Community recalls devastation of crack

Twenty-five years after crack cocaine swept across this city, destroying families and neighborhoods, Bostonians say they are still reeling from its deadly legacy. Yesterday more than 100 people came together at Hibernian Hall in Dudley Square to mourn the lives, the years, and the friends they lost.

“Crack cocaine came and infiltrated our community like [Hurricane] Katrina,’’ said Leonard Lee, a 52-year-old from Dorchester who works with drug and violence prevention issues for the city. “It got rid of all our moral values.’’

George “Chip’’ Greenidge, who organized the event as part of the National Black College Alliance’s Greatest Minds group, said the gathering was “about people hearing each other’s stories and how a five-letter word that wasn’t in the lexicon forever changed the black community.’’

Crack cocaine hit US streets in the early 1980s, authorities say, a cheaper, highly addictive alternative to powder cocaine that spawned feuding street gangs from Los Angeles to Boston who sold the drugs to their friends and neighbors.

The drug took Boston by storm around 1986 when Len Bias died of a drug overdose while celebrating his first-round draft pick to the Boston Celtics. His death, during an election year, was at first erroneously attributed to crack, but it sparked tougher federal drug laws that aimed to end the epidemic in urban areas, said Barbara Dougan of the Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which is working to change the laws.

The laws, which severely penalized scores of young black men, and the usage and sale of crack had a devastating impact on the black community, panelists and audience members said.

“We lost a generation of young folks to look up to because’’ of the drug, said Robert A. Lewis, who works with men newly released from prison who left their families behind because of prison sentences for crack cocaine.

Yesterday former users, dealers, and children born addicted to the drugs or into families that used the drugs shared their stories during the daylong event. The audience broke into groups by neighborhood and by age ranges — and nearly everyone had a sad story.

“The first time I ever knew crack was when I was playing hide and go seek and a weird person asked me where the jums were,’’ said Vernon Jackson, a 30-year-old former Grove Hall resident, using the street name at the time for crack. “I was 6 years old.’’

Deputy Superintendent William G. Gross said when he was growing up in Dorchester, young boys would worry about being teased.

But when he was a police officer in the 1980s, he said, young boys were getting stabbed and killed.

“There was an introduction of violence,’’ he said. “And my belief is that was because of the introduction of crack cocaine.’’

Gross, who heads the department’s gang unit, said police have responded by launching a host of efforts to address issues related to drug violence in the neighborhoods, including the community policing initiative.

Terryl Calloway, a former nightclub owner, said he remembered when gang members would come to his club to celebrate their day’s earnings and would open fire when they spotted a rival.

The violence, random and rampant, forced him to shut the nightclub, he said.

“It just changed the landscape of entertainment for black Boston,’’ he told the audience. “What was happening in our club was a microcosm of what was happening in the black community.’’

Meghan Irons can be reached at mirons@globe.com.