“THE HOLLY: FIVE BULLETS, ONE GUN, AND THE STRUGGLE TO SAVE AN AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOOD”

By Julian Rubinstein

FSG ($28)

At a peace rally he organized in Denver’s Holly Square in 2013, Terrance Roberts shot Hasan “Munch” Jones. “The Holly: Five Bullets, One Gun, and the Struggle to Save an American Neighborhood,” opens with this shooting, which left Jones paralyzed, before taking readers back to 1955. Terrance’s grandmother, Ernestine, had run away from the Arkansas cotton plantation where she and her family worked. She arrived in the Park Hill neighborhood of Denver, Co., to begin a new life at age 19. Ernestine would be one of the community’s first Black residents.

Author Julian Rubinstein, who is white and from Denver, leads the reader through the history of what he calls “invisible Denver”-- the neighborhoods in the Northeast section of town. “The Holly” serves as a case study of what has happened and is happening in cities across the country. It begs the question: When law enforcement has racist roots and a society’s prejudice limits jobs, income, and access to housing, how do you foster a sense of belonging and community? One answer for Northeast Park Hill was to find brotherhood, purpose, and pride in one’s neighborhood. Add drugs for income and guns, then violence and tragedy ensues.

There are so many threads to this book and Rubinstein braids them together in a compelling multi-generational saga with a strong narrative and solid investigative reporting. From the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the Black Lives Matter movement, “The Holly” shows how the American government has viewed activists as threats and how local law enforcement has sabotaged and undermined their work.

The “war on drugs” and anti-gang initiatives are heavily funded by federal grants. Law enforcement and federal agencies directly profit from drug seizure money. Both exploit vulnerabilities of gang-plagued Black neighborhoods by employing criminals as informants while granting them immunity. Rubinstein demonstrates how this well-funded machine has worked to bolster gang activity and support racist ideologies, not diminish them. Meanwhile, Black lives continue to pay the ultimate price.

According to Rubinstein, billionaires infiltrated northeast Denver to address neighborhoods with an outside perspective. Black existence was something that needed to be fixed. With gentrification, homes were flipped and sold for hundreds of thousands more than anyone from the neighborhoods could afford. One resident of Northeast Park Hill who was white told the Denver Post, “Houses are getting sold and property values are going up. I didn’t think Denver was a hot spot for gang activity but apparently it is more active than we thought.”

Meanwhile, Terrance Roberts, out of jail and on a mission to do better by his neighborhood, made great strides in interrupting the recruitment of new gang members. For a time, gang violence had even declined thanks to his “Camo movement,” and Roberts’ Prodigal Sons Initiative. In gang territory, wearing the wrong color clothing can put you in grave danger. Camouflage became the color code of peace and neutrality in Northeast Park Hill.

Roberts shared his dream of a community center and safe options for kids with anyone who would listen. He attracted funding to make his dream of a community center come true. But promises quickly emptied and Roberts soon was excluded from the youth efforts he initiated.

Bishop Acen Phillips, head of the Northeast Denver Ministerial Alliance said it this way, “Boys and Girls Club isn’t a Black thing. It’s a white thing run by the system. It’s a white thing sitting in a Black neighborhood, using concepts generated by the mind of a Terrance Roberts.”

Neighborhood gang members began to view Roberts as a gentrifier. They believed he was profiting from his outside relationships and grant funding. The truth was Roberts was broke. He relied on the kindness of those who believed in him and he moved frequently. Roberts began to fear for his safety.

Through all of this, local and national media failed Northeast Dever again and again. Local coverage seemed to have an incestuous relationship with law enforcement and relied on the foundations funding redevelopment to shape their coverage. A Denver Post feature of the Holly’s redevelopment managed to completely omit Terrance Roberts.

For the last section of the book Rubinstein switches to first person. He had returned to Denver shortly after the peace rally shooting and began to investigate what had happened. With his recorder rolling, Rubinstein attended many community meetings and gained the trust of community members. He points out several times in the book when local media attended the same community meetings as he, but failed to report on significant happenings.

Rubinstein details the intricacies and contradictions that exist between law enforcement and Black America through the lens of Northeast Denver and the shocking shooting of a gang member by a local anti-gang activist. He also manages to shine a light on the cost of gutting local newsrooms. Stories cannot be written from press releases and political soundbites alone. For anyone who wants to understand systematic racism in tangible ways, Julian Rubinstein’s investigative work makes it undeniable.

Editor’s note: In an earlier version of this review, Terrance Roberts’ first name was misspelled. 

Bonnie Jean Feldkamp is a syndicated columnist and the media director for the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Find her on social media @WriterBonnie

First Published: May 30, 2021, 10:15 a.m.