For sixteen years, the judge advocate had impassively presided over incidents of murder and child rape, yet nothing of this kind could be attributed to Caesar, whose crime had been to steal food. [The judge] was unperturbed by venality in convicts; he expected it. What so disturbed him about this refractory convict was the persistent refusal to be reduced to the condition of a slave.
Professor Cassandra Pybus
Research Chair of History at the University of Tasmania
Review of Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their Global Quest for Liberty. Beacon Press, 2006. ISBN 080705514X. $US 26.95.
This is the first time I have started a review with a quote taken from a book's epilogue. However, since I am an African American being held in one of America's Southern prisons, it seems appropriate for me to do so out of a genuine respect for those who have gone before me.
I had a visceral reaction to Professor Pybus' words. For I know that I share a historical kinship with the man who was known as 'Black Caesar' in eighteenth century Australia. A bounty was placed on his head: 'dead or alive'. He was hunted down and killed. The reward for killing him according to Professor Pybus was a 'lavish' one: five gallons of rum.
On February 15, 1796, the New South Wales Judge Advocate David Collins wrote a brief obituary which in part read: 'Thus ended a man who certainly, during his life, could never have been estimated at more than one remove above a brute'. The judge went on to later declare Caesar an 'incorrigibly stubborn [B]lack'.
Interesting words to be sure, especially when you consider that they were chosen and written by a White man who obviously condoned the State paying other men to go murder a man for the liquid coin of rum.
Professor Pybus has produced an informative and scholarly work full of little known African American history. In many ways her book salutes those men, women and children who were able to cast off the chains of their bondage in the American colonies before, during and after the American Revolutionary War.
When American colonists began to rebel in earnest against British rule, England's on-the-scene representative, Lord Dunmore, felt sufficiently threatened that he prudently sent his wife back to England.
While the British warship HMS Fowey rode at anchor on Virginia's James River, Dunmore used the vessel as his headquarters. In her wardroom he set about the task of 'assembl[ing] a squadron to strike back at rebellious Virginians', who greatly outnumbered British loyalists in the vicinity. Moreover, he had been told that in 1775, there were no less than 180 000 Black people enslaved in Virginia.
One of Dunmore's war stategies was the offer of 'freedom' to any slave who would swear an oath of allegiance to England. Consequently, slaves ran to Dunmore in droves. One among them was Harry Washington who was once the servant of then Colonel George Washington, the same George Washington who would become America's first president. Harry became a member of England's Royal Artillery Unit. Of course, no one thought that the rebellious colonists would actually win the war.
In defeat large numbers of Dunmore's troops, and those runaway slaves who supported them, succumbed to various diseases along with the standard horrors of mortal combat. Those who survived the colonists' fury were grudgingly allowed to leave America after a victory and ceasefire had been declared.
In due course, the British sailed first for Nova Scotia and after making landfall they deposited a substantial number of Blacks there. However, the bulk of the British fleet sailed for England, taking even more freed Black people with them.
From that point on, the African American struggle for freedom became a global diaspora. A growing number of destinations far beyond the shores of Nova Scotia and England (here read the West Indies, West Africa's Sierra Leone and Australia, for example) became both havens and/or earthly hells for those intrepid Black men, women and children.
Epic Journeys of Freedom is an engrossing read. For me it has had the effect of connecting those dots left dangling by several other historical narratives on the African American experience.
This book also exposes a demoralizing feature on the part of the well intentioned British effort to enhance the growth of freedom's seed for those Blacks who left America: a kind of undeclared Holy War between the Anglican Church and a number of seemingly adversarial Methodists. The consequence of which more often than not rendered Black refugees casualties of the very freedom they had been offered by the British.
Added to the long list of instructive history this book provides is its 26 succinct biographies of Black refugees, a feature which is easy to access while absorbing the depth of the main text.
On November 3, 2006, I listened to the 'Frank and Wanda Show' on V-103 radio, in Atlanta Georgia. The host, Frank Ski, offered a prize to the caller who could give the name of the first President of the United States. Several people called, none with the right answer. Eventually someone said John Adams and Frank Ski agreed and awarded them the prize!
