by Yusef Salaam
That experience also taught me that while I must maintain my own self-definition and never allow the system to tell me who I was, I couldn’t ignore my environment. I couldn’t sleep on the daily danger I faced while existing in that space, while being accused of a crime whose nature would ensure further assaults. And while I had to maintain my guard externally, I had to stay on guard internally. I had to regularly tell myself, remind myself, that I was not who they said I was. So I could live to tell the story.
I learned so much about the grace of Allah in that moment. That assault symbolized my whole experience of God’s protection. In the same way that I somehow did not feel the full brunt and devastation of Guzman’s hardened fist, I was blessed to not feel the full brunt and devastation of my time in prison, particularly in comparison to the experiences of my brothers in this journey. The Netflix series When They See Us captures their stories very well. I agonize over what Korey endured. As I watched the way each of us processed the pain of being accused of something so heinous, I’m clear-eyed about the fact that my experience in jail, despite the assault, despite the time spent in isolation, could have been so much worse.
When I aged out of the juvenile system at twenty-one, I was moved to Clinton Correctional Facility. This is where I learned my biggest lessons about how hard the system works to make Black men and women believe the lies they make up about us.
Day in and day out, I would hear the heavy footsteps of the guards walking down the galley. They would yell, “On the gate. On the count.” When you hear that, you have to get up, say your name, and say your number. Then you can go back to doing whatever it was you were doing. There’s a repetition to it. The number is drilled into you. It’s your identification, your brand. It got to the point where regurgitating that number became a knee-jerk reaction. Hear the gate. Get the call. Stand and say my name and number.
One day, while I was walking around the yard, a few of the old-timers came up to me.
“You Yusef?”
“Yeah.”
The oldest of them said, “Come with us.”
I was older now, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t still scared. Man, I can’t punk out now. Damn, I didn’t survive all this time just to be killed in the yard. I began thinking about my escape plan. Where was I going to run to? Most important, if I ran, would the guards even care? But I went. I didn’t feel like I had a choice.
I followed them into the far corner of the football-field-sized yard. Or at least, that was how vast it felt to me in that moment. My mind was racing. Man, they’re going to kill me. They’re going to kill me in the corner. There was a man shadowboxing. I mean, this guy was killing the bag; every lick was a merciless demolition. I knew that if this man hit me, there was no question about it, I was going down. He would not only crush my face, he’d slice it wide open. Damn.
“We found him.”
There was a pregnant pause and I’m pretty sure the whole world heard my heart beating. I was very tense. I didn’t want to show fear because this was another kind of jungle and fear would only feed the ones who wanted to harm me. Like Notorious B.I.G. raps, “Your heartbeat sounds like Sasquatch feet. Thundering, shaking the concrete.” That was how my heart felt.
My chest was puffed out, giving me an air of confidence that I didn’t have. I readied my chin for a blow. The man took off his gloves and extended his hand. “As-Salaam-Alaikum.” This means “May the Peace from the Owner of all Peace be unto you” in Arabic. His name was Adbul Haqq.
I let out a comforted sigh and said, “Wa-Alaikum-Salaam wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh,” which means “and May the Peace and Mercy and Blessings from the Owner of all Peace be upon you as well.” As Muslims you are taught that when you are greeted, you should reply with a greeting that is equal to it or better.
The man looked me in my eyes with a deep intensity. “We are Muslims. We are also members of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. You are a political prisoner. You are safe.”
At Clinton with Sheikh Albert “Nuh” Washington, an original member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. Men like Sheikh Nuh were the reason I was kept safe. Sheikh Nuh died in prison, never able to come home a free person.
Relief washed over me like a soft summer tide. I was twenty-one then, and I’m sure I didn’t understand the depth of everything that was happening in that moment. I didn’t know that they had been preparing for me. Waiting to find me. That they couldn’t wait to meet me so they could make sure I stayed safe. I didn’t know any of this, but I was so grateful. There I was, locked up in the mountains, fifteen miles from the Canadian border and being greeted by people telling me I am a political prisoner. They affirmed me in ways I didn’t know I needed to be affirmed. I was not who the media said I was.
This helped exponentially in the formation of my identity, particularly as I approached release. It introduced me to a part of my culture that I had only read about. The Black Panthers. The African warriors of old. All the men and women across the Diaspora who fought on behalf of those whom the system had captured. It was the catalyst that would send me on a lifelong journey of studying Black movements for liberation.
Later in my time at Clinton, Luqman, one of those same elders, took me aside and gave me some additional wisdom. He was an older guy who’d been in a good while. An intelligent man who was always reading, and with so much wisdom behind his eyes. He came over to me one day and said, “Hey, young brother. You know what that number means?”
He was referencing the number I’d repeated so often that it felt embedded in me by that point.
95A1113
I said, “No.”
Luqman, in the kufi cap, was very wise. These men were like my brothers. The gentleman on my right went to a bodega to get food for his family one night, was accused of a crime he didn’t commit, and came home many, many years later. This photo was taken twelve years into his exorbitant prison sentence.
