One of the recent additions to my prison artifact collection is an article by Isabel C. Barrows published in Harper’s Weekly in 1890. I was struck by the illustration that accompanies the article.

Harper’s Weekly (Aug 2, 1890)

The following quote gives you a sense of the tone and tenor of the article:

“During the days of slavery there was comparatively little crime. The easy-go-luck nature of the uneducated and poorer whites was not ambitious enough to be criminal. The better educated were too well-bred to stoop to criminal life; and for the colored criminals the masters acted as court, judge, jury, and executioner. There was no well-developed ideas of meum and tuum in the negro’s brain, and if he sometimes inverted the possessive adjectives he met his punishment in the stroke of the overseer’s lash. If he were guilty of murder he might have to forfeit his life, and the State — some of them, at least — made good his loss to his master from the public treasury. Here and there a calaboose, and now and then a jail, comprised the chief provisions for criminals under the law, and State penitentiaries were almost unknown. […] Suddenly this stricken land finds six millions of people thrown upon it, of whom hundreds and thousands are soon culprits under the law. What should be done with them, without buildings to receive and house them? The States were at first almost palsied by the situation. When the proposition came to lease the convict labor it was regarded as the best and wisest thing under the circumstances.”

The article continues by pointing out the horrors of the convict lease system and recounting a visit that the author made to a convict camp.

“The Equal Justice Initiative released Slavery to Mass Incarceration, an animated short film by acclaimed artist Molly Crabapple, with narration by Bryan Stevenson. The film illustrates facts about American slavery and the elaborate mythology of racial difference that was created to sustain it. Because that mythology persists today, slavery did not end in 1865, it evolved. Its legacy can be seen in the presumption of guilt and dangerousness assigned to African Americans, especially young men and boys, the racial profiling and mistreatment that presumption creates, and the racial dynamics of criminal justice practices and mass incarceration.”

While reading a local newspaper, Ida B Wells-Barnett’s attention was captured by the story of Chicken Joe Campbell.

Campbell was already incarcerated at Joliet Prison when, in 1915, the warden’s wife was killed in a fire. He was accused of murdering her. The warden, Edmund M. Allen had been appointed by the Governor of Illinois in 1913. He had progressive views (especially for the time) about how to treat prisoners. “There is some good in every man…and there exists some influence which will appeal to his heart and reason (cited in Giddings, 2009, p.549).” Allen had instituted an “honor system” at the Prison that allowed inmates to be rewarded with privileges and better job assignments for good behavior.

Joe Campbell had through his good behavior been elevated to the status of “trusty” and was assigned as a personal servant to the wife of the warden, Odette. Campbell was scheduled to appear before a parole board in a little more than a week when a fire broke out in the second-floor bedroom of the warden’s house. (Incidentally, Mrs. Allen had apparently agreed to testify in support of Campbell at his upcoming parole hearing). Paula Giddings explains what happened next in her authoritative biography Ida: A Sword Among Lions (2009):

“When prison guards and convicts from the volunteer fire department rushed to the residence, they found the lifeless body of Mrs. Allen. A later investigation found that alcohol had been spread over the bedding and that Mrs. Allen’s skull had been fractured. The coroner concluded that she had been knocked unconscious before succumbing to smoke inhalation and the flames. The Allen’s physician, who also had access to the warden’s living quarters and was himself a convict in the prison for killing his wife, claimed that Odette Allen had also been strangled and sexually assaulted — thought he had not made a thorough examination and no secretions were analyzed (p.549).”

Joseph Campbell was arrested for the crime right away. Barnett read about his plight when the Chicago papers reported that Campbell had been “confined to solitary in complete darkness for fifty hours on bread and water (Bay, p. 292).” After 40 hours of being subjected to questioning, Campbell ‘confessed’ to the crime. Wells was appalled by this barbaric treatment and wrote an outraged letter and appeal to local papers. “Is this justice? Is this humanity? Can we stand to see a dog treated in such fashion without protest?” she wrote. Her full letter can be read here:

Editor of the Herald: In common with thousands who have read of the horrible murder committed in Joliet penitentiary Sunday, I have followed the testimony given at the inquest now being held in an effort to find the murder.

