These materials are provided for participants' review and reflection, as part of the LWVDE 2022 Black History Month program.
Topic For Week 4, Feb 21 to 27: Criminal Justice
Poem for Week 4:
American History
by Michael S. Harper
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)
Week 4 Materials...
Articles:
◈ The Mass Criminalization of Black Americans: A Historical Overview
by Elizabeth Hinton and DeAnza Cook
Departments of History and African American Studies, Yale Law School, Yale University
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-criminol-060520-033306
Films:
◈ Monster (Netflix)
A talented teen implicated in a robbery-turned-murder fights for his innocence and integrity against a criminal justice system that's already judged him.
Cast: Kelvin Harrison Jr., Jennifer Hudson, Jeffrey Wright
Director: Anthony Mandler
Trailer video: https://youtu.be/hA-lmaz4AM8
◈ The Prison In Twelve Landscapes
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.
Watch the trailer on Vimeo:
https://www.prisonlandscapes.com
◈ The Blood Is at the Doorstep
Director: Erik Ljung
Year: 2017
Of all the films on this list, The Blood Is at the Doorstep may be the most physically activating. Not only will you watch it, and never be able to forget the name Dontre Hamilton, but you’ll likely commit Nate Hamilton’s name and story to memory as well. And when you think of Nate, the brother of an unarmed, schizophrenic young man who was murdered by a Milwaukee police officer in 2014, you’ll know that there is no way you can simply sit around and be moved by stories of police killing. You must move yourself into action after The Blood Is at the Doorstep, because it as much a tragic story of an innocent man and the system that failed him (because it always meant to fail him, and others like him), as it is a portrait of a grieving brother-turned-activist. This film, which premiered at SXSW, is both an intimate love letter to the Hamilton family (who suffer, as well as persevere), and a loud, boisterous call to action.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/RNXaNvV8zMA
Podcast:
◈ At Liberty - A Poet gives a 360 degree view of the criminal justice system.
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
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-poet-gives-a-360-degree-view-of-the-criminal-justice-system/id1396174920?i=1000432665627
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:
◈ How to Deconstruct Racism One Headline At A Time - Baratunde Thurston
ted.com/talks/baratunde_thurston_how_to_deconstruct_racism_one_headline_at_a_time
Additional Resources:
◈ Unequal Treatment, a 2003 Study by The Institute of Medicine (IOM)
More details here - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK220355
◈ An American Health Dilemma: A Medical History of African Americans and the Problem of Race: Beginnings to 1900
Book by W. Michael Byrd and Linda A. Clayton
https://www.amazon.com/American-Health-Dilemma-Americans-Beginnings/dp/0415924499
End of Month Discussion...
Don't forget to register for the culminating online discussion on February 28th, 2022 to share our experience, thoughts, insights and questions. Register here: Debriefing Conversation for Black History Month Program
