I’m in the throes of unpacking racism and seriously re-evaluating how people are treated unequally, the society we live in, and the injustice of our system.
I can barely remember a time before police brutality and systemic racism headlines were our only distractions from the COVID pandemic.
Maybe you can relate?
But I know those times exist, because I found this book. Before we collectively began talking about racism, this book sat with a $1 sign beside it on a library shelf, bearing a big DISCARDED stamp on the front inside cover. I got it because it looked interesting, I love memoirs, and I had a feeling this would be a difficult, but important, story for me to read.
It’s been a long year. There have been many days when I have not had answers to the questions in front of me, nor have I found peace on either side of any argument.
Yes, it’s been an unsettling, loud, year.
But if my black neighbors can endure decades of marginalization and deeply rooted prejudice, I can endure a season of hearing their hard stories.
“My only crime was being born black, or being born black in Alabama.”
On July 31, 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested while cutting his lawn. He got in the police car confused; he had no choice, and didn’t put up a fight. Why would he? He had nothing to hide. He’d done nothing wrong.
What he couldn’t have known is that would be the last moment he’d walk out of his momma’s screen door for 30 years. The last words he’d speak to her in that home there would be, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
In the coming days, Hinton would learn that he was being accused of murdering restaurant managers in Bessemer and Birmingham, Alabama – crimes that he didn’t commit. Crimes there was no evidence to prove him guilty. Crimes that he could actually counter-argue with overwhelming evidence for his innocence.
Over the coming years, as he fought for his freedom all the way to Death Row, he would see in real time how the justice system is pitted against people of color or simply those without money.
The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton is a firsthand account of an innocent black man’s journey in the custody of the justice system. It’s the story of how a man could survive three decades in a jail cell he didn’t belong in by the help of God alone.
I know I need to be reading more books about racism. I didn’t know I needed to be learning more about the injustice of the prison system too.
There are no words I can add to the headlines of the last year. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve just had to quietly sit and wrestle with the Holy Spirit, grateful that He can translate the messy wordless utterings of my heart to God.
Hinton writes with an evident hope on every page; it feels impossible that his story, from arrest to freedom, spans three decades. He tells us how that came to be.
On every page, he clearly outlines his trials. He describes the tone of the state-appointed attorney who was only given $1,000 to work the case, and how not securing finances made it impossible to defend his case. He describes the jail cells, and the inequities put on him – not only as a black man, but as a poor man too.
He talked about the friends he made in prison, the conversations they had, and their routine in the prison – even the routine of execution.
And he called them all by name.
It’s not just an injustice based on skin color, although that was a huge part of Hinton’s story. It’s a completely corrupt and unfair system at its core. Hinton’s courage to pen his experience is so helpful for us who are so far removed from these situations to understand.
As any worthwhile book does, this book changed my perspective.
I bookmarked pages to fill my journal with quotes. It’s one of those books that we can know that every page is important and highlight-worthy. There are so many things to learn here, but if I must choose the three takeaways that I will carry with me, it’s these:
The criminal justice system is, dare I say it, ungodly.
The entire cycle is bent toward repaying evil with evil, and there is no room for true restoration. There’s no dignity to be given to a man in a cell. And why is that? Because what’s true about God is that He does dignify people – the very ones He’s made. He does restore. He does not put us in time out or lock us away in a cell. He works and walks with us through our sins – the very things He has the right to cast aside for, but doesn’t.
I would also mention here that the criminal justice system is prejudiced. It is totally bias toward how much money you have, what color you are, your status in society, even where you live. And praise be that God does not look at us with preferential eyes, but has made His salvation available to everyone – not just those who have the money to earn it or look the right way.
The death penalty should upset the stomach of every Christian.
Life is not mine to take away, nor is it yours. When we realize that our society’s answer to “bad people” is to kill them – and spend the months and years before that murder treating them inhumanely – it should make us stop. No one is meant to live in a small cell. And, as it stands, the prison system is set up to take the life of a person before they ever make it to an execution date by robbing them of the things that humans most need for flourishing. Things like community, compassion, dignity, forgiveness, restoration, understanding, feeling the rain on your face, and hearing the words, “I love you.”
Only God could help a man through this.
I really can’t picture spending more of my life in a jail cell than as a free person. I can’t stomach the sound of not being heard, being overlooked, and being viewed by the system as just another problem to deal with. I can barely understand that this is our respond to criminals; I can understand why it doesn’t work though. It’s hard to put myself in those shoes. But Hinton did it. He wore those shoes, and his walk glorifies God. Not in the hope and love he writes with, but in his continual confession that only God could help a man through a hell like this. In the promise that God does hear and see us as people He loves, not problems to be dealt with.
We must believe these unbelievable stories.
If you are reading this blog, I’m assuming that you have never dealt with prejudice to this degree. I’m assuming that together, we cannot adequately picture ourselves in a jail cell, being wrongfully arrested, or not taken seriously for 30 years.
But for our neighbors, this is their reality. And if anything is going to change, we have to be willing to step into it. We have to be willing to look outside ourselves and believe these stories that feel so wrong, so other-worldly.
I want to clarify: I’m not asserting that I have figured out systemic racism and the prison system. Not even close. I realize it’s more nuanced and complex than a few words on a blog post can share. But it’s important to start somewhere, and for me, this was a good somewhere.
Pray for them by name.
Hinton ends the book by listing the names of every single person on death row at the time of the book’s publication. He writes that at least one out of every ten people on death row is innocent. He challenges us to read every name, and after every 10th name, speak, “Innocent.”
Our society will view these people as monsters, and rob them of their humanity by ruling their lives are not even worth living. They will feed them bread crumbs, lock them in a cage, and further traumatize and agitate the image of God in them.
But fellow believer, we are not like this. The Gospel we have been taught – the very one that sustains us still – is different than how the American prison system works. The Gospel we have preaches of forgiveness and a God who restores dignity back to people. It’s a story that tells us that people are marred by sin; everyone is looking for something that only God can provide. We cannot trust in our manmade systems, and we cannot act surprised when people break them.
So we have a choice: we can either hear these stories, and not believe them. Or we can hear them, and allow it to change the way we bring love about in this world.
We can choose to ignore them and call them liars, or we can choose to hear and see the most broken around us (and even on the news) through the eyes of Jesus.
What’s it going to be?