All shudder to think so terrible a dead could be committed within the prison walls, but I write to ask if one more terrible is not now taking place these in the name of justice, and if there is not enough decent human feeling in the state to put a stop to it and give “Chicken Joe” a chance to prove whether e is innocent or guilty.

The papers say he has been confined in solitary fifty hours, hands chained straight out before him and then brought in to the inquest, sweated and tortured to make him confess a crime that he may not have committed. Is this justice? Is this humanity? Would we stand to see a dog treated in such a fashion without protest? I know we would not. Then why will not the justice-loving, law-abiding citizens put a stop to this barbarism?
The Negro Fellowship League will send a lawyer there tomorrow and we ask that your powerful journal help us to see that he gets a chance to defend “Chicken Joe” and give him an opportunity to prove whether he is innocent.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Representing Negro Fellowship League
Letter Published in Chicago Record-Herald & Chicago Defender (June 1915)

She didn’t stop there. She sent her husband, Ferdinand, to represent Campbell because she felt that the “prominent people” in Chicago weren’t supporting him. Ferdinand was told by prison officials that Campbell already had an attorney (it turned out that this was not true). A persistent Mrs. Barnett wrote a letter to Campbell himself and went to see him at the prison. She came away convinced of his innocence. When she returned to Chicago, she found a letter that Campbell had sent in response to her original letter to him. It was subsequently published in local and national papers and proclaimed his innocence of the charges against him:

Joliet, July 10th, 1915
Mrs. I.B. W. Barnett,
My Dear Madam:
I cannot find words to thank you for the kindness which you have shown me. I have been in this place 22 days and you are the first one that has come to my rescue and believe me when I say that I will accept your kind offer with joy and I know that if I am given a chance I can prove that I am innocent of this crime. I have not had any chance, that’s why I cannot prove that I did not commit the crime, but if you will do as you say in your letter, then I will have a chance to prove to the world that I am innocent and believe me when I say that I thank you with all my heart and may God bless you.

Joseph Campbell

Ida and Ferdinand threw themselves into the defense of Joseph Campbell. Ida tirelessly raised funds while Ferdinand defended him in court. Despite Ferdinand’s best efforts, Joseph Campbell was found guilty and sentenced to death in April 1916. Ida and her husband supported Campbell through three appeals. After the final appeal, Campbell’s sentence was commuted by the Governor from death to life in prison in large part due to the pressure that the Barnetts kept up in this case. Campbell died in Joliet prison in 1950, nineteen years after Ida herself had passed.

I revisit this incident to underscore that the struggle against solitary confinement as a form of torture is a long one. Last month, here in Illinois, the Uptown People’s Law Center filed a class action lawsuit against the Department of Corrections over its solidarity confinement practices. The suit claims “that the Illinois prison system is excessively and inappropriately using the restrictive housing for inmates.” Ida already told us so in 1915. 100 years later you’d think that we would have learned the lesson.

It’s been a struggle to write lately. Words feel at once constraining and overwhelming. Kalief Browder’s suicide has left me flattened. I’ve been moving through the world but in an emotional fog that won’t lift. I’ve been thinking of Jamal (not his real name) who I’ve written and talked about before.

Jamal was 15 when we met. He was brilliant and funny. I would regularly see him standing in front of the EL station on my way to work in the mornings and suggest that he should be in school. He would tell me that standing in front of the EL was much more educational than school. Shortly afterwards, I gave him a book. Over the next couple of years, we became reading buddies. Jamal would come over on some Sundays to pick up new books. We would talk about life. I treasure those days.

