I just finished a really terrific book titled “Devil in the Grove” by Gilbert King. In it, he recounts a little known incident that took place in Florida in 1949. Four young men were falsely accused of raping a white teenager named Norma Padgett. They came to be known as the Groveland Four. I will write more about this case and the book at a later date.

Today I want to focus on the main protagonist of King’s book. Thurgood Marshall, known as “Mr. Civil Rights,” came to Lake County, Florida to defend the young men from almost certain execution. King paints the most vivid portrait of pre-Supreme Court Justice Marshall that I have ever read. King reveals that Marshall was haunted by images of lynchings throughout his early career as a civil rights lawyer.

One particular image was recurring — it was of a black man hanging from a rope of a tree in Florida. What Marshall could not erase from his mind were the smiling or serene faces of white children who were witness to the torture. Below is the particular image that he could not shake.

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She was one of my favorites. Jayne Cortez passed away last week. I wanted to share one of her poems in her honor. Rest in Power Ms. Cortez and Thank You!

There It Is

And if we don’t fight
if we don’t resist
if we don’t organize and unify and
get the power to control our own lives
Then we will wear
the exaggerated look of captivity
the stylized look of submission
the bizarre look of suicide
the dehumanized look of fear
and the decomposed look of repression
forever and ever and ever
And there it is

More evidence of the disproportionate impact of the “war on drugs.”

Quentin Tarantino equates the “war on drugs” with slavery… and I agree with Chauncey DeVega that these are not the same.

A few months ago, I wrote about the killing of Rekia Boyd by an off-duty Chicago Police officer. This week Antonio Cross’s trial will begin. He was charged with misdemeanor aggravated assault in an incident where off-duty detective Dante Servin shot him, another person, and killed Rekia Boyd. Servin claimed that Cross had a gun. A gun was never recovered at the scene. As we wait for the trial to begin on January 10th, I wanted to revisit the police brutality that women of color experience.

As I mentioned in my post about Rekia Boyd back in April, this is not something that we hear very much about. I have written about my personal struggle to take state violence against women of color as seriously as I do when it is directed against black men in particular. As a way to overcome my own internalized oppression, I am committed to underscore more current and historical examples of state violence against women of color on the blog this year.

I’ll kick off this series with an excellent video titled “Our Forgotten Voices: From History to Herstory” about the impact of current stop and frisk policies on young women of color. The video was created by young women from the Sadie Nash Leadership Project. They describe its purpose as follows:

Growing media attention and activist work have been dedicated to the criminalization of men of color by the justice system and the NYPD’s policy of Stop and Frisk… We acknowledge and validate these experiences but would like to shed light on womyn’s perspectives because womyn are diversely affected by the culture of policing and surveillance by the NYPD, which has grown increasingly sexist, racist, classist, homophobic, and transphobic through the Stop and Frisk policy and abuse of power. We do not feel safe. Through this film we are calling allies and survivors of all identities to work together to enact change, not only in our cities but our justice system as a whole.

Please take five minutes to watch the young women’s video:

It’s been two and a half years since I launched Prison Culture and I continue to be amazed by the loyal following that it has garnered. I started this blog for myself. It’s true. I didn’t expect that 5 other people (including a couple of family members) would be interested in my ramblings. I wanted an outlet to distill my thoughts about my work and activism. I wanted to better organize my ideas about mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex. I often don’t really know what I think about something until I write it down. The blog was intended to be a catalogue of my interests and of some of my ideas. It is all of those things.

But over the past couple of years, I have also learned that some of what appears on this blog resonates with others. Some of you have been incredibly kind to reach out to me when you agree with something you read here and also when you disagree. The blog has now evolved to include artifacts from my personal collection and some writing about key historical moments that I am researching. From time to time (not regularly enough for me), my friends have generously submitted guest posts here too. So I feel in a way that Prison Culture is no longer just a blog for myself.

