at the prison in Tehachapi. Today James heads Prison Fellowship’s prisoner reentry team in Los Angeles, and mentors several ex-prisoners himself, through Prison Fellowship and his own reentry ministry, Contending4ministries.
“I call him just about every week and tell him what I’m going through, and he gives me advice about everything,” said Tim Burns, one of the men James mentors. James helped Tim get a job at his company and find housing. More than that, he offered his wisdom, and didn’t abandon Tim when Tim made poor decisions.
“He’s like a brother . . . he’s the brother that was there no matter what.”
Mining for Diamonds
Judge retired from the chaplaincy at CTF in June, but has continued to mentor James over the phone. He’ll admit that James isn’t perfect, and that he’s made a few bumbles since he was released. But Judge believes he’s staring at a treasure in this hulking former gangster.
“I’m mining for diamonds. When you find a diamond, you’ve got something of value, and James Howard is a diamond in the service of the Lord.”
When you’re in the street and you’re a player in the gang, nobody really comes to you for help. Everyone is just worried about survival. When you become successful, you become “The Man,” you become an ambassador. - “Ice T"
