Sunday, October 5, 2003
Butterfield Frontier House, Montgomery, Alabama
I left Montgomery Friday morning headed west on Highway 80 towards Mississippi--retracing the route of the famous Selma-to-Montgomery March. On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, more than 600 civil rights activists took to the streets of Selma, Alabama intent on marching to the State Capital in Montgomery to demand equal voting rights. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge where state and local policemen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas. Undaunted, two weeks later about 3,200 marchers turned out for the march. With the protection of the Federal courts they reached the Capitol on Thursday, March 25. By that time, the group had swelled to more than 25,000. Five months later, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. Today, 38 years on, I pass the markers of the historic event on the side of the road. The only marchers now are the three different gangs of all-black work release prisoners clad in white picking up trash.
There is something about coming home to Alabama. No matter where I have been and what I have seen all over the world, Alabama has a way of grounding you like the stagnant waters of a southern swamp clinging to the splayed roots of a long suffering tree. I squirm nervously in the seat of my Mercury Mountaineer as I descend the stairs of history. I pass massive expanses of farmland and then catfish ponds. I guess protectionist tariffs against Vietnamese catfish or "tra" must be working. (Free trade, it appears, is truly in the eye of the beholder.) I am entering what they call the American Black Belt--a region stretching across 623 southern counties distinguished in nomenclature only for its high concentration of African Americans, poverty and illiteracy. The Black Belt is also where Reaganomics and the "War on Drugs" mated and conceived the concept of the "private prison".
FACT: While approximately 12% of Americans are black, African American males constitute more than 50% of the adult male prison population.
I am going to Yazoo City Mississippi to visit an old friend of mine who is in fact Caucasian I suppose and incarcerated in the Federal Corrections Institution at Yazoo City, Mississippi. Yazoo City is just another wretched southern Black Belt town--closed mills and cotton fields with Haley Barbour for Governor signs in every dusty yard and dilapidated storefront. (Haley Barbour supports private prisons as a lower cost alternative to state-run institutions.)
It must be cotton-ginning season as there are enormous white bales lining the cloud-like fields as far as the eye can see.
FACT: Some 10 million people in western and central Africa depend on cotton farming for their livelihoods. Cotton prices have declined some 39% since 1997 due in large part to US cotton production subsidies to a small number of politically well-connected agri-corporations. The last WTO round in Cancun collapsed in part due to the refusal of the US government to eliminate these subsidies.
FCI Yazoo, cotton fields and chemical plants appear to be the only economic activity in Yazoo City. As I approach the prison, there is a minimum-security camp to my left, construction for a new maximum-security prison straight ahead and the low/medium security facility housing my friend on the right. The low/medium is in fact surrounded by guard towers, spaced fences and row upon row of concertina wire. As I am about an hour early, I ask the guard at the front desk if I can wait in the empty waiting area to my right and he states categorically, "No." So I went back to my car and drove around for an hour. One of the things that I noticed was that everywhere I went in Mississippi people asked me where I was from. When I told them I was from Alabama, they seemed incredulous. Is it me?
Finally, I see a large crowd gathering near the parking lot in front of the prison. There are old couples, young women with children running around everywhere. I follow the line into the prison as visiting hours begin promptly at 5:30. One of the guards leaving the prison was then kind enough to inform me that there is no way I can enter the visiting area with my back pack so I return to the car and leave it as well as the computer and newspaper inside. In fact I had to return to the car a half a dozen more times to return various contraband including:
- sunglasses
- a deck of cards
- artificial tears eye drops
- a wallet
- cellphone
- credit cards
- cash exceeding $25
I discovered from some of the other families that fortunately for me, I brought two picture IDs, was wearing long pants, a long sleeve shirt and wrap around shoes not revealing the skin of my foot otherwise I would not have been allowed to enter at all. (Again, people keep asking me where I'm from.)
They call my name and with an ultraviolet stamp to the wrist, I am escorted to the visiting room. My friend is seated near the door and I can see an enormous smile on his face as we catch each other's eyes. I have not seen him in nearly 4 years now so I almost didn't recognize him and all that crazy blond hair. I walk up to him and we shake each other's hands and sit down across from each other. At first he seemed very nervous presumably because I was seeing him in this situation. I did my best to put him at ease but the stillness in the air was palpable. After some time and a couple of cigarettes for him we settled in at last for the kind of conversation that two long lost friends should have. He has served two years now of a five year sentence for dealing 3 grams of cocaine to a doctor in a sting operation in Montgomery. In fact he got 1 day for the drugs and 5 years for carrying a concealed weapon. I assure him that I am not there to judge him and that my love is unconditional. I can see the tears of joy welling up but never breaking the surface of his big blue eyes. Two hours past quickly as we reminisced about old times and it is finally time for me to go. We embraced briefly at the end of the visit. I was trying to be careful not to show too much emotion since he told me it cannot be done there. I wanted so much to hold him and tell him that I loved him but I couldn't. So much was not said but thank God we both knew. I was led out the front; the guard checking my stamp under an ultraviolet light while my friend is led out the back to be strip-searched.
It was much too late at that point to drive all the way back to Montgomery so I stopped off for the night at the Holiday Inn Express in Jackson, MS. Apparently it is the time of the year for the State Fairs throughout the South and the fairgrounds adjacent to the motel are packed with cars, pickups and SUVs. As I look out of the window of my motel room, I can see the neon lights of a Ferris Wheel spinning in the night.
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