Then the trouble came. In 2007, I didn’t see or hear from Jamal for a month. That was unusual. I asked some of his friends in the neighborhood where he was and what happened to him. There was radio silence. Finally one evening in October, I got a phone call from Jamal. He was at Cook County Jail and he needed my help. “What can I do,” I asked. “Do you need a private lawyer, I have friends who could help? Money for items from the commissary…” I was going on and on and he finally stopped me when he could get a word in. “Ms. K he said, please tell them to send me to prison now…just get me out of here.” Cook County Jail was and is still hell.

By 2012, Jamal was dead by his own hand. I was and still am devastated. Jail and prison kill. This, I know for sure. I’ve never written about Jamal’s death. I’ve started to several times. The words won’t form. I haven’t recovered from his loss. I never will. It’s been 3 years but it might as well be 1 day. I remember his smile but it’s always so fleeting, so ephemeral. I knew that he was broken by prison. I didn’t know how to unbreak him. That’s my unending nightmare.

I’m starting to envision an exhibition that will use some of the racist, anti-black ephemera that I have collected over the past few years. I’ll write more about my intentions and hopes for the exhibition in the next few weeks.

Recently as I was antiquing, I came across the following ad from 1927 for The Fisk Tire Company. I knew nothing of this company before seeing the ad. I confess to failing to understand the connection between the image below and selling tires.

1927 Ad for Fisk Tires (from my collection)

From Narratively:

“William Koger lives in Washington, D.C., with his mother, Sandra, and three boys: Isaiah, 11, Demetri, 10, and Deshawn, 8. But it is the absence of their mother, Sherrie Harris — who is serving a long-term sentence at Hazelton Penitentiary, in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia — that looms over the household. William took on the unexpected role of primary caregiver to all three children, including one stepchild, but he has been in and out of jobs and in and out of prison himself. After being injured in a serious car accident, he is now unemployed and often in severe pain. The family is stretched financially and often unable to afford food or medicine. The children are emotionally scarred by their mother’s absence and sometimes withdraw into their shells or act out. Only when pressed do they express their intense yearning for their mother to come home, rejoin the family, and provide them with the maternal love they are missing. Sherrie Harris has been incarcerated since 2006 and is scheduled to be released in 2017.

This piece is part of a much larger multimedia project, titled Locked Apart, that includes multiple families in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia. I believe it is appropriate to acknowledge that family members of offenders are among those who are victimized when a crime occurs. Like the voices of crime victims and their families, the voices of offenders’ family members should be heard.”

Watch this video.

Locked Apart from Narratively on Vimeo.

It’s the one year anniversary of We Charge Genocide (WCG) and there is so much to say about this year. We celebrated our accomplishments together on Saturday. It was a moving and beautiful afternoon/evening that was capped off by several of us flying kites.

L.A. based artist Amitis Motevalli was in Chicago this weekend as part of the Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival to fly 23 kites representing people killed by law enforcement within one year in the state of Illinois. Through collaboration with organizers, artists and journalists, Amitis documented people killed in Illinois by law enforcement over a one year span from May 2014 until this weekend. Their faces and names were stenciled on kites. On Saturday, those kites were flown at Homan Square Park overlooking Homan Square Police Buildings.

photo by Amitis Motevalli

Those who attended the performance at Homan Square park flew “one kite with a portrait of each person killed to reflect on the life beyond state violence and the life each of these people lived, rather than the way they were killed.” The performance, “Flying Moons” is from an ongoing series of Amitis titled “This is How the Moon Died,” taken from the last sentence of Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “Victim Number Forty Eight”, about the repercussions of the killing of a young Palestinian man by Israeli police.

Most of We Charge Genocide’s (WCG) work this year has focused on honoring and fighting for our dead. Yet, we’ve reminded ourselves of life too. We’ve stressed how our loved ones lived. This was a major part of last month’s #DamoDay celebration. I was struck yesterday by Ta-Nehisi Coates’s words about Kalief Browder’s suicide:

“Browder was not “the blacks.” He was his mother and father’s child—an individual. And yet for reasons as old as America, he was not treated like one.”

