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."
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 underst
About Maxwell Melvins
Bio
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.
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.
Global Influence
Maxwell and the Lifers Group received news coverage from Japan, South America, the UK, and Europe.
MOVIES AT RAHWAY PRISON
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.
Maxwell wearing the 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks t-shirt that Sipke Lee gave him, while incarcerated.
Denzel Washington (right) performing as Malcolm X, filmed at Rahway State Prison.
SCARED STRAIGHT
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 INSTITUTION
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.
TEDx CUNY 2018
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.