If ever there was an example of how badly some African Americans needed to study history, this is it. Of course George Washington was America's first president, and John Adams the second (from 1797 to 1801).
Sadly that error was neither noted nor corrected.
While both Mr Ski and the caller were wrong, I do not mean to assail them. My deeper concern is for those many poor African American children listening to that show five days a week who are learning degrading rap lyrics and this kind of historical misinformation.
I wish that Frank Ski and the caller would read this book aloud - one page per day on air.
Brandon encourages your response to this or any other essay, poem, book review or short story. He does not care if your response is positive or negative - he answers all letters.
If you are interested in reading more about African American history I urge you to read 'while the Mississippi and Hudson merge' a roman à clef. It can be purchased from iUniverse.
Monday, 3 November 2008
Stamps
To: Major Scott (Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison)
From Prisoner Brandon Astor Jones, UNO#400574; G3-83
Date: September 12, 2008, 17.01 hours
Subject: Our encounter yesterday regarding 'Stamps'
It is ironic amid all of the Department of Corrections' talk of the need to save money that frequently when there is an opportunity to make money this prison's store passes it up.
It costs 94c to send a letter to Australia and the United Kingdom. Yet the highest denomination of United States postage stamps a prisoner can purchase at the GD&CPs store is an 84c stamp. A letter must therefore have one 84c, three 3c and one 1c stamp on it. As you know we are limited to 20 stamps per store purchase (which causes us to use one quarter of the purchase for one letter). This is absurd when a 94c stamp is all that is needed.
Moreover, the GD&CP store VERY OFTEN does not have 84c stamps, and it strangely has never sold 94c ones. I have the nature of this long-standing problem known to Counselor Clark, Unit Manager Goen, Lieutenant McCormick and many others here among staff administrators, both verbally and in writing. I even wrote an Informal Grievance Form about it last year and I have not had that Informal Grievance returned to me yet (I put it in then Counselor Murphy's hand personally).
I have mail I have been trying to send out for weeks, due to lack of postage. In effect, I am being denied timely access to US Courts, lawyers, family and friends needlessly despite being under a sentence of death (I could have a fourteen day death warrant read to me at any time).
I respectfully request that you fix this problem.
From Prisoner Brandon Astor Jones, UNO#400574; G3-83
Date: September 12, 2008, 17.01 hours
Subject: Our encounter yesterday regarding 'Stamps'
It is ironic amid all of the Department of Corrections' talk of the need to save money that frequently when there is an opportunity to make money this prison's store passes it up.
It costs 94c to send a letter to Australia and the United Kingdom. Yet the highest denomination of United States postage stamps a prisoner can purchase at the GD&CPs store is an 84c stamp. A letter must therefore have one 84c, three 3c and one 1c stamp on it. As you know we are limited to 20 stamps per store purchase (which causes us to use one quarter of the purchase for one letter). This is absurd when a 94c stamp is all that is needed.
Moreover, the GD&CP store VERY OFTEN does not have 84c stamps, and it strangely has never sold 94c ones. I have the nature of this long-standing problem known to Counselor Clark, Unit Manager Goen, Lieutenant McCormick and many others here among staff administrators, both verbally and in writing. I even wrote an Informal Grievance Form about it last year and I have not had that Informal Grievance returned to me yet (I put it in then Counselor Murphy's hand personally).
I have mail I have been trying to send out for weeks, due to lack of postage. In effect, I am being denied timely access to US Courts, lawyers, family and friends needlessly despite being under a sentence of death (I could have a fourteen day death warrant read to me at any time).
I respectfully request that you fix this problem.
