The Streets Were My Father: A Chicago Gang Member’s Road to Redemption
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Carlos Colon spent his early years searching for a father figure and found it in the streets of Chicago. Gang life gave him identity and purpose, but it also drew him into violence that followed him into prison after he took another man’s life. Inside those prison walls, something began to change. He committed himself to a different path and walked out a new man years later.
Here’s Carlos with his story, originally part of our documentary The Streets Were My Father.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. This is our American stories. |
| 0:30.1 | And as you know, some of our favorite stories and some of your favorite stories on this show are redemption stories. |
| 0:36.3 | Comeback stories about people who turn their lives around, |
| 0:40.0 | which brings us to our next story. |
| 0:42.1 | It comes from the documentary, The Father I Never Knew, |
| 0:45.6 | a movie that tracks the lives of former gang members |
| 0:48.1 | that were raised without a positive father figure, |
| 0:51.3 | which you can find on Amazon Prime. |
| 0:53.1 | The director, Don Albert, |
| 0:55.1 | graciously gave us the interviews to tell these stories. |
| 0:59.1 | And now we bring you the story of Carlos Colon. |
| 1:05.8 | I was born in Chicago, Illinois, |
| 1:08.5 | being in Humbold Park. |
| 1:10.3 | From the 70s on through the 90s, it was pretty |
| 1:14.6 | drastic. Growing up with a single mom, you know, the gangs was pretty bad in the neighborhood, |
| 1:22.6 | and poverty was at its worst. I would think about it. Now I think about my upbringing and it was a lot of empty lots. |
| 1:30.8 | So there wasn't no playgrounds. |
| 1:32.1 | There was just empty lots, you know, where no buildings were and where they used to be. |
| 1:38.0 | So a lot of times, you know, we turn to the streets and, you know, you come from a dysfunctional home where you see drug abuse from different men in my mom's lives and domestic abuse. |
| 1:52.0 | I turned to the streets. |
| 1:55.0 | I spent most of my life in prison from juvenile on through my adulthood. |
... |
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