Decades after the crack epidemic, we’re still reckoning with our mistakes

On the first day of an investigative journalism class I took several years ago, the professor handed out a news story titled “Jimmy’s World,” published by The Washington Post in September 1980. The professor gave us no instruction other than to read the roughly 2,000 words to ourselves. Written by Janet Cooke, the piece begins with an unusual description, both grisly and tender, of a Black boy from D.C. named Jimmy. “Jimmy is 8 years old and a third-generation heroin addict,” Cooke wrote, “a precocious little boy with sandy hair, velvety brown eyes and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin brown arms.”