Saturday, 1 November 2008
'...death row prison cell' by Brandon Astor Jones
CHOICES
if i can't do
what I want to do
then my job is to not
do what I don't want
to do
it's not the same thing
but it's the best I can
do
if I can't have
what I want...then
my job is to want
what I've got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more to want
since I can't go
where I need
to go...then I must...go
where the signs point
through always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral
when I can't express
what I really feel
and none of it is equal
i know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry
Professor Nikki Giovanni
My good friend Dr Jill Segger recently shared this poem with me in her latest communication. I had previously written a letter to her in which I included a copy of the letter I wrote to Professor Giovanni on April 17 2007, after she had been featured on the Public Television program The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. The professor spoke at some length after an angry student had shot and killed 33 people (including himself) on campus.
In my letter to the professor, amongst other things I wrote that I felt she had given "eloquence and hope to the aftermath of utter violence and devastation", as I offered my heartfelt condolences. More on Professor Giovanni's poem and my letter to her later.
As usual, I plan to rely on the reader's intelligence to grasp the full meaning of my words on these pages and those unseen messages conveyed between the lines that I dare not write, but you know that I am thinking.
The main thrust of my letter to Professor Giovanni follows here:
I also believe that violence in America is taught in both overt and subtle ways. Few will admit it, but the majority of Americans consciously and unconsciously give tacit approval to (and encourage) violence from the cradle to the grave.
For example, more than 57 years ago, when I was one of less than a handful of Blacks among as many as 354 White students at Lowell Longfellow School in Harvey, Illnois, I became both victim and, as a sad but necessary consequence, a perpetrator of violence. In classrooms, hallways and especially out on the playgrounds, groups of White boys would attack me repeatedly. During one of those attacks, Mr Fry, the school principal, pulled no less than five bullies off me. He had seen me being pummeled and kicked to a bloody pulp. I was clearly the victim.
Looking back I realize that it was silly of me to have thought that Mr Fry was saving me when he pulled those guys off me. You see, when he took me to his third floor office, he produced a wooden paddle that was about three feet long. He then explained that because I started the fight, I would be given 'four licks', despite my protests that I had not started anything at all. He gave me those four licks, immediately.
It goes without saying that you can rationally conclude that Mr Fry was both wrong and racist in his response to the situation, and I agree. However, I want this writing to be more about the instrinsic and varied nature of adolescent violence in America, than the racism that can so often support and perpetuate it.
The violence on the playground that day at Lowell Longfellow School was an integral part of Mr Fry's school administration program. That is to say that from the attack on the playground all the way up to the third floor paddling, violence permeated Mr Fry's school administration. His response to group violence was to administer more violence to the individual victim of said violence.
Most (we can be grateful not all) White people in America like to think of themselves as not being racist. Consequently they see no need to instruct their children in the art of accepting people who look and act in ways that are different.
Of course, by the time those children are started in school, they are not prepared to understand, let alone accept, people who do not look and act like them.
American society, by and large, teaches its members to not only reject but to also assail difference. In this fashion Mr Fry, and millions of parents in America, promote a kind of semi-subtle-violence, a nefarious violence that such parents can routinely pretend to be unaware of.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO ALL:
If you do not consciously teach
ACCEPTANCE OF OTHERS to
your children, long before they start
school, YOU CONSCIOUSLY
TEACH VIOLENCE BY
DEFAULT.
Likewise, if we as a nation do not start teaching small children conflict resolution and self-control, we are encouraging the kind of violent loss of control that visits America so frequently.
Unfortunately when someone actually suggests that we pursue such thinking and teaching methods for Americans, that someone is usually met with the vociferous protests of angry parents/taxpayers who declare that a) the State has no business teaching their children what or how to think and/or b) even if they wanted to try it, there is no money for such liberal teaching concepts in the State or Federal budget.
Those vociferous and angry voices more often than not belong to the same people who support sending thousands of young men and women to war in Iraq, and elsewhere, along with billions and billions of tax dollars.
Last week I was reminded of Mr Fry's paddle as the use of corporal punishment occupied a slot in most evening news programs for two days. Those news programs inspired me to conduct my own survey here in G3 Cellblock, where 20 of the 23 men answered yes when I asked if they had been subjected to corporal punishment while they were in early primary school. One of the men recalled getting paddled, the first time while he was still in kindergarten.
