MANSFIELD, OHIO

SEPTEMBER 1956

The pimps on Broadway in Lorain looked so sharp, with their conk haircuts, sharkskin suits, straw fedoras, pinky rings, and gold teeth. They had hos hanging off them like they were made of Velcro. They drove Coupe de Villes and Lincoln Continentals, with whitewall tires and shiny grills. They didn’t have to work the line at the steel mill or lay bricks in the sun twelve hours a day just to get by.

Sam Little knew he was a player at heart, but he didn’t know the rules of the game—he could only covet its spoils. He crawled the streets at night, but it was as if he was at an aquarium, peering through the glass at the life he wanted. He couldn’t figure out how to dive in. He thought he saw his opportunity one day when he walked by a closed dry cleaner and spied all the neat suits hanging in bags, the freshly cleaned and shaped hats standing in rows, with their tickets stuck in the brims.

He scanned the deserted street before wrapping his fist in his shirt and knocking it straight through the window. No alarm sounded. No dogs barked. He turned the doorknob from the inside and walked into the quiet of these things that belonged to someone else. The smell of cleaning chemicals and the delicious adrenaline of the moment surged through him like a crazy hit of heroin. His eyes adjusted to the light, and he took two suits that looked like they’d fit his already six-foot frame and one straw fedora. Then he ran.

The next afternoon, when Big ’Un was at work and Mama was at the market, Sam dared to throw on his new duds and hit the stroll. A friend clocked him immediately.

“No one ever going to believe those are your rags, Sam McDowell. You’re gonna get cuffed and stuffed again before you know it.”

The immovable confidence he’d felt while putting the suit on drained out of him like water through a sieve. The friend had a point. Sam had turned sixteen a few months before, so if he got convicted, he would be going to the Ohio State Reformatory at Mansfield, and rumor had it, OSR made BIS look like a day at the ballpark.

“Just give it back,” the friend advised. “They won’t do nothing to you if you give it back.”

For the crime of stealing two suits and a hat that he returned two days later, on May 27, 1957, sixteen-year-old Sam McDowell, a.k.a. Samuel Little, was arrested, charged with breaking and entering, and sentenced to seventeen months in the Ohio State Reformatory. He even saw his birth certificate for the first time. Indeed, it read Samuel Little. He was a Little nigger after all. It was right there in black and white.

The Ohio State Reformatory opened its doors in 1896, and it was meant to be a halfway point between BIS and the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus. Construction hadn’t yet been completed, and the first inmates were immediately put to work building the sewer system and the twenty-five-foot stone wall surrounding the Victorian stone structure, with its six-story windows and Gothic towers. It was designed in the era of prison reform, and its architecture was meant to facilitate the prisoners’ connection to their spiritual lives.

By the time Sam walked through its doors, OSR housed over three thousand men. In his well-appointed home attached to the facility by a tunnel, Warden Glattke talked to all the new prisoners personally about God this and God that before handing them over to the guards to be checked into a penthouse, which was what they called the cells on the sixth and top floor of the largest freestanding steel cellblock in the world.

That first walk to Sam’s cell, his head swam with the vertigo of the height while the humid air redolent of that many bodies hit him like a wall. He knew much about his future in the stinking, strange palace of punishment would be found at the end of that walk. The guard grabbed the bars of his future home and slid them open, and Sam stepped inside the nine-by-six-foot cell. In spite of the unmistakable sound of the iron gate closing behind him, his face lit up. The guard barked a brief schedule—line up, meal, lights out—but Sam wasn’t listening. Would you look at that? Of all the things.

“Well, Wilbert Taylor!”

“Hello, cellie.”

Wilbert had changed in that brief period between their release from BIS and their present accommodations. He was broad as a bulldog now, his muscles visible even beneath the shapeless prison garment. His hair was straightened with lye and long like a girl’s. He’d lined his eyes with smears of coal.

“You really let your hair down, girl.”

“Make no mistake. They don’t fuck with me no more.”

