Imprisoned at 17, Sentenced to 54 Years to Life, Taught Himself to Read At Age 20 In Prison, Learnt Financial Literacy and Trading Stocks By Himself From Age 22 In Prison | Curtis “Wall Street” Carroll

Curtis Carroll is a convict sentenced to 54 years to life for robbery murder and attempted murder at the age of 17 years. He has served 22 years of his sentence to date, with the last four years having been at San Quentin prison, California.

He was born is Washington DC and moved to East Oakland, California, in the early 80’s. He grew up in a crack environment, where both his mother and his grandmother were drug addicts. Everyone is his family were either drug addicts or drug dealers. No one in his family had jobs, and no one worked. His entire perspective about life was about poverty.

He was enrolled in school but didn’t go too often. He was illiterate. He didn’t know much about maths and learnt most of his life skills in the streets. His role models were the pimps, prostitutes and hustlers. He was always told to make money he needed to be on the streets. His views were shaped by the people on the streets who he looked up to.

He knew crime was a bad thing but believed that it was justified to survive. He believed the police and white people were the enemy and were the reason why life was the way it was for his family and his community. He took to robbing, stealing and burglary.

His mother started using drugs when he was about 9 or 10 and so for the next 7 or 8 years until he went to prison, he had no real guidance and spent most of his time on the streets. There was no accountability in his life and he would do anything to put food on the table and that ultimately led him to prison.

His conscience was eroded and he saw crime as an opportunity. He never perceived the hurt he was causing to others, only that he was taking advantage of opportunities that were arising and the people that they were robbing had more and probably wouldn’t miss the items they lost.

The day he was arrested, he had gone with his brother on assignment to rob a house and they got distracted when they found that there was so much cereal and food in this house, and instead of focusing on what they were sent to do, they started gathering all the food and cereal in the house and eventually ended up getting caught.

He never saw lawyers, doctors, firefighters and other professionals in his neighborhood and saw he never aspired to be like them. He saw drug dealers driving big cars with a lot of beautiful ladies following them around in the neighborhood and that was what he aspired to do. He felt very little empathy because he never felt like he was being helped. He always felt like a victim of circumstances.

He would watch his mum going to the blood bank selling her blood for 40 dollars in order to feed her four kids and it tore his heart and that drove him to justify crime. He didn’t have any remorse.

In prison, reality slowly started developing. When he learnt how to read, he started to see the world differently. He actually started  growing up in prison. He learnt how to shave in prison. He learnt about girls in prison. He’d never been on dates. He’s never been to a prom, but he learnt all that in prison.

After spending some time in prison, reading, he started seeing life through the eyes of the world, and then slowly he started understanding the pain that he should have caused himself. Disgusted with himself, he couldn’t understand how he could have done all the bad things he did. As he got more educated, he stopped making excuses and started holding and making himself more accountable.

One day before he learnt how to read, at the age of 20, he went to pick up the sports section of the newspaper so his cell-mate could read it for him. Because of his inability to read, he made a mistake and brought the business paper instead. “Youngster, you pick stocks?” the old man asked him. “What is that?” Curtis asked. “It’s where the white people keep all their money.” the old man answered. Curtis was intrigued and wanted to know more and his cellie gave him a brief description of what stocks were. Wanting to know more, he decided that he needed to learn to read without fail. At 20 years old, he picked up a book for the first time. Amid criticism from family and fellow inmates, he braved himself for the experience and started learning to reading. By age 22, he had learnt significantly how to read and went to take the business section of the paper again and started learning about stocks and how to trade them. He soon became a financial literacy enthusiast learning everything that he could on financial literacy and trading stocks at every opportunity.

As he got more skilled and knowledgeable on stocks, fellow inmates soon started calling him “Wall Street”.

One day, the warden at the prison called him to his office and asked him to start a financial literacy class in the prison and this changed his life. He went from not caring about his community to wanting to loving his community, teaching financial literacy and wanting to add so much value to his community

Curtis sat down with veteran journo Sway, and they had an insightful conversation.

He was invited and spoke on TEDx about how he learnt to read and trade stocks in prison.

The Great Big Story featured him here

Going beyond trading and teaching people about trading stocks, Curtis is passionate about teaching people financial literacy and how to make better financial decisions and improve their lifestyles through smarter financial decisions. He has been in prison for 22 years and has teaching financial literacy classes at Saint Quentin for 10 years.

A truly inspiring and powerful story of someone who came from the lowest levels of indifference, illiteracy, drugs and crime to teaching himself how to read and trade stocks, developing a conscience, holding himself accountable, forgiving himself, connecting with his purpose and God’s plan for his life. He is an example to both people in prisons and anybody else who is pursuing something in life.

About The Author

Desmond Mapfumo is a Mindset Coach, Startup Builder and Consultant. He is a Strategy, Systems and Maximization Expert. He is the Founder and Contributing Editor For Inspiration Media Publications. Inspiration Media is member of the Rebirth Group, which he also founded and leads as the Executive Chairman and CEO. Desmond is a writer, speaker, teacher, mentor and trainer.