August 3, 2006 | Read Time: 14 minutes
A DAY IN THE LIFE
It is just before 4 on a Monday morning, and the 2700 block of Baltimore’s East Madison Street is dark and forbidding, dotted with boarded-up houses. Homes that remain occupied sport “no loitering” signs, adding to the scene’s desolation. But in a matter of minutes, the street teems with life: Some 15 men recently released from prison pour out of two buildings and head across the street to the God Is in Reach Transitional House.
Monday through Thursday, at 4 a.m. sharp, Clayton Guyton and the men in his charge hold a short meeting before heading out in small groups to clean up the neighborhood, armed only with plastic trash cans, brooms, a seemingly endless supply of trash bags, and sheer determination. The city sent sanitation trucks through this area, as scheduled, on Saturday, but Mr. Guyton and his crew still find plenty of work to be done. Although they typically will finish their work around noon on Mondays, this particular day they will still be bagging trash at 2 p.m.
The crew is beginning its weekly cleaning of an approximately 70-square-block area that includes the Madison East End and Patterson Park neighborhoods.
Mr. Guyton, a 50-year-old bear of a man who once worked as a correctional officer, stops his truck near each pile of trash bags collected at the end of streets and alleys. One of the workers jumps out of the back of the pickup and loads the bags onto the flatbed.
In addition to the bags, Mr. Guyton will see his truck filled with fans, sofas, mattresses, and other abandoned junk as he heads to a city-provided bin to unload his cargo. Also on board are at least two of the thousands of neighborhood rats who were inadvertently relocated by the cleanup and are now making a mad dash for freedom. It will be another 25 to 50 truckloads before the neighborhoods are clean. The chore is hard, dirty, and exhausting, but it’s solid preparation for the real world of work.
The program for former inmates is a centerpiece of Mr. Guyton’s 11-year-old nonprofit organization, the Rose Street Community Center. The center — which includes God Is in Reach Transitional House — was created by Mr. Guyton and three other local activists out of frustration with their community’s decline into crime, drugs, and despair.
The original center was set on fire by angry drug dealers who were displaced, and its founders have sometimes been personally threatened by those dealers.
But today the center serves as a resource for people in need, providing referrals to drug-treatment programs, homeless shelters, medical services, and job training. It also helps clients obtain Maryland identification cards and prepare for their high-school equivalency exams. In addition, the center runs a youth program, among other services.
A Neighborhood’s Decline
As recently as the mid-1960s, Madison East End was a solidly black middle-class neighborhood.
But that began to change after the urban riots in 1968 following the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which, in Baltimore and other American cities, accelerated middle-class flight to the suburbs.
With the appearance of crack in the early 1980s, the climate changed further, says Mr. Guyton. Unlike in previous generations, women and children got swept up in the drug trade, and many local families fell to pieces.
By the early 1990s, drug dealers and gangs ruled the streets. Hit especially hard by the violence was the 800 block of North Rose Street, a stone’s throw from Mr. Guyton’s home.
Fed up and determined to drive the dealers away, Mr. Guyton — accompanied by his fellow local activists, Kelly Brown, Elroy Christopher, and Vincent Richardson — took on the exceedingly dangerous job of taking back North Rose Street for its law-abiding residents.
For starters, they purchased chain-link fencing that they wrapped around an abandoned garage that served as a drug ring’s headquarters, effectively shutting operations down.
And when Mr. Guyton and his colleagues realized that the city couldn’t keep up with their neighborhood’s trash, they took it upon themselves to do what was needed — at one point, stacking the trash bags across East Madison Street and making the road impassable. City garbage trucks were then quickly dispatched to the neighborhood. (Mr. Guyton says, however, that he remains unimpressed with the city’s trash- collecting efforts.)
Late in the 1990s, Mr. Guyton, then working as a prison guard, and his fellow activists came to the conclusion that the neighborhood needed a community center. After throwing out the denizens of a North Rose Street crack house, changing the locks, and sprucing the place up, the building was turned in 1995 into a safe after-school destination for local children.
The evicted drug dealers, however, were not mollified by this turn of events — and one of them was later convicted for torching the community center to the ground.
From the Ashes
Other people might have thrown their hands up in the air and admitted defeat, but not Mr. Guyton and his colleagues. They took over the house next door, creating a new Rose Street Community Center. This time, however, the four men took turns providing round-the-clock protection.
The center’s God Is in Reach Transitional House, a program for former prisoners that includes work on the center’s cleanup crews, was made possible when Robert C. Embry Jr., president of the Abell Foundation, heard Mr. Guyton and Mr. Christopher on a local public-affairs radio program talking about their activism.