I didn’t know. It was a significant part of how the state identified me and I had no idea what it meant.
“Check this out,” he said. “Ninety-five is the year you got sent to the big house. The next part of your number is either A, B, or R. A is the whole first half of the year from January through June. B is the whole second half from July through December. R means that you returned after you left—that you got caught up in the door of recidivism. Your next part is your position in line. The number 1113 meant that you were the 1,113th person to enter the door.”
I was the 1,113th to enter the doors of Clinton in 1995.
I was floored.
I thought, You mean to tell me 1,112 people came into this facility before me, and my birthday is in February? That means from January first to February twenty-seventh, 1,112 people had already entered the system.
There’s a weight and magnitude to that. These were fathers. And grandfathers. Cousins and brothers. Sons. When we ask, “Where are the men?” here, in part, is the answer. I remember turning to look at Luqman’s number. It began with 72A.
I felt sick.
I thought about all the prisons in New York, all the prisons in America. This man had been in prison for longer than I had been alive. He entered in 1972. And the A meant he’d never gone home. I almost wished he’d had an R. That would have meant that he’d have gone home at least once to hug his children or play dominoes with his friends. It would have meant that he hadn’t spent every waking moment since before I was born behind bars.
The American criminal justice system is eager to define Black men specifically, and Black people in general, as criminals. Mass incarceration is the corrupt system that allows those numbers to actually mean something, to actually define a person. This system of injustice uses incarceration as a way to avoid the problems of poverty, wealth gaps, and health disparities, among many others, all wrought by white supremacy and the history of enslavement and Jim Crow. Instead of uprooting the system, they justify it, wielding incarceration as a social machete to chop down the
marginalized. It is the echo of states’ rights. It is the echo of a Confederacy that was desperate for a way to continue the institution of slavery. It is the ownership of humans by another name. Cornel West, in Black Prophetic Fire, emphasizes not only the fact of it, but the why of it:
There are hundreds of political prisoners right now in America’s jails who were so taken by Malcolm [X]’s spirit that they became warriors, and the powers that be understood them as warriors. They knew that a lot of these other middle-class [Black] leaders were not warriors; they were professionals; they were careerists. But these warriors had callings, and they have paid an incalculable and immeasurable price in those cells.
There’s a plot that is more devastatingly powerful than we could ever imagine embedded in this system. As scholar and Afrocentric education advocate Jawanza Kunjufu has written about significantly, this plot is the conspiracy to destroy Black boys. He says, “Our youth are chameleons and they will become whatever we want them to become.” The challenge we face is that the system has already decided who they want our youth to become. But it’s up to us to decide differently. As Kunjufu also says, “We must demand excellence of ourselves and agitate and advocate justice from the larger society.”
Mass incarceration is supported by other faulty systems. Housing discrimination and inadequate public-school education. Unemployment and lack of access to health care. Too many of us look around our communities and are utterly uninspired. We look around us and hear what the world is really saying: We aren’t worth anything. Fortunately, there are many Black people who are countering that narrative. Many who are expanding what others of us see of ourselves. But that work isn’t for the faint of heart.
Children go to Central Park and see the gentle streams of water and budding flowers. They play on equipment that’s new and safe. Then they return to their neighborhoods and, from a psychosocial perspective, internalize the lack they see around them. They go to their playground with broken, hazardous equipment and they believe they don’t matter, that they are not deserving. And sadly, for some who don’t get to see a vision of themselves beyond their immediate environment, or who don’t have the village of people to impart wisdom and knowledge of their true identities into their minds and hearts, they end up learning that the only place they can really thrive is the modern-day cotton field called prison. And so they return again and again.
I recognize that I was privileged in many ways throughout my experience in the system. I encountered so many people and opportunities that shielded me from the system’s agenda. So much grace came my way. I know that too many people didn’t have this same experience. But I also know that Black people have an extraordinary capacity for resilience. So, whether it’s facing jail time for a crime we didn’t commit or facing the grief of a lost job or loved one, we have the capacity to shift the narrative. We must be willing to define ourselves for ourselves. No, we may not have all the information we need. We may not have all the emotional and psychological resources at hand. But we can still be seekers. We can continuously work to discover new information about our circumstances. We don’t have to buy the first story told to us about what’s happening in our lives. We have the ability to sift through all the narratives and use that knowledge for our own good. We have to be willing to go on a journey. It’s a scavenger hunt, for sure. So you must arm yourselves.
For anyone who is embarking on this journey, I suggest using the four Ws and one H.
Figure out who and what you are.
Embrace where you are.
Search out why you are.
Learn how you are.
Keep digging. Keep searching. Don’t accept the proverbial number you’ve been given. I was not 95A1113. I am Yusef Idris Faadel Abdus Salaam. Even if, for a season, you have to repeat that number to them, as I did. Even if you need it to survive the moment. Know deep down that there is more to you, that grace will show up for you also. Just take the first step.
