XXII: SOUTHERN TRIP 2018 – PART 1: CINCINNATI, TULSA, DALLAS
The Die Jim Crow Southern Trip 2018 was a great success, and it started with a dad: Charles Williams, Sr.. Williams is the father of C-Will (or, more formally, Charles Williams, Jr.) who graces the cover of the Die Jim Crow EP and is the co-writer and vocalist on track three, “First Impressions.” In prison for a murder he maintains he did not commit, Williams Sr. has been helping his son fight the case, and according to the father it looks promising. We’ll see. Once a state convicts, the obstacles to overturn are nearly insurmountable. But the fight in this father and son team is remarkable, and time will tell.
Mr. Williams and I met at a Frisch’s Big Boy in Norwood, Ohio, an enclave city of Cincinnati. Sitting down to a big buffet breakfast, Williams Sr. almost immediately brought up his son’s case. Well-versed with the ins and outs of the criminal justice system, C-Will’s father had served time as a ward of the state himself. We didn’t go into details, but he did mention that back in the day when he delivered milk for Ohio’s Department of Corrections in the 1970s, there were seven prisons in the entire state. There are now 29 (not including jail or other detention facilities). Williams Sr. was familiar with an older camp, London Correctional Institution, as this was one of his milk stops. Now his son is currently held there, serving a life sentence.
After a round two of buffet for both of us, Williams Sr. and I parted ways with an inspiring farewell. I loaded him up with swag: a t-shirt, a fat stack of postcards, a poster, a couple CDs, and a vinyl copy of the EP. Williams had heard about the Die Jim Crow project through C-Will, but I don’t think he realized the scope. It was great to see him hold up his son on the album cover, and it seemed to sink in that there could be a big future with the project and his son’s involvement. We left with firm handshakes and a promise to stay in touch about C-Will’s case. I promised Williams Sr. that if the case gets to a review process and I need to be in town, I’m there.
The next stop was Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I had a dinner meeting that evening. With a couple hours to kill, I stopped by the Greenwood Cultural Center in downtown Tulsa’s Greenwood District. Nearly one hundred years ago, a race riot took place in what was then known as “Black Wall Street,” a thriving neighborhood of black-owned businesses. As pulled from GreenwoodCulturalCenter.com:
“The Tulsa race riot was a large-scale, racially motivated pogrom on May 31 and June 1, 1921, in which a group of whites attacked the black community of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Greenwood District, the wealthiest black community in the United States, was burned to the ground. Over the course of 16 hours, more than 800 people were admitted to local white hospitals with injuries, the two black hospitals were burned down, and police arrested and detained more than 6,000 black Greenwood residents at three local facilities. An estimated 10,000 blacks were left homeless, and 35 city blocks composed of 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire, resulting in over $26 million in damages. The official count of the dead by the Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics was 36, but other estimates of black fatalities vary from 55 to about 300.
The events of the massacre were long omitted from local and state histories: The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was rarely mentioned in history books, classrooms or even in private. Blacks and whites alike grew into middle age unaware of what had taken place. With the number of survivors declining, in 1996, the state legislature commissioned a report to establish the historical record of the events, and acknowledge the victims and damages to the black community. Released in 2001, the report included the commission’s recommendations for some compensatory actions, most of which were not implemented by the state and city governments. The state passed legislation to establish some scholarships for descendants of survivors, economic development of Greenwood, and a memorial park to the victims in Tulsa. The latter was dedicated in 2010.”
Outside the Greenwood Cultural Center stands a monument for the victims of the 1921 race riot, and across the street is the Vernon A.M.E. church, one of the only buildings left standing after the pogrom. Inside the Cultural Center was a no-frills exhibition on the riots, featuring photos and articles.
Courtesy: Oklahoma Historical Society
From Timeline article by Meagan Day:
Postcards commemorating the “Tulsa race riot” were printed shortly thereafter. (Tulsa Historical Society)
A moment to acknowledge the lives lost and damaged.