Yes, I know that some readers will say corporal punishment was good for some. To those readers I must admit that is true, but only a minority.
As my fellow prisoner gave me details of the paddling he experienced in kindergarten, I wondered if the woman who paddled him had been at the core of his adult life's anger. I wondered if it was she he was trying to kill, instead of his late wife? I wonder, even now, how many of those 20 men in my Cellblock would be here if they had been given anger management instruction as frequently as they were given corporal punishment, in one form or another?
I am aware as I write this line that most, if not all, of the self-righteously 'vociferous' among us will discount and resent everything that is said on these pages because of who and where I am. That is a sad fact of American life, that few people listen to what prisoners have to say. I am very fortunate to have a friend like Dr Segger, who wrote the encouraging words below:
Thank you Dr Segger. Your words move me deeply. As you might have guessed Professor Giovanni did not answer the letter I wrote to her on April 17 2007. At least, she did not answer it in the direct traditional way. In an indirect way via her poem 'Choices' that you have shared with me in your letter, I choose to consider it in general, and one portion of it in particular, an answer that speaks to me on many personal levels.
If the reader is a person who is of the opinion that all human beings should be heard, no matter their situation or location, feel free to drop me a line. Know that you are in good company with the likes of Professor Giovanni and Dr Segger. I hope to be able to share some things with all of you that are sure to surprise you. Things that come from the Heaven and Hell sides of this death row prison cell.
WRITE TO:
Brandon Astor Jones, G3-83
UNO#400574
Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison
P.O. Box 3877
Jackson, Georgia 30233
USA
if i can't do
what I want to do
then my job is to not
do what I don't want
to do
it's not the same thing
but it's the best I can
do
if I can't have
what I want...then
my job is to want
what I've got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more to want
since I can't go
where I need
to go...then I must...go
where the signs point
through always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral
when I can't express
what I really feel
and none of it is equal
i know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry
Professor Nikki Giovanni
My good friend Dr Jill Segger recently shared this poem with me in her latest communication. I had previously written a letter to her in which I included a copy of the letter I wrote to Professor Giovanni on April 17 2007, after she had been featured on the Public Television program The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. The professor spoke at some length after an angry student had shot and killed 33 people (including himself) on campus.
In my letter to the professor, amongst other things I wrote that I felt she had given "eloquence and hope to the aftermath of utter violence and devastation", as I offered my heartfelt condolences. More on Professor Giovanni's poem and my letter to her later.
As usual, I plan to rely on the reader's intelligence to grasp the full meaning of my words on these pages and those unseen messages conveyed between the lines that I dare not write, but you know that I am thinking.
The main thrust of my letter to Professor Giovanni follows here:
Viewing American society for 28 years from a death row prison cell often allows me unusual clarity. I would like to share this thought.
As violence continues to rise on campuses, I have come to the conclusion that one of the best ways to reduce future violence (not just on campuses but in general in American society) is to start teaching children anger management. I mean that it should be taught in much the same way they are taught their ABCs in kindergarten.
Teachers need to teach anger management and how to constructively respond to each days', indeed life's, disappointments, betrayals, etc. The tragedy at Virginia Tech* and countless other places have made me certain that early and sustained instruction in anger management is, at the very least, as important as learning one's ABCs.
I also believe that violence in America is taught in both overt and subtle ways. Few will admit it, but the majority of Americans consciously and unconsciously give tacit approval to (and encourage) violence from the cradle to the grave.
For example, more than 57 years ago, when I was one of less than a handful of Blacks among as many as 354 White students at Lowell Longfellow School in Harvey, Illnois, I became both victim and, as a sad but necessary consequence, a perpetrator of violence. In classrooms, hallways and especially out on the playgrounds, groups of White boys would attack me repeatedly. During one of those attacks, Mr Fry, the school principal, pulled no less than five bullies off me. He had seen me being pummeled and kicked to a bloody pulp. I was clearly the victim.