FIVE
Elevate and Decide in the Air
I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.
LANGSTON HUGHES
Early on in Harlem Valley, coolin’ in the North.
TO BELIEVE THAT SOMEONE IS guilty simply because they match the race of a perpetrator is a deeply rooted outgrowth of the white supremacy that’s embedded in every major system in this country. As Aberjhani writes in his book of essays Illuminated Corners, “It becomes more and more difficult to avoid the idea of black men as subjects of not just racial profiling but of an insidious form of racial obliteration sanctioned by silence.” The truth of that is profound. There are myriad ways to examine how law enforcement profiles and stereotypes Black men, but the one that truly reveals the insidiousness of the way the system operates is the spiritual perspective I take when I think about what happened to the Exonerated Five. And what continues to happen all around the country. The mechanism used to oppress marginalized people is most certainly a kind of witchcraft. This witchcraft has planted seeds of inferiority to the extent that too many Black and Brown people believe Black and Brown men and boys will be dead or in jail by the age of twenty-one.
I saw it myself while locked up. There were way too many men who were unable to stay mentally free and who succumbed to the defeatist nature of prison culture. There were men I encountered in prison who believed the lies they were told about themselves. But there were also those of us who literally fought for our freedom. We spent time doing whatever activity we could to launch our imaginations outside of the cinder blocks that threatened to choke out our souls.
My stabilizer of choice was poetry and art. For a season, though, it was also basketball. Prior to going to jail, I never really played basketball. Whenever I say this, people are shocked, since I’ve been over six feet tall since I was twelve years old. But even from a young age, I was an artist. Sports, with the exception of skateboarding and martial arts, just wasn’t my thing. I spent many years studying jujitsu under Master Li’l John Davis, who was one of the top two instructors in New York. But there are no dojos in prison. And when I first arrived, I felt an overwhelming need to settle in, to try to connect with other inmates in any way possible as long as it was positive. I was still a child, and when I saw other children playing basketball, I wanted to fit in. Oh, wow. That’s cool. I want to do that. Yes, I became a spiritual leader at Harlem Valley, but I was also a kid.
I’d been given some advice before going in, and now I kept hearing it over and over again in my head: Do the time; don’t let the time do you. So basketball it was.
In Harlem Valley, my fellow inmates immediately believed my height would give me an advantage.
“Yo, Big U”—that was a nickname they had given me—“you need to come on and get out here on this basketball court,” they’d say.
So I began to learn the game. I started shooting and making more shots than I was missing. Okay, this is cool. I figured out what the other guys already knew: My height was an asset. And then I started dunking the ball. This is real cool. For the first time since the end of the case, I was actually enjoying myself.
The hours spent playing ball didn’t make me feel like I was in prison. It was like I was back on the block with my friends again. Riding my skateboard. Telling big jokes and laughing big laughs. Having that taste of childhood gave us all back our humanity. Yes, we were in the belly of the beast, but there was still life there. There was life in this downtrodden space that we could turn into something beautiful, if only for an hour. So I kept learning and getting better at the game.
Some of these men were monsters on the court. It was like watching Michael Jordan play Scottie Pippin every day. Their talent was astronomical. I still may not be a sports person, but what I do love about it, and loved about basketball especially back then, is that no matter what team was playing, the sheer athleticism present on the court made you stand up in awe. That was how I felt watching people like Pamzy and Asiatic play in p
rison. These men were just as good, if not better, than the men who played for the NBA. The system just got them first.
Some of the most brilliant minds are sitting in a jail cell. The prison system houses some of the most amazing talent that will never be discovered. I watched guys who were ambidextrous and could maneuver in ways I still find astonishing. One guy in the adult facility, Lefty, was the type we’d let do whatever he wanted to do. He’d mastered every move we’d see the pros do in NBA games. He was doing crossovers and reverse layups like Jordan and Magic. Lefty was definitely not the guy you tried to post up.
Pamzy, Kevin, and I during a visit. We all came from the same neighborhood.
There was Asiatic, who soared through the air so high, you could almost stand beneath him and see the bottoms of his shoes. He was another one who, if the scouts recruited from prison, would be a first-round pick. One day, he took an enormous leap, hitting his tooth on the regulation-sized rims we had on the court. From that point on, he was known as the man with the dead tooth—which was as much of a compliment as it was a dig.
Every day on the court was like a mini training camp. Because of that, whenever we were off the court, we were preparing for our return to it. In the cell, we meditated on moves. In the courtyard, we used weights to work on strengthening our legs. We were always thinking about what we’d just seen during a game we’d watched, or about a move our favorite player had made back in the day, trying to perfect our own. I discovered that in order to really live through your sentence in prison, it’s important to find a way to document your time there, to find some kind of outlet. Basketball was that outlet for many of the men inside. There was this sense of “If I don’t play, I’ll get trapped here,” and in more ways than the obvious. I don’t know if they were always conscious of it, but they were using basketball to remain free.