This Is My America

by Kim Johnson

  Daddy whispers to Mr. Jones, who shakes his head slowly. He doesn’t seem to know where this is going. I squeeze Jamal’s hand.

  “We have reviewed a signed affidavit from a Sheriff Brighton,” the judge says. “An official report filed by two witnesses stating that Richard Brighton was in the vicinity at the time of the crime, found by Officer Beverly Ridges in a sealed evidence bag, that was not turned over to the defense at trial. We have a ballistics report from a gun owned by Richard Brighton that matches the gun used in the killings of Mark and Cathy Davidson, and we have reviewed DNA samples never tested during the trial that are a match for Richard Brighton. Witnesses who previously testified they saw Jackson Ridges and James Beaumont in town close to the time that the Davidsons were murdered now say they were pressured to make false statements. One witness is named outright as a known repeat witness for the police.”

  “Your Honor—” the prosecutor begins.

  The judge doesn’t even acknowledge him.

  “The prosecution does not object to a review of the appeal and wrote a statement to support the case. But as I read the statement, there are no apologies to the court. To Mr. James Beaumont. No statement regarding the police’s and the prosecution’s tampering with evidence, with witnesses.”

  The courtroom starts buzzing. We can feel the judge moving toward a decision that has already been carefully considered by the other judges. Judge Vandyne has been given authority to continue presiding without more review.

  The judge sets down his papers and removes his glasses.

  “Mr. James Beaumont, please stand.”

  Daddy lifts his body up with help from Mr. Jones. I can tell he doesn’t know how to process what’s happening. It’s fear and hope all mixed into one body. I rub my thumb inside my palms to settle my nerves.

  “Mr. Beaumont, do you still claim to be not guilty of the murders of Mark and Cathy Davidson?”

  “Your Honor, I’m not guilty.”

  “Then on behalf of the Court of Criminal Appeals, with regret and sorrow for the trials you have been through, and the seven years you have served, may God forgive us all for what we know now, you are a free man. I hereby reverse your conviction for the murder of Mark and Cathy Davidson.”

  The room explodes in applause. Daddy turns to us immediately, Mama falling to her knees, but this time praising God. I cover my mouth with my hands. Jamal can’t get to Daddy on his side so he just puts his arms around Quincy and me, Corinne squishing in the middle. Crying out in joy. Unbelievable joy that it’s all finally over. I’m bursting so much my chest feels like it’s exploding. Buzzing and zipping inside.

  It’s over. The clock has stopped. We can stop living our life counting the days, counting the time between Saturday and Monday visits.

  Jamal takes Corinne to see Daddy. Quincy places his hands on either side of my face and kisses me.

  “You did it.” Quincy presses in closer to me, resting his forehead against mine.

  I flick my eyes at him but don’t move.

  “Completely platonic, don’t get excited.” Quincy’s voice is soft, but there’s a shakiness behind it because we’ve been inseparable ever since Jamal’s been free.

  “Maybe it should be more,” I whisper.

  Quincy stops joking and kisses me again. Each time I kiss him, I’m lost in us. He places his hand by my ear and kisses my lips once more. Quincy gives a halfway grin. I hold on to his hand until it’s time for Daddy to speak.

  We follow Daddy through an exit that leads to the front steps of the court, where the media has been gathering, waiting for him to speak. Before he goes to the mic, Daddy extends his arm to grab my hand and pull me up next to him. I look out at the crowd. The courtroom catching up to us and surrounding the cameras. Across the street, the sidewalk is filled with people who weren’t able to come to the courtroom but wanted to make sure there was justice. I’m taken aback by the swarms of people here to see my daddy free.

  Daddy whispers, “Baby girl, this is all because of you.”

  He gets on the mic, going down the list of everything he’s thankful for. He sticks to the speech he wrote because he didn’t want to miss a name or a moment. The crowd is overflowing, growing. I breathe out slowly, take pride at being able to stand next to my daddy. No longer in Polunsky Prison, a free man, for the first time in seven years.

  Daddy finishes to cheers.

  Cameras clicking, reporters yelling questions, but they’re overtaken by the shouts of people chanting, Justice. Justice. Justice.

  I’m soaring inside. The word rattles through my body. Daddy lifts my hands up with his. Then Mr. Jones and Steve take the mic. We drop back, and our security guards escort us away as Innocence X takes more questions, holding court with the media now, so we can escape without anyone following. Mr. Jones has them captivated.

  I hold my breath, waiting until Daddy sees our surprise.

  He stumbles toward it, speechless. Mama passes me a knowing glance. All my comments over the years, I swallow up because she was right. The look on Daddy’s face to see his old Buick, just like the last day he drove it—it’s priceless.

  Daddy’s car is polished clean, parked on the side of the courthouse in a private spot.

  Mama hands the keys over to him. He shakes his head. “I haven’t driven in years.”

  He hands me the keys. I refuse. So does Jamal.

  Seeing Daddy drive us home is just as meaningful to us. Daddy clears his throat as he sits in the driver’s seat and we all pile in, waiting for him to turn the ignition. I can feel he’s nervous that it might not work, that the moment will fall apart. Like everything else.

