Blog Post #3: A Letter from the Incarcerated

Ryan Walker-Hartshorn

Professor Allyson Hobbs

African American Women’s Lives

January 30, 2017

Blog Post #3: A Letter from the Incarcerated

Dear Mr. Craft,

            I’m writing to you from the future. My name is Brian Watson and I am currently incarcerated at San Quentin state prison. I spend a lot of my days here reading and I came across your book in the library. I read it from start to finish and I found much of my life to be similar to yours. On several occasions I resonated with your experiences and I wanted to share one that I found to be essentially identical.

            You write about the danger it is to be a coloured person in the south and how all of the odds are stacked against you and the worst of which is the law. You explain what happens if you, as a coloured person, are stopped and questioned by white folks. When you said that you could be stopped and asked for your slave papers and should one refuse to provide this to the white man he or she is subjected to arrest or a beating and that coloured folks could not defend themselves against the attacks I thought a lot about my own experience with the police.

Not too long ago, two years to be exact because I am 20 years old now, I was enrolled at San Francisco High School. During my senior year I went through a lot. My mom was diagnosed with cancer and my uncle, who was like a father to me, passed away. I was left struggling to take care of my mother while looking after my two little sisters who were about to start middle school. I had to take time away from school and basketball so I could work extra hours to make ends meet. Well, one day I was feeling particularly stressed and I was in a foul mood. According to my teacher I was being disrespectful and disruptive in class and she called campus security on me. They came in and addressed me in an aggressive manner, which obviously angered me. Tensions rose and I became more agitated. They had no idea what I was going through and why I wasn’t in a good mood that day. Well, the security guard called for back up because he thought I was a threat to myself and to my peers. That was not true. Once his buddy showed up, without assessing the situation, he put his hands on me and naturally I responded. I shoved him away and then they both tackled me and then called the cops and they arrested me and charged me for “resisting arrest”. I was booked and sent to Juvenile hall. From there my life spiraled downhill, my mother eventually passed and my sisters were put in foster care. Now I am at San Quentin because of some trouble that I got into.

I felt like I should write a letter to you, even though you’ve passed away, because I wanted to get my feelings out on to paper. The experiences of coloured folks back in the day and the experiences of coloured folks now are essentially the same, just a different time period. I feel trapped just as they did. Hopefully someone will here me.

-Brian