The next stop was an Italian restaurant called Mondo’s for a dinner meet with Justin Jones. Having nourished on gas station food since breakfast at Frisch’s Big Boy the previous day, I was ready for some hearty pasta. My dinner companion that evening has been a behind-the-scenes stalwart for Die Jim Crow since we met in August 2017. I was connected to Justin Jones through a mutual colleague, longtime justice activist Carol Shapiro, who thought we might click (“His hair is as long as yours.” – Carol). Jones had served as Director of the Oklahoma prison system from 2005 to 2013, and, according to Carol, had progressive politics and a love for music. When I met Jones, I instantly liked him: for a former Corrections Director to talk explicitly about racial injustice in the prison system and get excited about a project like Die Jim Crow meant a lot, and by the end of our initial August meeting I could tell the feeling went both ways. He agreed to help write letters of introduction to current Directors nationwide, and within months I was granted access to Colorado and South Carolina DOCs. Though Justin is humble about his help with the project, I believe his endorsement was a decisive factor in making that access possible.
Our dinner was a pleasure food- and business-wise, as I got to pow wow with Justin about my plans going forward over a pasta and seafood dish that could have fed two. It didn’t last long. We are hoping to gain access to a few more states to add to the list thus far of Ohio, Colorado, South Carolina, and Mississippi (the latter I would gain access to the following week, look out for Part 2 of this series!).
The following day, October 9, I had to be in Dallas to set up the Die Jim Crow merch table at the 2018 InterNational Prisoner’s Family Conference, so I started my drive south that night.
The conference this year was just as cool as last years, with both new and familiar faces. Going strong for ten years now, IPFC is a mix of formerly incarcerated activists, family members of folks inside, academics, policy experts, (a couple) politicians, and international keynote speakers with insight on prison systems overseas. On day two I made a presentation that could have easily been an hour but had to be condensed due to me being a last minute addition.
Embarrassingly, my camera battery – which had been charging for hours – inexplicably crapped out just as I began filming. Thank you to Kayla Victor who was able to film the majority of the presentation:
I was also lucky enough to do another interview this year with Julia Lazareck of Prison: The Hidden Sentence. Julia and I met last year and got along, and this year I filmed a keynote she gave called “Closing the Empathy Gap.” Her experiences dealing with the prison system are intense, as her brother served fifteen years incarcerated before passing away. He died in prison. Though she struggled with her brother’s incarceration and his passing away for years, Lazareck now runs PTHS with a goal to help others going through similar strife. It’s inspiring to be around so many people doing great work on prison issues; Julia and a few others I caught on camera:
(L-R) Bree Boppre, Kirstin Eidenbach, Mayor Franklin Deese, State Rep. James White during panel “Building Working Relationships with Criminal Justice Officials”
Claudia Whitman of Mancos, Colorado. Whitman taught a workshop called “So You Think Your Loved One Is Innocent?” She is a pro bono innocence investigator who at last year’s conference connected Fury Young with Michael Tenneson, a Die Jim Crow artist currently incarcerated at Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility.
Barbara Allan of Long Island, NY. Allan recently published her memoir “Doing Our Time on the Outside.” She has been a prison activist since the 1960s.
Jacalyn Brown of Ocala, FL. Brown runs Flip Flop Support Group (flipflopsg1.com). She bought two copies of the Die Jim Crow EP after hearing “Plastic Bag.”
Fury holds up limited edition D.I.Y. Die Jim Crow EP CDs at merch table
That Friday, a group of us went out for Texas barbeque at Marshall’s, a down home spot a few minutes from the Wyndham Garden where the conference was held. There was talk of having the next conference in New York, so I’m hoping that does happen…. I made sure to let it be known that if so, Die Jim Crow artists will be there for a performance!
Conference attendees at Marshall’s Bar-B-Q. (Photo: Lorena Liñero)
Look out for Part 2: Angola, NOLA, Jackson, Birmingham. Thank you to all the GoFundMe donors who made this happen. As of now, the campaign is still live and only a few hundred bucks from reaching the goal. While the trip is over, the costs to recoup have not been met, so please help make that happen!
Thanks to all —
Fury Young
Producer, Die Jim Crow
All photos by Fury Young unless otherwise noted.
