In Brooklyn's Vanderveer Projects, Michael K. Williams's friends called him “the prophet of the projects.” Now as the world mourns the loss of a great actor, people in Flatbush are grappling with the loss of something greater. sakiknafo1 reports
Williams at the Vanderveer Estates, where he grew up. Photo: Demetrius Freeman/The New York Times/Redux The housing project known as Vanderveer Estates consists of 59 red-brick buildings bound by Nostrand and Foster Avenues in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. One night a few months ago, the actor Michael K. Williams stood in front of one of those buildings and gave a speech. “I love my hood,” he said, hoarse with emotion. “I’m born and raised on these streets.
Williams lived in Vanderveer until he filmed the second season of The Wire. His building overlooked a courtyard known as the Terrace. “We called ourselves Terrace Massive,” Alvin Washington, a childhood friend, recalled. “It was about 15 of us. A little crew.” Of those 15 or so friends, nearly half have died. According to Washington, only Williams and maybe one other boy avoided doing time. “Mike will tell you in three seconds, he’s not a gangster,” he said, laughing. “He was a free soul.
Those situations included a 25-year prison sentence. When Dupont was 19, he was convicted of murdering a man who had attacked his brother. “My relationship with Mike before prison was close, and those 40-foot walls did not change that,” he said. Some 20 years into his sentence, in 2017, Governor Andrew Cuomo granted him clemency, a decision that prison officials attributed to Dupont’s outstanding work as a youth counselor. Dupont, in turn, credited Williams with helping him become a leader.
In February, Williams appeared on the show. For a half hour, he answered AJ’s questions with remarkable thoughtfulness and vulnerability. At one point, he observed that people deal with pain and anger in different ways. “For me, I turn my pain inward, and I hurt myself,” he said. Others hurt those around them. “So it’s all about, we gotta love each other no matter what,” he said. “We gotta lift each other up.
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