Consumed by Hate, Redeemed by Love

by Thomas A. Tarrants

  On the day I learned of my rejection by authorities in Tupelo, I was scheduled to speak to a class of law enforcement students visiting from the University of Mississippi. Tour groups regularly visited the pre-release center to see the facilities, eat lunch in the cafeteria, and talk with the inmates. The prison tour guide, Mrs. McBride, had arranged for me to address the group and answer their questions. At the end of my talk, she mentioned to the group that because of political issues I was having trouble finding a county to accept me on work release. It turned out that the professor leading the class on the tour, Dr. Chester Quarles, happened to be director of the University of Mississippi’s law enforcement program. After hearing my story, he took an interest in my situation and later offered to recommend me to the circuit judge, district attorney, sheriff, and chief of police in Oxford, where Ole Miss was located. What’s more, he said he would try to find me a part-time job. I later discovered that he was active in his church and missions work.

  This time, step-by-step, everything fell into place, as if an unseen hand was guiding the process, and my application for admission to the University of Mississippi was accepted. Thanks to the sustained efforts of the two counselors in the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation office, I received both state and federal grants to help cover expenses. Oxford officials gave their approval, and I was offered a part-time job.

  This door was definitely looking open.

  By Monday, December 6, 1976, everything had been completed except the Oxford parole officer’s report, which had to verify my job, sponsor, and living arrangements. Once this was in, Parchman’s brand-new superintendent, John Watkins, and the state commissioner of corrections, Dr. Allen Ault, would review my case.

  Disapproval at any level would block my release.

  Although I was hopeful, I knew it would not be a slam dunk. Several months earlier, a number of my friends and mentors had written the governor, asking for my sentence to be reduced to make me eligible for release. The governor’s office forwarded the request to the parole board. After weighing the matter at length, the parole board recommended that no clemency be granted at that time. (I was told that my case was a political “hot potato,” and they did not want to touch it.) Their no-clemency report arrived in the governor’s office just days before I was to be considered for the work-release program. My prospects for release seemed dim.

  The federal court’s deadline for reducing the prison population was December 31, 1976. On December 8, Dr. Ault, who was new on the job, was scheduled to be at the prison to oversee the review of inmate records. But my papers were still incomplete. The parole officer at Oxford had not yet made his routine investigation, much less written his report. It looked as though I would run out of time before my case could be considered.

  That morning, Ed McBride, a top administrator at Parchman telephoned the parole officer in Oxford and asked if he could complete the investigation before noon. Ed, who was a pilot, then flew his personal plane the ninety miles to Oxford, met the parole officer at the airport to get the necessary papers, and flew back to Parchman in time to put my now-completed package in front of the review committee. Dr. Ault and Superintendent Watkins agreed to interview me that afternoon.

  At about 1:00 p.m., I was told to get ready to go to the warden’s office. This was going to be the big day for me. I immediately asked Chaplain Wendy Hatcher to ask some of my closest friends to be in prayer.

  In the midst of the excitement and tension, I felt a deep peace. I was able to pray with an honest heart that God’s perfect will would prevail. I wanted very much to be free, but more than that, I wanted whatever God wanted—even if it meant spending more time in prison. It was hard to pray, “Not my will, but yours, be done.” But I was somehow enabled to do it.

  The guards came and drove me from pre-release to the administration building, a distance of several miles. What a strange feeling it was as I looked out across the brown fields to realize that the long-awaited day might have finally come. We pulled in front of the building and entered the warden’s outer office. In a few moments a tall, neatly dressed man in his late forties came out and introduced himself as Superintendent John Watkins. He invited me into his office, where he introduced me to Dr. Allen Ault. Mr. Watkins was a well-educated, confident man with a forceful personality. He began asking me questions while Dr. Ault sat quietly to one side, almost out of my sight. The questions came fast and varied. Sometimes I could follow his line of thinking; other times it seemed to come out of the blue.

  He opened with “What was it like growing up?” and moved on to “How did you get yourself in so much trouble with the law?” Then, with no show of emotion, “And why did you break out of prison? Hadn’t you learned anything from the trouble you got into?”