Looking back I realize that it was silly of me to have thought that Mr Fry was saving me when he pulled those guys off me. You see, when he took me to his third floor office, he produced a wooden paddle that was about three feet long. He then explained that because I started the fight, I would be given 'four licks', despite my protests that I had not started anything at all. He gave me those four licks, immediately.
It goes without saying that you can rationally conclude that Mr Fry was both wrong and racist in his response to the situation, and I agree. However, I want this writing to be more about the instrinsic and varied nature of adolescent violence in America, than the racism that can so often support and perpetuate it.
The violence on the playground that day at Lowell Longfellow School was an integral part of Mr Fry's school administration program. That is to say that from the attack on the playground all the way up to the third floor paddling, violence permeated Mr Fry's school administration. His response to group violence was to administer more violence to the individual victim of said violence.
Most (we can be grateful not all) White people in America like to think of themselves as not being racist. Consequently they see no need to instruct their children in the art of accepting people who look and act in ways that are different.
Of course, by the time those children are started in school, they are not prepared to understand, let alone accept, people who do not look and act like them.
American society, by and large, teaches its members to not only reject but to also assail difference. In this fashion Mr Fry, and millions of parents in America, promote a kind of semi-subtle-violence, a nefarious violence that such parents can routinely pretend to be unaware of.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO ALL:
If you do not consciously teach
ACCEPTANCE OF OTHERS to
your children, long before they start
school, YOU CONSCIOUSLY
TEACH VIOLENCE BY
DEFAULT.
Likewise, if we as a nation do not start teaching small children conflict resolution and self-control, we are encouraging the kind of violent loss of control that visits America so frequently.
Unfortunately when someone actually suggests that we pursue such thinking and teaching methods for Americans, that someone is usually met with the vociferous protests of angry parents/taxpayers who declare that a) the State has no business teaching their children what or how to think and/or b) even if they wanted to try it, there is no money for such liberal teaching concepts in the State or Federal budget.
Those vociferous and angry voices more often than not belong to the same people who support sending thousands of young men and women to war in Iraq, and elsewhere, along with billions and billions of tax dollars.
Last week I was reminded of Mr Fry's paddle as the use of corporal punishment occupied a slot in most evening news programs for two days. Those news programs inspired me to conduct my own survey here in G3 Cellblock, where 20 of the 23 men answered yes when I asked if they had been subjected to corporal punishment while they were in early primary school. One of the men recalled getting paddled, the first time while he was still in kindergarten.
Yes, I know that some readers will say corporal punishment was good for some. To those readers I must admit that is true, but only a minority.
As my fellow prisoner gave me details of the paddling he experienced in kindergarten, I wondered if the woman who paddled him had been at the core of his adult life's anger. I wondered if it was she he was trying to kill, instead of his late wife? I wonder, even now, how many of those 20 men in my Cellblock would be here if they had been given anger management instruction as frequently as they were given corporal punishment, in one form or another?
I am aware as I write this line that most, if not all, of the self-righteously 'vociferous' among us will discount and resent everything that is said on these pages because of who and where I am. That is a sad fact of American life, that few people listen to what prisoners have to say. I am very fortunate to have a friend like Dr Segger, who wrote the encouraging words below:
Dear Brandon,
I was very moved by your thoughts on anger management and how to prepare children for rejection and frustration and how this is essential to reducing violence. You are absolutely right and your life experience gives you a particular authority [in] speaking thus...
Thank you Dr Segger. Your words move me deeply. As you might have guessed Professor Giovanni did not answer the letter I wrote to her on April 17 2007. At least, she did not answer it in the direct traditional way. In an indirect way via her poem 'Choices' that you have shared with me in your letter, I choose to consider it in general, and one portion of it in particular, an answer that speaks to me on many personal levels.
...when I can't express
what I really feel
i practice feeling
what I can express
and none of it is equal
i know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry.
If the reader is a person who is of the opinion that all human beings should be heard, no matter their situation or location, feel free to drop me a line. Know that you are in good company with the likes of Professor Giovanni and Dr Segger. I hope to be able to share some things with all of you that are sure to surprise you. Things that come from the Heaven and Hell sides of this death row prison cell.