  Daddy waits another minute, then turns the key. The engine revs, then starts purring. Daddy starts out slow, cautious. When we reach the highway toward Crowning Heights, we can see him relax. No longer looking over his shoulder. He lets out a laugh, a great belting laugh as he grips the steering wheel at ten and two, like he’s just learning how to drive again. Corinne is giggling watching him. He looks in the rearview mirror, and our eyes meet. I don’t say anything when I see that Daddy’s laughing, but tears are running down his face.

  It’s all real. We can let it out. We’re holding on to each other, windows rolled down, letting the wind whip on us as Daddy drives us home.

  For the first time, I allow myself to shut the worrying away. There’re still some uncertainties, for sure, but the most deadly countdown has ended. With justice secured for my father, I’m finally free, too.

  Monday, September 27

  Stephen Jones, Jr.

  Innocence X Headquarters

  1111 Justice Road

  Birmingham, Alabama 35005

  Re: Death Penalty—Intake Department

  Dear Steve,

  You thought I’d stop, huh? This is going to be my last letter. I bet you wonder what I’m going to be doing. I’m starting my senior year with my own podcast: Corner for Justice. I decided I didn’t need to be the editor of the school newspaper if I can reach a larger audience with social media. I have just over 100,000 followers already! It’s all about highlighting injustice. Would you be willing to do an interview? I’ve got a lot of people lined up, so time’s ticking. I don’t plan to wait seven years for a response.

  Thank you again for everything you’ve done. Congratulations on your recent case. Don’t forget us when you’re big-time. I’ve got a couple of cases you might be interested in.

  Peace and solidarity,

  Tracy Beaumont

  Author’s Note

  While This Is My America is a work of fiction, it is rooted in US history and fueled by my decades of work in education and advocacy for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Growing up, I was an activist in my community as much as a daydreamer in the library. At the time, I had trouble finding books with characters who looked like me: the
gap of diverse literature from diverse writers was (and still is) staggering. Nowadays, I write the stories I wanted to read, to fill the space in between those worlds.

  Racism in the criminal justice system was imprinted on me at twelve years old when Los Angeles police officers violently beat Rodney King. I was shocked at the inhumanity of his treatment, and when the video aired on national television, I thought surely justice would finally be served. But it wasn’t. When a jury acquitted the police, the Black community exploded and rioted in anger. I felt their rage. Their pain was my pain.

  In 1997, I marched against police brutality for the first time at a youth rally in Pittsburgh during the NAACP national conference. The city was still rife with tension in the Black community from a few years earlier, when Jonny Gammage, a Black motorist, died of suffocation after he was pinned to the pavement by white officers. Those officers were charged with involuntary manslaughter; none were convicted.

  With no books to turn to for Black protagonists, I found that rap became my life’s soundtrack, from Lauryn Hill’s lyrical prose influences through Public Enemy, Ice-T, and N.W.A teaching me that art can be used to express discontent. Rap was my generation’s tool for expression, and it was this music, not high school English classes, that taught me how to be a writer.

  I wrote This Is My America to tackle serious topics and give hope to the next generation. For my son and daughter, who will one day need to find meaning. In 2014, my then-six-year-old son burst into uncontrollable tears in public after seeing video footage of Eric Garner take his last breath, held down by police officers, with no one attempting to resuscitate him. “He couldn’t breathe,” my son cried. “He couldn’t breathe, and they didn’t stop.” He worried, what if someone called the police on me because he was crying? What if the police held me down, his asthmatic mother? Then I wouldn’t be able to breathe. In that moment, I knew my son’s days of innocence were over. Corinne Beaumont’s character represents my children’s fragile innocence on the line.

  This Is My America seeks to expand the now very public conversation on police brutality that the Black Lives Matter movement made possible through activism. One in three Black boys born today will be incarcerated in their lifetime. After the 1960s War on Crime, the 1970s War on Drugs, and the Crime Bill of 1994, mass incarceration skyrocketed. The prison-industrial complex is a $182 billion industry that feeds off the lives of Black, brown, and poor people caught up in its vicious cycle.*

  While mass incarceration is a complex problem, I wanted to simply (ha ha) focus on how it’s almost impossible to prove someone is innocent without adequate representation. Bryan Stevenson’s incredible legacy, Just Mercy, was the first nonfiction work that made me realize I could explore topics I care most deeply about in my young adult stories. I based my character Steve Jones on Bryan Stevenson, and the fictional Innocence X on the incredible organizations Equal Justice Initiative and the Innocence Project.

  Tracy Beaumont was written in honor of all the Black girls and womxn leading movements and the young womxn I advise and mentor, who are powerful beyond measure. I envision “Tracy’s Corner” as a way I would call other students to action if I were in high school today. I was a lot like Tracy, full of idealism and a desire to make the world a better place. I was president of my multicultural club and the local youth NAACP chapter in high school, and we held many meetings in the NAACP’s downtown office. In college, as a student organizer and co-president of the Black student union, I worked to bring my peers together to talk about important issues and try to effect change. Now I work on a college campus as an ally and advocate, and I bear witness to my students’ active engagement.

