Dispatches from the Inside: Section Introduction

“I don’t think anybody ever got more out of going to prison than I did,” Malcolm X wrote in The Autobiography of Malcolm X. “In fact, prison enabled me to study far more intensively than I would have if my life had gone differently and I attended some

Experience engaging with deeply rooted racists, adroit dope boys, and cunning street hustlers, and the arrogance caused by whiteness and power enables some people the ability to read what others cannot (or will not) and offer an unique critique of America's racist machine. Rapper Jay Electronica rapped on “Leaflets” rapped: The furnace I was fashioned in was hotter than an incinerator.

While I would not wish my experience with prison or the streets on anyone, I am thankful for the education I received in juvenile jail, group homes, prison, and the streets. My Blackness, as I understand it, has been shaped by all of the former. Many traumas come with incarceration. Witnessing murders, stabbings, beatings, and having to participate in race fights makes me angry and hyperaware, especially around men. Only a few people have seen the effects of my incarceration. The anger that results from my being captured validates my theory that America hates me. No human being should have to witness murders, stabbings, and maneuver through spaces with an understanding that at any time one could be killed or seriously hurt. But this anger gives urgency to my educational pursuits, and opens my ambition to explore the places that made me. My life nor my life’s purpose can not be separated from the people living and dying in the hidden corners of America.

One of the most important things we can do is to listen to prison intellectuals. In this new section of SOULS, we extend Manning Marable’s notion of “Dispatches from the Ebony Tower” to highlight "corrective," descriptive,” and “prescriptive” Black study by writers and thinkers who are currently or formerly If the Black intellectual tradition is descriptive, then the voices of the elders sitting under the tree across from grandmomma’s house, Mr. Vincent Bolden, my prison teacher, mentor, and friend at Mississippi State Prison at Parchman, need to be

Also, the voices of my uncles and homies who taught me how to hustle, and protected me from grown men, who as a teenager would attempt to take advantage of me on the streets, speak through me, and need to be heard. Some of this love may have been unhealthy but my loved-ones expressed love as they understood it. Whether right or wrong, the streets, prison, and every encounter in my neighborhood are responsible for my intellectual pursuits. These teachers are just as important as my mentors inside of Ebony Tower. Their voices are why I am inside the Ebony Tower, and their voices bring us the crucial perspectives within, subsumed by, looking outward rather than peering under a microscope, or through what Zora Neal Hurston called a Prison intellectuals have lived in and experienced places where trained intellectuals study. Prison intellectuals are, in my opinion, a threat to white supremacy and all of the ideals that shape the prison industrial complex.

Malcolm X often drew upon his experiences from the streets of Roxbury, Massachusetts, and Harlem—his alternative educational spaces, before formally earning his master’s degree, as he called it, at the Massachusetts State Prison over six years of incarceration. Malcolm’s auto-didacticism transformed him into one of America’s most vibrant, brilliant revolutionary intellectuals. He said: “Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read something I’ve said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade. This impression is due entirely to my prison Malcolm X follows a strong thread of confined Black intellectuals who exposed and examined America’s criminality and hypocrisy from within their confinement.

In 1797, Abraham Johnstone, a former slave who eventually earned his freedom, was sentenced to death after being accused and convicted–without evidence– of murdering his friend and forced laborer, Thomas Reid. Johnstone not only maintained his innocence, but he also used his imprisonment to explain why and how Blackness is criminalized.

During Johnstone’s incarceration, and before his death sentence on July 8, 1797, he penned several letters not only proclaiming his innocence but brilliantly critiquing America. Johnstone’s writings were later combined into a pamphlet, “Address, Dying Confession and Letter to His

What initially stands out in “The Address of Abraham Johnstone” is that Johnstone does not come across as a man begging for his freedom. He seems to know who he is and understands why America hates him. Instead, Johnstone asks the powers that be to be upright citizens, and to acknowledge that his conviction of murder is a result of his skin color as opposed to solid evidence.

In the letters, he goes on to give a brief history of America and its slave trade before calling out the hypocrisy of the colonies seeking independence from the British. “Even the patriotic who stood forth the champions of liberty…those who undauntedly stood forth day by day the advocates of liberty, at night would be cruel, rigid, and inexorable

Johnstone suggests “usurp[ing] the clergymen" before calling for the liberation of all Blacks and warning Blacks to be aware of the hypocrisy of whiteness. “Another circumstance that renders my fate [peculiarly] unhappy at this crisis, is that it happens at a time when every effort is us[ed] for a total emancipation of all our brethren in slavery within this

Nearly one century after Johnstone was framed, convicted, and hanged, Celia, a forced laborer, faced the state of Missouri after she admitted to killing her enslaver, Robert Newsom. On the day Newsom purchased Celia, a then-14-year-old girl, Newson raped

While there is not much known about Celia’s imprisonment, we do know that she birthed a stillborn child during her incarceration. Celia’s life story, her Blackness, and her gender made her a political prisoner. Celia was born sometime around 1835. During her brief life—mid-19th century—abolition of slavery became a serious conversation among politicians. Members of Congress argued over Celia, and numerous forced laborers. Her criminalization is not unlike mass incarceration caused by the War on Drugs. An examination of America written by Celia would have been invaluable to trained intellectuals. Her voice could have offered unique examinations of sexual politics and the economics of slavery in the United States.

​​Joy James, Ebenezer Fitch Professor of Humanities, surmised that prison intellectuals are public intellectuals who, like his or her visible counterparts, reflect upon social meaning, discord, development, ethics, and Prisons are not accredited by the government, but prison intellectuals offer sharp critiques of their Blackness of how they see it not only in their experiences but also in their generation.

Prisons have shaped much intellectual labor. Also, prison intellectuals have transformed lives, and acted as classrooms and grassroots organizations. The intellectual rigor undertaken by prison intellectuals is not unlike the intellectuality found in the Black church, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, and universities. Prison intellectuals provide insight into mass incarceration. Also, prison writers and thinkers give insight into their actions, and shedding light on individual histories shows how widespread America’s racist machine is. To comprehend the issues plaguing the men sitting under the tree, the addicts, drug dealers, gang bangers, and the sex workers, who all likely have received, or will receive, a prison sentence, cannot be fully understood without more voices of people living inside prisons and jails.

Dispatches from the Ebony Tower will bring these insights and experiences to SOULS. We invite you to engage. If you are currently or formerly incarcerated, click here to send your pitch or completed work to Souls Submissions, Attn: Darryl Robertson, Special Editor.

Darryl Robertson ’27 (Columbia GS) is a Harlem-based writer, former Justice in Education (J.I.E.) Scholar, and freelance research assistant for the New York Times and contributing writer for MSNBC.

Find his writing here.