MAXWELL MELVINS
Born the fifteenth and youngest of a large family in Camden, New Jersey. Poverty, unemployment, drugs, and violence were the realities of life in this desperately struggling, slowly decaying city. He wasn’t violent. He didn’t see himself as a victim. This was just how things were. After becoming addicted to heroin, a drug deal went wrong. He grabbed a gun and started shooting. One of the bullets took the life of his close childhood friend, who was an innocent bystander. He fled to New York City. To elude the police he donned women's clothing, but he felt he had to come home and face what he'd done. He turned himself in. He was sentenced twenty-five to life. While incarcerated, the work he did to teach youngsters to never follow in his footsteps led to him becoming a Grammy-nominated global superstar at the birth of hip hop.
While incarcerated at Rahway State Prison in New Jersey he joined the Lifer's Group, an organization founded in 1972 primarily for the support of long-term inmates. In the early 1990s he developed a new project to produce rap albums under the name of the Lifers Group. The rappers and many of the musicians were fellow inmates. The aim was to reach out to kids in a manner in which they would understand that prison and a life of crime was a one-way ticket into the belly of the beast.
I used to have a name,
but now I got a number.
I used to put suckers,
six feet under.
Now that I’m in jail,
no longer a rebel
You can’t tell me damn thing about the ghetto,
I been there.
20/20 News Show
In early 1992, a letter arrived in Maxwell’s cell inviting him to attend the Grammy Award ceremony because he and the Lifers Group were nominated for a Grammy, in a category alongside Billy Joel, Peter Gabriel, Madonna, and Sinead O'Connor. The State of New Jersey did not allow him to attend. So, on the evening of the awards, the media came to him. News crews set up outside the jail, while Barbara Walters and the 20/20 team filmed Maxwell and his crew inside. The Lifers Group didn’t win –Madonna beat them to the prize – but they still made history. No prisoners had ever been nominated for a Grammy. Maxwell was the driving force behind one of the most extraordinary tales in modern music history.
Social Influence
In 1991 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) awarded the Lifers Group their annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. SCLC Humanitarian Award for "helping to keep youth out of prison and extraordinary work for the good of humanity." The award was inscribed with Maxwell's name because of his role as president of the Lifers Group.
Maxwell's work became so well respected that the law departments of multiple states invited him to educate them about the life experience of incarcerated people. In 1998 the House of Congress discussed the restorative lessons that can be learned when prisons allow incarcerated people to create their own Lifers Groups.
Global Influence
Maxwell and the Lifers Group received news coverage from Japan, South America, the UK, and Europe.
Movies at Rahway
Maxwell Melvins and Spike Lee, at Rahway Prison. The man on the right is wearing a hat that says "Sweat-Master." That was Maxwell's nickname, because he worked hard all the time to further the mission of the Lifers Group.
Denzel Washington (right) performing as Malcolm X, filmed at Rahway State Prison.
The success of the Lifers Group caused Rahway State Prison (aka East Jersey State Prison) to become a site of many film productions. In 1992, during the filming of the Malcolm X biopic a ceeremony was held in the prison in which Maxwell was given a 40 Acres and Mule Filmworks t-shirt, and Spike Lee and Denzel Washington gave speeches acknowledging the positive social impact of the work of the Lifers Group.
SCARED STRAIGHT
Logo of Juvenile Awareness Project
The Lifers Group originally named it the Juvenile Awareness Project because it was focused on educating people under the age of eighteen. The logo was made of the combined images of a man in graduate robe and in striped prison uniform. The Lifers Group also led awareness projects for parents, lawyers, and corrections officers.
In 1978 the filmmaker Arnold Schapiro created a documentary film about the Lifers Group's Juvenile Awareness Project, at Rahway Prison. It won an Academy Award, and Emmy Award, and a George Polk Journalism Award. The phrase "scared straight" was how the Lifers Group members described their work. That phrase became the name of the movie and became a standard term in American English.
Smithsonian Institute
In 2006 the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History acquired from Maxwell his poems, a Lifers Group album, his Grammy nomination certificate, posters, and Lifers Group fashion wear.
Since his release in 2011 Maxwell has continued to pursue his mission.
Maxwell Melvins and Dr. Nicole Fleetwood.
Original (a rapper from the Lifers Group), Maxwell Melvins, Reginald Hayes (founder of The Escorts doo-wop music group), and a member of The Escorts.
In 2017, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Maxwell was interviewed by Dr. Nicole Fleetwood (a MacArthur Genius Grant Recipient) at a program about art and music made in prisons.
Original, Maxwell Melvins, and Ralph McDaniels.
A formerly incarcerated Lifers Group member came to the event at the Met Museum. This was the first time he and Maxwell had seen one another in nearly twenty years.
Ralph McDaniels, the father of music video tv shows, has included Maxwell in his programs at the Queens Library in NYC.
Maxwell on stage at TEDx CUNY , held at CUNY Graduate Center
In 2018 Maxwell gave a presentation at a TEDx conference produced by the City University of New York (CUNY). The rapper Kurtis Blow also participated at this event. During the rehearsals they were able to meet and celebrate the history of hip hop.