These materials are provided for participants' review and reflection, as part of the LWVDE 2023 Black History Month program.
Topic For Week 4, Feb 22 to 28: Criminal Justice
Poem for Week 4:
American History
Those four black girls blown up
in that Alabama church
remind me of five hundred
middle passage blacks,
in a net, under water
in Charleston harbor
so redcoats wouldn't find them.
Can't find what you can't see
can you?
Copyright © 2000 by Michael S. Harper
Source: Songlines in Michaeltree: New and Collected Poems
(University of Illinois Press, 2000) Repeat from 2022
Week 4 Materials...
Article:
by Elizabeth Hinton and DeAnza Cook Departments of History and African American Studies, Yale Law School, Yale University, 2020
This lengthy but provocative review synthesizes the historical literature on the criminalization and incarceration of black Americans for an interdisciplinary audience. By underscoring this antiblack punitive tradition in America as central to the development of crime-control strategies and mass incarceration, our review lends vital historical context to ongoing discussions, research, and experimentation within criminology and other fields concerned about the long-standing implications of institutional racism, violence, and inequity entrenched in the administration of criminal justice in the United States from the top down and the ground up. (Repeat from 2022)
Video:
The museum, located in Montgomery, Alabama, provides a comprehensive history of the United States with a focus on the legacy of slavery. The Legacy Museum is an engine for education about the legacy of racial inequality and for the truth and reconciliation that leads to real solutions to contemporary problems. After reading about the museum and watching the video of some of the higlights, you may just want to plan a trip.
Films:
Brett Story’s documentary about the way prison systems reshape the landscapes around them is remarkable for many reasons, but one of them is the simple fact that we don’t see a prison until the end of the film. Instead, The Prison in 12 Landscapes captures a series of vignettes in communities that are shaped in some way by a nearby prison, from conversations with people at historical societies to narration from prisoners who fight fires for a few bucks a day. The film plays out like both poetry and a negative-space portrait — what’s left unsaid is just as important as what’s said out loud. And it interrogates whether the prison system does what it says it wants to do or whether it has a different aim altogether.(Repeat from 2022)
Rent or purchase from Amazon
Rent or purchase from Amazon
◈ 13th - Netflix (full length)
Combining archival footage with testimony from activists and scholars, director Ava DuVernay's examination of the U.S. prison system looks at how the country's history of racial inequality drives the high rate of incarceration in America. This piercing, Oscar-nominated film won Best Documentary at the Emmys, the BAFTAs and the NAACP Image Awards.
Podcast:
Reginald Dwayne Betts is a published poet, memoirist, and legal scholar who's currently pursuing a Ph.D. in law at Yale. His legal work, like his poetry, is informed by the years he spent in prison as a teen. This week he sits down with At Liberty to discuss his journey to the legal profession, his perspective on the criminal justice system, and
Book Recommendation:
◈ Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
Citizen: An American Lyric is a 2014 book-length poem and a series of lyric essays by American poet Claudia Rankine. Citizen stretches the conventions of traditional lyric poetry by interweaving several forms of text and media into a collective portrait of racial relations in the United States.
TED Talk:
◈ Community-powered criminal justice reform
Community organizer Raj Jayadev wants to transform the US court system through "participatory defense" -- a growing movement that empowers families and community members to impact their loved ones' court cases. He shares the remarkable results of their work -- including more than 4,000 years of "time saved" from incarceration -- and shows how this new model could shift the landscape of power in the courts.
The author of the book Just Mercy & video, Bryan Stevenson, tells the viewer an engaging and personal talk -- with cameo appearances from his grandmother and Rosa Parks -- human rights lawyer. He shares some hard truths about America's justice system, starting with a massive imbalance along racial lines: a third of the country's black male population has been incarcerated at some point in their lives. These issues, which are wrapped up in America's unexamined history, are rarely talked about with this level of candor, insight and persuasiveness. (Over 8 million people have viewed this informative and thought-filled Ted Talk
Additional Resources:
The Searchable Museum gives digital experience of Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History. Launched in 2021, this site transforms the artifacts, stories, and interactive experiences of the physical exhibit into a digital platform where museumgoers can take it in at their own pace. At this time (2023), there are 2 sections of the museum are now available: Slavery & Freedom & Making a Way Out of No Way.
Don't forget to use the prompting questions as you read, listen and/or view the resources. This will help you remember what you were thinking, so that you can participate more fully at the Debriefing Conversation.End of Month Discussion...
Don't forget to register for the culminating online discussion on February 28, 2023 to share our experience, thoughts, insights and questions. Register here: Debriefing Conversation for Black History Month Program