WRITE TO:
Brandon Astor Jones, G3-83
UNO#400574
Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison
P.O. Box 3877
Jackson, Georgia 30233
USA
'...the reader as well' by Brandon Astor Jones
I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves into the lives of others.
Sherwood Anderson
Unfortunately, prisons in America provide little in the way of a means for positive daily individual accomplishment for prisoners. A man like myself, in order to keep insanity and boredom at bay, needs to accomplish something worthwhile every day.
In 1962, when I joined the US Army, I lied when I indicated on the induction form that I had completed '9 years' of schooling. In reality I did not even graduate from elementary school.
It was only after I came to this prison did I manage to - by hook and by crook - obtain a General Education Development Certificate. I am sharing this bit of information because I want the reader to know that I could barely write a letter, let alone a book, when I entered prison.
With the progression of time I began writing poems, essays and short autobiographical snippets. It did not take long for the daily routine of accomplishment - with the frequent discoveries of myself, and others, past and present - to become addictive. I began reading everything I could get my hands on, from cover to cover, even old newspapers and magazines. In time I decided to get myself published.
I began a brief correspondence with Mr Creed W Pannell, the publisher of the Atlanta News Weekly. He offered me a 250 word weekly column with the freedom to write about any subject I chose. That freedom lasted for nearly a year until I wrote about Clarence Thomas, who was then an unconfirmed United States Supreme Court nominee.
Before writing that essay I had read (in detail) the nominee's paper trail in the prison's law library, which led me to conclude that he was unfit as a replacement for the highly esteemed United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
I got no reader response to any of my columns prior to that article, but that following week ten letters arrived. All were written by African American men and women who expressed outrage that I dared "to write [such] disparaging things about a wonderful Black man from Pin Point, Georgia"!
My column, 'An Inside Look with Brandon Astor Jones', was discontinued immediately. Of course, I take a degree of comfort in knowing that these days most of those letter writers share my opinion of Justice Thomas.
I quickly had begun to enjoy writing a column each week. After not being able to find another column in America, I began perusing foreign publications with a view to finding a new space. All that eventuated was occasional publication in the United Kingdom.
I switched my geographical focus to Australia. Eventually I made contact with a fellow American, who had recently relocated from Wisconsin to Sydney. Mr Allen Myers had just started the Green Left Weekly newspaper, and he offered me a 550 word space each week, which I accepted. Green Left Weekly grew quickly from a fledgling local publication in Sydney to one of the most widely read alternative newspapers in the entire country. It is distributed in each of Australia's states.
For more than eleven years, 47 weeks in the year, my column titled 'looking out' was published. I covered many topics such as racism, sexism, classism, intracultural prejudice, prison, prisoners, crime, capital punishment, spousal abuse, music, history, slavery, local and global politics. Then a new editor came who found me to be too pro-America for his taste. Shortly thereafter 'looking out' was discontinued.
By then my interest in American history had narrowed. The Civil War and those African Americans who had fought and died for the Union (Federal) Navy, long before the Union Army began accepting Black men as soldiers, became my obsession. Sadly, the Civil War as it was fought on America's inland waterways and experienced by Black men and women has rarely been written about. I decided that I would start writing some of this history.
From newspapers I learned of Joseph P Reidy, then the Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. He and his students had spent a decade researching Blacks' involvement in the fighting of America's greatest internal conflict. I wrote to him seeking the specifics on Black sailors in the Union Navy.
Dean Reidy introduced me to several little known Black heroes who fought in the war, but the one who interests me most is a man named Wilson Brown. He was once a slave on a cotton plantation. He was the only man, Black or White, from the State of Mississippi to be awarded the US Navy's Medal of Honor for his heroic service while under heavy enemy fire during the civil war.
I became so taken with Wilson Brown's life I was inspired to write a lengthy essay about him. Two years later that essay had grown into a book written in the form of a roman à clef entitled 'without war'.
The story begins in Wilson Brown's early years on the Miller Plantation as a slave. In that particular 39 chapter draft, the story ended with Brown's heroics during several of the ship-to-ship engagements of the Battle of Mobile Bay.