Indeed, we must guard against crunching the victims of state violence into mere numbers: statistics to be tallied. These are individuals. We have to preserve their humanity as we mourn their deaths. We invited Amitis to join us on the Southside after her event at Homan Square Park ended. She graciously accepted and at our WCG celebration, she shared her motivation for creating the kites and the performance.

Amitis sharing with us (photo by Sarah Jane Rhee, 6/6/15)

As we wrapped up our celebration, several of us went outside to fly kites. One of them depicted Dominique “Damo” Franklin Jr who is the reason that WCG formed in the first place. It felt as though we had come full circle. There was such beauty in seeing the kites in the air. We laughed raucously as we flew them. It was a cathartic experience. We were literally lifting up the names of our dead. We were remembering their lives together. It’s an experience that I will never forget.

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (6/6/15)

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (6/6/15)

photo by Kelly Hayes (6/6/15)

photo by Kelly Hayes (6/6/15)

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (6/6/15)

photo by Kelly Hayes (6/6/15)

photo by Sarah Jane Rhee (6/6/15)

Names of those remembered through the kites:
3-21-12, Rekia Boyd, 22, Chicago
5-20-14, Dominique Franklin Jr., 23, Chicago
7-4-14, Pedro Rios, 14, Chicago
7-5-14, Warren Robinson, 16, Chicago
7-9-14, Steven Minch, 45, Granite City
7-28-14, Steven Isby, 53, Chicago
7-29-14, Josh Edwards, 25, Pana
8-18-14, Joshua Paul, 31, Carpentersville
8-19-14, Darius Cole Garrit, 21, Chicago
8-24-14, Desean Pittman, 17, Chicago
8-24-14, Roshad McIntosh, 19, Chicago
9-13-14, Fredi Morales, 20, Wheeling
10-20-14, Laquan McDonald, 17, Chicago
10-25-14, Craig Hall, 29, Maywood
11-3-14, Christopher Anderson, 27,Highland Park
12-7-14, “unknown”, in his 20s, Chicago
12-26-14, Terrence Gilbert, 25, Chicago
1-7-15, Joseph Caffarello, 31, Rosemont
1-11-15, Tommy Smith, 39, Arcola
3-2-15, Shaquille Barrow, 20, Joliet
4-2-15, Darrin Langford, 32, Rock Island
4-4-15, Justus Howell, 17, Zion
4-13-15, Isaac Jiminez, 27, Alton

My friend, organizer and artist Monica Trinidad, has a new website that includes some of her artwork. One of my favorite pieces is below.

by Monica Trinidad

Once again, the conversation about interpersonal violence in Chicago has turned into a debate about the moniker of “Chiraq.” Spike Lee is making a film called “Chiraq” and this has sparked editorials and endless commentary. I’ve received some calls from the press asking for my opinion. Since I’ve already discussed this issue ad nauseum, I’ve declined to offer more words.

Young people in Chicago have been commenting on the violence that they experience for years. They have been making art about that violence too. Recently, my friend Daphne, a Chicago Public School teacher, worked with her students on a series of audio and visual pieces about interpersonal violence. One video that was entirely shot, edited and produced by some of her students is below.

In a community-based program at the YMCA, one of my colleagues helped young people produce a series of audio stories about their experiences of violence. You can listen to all of them below:

One particular story about the trauma caused by interpersonal violence really stood out to me.

Mr. Mail Man
(by Adolfo Davis, from Thoughts of A Broken Child)

Mr. Mail Man, please don’t pass me by today.
I need to receive some love from the outside world.
I guess they went on with their lives.

I don’t know how many more pass-bys I can take from the mail man,
So please don’t pass me by today.

The last letter I got was one I sent myself,
Just to hear them say “Davis” you got mail.

Because hearing your name called for mail is a feeling of grace, love, peace, joy and happiness all in one.
Because you feel someone cares.

But, when your name isn’t called,
It’s like getting your heart broke for the first time.
You never want to feel that pain again,
But you still put yourself out there hoping you get mail.

So today Mr. Mail Man, Please don’t pass me by.

P.S. I was passed up once again