In 2013, I am challenging myself to become more organized in how I present information here. I am going to try to abide by a regular posting schedule that is organized according to particular categories. For example, I often post poems of the day related to the PIC. I will continue to do so on a weekly basis on Wednesdays for example. You can also continue to expect weekly images of the day. These will appear mostly on Sundays now. I am looking for a way to make my blogging schedule more predictable for me and for readers. Wish me luck in following through on this.

I will continue to work more than full-time running my organization this year and I am also teaching another college class this semester. I want to make sure that I can still continue to regularly blog even though I am going to be swamped (as usual).

I am excited to continue to share my work and passions with you in 2013. I can’t tell you how humbling it is for me that you take the time to read what I write and to offer your input when the desire strikes.

May this year be a prosperous, healthy, and peaceful one for you and yours!

My friend, the brilliant Dara Cooper, did something really terrific yesterday. After a conversation with some youth worker friends, she decided to crowdsource questions on Facebook for people who wanted to debrief Django Unchained particularly with black youth. I love this idea even though I think that the attention paid to the film is already completely disproportionate to its quality or value… But that’s unimportant. Many black people are packing theaters to see this movie and many in the audience are young people. I asked Dara if I could share the list on this blog for others who might find it useful. She agreed by saying: “It’s ours.” That’s pretty much typical of Dara…

I recently read that some new research confirms the fact that black children who are instilled with racial pride do better in school. I am sure that this does not come as a shock to anyone but it is always good to get some empirical evidence for what you suspect in your gut. One of the study authors, Ming-Te Wang, explains:

“Our findings challenge the notion that ‘race blindness’ is a universally ideal parenting approach, especially since previous research has shown that racially conscious parenting strategies at either extreme—either ‘race blindness’ or promoting mistrust of other races—are associated with negative outcomes for African American youth.

“When African American parents instill a proud, informed, and sober perspective of race in their sons and daughters, these children are more likely to experience increased academic success.”

Anyway, I contributed some of my own questions to Dara’s curated list. If you want to contribute your own, please leave them in the comment section and I will keep adding to the list. Below is the Facebook note from Dara:

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As I prepared for the opening of the Black/Inside: A History of Captivity and Confinement exhibit this Fall, I took a hiatus from sharing items from my personal collection on the blog.

Incidentally, the exhibition ended its run at the African American Cultural Center at UIC on December 21st. It was a great success with hundreds of people visiting the exhibit over the course of seven weeks. Black/Inside will next travel to Trinity United Church of Christ for Black history month. I am excited about that.

Anyway, back to my collection. Regular readers know that I love photographs. The following is a photograph depicting the life of prisoners on a chain gang in 1930s Georgia. Stay tuned next week for another photograph in the series…

1937 Bibb County Chain Gang Photo – from my collection

I mentioned last week that I am doing some research about lynching in the United States. I am learning a lot that I didn’t know of course. I came across this amazing photograph…

Irwinton, 1949, Wife of the victim by Marion Palfi

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As part of my ongoing series on the failure and racism of the drug war, I wanted to share this comic which also illustrates the class oppression inherent in the so-called war…

I admit to being a stan for Dick Gregory… I simply adore the man. I am grateful for the purposeful life that he has led and continues to lead. I love him.

Years ago, I was privileged to meet Mr. Gregory at a reception following a book reading. I made a complete fool of myself gushing over him. He was characteristically hilarious when he quipped (deadpanned) that he would much prefer my money to my appreciation. Then he smiled and I was done. My fandom only intensified. I am sure that thousands of people across the world have their own Dick Gregory stories.

Anyway, over the years I have read Mr. Gregory’s writings and have collected photographs of him. My favorite photographs are those of him getting arrested… [Don’t ask]. I thought that it would be fun to share some of those photos here as a way to honor Mr. Gregory’s activism and civil disobedience over the years. Stay tuned for those in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, I just finished his memoir “Callus On My Soul” yesterday. It was published in 2001 and is an excellent read. Below is the book cover which is appropriate to the topics that I usually consider on this blog.

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