While reading another newspaper I came across an article about a Quaker professor at the University of Alabama's Tuscaloosa Campus. He had been the driving force behind the movement to encourage Alabama to apologize for the role it played in the perpetuation of slavery. When I read that, I thought to myself that he would be the perfect person to give me his opinion on my book.
I wrote to him and asked if he would read it. He promptly responded indicating that he would be happy to read it and give his opinion. I sent 'without war' to him immediately.
Three weeks later he wrote again saying that the manuscript was good and, because of its educational value, should be put up on the internet. He added that he would be happy to do that for me. I explained to him that the manuscript was incomplete and that I did not want it up on the internet even in the incomplete form because it could be stolen in part or whole. I asked him to return it.
He wrote again and said he would return it but first he wanted to write an essay on its theme: how the violence of war, love and law can produce redemption. Before I answered that letter, another arrived dated June 25 2004. The professor commented that 'without war' reminded him of 'a short story [by Harriet Beecher Stow] called 'Love versus Law'".
He never returned my manuscript despite my repeated letters asking him to do so. Then he stopped communicating completely.
The manuscript now has 50 chapters. As all my writing is given the title of the final words in the last sentence, the new title of 'without war' became 'while the Mississippi and Hudson merge'.
My purpose for having written this essay is two-fold. First, I hope that many readers of these words will write, call or email the professor and ask him to kindly return my work. I choose not to speculate as to why he has not done so. I just want my work back. He can be contacted at the following work email address at the University of Cambridge, UK: abrophy@email.unc.edu.
Second, I trust that after reading this all writers who are in prison will exercise due caution when sending your manuscripts out. No matter how official their titles appear to be, some people on the outside (but not all) will take advantage of you because you are in prison. If you must send your manuscript out try to send it to an organization you can trust, like the PEN American Center's Prison Writing Mentorship Program in New York.
The words that head this essay are true: 'writing... forces us out of ourselves into the lives of others.' In fact, it is clear that those words also apply to the reader.
while the Mississippi and the Hudson merge can be purchased from the publisher iUniverse.
Sherwood Anderson
Unfortunately, prisons in America provide little in the way of a means for positive daily individual accomplishment for prisoners. A man like myself, in order to keep insanity and boredom at bay, needs to accomplish something worthwhile every day.
In 1962, when I joined the US Army, I lied when I indicated on the induction form that I had completed '9 years' of schooling. In reality I did not even graduate from elementary school.
It was only after I came to this prison did I manage to - by hook and by crook - obtain a General Education Development Certificate. I am sharing this bit of information because I want the reader to know that I could barely write a letter, let alone a book, when I entered prison.
With the progression of time I began writing poems, essays and short autobiographical snippets. It did not take long for the daily routine of accomplishment - with the frequent discoveries of myself, and others, past and present - to become addictive. I began reading everything I could get my hands on, from cover to cover, even old newspapers and magazines. In time I decided to get myself published.
I began a brief correspondence with Mr Creed W Pannell, the publisher of the Atlanta News Weekly. He offered me a 250 word weekly column with the freedom to write about any subject I chose. That freedom lasted for nearly a year until I wrote about Clarence Thomas, who was then an unconfirmed United States Supreme Court nominee.
Before writing that essay I had read (in detail) the nominee's paper trail in the prison's law library, which led me to conclude that he was unfit as a replacement for the highly esteemed United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
I got no reader response to any of my columns prior to that article, but that following week ten letters arrived. All were written by African American men and women who expressed outrage that I dared "to write [such] disparaging things about a wonderful Black man from Pin Point, Georgia"!
My column, 'An Inside Look with Brandon Astor Jones', was discontinued immediately. Of course, I take a degree of comfort in knowing that these days most of those letter writers share my opinion of Justice Thomas.
I quickly had begun to enjoy writing a column each week. After not being able to find another column in America, I began perusing foreign publications with a view to finding a new space. All that eventuated was occasional publication in the United Kingdom.
