Mr. Leifel and OG- Arkansas Times Retrospective

MR. LEIFEL and O.G.
Arkansas Times- June 13, 2003
By: David Koon

A VETERAN OF THE LITTLE ROCK GANG WARS RETURNS TO A DIFFICULT PEACE—

Leifel Jackson is graying now, thicker around the middle than he was in 1993. At 41 years old, he could be any father or husband, slowly dropping into middle age. Though his youth is largely behind him, he still carries himself well. To talk to him, you’d never know that he had seen the worst of life and death in the Little Rock gang wars of the 1990s. To look at him, working with kids at the Sherman Park Our Club center in North Little Rock, you’d never know he was once a hardened criminal.

In 1993, when HBO producer Marc Levin came to Little Rock, looking to film gangsters in their natural habitat, then-County Coroner and self-taught gang expert Steve Nawojczyk introduced him to Leifel Jackson.

Back then, Jackson was known as O.G.

Though only in his early 30s, Jackson was one of the old men of the Little Rock gang world. In the 1980s, he went to live with relatives in the Watts projects in California. By the time he returned to Little Rock in 1987, he was a gang banger, who went on to found and lead one of the city’s most infamous gangs, the Original Gangster Crips. Within a few years, Leifel Jackson became a homegrown Godfather, taking in money from illegal drugs. Every two weeks, if their grades were good, he took over 100 neighborhood kids skating. If he saw kids on the street who needed shoes, he bought them new ones. But as much as he was loved for his charity, he was as feared on the streets. In those days, love wouldn’t get you nearly as far as a bullet. In the “Bangin’ in Little Rock” documentary, Jackson takes a starring role, swaggering and cocksure, every inch the gangster.

A few months after “Bangin’ in Little Rock,” though, Jackson went down on a federal indictment for drug trafficking. Cop a plea prosecutors told him, and they would back down from other members of the gang. Jackson did, and his loyalty cost him much of the last decade in federal prison. Because he was a gang kingpin, Jackson was shuffled from place to place, serving time in five states in nine years.

“That’s what they do to a shot caller,” Jackson said, standing on Wolfe Street in the sun, a free man, “They give you diesel therapy. The federal government has ways of keeping you going so you’ll never get comfortable.”

After many angry years tucked in shackles throughout the south and up and down the eastern seaboard, Jackson came to a realization: He only thought he owned his world. “I realized, man, that I was only playing in the street,” Jackson said, “When I get out, I’m going to go back over there, and that street’s still going to be Booker Street.’ So whatever street we’re claiming, you know, sometimes it takes some time to mature to understand that we really don’t own anything.” It was an epiphany that would change his life. He got out of jail three years ago. Six months after that, with the help of Sen. Bill Walker, he took a job as the director of the Sherman Park Our Club, an after school program located in the old Argenta train station in North Little Rock.

Jackson teaches the kids at the Sherman Park Our Club common sense things, that he says he could have used as a kid: Self-respect and respect for others, how to cook and clean, how to navigate busy intersections that any of them have to navigate to get to school. It’s a job he loves, one that earned him recognition from the Arkansas Coalition of Juvenile Justice as he 2002 justice worker of the year.

Talking to Leifel Jackson on Wolfe Street, close to the quiet home that he shares with his wife and children, the careful observer notices that he has retained at least one thing from his former life. Just like he did in “Bangin in Little Rock,” every time a car comes up behind him; he glances back over his shoulder at it. It’s not a cowardly thing, just a quick glance back over his shoulder at it, a leftover tic that kept him alive back then, when any dark window could have held the dark maw of a gun.

Like his past, it’s something he hasn’t been able to shed.

Jackson fights a daily battle with O.G. it’s a name that many, on both sides of the law won’t let him forget. “Once you’re labeled a gang banger or a drug dealer, it’s hard to do different,” Jackson said, “Little Rock has been hard on me. A lot of law enforcement here looks at me here in a terrible way.” In Little Rock, his reputation is so bad that when he applied for work in a city-financed after-school program he was flatly told no. That’s why he drives over the bridge. Though he has spoken all over the country since his release from prison, he finds it amazing that he can’t help them in Little Rock where he lives.

At the Sherman Park Club, he is only paid for 20 hours a week, but he often works 50 or 60. He hoped the juvenile justice worker of the year award would help open doors for him; help him land a full-time job. But so far nothing. “Everyone loves Leifel,” Jackson said, “Everyone wants to get on the band-wagon. But no one really wants to hire me and say ‘Hey, this is my employee, he works 40 hours, he makes this, we give him insurance like we do the other employees.’ I’m still just working as a contract worker.” Around his house, money is always a problem, some nights, the street calls to him.

“For years, my wife has carried me, and she has really believed in me,” Jackson said. “But now, the bills are have piled up, and [something’s] saying, ‘okay, time to get some cocaine now! You know how to take care of your family.’ But my wife is saying I can do better. My heart is saying, I can never sell another cocaine rock to nobody.” Barring that, he knows that before long he’ll probably have to leave Sherman Park and take a job elsewhere, doing something know one else wants to do; one of the jobs they reserve for men with a past like him.

This winter, Leifel Jackson will be featured in the HBO sequel to “Gang War: Bangin in Little Rock.” He’s one of only a few gang members left from the original film, and one of the even fewer not involved with the gang life or in prison. Jackson said he watches the original documentary a lot. It helps him remember why he chose the path he has. “It kinda stabilizes me, It really lets me know how close I was to not being there,” Jackson said, “it just really makes me pay attention to what’s going on around me now.. I’m not supposed to be here if you let statistics say it, if you let society say it. God kept me here for a reason.”

Most of all, Jackson said, he just wants to keep doing right, and get a chance to be recognized for something other than his rap sheet, someone other than the man that went t prison as a gang member and drug dealer named O.G. “I want to be down in history, like Daisy Bates, “ Jackson said. “She has history. She can ride down Daisy L. Bates Drive . If I want to claim something, I want my name to be there for a reason. It took me along time to understand that.”