Self-help groups have been important instruments for helping Henry “MC” Montgomery become a better human being, he said, as he rejoins society after 24 years in prison. They helped him overcome his life’s hardships.
Looking forward to freedom, he said to those he left behind, “I will be representing you guys in prison, and I will be letting the world know that there are many more guys that have been doing the work that will be behind me. And I am sure that they will be doing bigger things than I am doing.”
After serving all those years in prison for second-degree murder and assault, he is paroling to Options transitional facility. He said he has an immediate job offer to work with at-risk youth. He also said that his first music venture will be making a pop album.
“The first 10 years were extremely rough, stressful, lonely, and hopeless,” Montgomery said. “I watched a lot of violence and suffering, went through a lot of violence and suffering. As time went on, I developed more anger than what I had before I came in. The horrible experiences were making me better. But I didn’t know that at the time. Now that I reflect back, I can see it clearly; those experiences were needed to make me into who I am today.”
“It took a particular incident where I over-reacted that showed me that I had an anger problem I needed to work on. This led me down the path of reading books on spirituality, meditation, and self-help,” he said.
Montgomery pointed to numerous self-help groups for enlightenment and change. “I started involving myself in groups such as anger management, Non-Violent Communication, Conflict Resolution, Community Impact, etc. After years of study, I finally started to internalize the tools and eventually learned to use them in potential troublesome situations,” he explained.
He described his troublesome childhood: “I wasn’t really a bad person growing up, I grew up watching my mom being abused… My mother got beat with a billy club by an L.A. policeman; I remember that like it was yesterday. As a teenager, I began being attacked by Crips and Bloods.”
He also mentioned the good times of his life, expressing how he and his uncle formed dance groups and rode motorcycles together. He said before his incarceration he was enrolled in a class called California Impact, training to retake a test to join the military. “The real reason I wanted to join the service was not to make myself a better life; it was actually to escape my life in Los Angeles because I feared that I would be killed,” he said.
Montgomery described his early introduction to hip-hop: “In elementary school I used to be in the back of class making beats. I would dance in my room for hours trying to mimic the guys I saw at dance parties. I started a group in 1983 called Erotic Freak Daddy’s at World on Wheels in L.A. I was with my uncle when he danced for Ice-T.”
He said that he started rapping in the Los Angeles County Jail, where he got into a rap battle with a gang member and came out victorious. “That victory made me think that I was pretty good at rapping. I used my rapping skills to keep the gangs off of me, which eventually led them to embrace me,” he added.
As for the men he’s leaving behind, Montgomery has this advice: “Keep yourself clean, because the biggest prize is freedom. Join groups, internalize what you learn in the groups, and put what you learn to practice.”
-JulianGlenn Padgett contributed to this story