  This Is My America is a piece of fiction; if this story were true, there wouldn’t be an immediate happy ending for the Beaumonts. They would continue to live in the same society, combating racial prejudice and inequality—with all the disadvantages and stains of post-prison survival and recovery. I wanted to leave my readers with hope but nevertheless reflect real-life struggles, which is why Tracy’s friend Tasha and her family are still on an uphill journey of life after prison at the end of the novel.

  This Is My America’s DNA is embedded from beginning to end with complex topics that impact Black Americans today. The Beaumonts’ story showcases how generational trauma caused by mass incarceration reverberates throughout the Black American experience today. The story weaves past and present. It is based as much on Thurgood Marshall’s story told in Devil in the Grove as it is on Just Mercy. The present is still a reflection of the past.

  The death penalty is one of today’s most horrifying examples of the legacy of slavery. This is why I selected the topic of the death penalty out of many issues of mass incarceration. This history began as early as 1619, when African slaves were brought to the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia, as part of the transatlantic slave trade. Legal bondage of those enslaved and their descendants continued until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment ended de jure slavery in 1865. During the Reconstruction era, Southern whites rebelled against the end of slavery, and a terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan, was born. By 1870, Klan representation had expanded to almost every state. Slavery had ended, except as a punishment for a crime. So former slaves found themselves being charged with vague crimes like “loitering.” The country had profited from slavery, and prisoners became a viable exception for use of free labor.

  Equality wasn’t realized for those who were freed. In 1896, the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation with the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. This “separate but equal” doctrine permitted separate public facilities as long as they were of “equal quality.” It was not until 1954 that the Supreme Court revisited the doctrine. In the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, the Court found “separate but equal” to be unconstitutional in public schools. Major legislation followed in the next decade: the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

  Some declared the United States a post-racial society upon the election of Barack Obama, the forty-fourth president. This declaration is refuted by the rise of white supremacists since the election of the forty-fifth president. The stain of racism also rears its ugly head each time a viral video reveals police brutality or racial disparities in arrests and convictions. Worse, Black people are regularly viewed as threats in public establishments throughout the country simply because they are Black. In 2018, two Black café patrons in Philadelphia were arrested while waiting for a white colleague—New York magazine titled its story “Black Loiterers, White Lingerers, and Starbucks.” In Oakland, a white woman called the police because someone was Barbecuing While Black in a public park. In Dallas, a police officer shot an unarmed Black man in his home, where she claimed to have mistaken him for an intruder after erroneously entering his apartment, thinking it was her own.

  I share these viral stories as examples because the victims weren’t believed when they told their stories. Our larger society doesn’t accept that the horrors of racism persist until they view bodily trauma on television or, more recently, cell phone or police video of these heinous crimes.

  Another authorial decision I made was to adapt the real visitation practices in Texas. To better humanize James Beaumont, I decided to not place him shackled behind a glass wall during interactions with his children and wife. I want readers to know James as his family does and to feel his loving presence without barriers as he interacts with them.

  The appeal process for death penalty cases is complex and differs by state. The Court of Criminal Appeals is Texas’s highest state court for criminal cases, consisting of nine justices (including a presiding judge). I provided a simplified version of an expedited appellate process so as not to bog down the story with criminal appeal procedures that are specific to the state of Texas. With this challenge, I chose to depict an appeal proceeding that could include James Beaumont and his family. My ultimate go
al was to show elements of an arduous process while also infusing hope and leaving space for the reader to ponder the next chapter for the Beaumont family.

  I also wanted to portray the continuing legacy of white supremacy and terror that persists today. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Vietnamese fishermen clashed with the KKK in Galveston Bay. For years they faced harassment and were forced to defend their livelihood despite intimidation and violence from the Klan. This story informed my selection of the lynching of a non-Black person to further highlight the widespread fear and targeting of the KKK. But we cannot forget that of the almost five thousand lynchings in US history, over 70 percent were of African Americans. I urge you to see the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, located in Montgomery, Alabama. The memorial, which can also be viewed online, is dedicated to the memory of enslaved Black people, people terrorized by lynchings, and African Americans shunned by racial segregation.

  Lynchings and capital punishment draw many comparisons as inhumane and unequal treatment largely applied on the basis of race. As of April 1, 2019, there were 2,637 inmates in prison who had been sentenced to death, across thirty-two states. African Americans make up about 13 percent of the US population but are 42 percent of the people on death row. It’s important to acknowledge that, nationally, 95 percent of prosecutors are white, according to a 2014 study by the Reflective Democracy Campaign. This lack of diverse representation leaves more room for implicit (and explicit) bias against defendants of color.

  Evidence of disparity is most egregious in the state of Louisiana, where the odds of a death sentence are 97 percent higher in cases where the victim was white. Slavery was abolished, but the economics of the prison-industrial complex serves as an exception. Take, for example, the comments of a Louisiana sheriff, Steve Prator, who in 2017 railed against the move to release prisoners, citing their ability to provide free labor. I hope the reader will ponder the application of the death penalty as it relates to the legacy of slavery.