I switched my geographical focus to Australia. Eventually I made contact with a fellow American, who had recently relocated from Wisconsin to Sydney. Mr Allen Myers had just started the Green Left Weekly newspaper, and he offered me a 550 word space each week, which I accepted. Green Left Weekly grew quickly from a fledgling local publication in Sydney to one of the most widely read alternative newspapers in the entire country. It is distributed in each of Australia's states.
For more than eleven years, 47 weeks in the year, my column titled 'looking out' was published. I covered many topics such as racism, sexism, classism, intracultural prejudice, prison, prisoners, crime, capital punishment, spousal abuse, music, history, slavery, local and global politics. Then a new editor came who found me to be too pro-America for his taste. Shortly thereafter 'looking out' was discontinued.
By then my interest in American history had narrowed. The Civil War and those African Americans who had fought and died for the Union (Federal) Navy, long before the Union Army began accepting Black men as soldiers, became my obsession. Sadly, the Civil War as it was fought on America's inland waterways and experienced by Black men and women has rarely been written about. I decided that I would start writing some of this history.
From newspapers I learned of Joseph P Reidy, then the Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. He and his students had spent a decade researching Blacks' involvement in the fighting of America's greatest internal conflict. I wrote to him seeking the specifics on Black sailors in the Union Navy.
Dean Reidy introduced me to several little known Black heroes who fought in the war, but the one who interests me most is a man named Wilson Brown. He was once a slave on a cotton plantation. He was the only man, Black or White, from the State of Mississippi to be awarded the US Navy's Medal of Honor for his heroic service while under heavy enemy fire during the civil war.
I became so taken with Wilson Brown's life I was inspired to write a lengthy essay about him. Two years later that essay had grown into a book written in the form of a roman à clef entitled 'without war'.
The story begins in Wilson Brown's early years on the Miller Plantation as a slave. In that particular 39 chapter draft, the story ended with Brown's heroics during several of the ship-to-ship engagements of the Battle of Mobile Bay.
While reading another newspaper I came across an article about a Quaker professor at the University of Alabama's Tuscaloosa Campus. He had been the driving force behind the movement to encourage Alabama to apologize for the role it played in the perpetuation of slavery. When I read that, I thought to myself that he would be the perfect person to give me his opinion on my book.
I wrote to him and asked if he would read it. He promptly responded indicating that he would be happy to read it and give his opinion. I sent 'without war' to him immediately.
Three weeks later he wrote again saying that the manuscript was good and, because of its educational value, should be put up on the internet. He added that he would be happy to do that for me. I explained to him that the manuscript was incomplete and that I did not want it up on the internet even in the incomplete form because it could be stolen in part or whole. I asked him to return it.
He wrote again and said he would return it but first he wanted to write an essay on its theme: how the violence of war, love and law can produce redemption. Before I answered that letter, another arrived dated June 25 2004. The professor commented that 'without war' reminded him of 'a short story [by Harriet Beecher Stow] called 'Love versus Law'".
He never returned my manuscript despite my repeated letters asking him to do so. Then he stopped communicating completely.
The manuscript now has 50 chapters. As all my writing is given the title of the final words in the last sentence, the new title of 'without war' became 'while the Mississippi and Hudson merge'.
My purpose for having written this essay is two-fold. First, I hope that many readers of these words will write, call or email the professor and ask him to kindly return my work. I choose not to speculate as to why he has not done so. I just want my work back. He can be contacted at the following work email address at the University of Cambridge, UK: abrophy@email.unc.edu.
Second, I trust that after reading this all writers who are in prison will exercise due caution when sending your manuscripts out. No matter how official their titles appear to be, some people on the outside (but not all) will take advantage of you because you are in prison. If you must send your manuscript out try to send it to an organization you can trust, like the PEN American Center's Prison Writing Mentorship Program in New York.
The words that head this essay are true: 'writing... forces us out of ourselves into the lives of others.' In fact, it is clear that those words also apply to the reader.
while the Mississippi and the Hudson merge can be purchased from the publisher iUniverse.
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