“Bob met with Clayton and asked him what he needed most,” says Melanie Styles, who oversees Abell’s grants to train workers. “His response was that, ‘We have all these men just out of prison who are looking for work, but they have no money and end up dealing drugs or committing other crimes.’”
In 2000, the foundation provided $300,000 to cover Rose Street’s costs and to allow Mr. Guyton to establish a transitional program for people being released from prison. (Six years later, Abell’s annual $300,000 grant is still Rose Street’s sole financial support, according to Mr. Guyton.)
Today, the center rents five houses — two of which are supervised by Mr. Guyton and Walker Gladden, Rose Street’s youth coordinator — to shelter men just out of jail. The remaining three homes are independent homes for the program’s “graduates”: These residents have jobs and pay all the bills. “Bob Embry is an angel who took a long-term risk on us,” says Mr. Guyton.
Mr. Embry is similarly impressed with Mr. Guyton. “I look to invest in people, and I’ve not met anyone who is on a par with Clayton,” he says. “He is absolutely tireless, and the standards that he holds himself and the people he works with to are exceedingly high.”
A Steppingstone
Residents of the supervised homes are assigned to the cleanup crews. For their work, they receive a stipend of $10 a day, which is meant to cover their food, laundry, and toiletries. (The food budget, however, is supplemented since Mr. Guyton treats his crew to dinner at least a couple of days a week.)
“Clayton shows these men how working hard can be rewarding in and of itself,” says Ms. Styles. “When others see them working hard, they value the men too. And when the men do find permanent employment, they will tell Clayton that the work is easy compared to cleaning streets and alleys.”
Once a former offender is accepted into the program, he must spend 90 days working the streets and alleys before being allowed to start looking for a job. After those 90 days, program participants are still required to meet at the transitional house at 4 a.m., but they are allowed to leave the cleanup crew early if they are in a job-training program or have interviews lined up.
“After someone finds a job, he is still required to stay in supervised housing for 30 days,” says Mr. Guyton. “We want to see how he is adjusting to the world of employment.”
After those 30 days, the individual has a choice: Stay in supervised housing, move in with family members, get an apartment, or move to one of the center’s independent houses.
Currently, Ms. Styles acknowledges that, without spending a lot of money on research, it is not possible to determine how many of Mr. Guyton’s graduates stay out of trouble. However, she notes, the foundation is working with the state’s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services to compare the reincarceration rates of Rose Street participants with those of other former offenders.
Tearing Down, Building Up
By 8:15 a.m., a city trash bin arrives, and a waiting mound of filled garbage sacks on Ashland Avenue — Mr. Guyton estimates he spends about $10,000 annually on trash bags — is heaved into it. (Ms. Styles notes that, in the course of a given week, 12 tons of trash are hauled away by Rose Street crews.)
For Mr. Guyton, cleaning up the neighborhood has two purposes. “These are people who helped tear a neighborhood apart and now they are part of putting it back together,” he says. “What we do is symbolic — as they clean up the neighborhood, they are involved in cleaning up their lives, as well.”
He estimates that he receives 40 letters a month from former inmates who want to join the center’s recovery program, but only about one in four applicants is accepted. (The supervised residences can hold 40 men at a time.) Mr. Guyton says that applicants who are rejected from Rose Street are usually referred to other charities’ programs that may be a better fit for their needs.
There is little in Mr. Guyton’s background that would lead one to expect to see him doing what he does today.
He originally hails from South Carolina, but when he was in elementary school, his father, a Baptist minister, moved the family to Baltimore. After completing high school, Mr. Guyton spent three years in the U.S. Air Force, then worked for 17 years as a transportation-management specialist at the Presidio military base, in San Francisco.
Following a divorce in 1994, Mr. Guyton returned to Baltimore and began work as a prison guard. There, he learned what men in prison needed upon their release.
“I just jumped blindly into Rose Street,” he says. “Every night there were guns going off, and the faces of the neighborhood children were so sad. I had children of my own, and I wanted a safe environment for young people. But I really had no idea how dangerous things were going to be.”
As he built the program for released prisoners, he leaned on the spiritual teachings of his youth. “This is a faith-based program that sees our strongest links helping those who are weaker,” he says. The men are encouraged to be aware of having faith, being prayerful and trustworthy, says Mr. Guyton, but Christianity is not particularly emphasized.
“When we are screening these men, we ask a lot of questions about their families, goals, when they last used drugs and so forth,” says Mr. Guyton, who lets his instincts guide him in the selection process. He notes that program participants must be drug-free, a policy enforced with random drug tests and daily, mandatory attendance at Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Even cursing is forbidden, with bad language drawing a $9.99-per-word fine — a figure chosen because it sounds “like a Wal-Mart sale,” Mr. Guyton says.