Sam learned Wilbert had become what was known as a Boxing Betty. A Betty was a particular kind of girl in prison culture—one who would kick your ass.

When Wilbert had entered OSR, he’d been gang-raped by four men. He was strong but no match for four. Wilbert became Betty, and she had gotten stronger until she was a match for that many or more. She exacted a uniquely humiliating retribution on each, one by one, beating them to a pulp before sucking their dicks in public.

“Wait,” said Sam. “You made them let you suck their dicks. You something else, girl.”

“Yes. I am. Now they’re girls too. And it ain’t even natural to them.”

They fell out laughing.

“I can’t believe you here.”

“I thought about you. Out there.”

“I’m not gonna call you Betty. I’ll call you Wilbert. But you can still be my girl. And, Wilbert, you’re gonna teach me to fight.”

With Wilbert’s guidance, Sam negotiated the gauntlet of OSR and integrated seamlessly into prison life. He soon realized that while he had never found the direction he needed on the outside, he had hit the jackpot in the prison, where all the fun and games began.

The prisons were segregated and merciless. The Black inmates shoveled coal while the white inmates worked administrative jobs. The sissies worked in the mattress factory. Sam thought that was pretty funny.

There were few ways to garner favor, but Sam managed. He understood in his bones every human exchange was a transaction—every hello, every goodbye, every threat, and especially every favor. His natural predilection toward wheeling and dealing served him well on the inside.

Sam was also fast and strong. He showed startling promise as a boxer. Wilbert wasn’t allowed to fight in the proper prison ring because he was a sissy, but he saw something special in Sam, even if it was a bit frightening and unhinged. He trained him.

“You got to be a little bit wild in the eyes to win, Big Daddy.”

Together, they turned their mattresses to the wall and used them as heavy bags.

Sam rose through the ranks of the boxers in the prison with a fury few had seen before. Most stepped out of his way when they turned the cavernous prison chapel into a basketball court every Friday. They even turned it into a proper boxing ring once a year. It was a big event: anticipated eagerly and bet on by both guards and prisoners. Several famous real-life boxers had been funneled from the prison system. Sam was a favorite with the guards. They even outfitted him with proper shoes and shiny shorts.

The Mad Daddy. The Machine. The Machine Gun.

He was born for the dance between control and explosion—unapologetically defensive, relentlessly aggressive.

In 1960, the Mad Daddy defeated a man named Bubba by KO to become the middleweight champion of the Ohio State Reformatory.

Just a few cells down, Don Draper, a very different kind of inmate, spent most of his day hiding out, head down, scribbling on any loose scrap of paper. Other inmates left Don alone, because he’d draw pictures to send to their wives and kids and grandmas. Every day, Sam passed by his cell, and damn, it fascinated him. The man could make something look like that with just paper and a pencil, like magic? Drawing something was almost like stealing something. Don said he would teach Sam to draw if Sam would teach him to fight. It was hard for Sam to believe he could achieve such a thing, but then, as Mama had told him, anything any human being had the ability to do, Sam could do if he put his mind to it. He just hadn’t put his mind to much yet.

By the time Sam walked out of the gates of the Ohio State Reformatory in early 1961, he was an accomplished hustler, an up-and-coming fighter, and a promising artist. He even had dreams and goals. He wanted to be a prizefighter. Or a pimp. Or both.

There was one essential piece of his education that was still missing…not getting caught.

He was back inside by June. He’d attempted to steal money from a furniture store by breaking in the skylight. They’d gotten him on the roof and tossed him right back.

He was the middleweight champion again, in both 1963 and 1964. Would have won in 1962 also if the warden hadn’t banned the fights when Benny Paret died in the ring.

In the meantime, Sam was mocked for another essential piece of his missing education. He’d yet to have a sexual experience with an actual woman. He was a celebrity on the inside, valued for his boxing and art skills alike, but that didn’t stop the other inmates from guessing his secret.

“Of course I’ve seen a pussy”

“So draw one, van Gogh.”

Even he’d laughed at his attempt.