Curtis “Wall Street” Carroll
Here is the full transcript of Curtis “Wall Street” Carroll’s Talk: How I Learned to Read – and Trade Stocks – in Prison at TED conference.
TRANSCRIPT:
I was 14 years old inside of a bowling alley, burglarizing an arcade game, and upon exiting the building a security guard grabbed my arm, so I ran. I ran down the street, and I jumped on top of a fence.
And when I got to the top, the weight of 3,000 quarters in my book bag pulled me back down to the ground. So when I came to, the security guard was standing on top of me, and he said, “Next time you little punks steal something you can carry.”
I was taken to juvenile hall and when I was released into the custody of my mother, the first words my uncle said was, “How’d you get caught?”
I said, “Man, the book bag was too heavy.”
He said, “Man, you weren’t supposed to take all the quarters.”
I said, “Man, they were small. What am I supposed to do?”
And 10 minutes later, he took me to burglarize another arcade game. We needed gas money to get home. That was my life.
I grew up in Oakland, California, with my mother and members of my immediate family addicted to crack cocaine.
My environment consisted of living with family, friends, and homeless shelters. Oftentimes, dinner was served in breadlines and soup kitchens. The big homey told me this: money rules the world and everything in it. And in these streets, money is king. And if you follow the money, it’ll lead you to the bad guy or the good guy.
Soon after, I committed my first crime, and it was the first time that I was told that I had potential and felt like somebody believed in me. Nobody ever told me that I could be a lawyer, doctor or engineer I mean, how was I supposed to do that? I couldn’t read, write or spell; I was illiterate.
So I always thought crime was my way to go. And then one day I was talking to somebody and he was telling me about this robbery that we could do. And we did it.
The reality was that I was growing up in the strongest financial nation in the world, the United States of America, while I watched my mother stand in line at a blood bank to sell her blood for 40 dollars just to try to feed her kids. She still has the needle marks on her arms to day to show for that. So I never cared about my community. They didn’t care about my life.
Everybody there was doing what they were doing to take what they wanted, the drug dealers, the robbers, the blood bank. Everybody was taking blood money. So I got mine by any means necessary; I got mine.
Financial literacy really did rule the world, and I was a child slave to it following the bad guy.
At 17 years old, I was arrested for robbery and murder and I soon learned that finances in prison rule more than they did on the streets, so I wanted in.
One day, I rushed to grab the sports page of the newspaper so my cellie could read it to me, and I accidentally picked up the business section. And this old man said, “Hey youngster, you pick stocks?”
And I said, “What’s that?”
He said, “That’s the place where white folks keep all their money”
And it was the first time that I saw a glimpse of hope, a future. He gave me this brief description of what stocks were, but it was just a glimpse. I mean, how was I supposed to do it? I couldn’t read, write or spell. The skills that I had developed to hide my illiteracy no longer worked in this environment. I was trapped in a cage, prey among predators, fighting for freedom I never had. I was lost, tired, and I was out of options.
So at 20 years old, I did the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. I picked up a book, and it was the most agonizing time of my life, trying to learn how to read, the ostracizing from my family, the homeys. It was rough, man. It was a struggle. But little did I know I was receiving the greatest gifts I had ever dreamed of: self-worth, knowledge, discipline. I was so excited to be reading that I read everything I could get my hands on: candy wrappers, clothing logos, street signs, everything.
I was just reading stuff! Just reading stuff. I was so excited to know how to read and know how to spell. The homey came up, said, “Man, what you eating?”
I said, “C-A-N-D-Y, candy.”
He said, “Let me get some.”
I said, “N-O No.”
It was awesome. I mean, I can actually now for the first time in my life read. The feeling that I got from it was amazing. And then at 22, feeling myself, feeling confident, I remembered what the OG told me.
So I picked up the business section of the newspaper. I wanted to find these rich white folks. So I looked for that glimpse. As I furthered my career in teaching others how to financially manage money and invest, I soon learned that I had to take responsibility for my own actions. True, I grew up in a very complex environment, but I chose to commit crimes, and I had to own up to that.
I had to take responsibility for that, and I did. I was building a curriculum that could teach incarcerated men how to manage money through prison employments. Properly managing our lifestyle would provide transferrable tools that we can use to manage money when we reenter society, like the majority of people did who didn’t commit crimes.
Then I discovered that according to MarketWatch, over 60 percent of the American population has under 1,000 dollars in savings. Sports Illustrated said that over 60 percent of NBA players and NFL players go broke. 40 percent of marital problems derive from financial issues. What the hell?
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