From death row, drug peddling and homelessness, they never gave up and succeeded academically

Anton House

House is a doctor of United States history, earning his doctorate from Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, after serving time in prison for drug peddling.

As a teenager in the 1990s, he was caught in the gangster life associated with every black community in the United States. House sold drugs. According to the Journal Times, House’s mother supplied him with “real drugs” to sell so that he wouldn’t be killed for selling “licked off Lemonheads crushed to look like crack.”

For fear of being killed, the 13-year-old got himself a gun. He wore bulletproof almost all the time as a protective measure. Growing up as a kid, House saw drug dealers in his Racine neighborhood living a life of affluence and he wanted some. 

At the age of 15, House would be at a juvenile detention center, dropping out of High School at the age of 16. When he was 18 he went to prison for the first time. That was in 1998 for cocaine possession. And in 2001 he went back again.

It was in prison and after reading The Destruction of Black Civilization by Chancellor Williams that House’s evolution to a scholar began. Before his first encounter with the law, House said he was so negative and was a bad influence on his friends, getting them drunk and in effect luring to destruction. “I’d try to corrupt them because I was so miserable myself,” he said.

House set forth to take charge of his life and destiny, rewrite the story of the African Americans who have since the millennia being discriminated against. House began to ferociously seek enlightenment in books – book on black history, philosophy, and anything he could lay his hands on.

The former drug dealer hopes to serve as an example for young black boys and girls from Racine and across the United States.