While the crimes for which the men were convicted may include armed robbery and murder, sex offenders are not admitted to the program, in deference to the wishes of neighborhood residents.
To foster a further connection with the center’s neighbors, all the men must donate two canned goods per week, which are given to a local family in need.
They also must contribute to the purchase of a $100 savings bond for a neighborhood child who submits an essay on any topic, an offer the community center makes on a continuing basis to local kids. (The program has run for the past 18 months and has resulted in more than $11,000 in savings bonds being doled out. Money collected from cursing fines goes toward paying for the bonds.)
The men are also encouraged to reach out to others who could benefit from the Rose Street Community Center’s services, and must open a savings account and present a monthly statement to Mr. Guyton.
Dealing With a Job Applicant
Sometime after 10 a.m., Mr. Guyton heads to a local filling station for gasoline and snacks, before returning to the cleanup site.
As Mr. Guyton waits for his crew to unload his truck, an 11-year-old boy from the neighborhood quietly appears and shyly greets him. Clearly, this is not the first time he has come to Mr. Guyton for some adult attention. Patting the child on the head, Mr. Guyton asks about his algebra homework and promises that if the boy brings his completed work to the community center, someone will check it for him.
Mr. Guyton’s cellphone rings: It is Corliss Jones, the community center’s administrator, calling to say that a young man has been referred to Rose Street for a job. While no jobs are available, Mr. Guyton nevertheless tells Ms. Jones where he is and asks her to send the man his way.
When the job applicant arrives, it becomes clear that he needs to obtain a Maryland identity card — a process that includes locating the applicant’s birth certificate and Social Security number, and providing two official pieces of mail that prove he has a place to live.
Pointing out that rounding up all those documents costs money, Mr. Guyton invites the man to join him on the cleanup crew at 4 a.m. tomorrow — or, if he wishes, to start to work right now and he’ll receive $10. Promising to return tomorrow, the job applicant leaves.
“He won’t come back,” says Mr. Guyton. His prophecy proves inaccurate: The young man does, in fact, return the next day.
‘Treats Everyone the Same’
With one eye on the clock and the other on the cleanup crew’s progress, Mr. Guyton realizes he will not be able to make a 1 p.m. meeting with Randi Pupkin, founder and executive director of Art With a Heart, a charity that leads art projects in housing facilities for low-income elderly people and in group homes for troubled teenagers, as well as at a local public school.
Ms. Pupkin has just received a grant to host a two-week summer program for high-school students and is seeking assistance from Mr. Guyton and Mr. Gladden in recruiting neighborhood children for the project.
Tied up with neighborhood trash, Mr. Guyton calls Mr. Gladden and asks him to stand in for him at the meeting.
The crew finishes its work just before 2 p.m., and those who participated in the cleanup are now free to meet with parole officers, visit their families, or shop for groceries.
Before heading their separate ways, Michael Rubin, a program participant, testifies to Mr. Guyton’s leadership. “Mr. Clayton is very fair, and he treats everyone the same, whether you are God or nobody,” he says. “He has done a lot to make me a quality person.”
Anthony Ware, who recently joined the program, echoes Mr. Rubin’s sentiments: “I researched Rose Street when I was still in prison and was drawn to its values, discipline, and respect for all people.”
Good News
Mr. Guyton now heads for the community center to have his weekly meeting with Ms. Styles, who asks how things went with the Monday cleanup.
“The city trash guys are getting sloppy,” he gripes. “There were a lot of things that they didn’t pick up on Saturday.”
But other than that it has been a good week: He tells Ms. Styles that one of God Is in Reach’s men has just received his commercial driver’s license and found a job paying $18 per hour. Mr. Guyton adds that all of the 10 men in his program who have enrolled in such training successfully completed the driver’s-license program.
After Ms. Styles leaves, Mr. Guyton picks up the mail and spends a few minutes chatting with Ms. Jones and Caychan Chase, who handles Rose Street’s correspondence with inmates. Then, at about 3:30 p.m., he’s off to take a nap, grab a bite, shower, and handle other administrative matters.
At 8 p.m., all the men in Rose Street’s residential programs attend the house meeting held four nights each week.
“We discuss problems that anyone might be having, who is buying savings bonds for the children, and who in the community we may need to help, such as a senior citizen, schools that might need our help,” says Mr. Guyton.
By 11 p.m. — lights out — everyone is back in their own bed. That 4 a.m. crew meeting is just around the corner.