  The rapid-fire questions probably lasted for about half an hour, but it seemed longer than that. I felt as if I were being interrogated by a skilled intelligence officer. At times he would question me as a psychologist, at times as a sociologist, yet always as a skeptic.

  Suddenly the questioning stopped and there was silence in the room. I could read body language well enough to see that Superintendent Watkins had made his decision. I held my breath.

  “I’m an atheist,” he declared. “I’ve been in this work too long to have any confidence at all in your ‘religion.’ In all my years in corrections, I have known only one man who got religion in prison and kept it after he left. I wouldn’t release you on the strength of your religion, because I don’t think it’s worth five cents. And I think you will discard it when you get out. But I do believe you have changed and deserve a chance to make something of yourself. That’s why I’m going to release you.”

  I felt a flood of emotions welling up in me. My waiting was over. There would be no more suspense. Somehow, I held on to the peace I had when I walked into his office.

  Dr. Ault then spoke. “Will Monday next week be soon enough to leave?”

  I turned to Dr. Ault and said, “Yes, sir. Monday will be just fine.”

  As I left the warden’s office, friends on the staff who had been sweating out my interview came up to learn the decision. When I told them the news, they were overjoyed. But the person who was the most overjoyed and most thankful was not there that day. My dear mother, who had put her hope and trust in God and prayed faithfully for all those years, was filled with joy when I called to tell her the news.

  What none of us knew at the time was that the political sensitivities of my case meant that the governor had to give final approval to the decision that had just been made. As he pondered the decision, he sought advice from his special counsel, a friend of many years whose judgment he could trust. The special counsel said, “I know this man and believe that he is a real Christian now. I recommend that you release him.” The special counsel was Alvin Binder, the Jewish lawyer I had earlier come to know through Ken Dean.

  Chaplain Glenn Howell drove me back to the pre-release center. He had come to Parchman only weeks after I had found Christ. He and his family had prayed for, encouraged, and supported me all these years, through the ups and downs of prison life. Truly, God had brought him to Parchman, at least in part, to walk with me during that time. How grateful I was—and still am—for his friendship and wisdom.

  On my last night in prison—Sunday, December 12, 1976—Glenn and his wife, Mary, gave a going-away party for me at their home. There on the prison grounds, friends from around Mississippi came to see me for the last time at Parchman. It was an emotional time for all of us—a time of joy and gratitude in remembering God’s past blessings as well as anticipating those to come.

  Tokens of future blessings were already appearing. When I had walked into the warden’s office on Wednesday, I had fifty dollars to my name. By Sunday, various friends had chipped in more than a thousand dollars (which was a lot of money in those days). Frank and Joyce Watts had arranged to provide me a new wardrobe. And of course, my mother wanted to provide anything else I needed. I would leave prison with ev
erything I needed to start a new chapter of my life.

  The next morning, December 13, 1976, dawned bright and crisp and clear. At about 8:30 a.m., a prison station wagon arrived at the pre-release center where I had spent the last four years. I said good-bye to my fellow inmates, who had to remain behind and wait for their turn. As I turned to leave the center for the last time, I realized I had been in Parchman prison exactly eight years to the day from the time I had arrived.

  When we arrived at the identification office for out-processing, I found that it had been moved into a new, modern facility that very morning. Nonetheless, the sergeant in charge was the same man who’d admitted me to Parchman eight years before. He seemed genuinely glad to see me getting out. He shook my hand and wished me well.

  Dr. Quarles and his wife had come to Parchman to drive me to Oxford and the University of Mississippi. Colorful Christmas decorations filled the windows of the houses along guard row just as they had been that December evening eight years earlier. I was struck by the contrast. That was a day of deepening gloom and bleak despair. This was a new day of hope and freedom. I could feel the joy of Christmas. Yet the greatest contrast that morning was not in my circumstances, but in me. I was not the same man.

  Part 2

  SEEING GOD WORK IN THE ORDINARY

  1977–2019

  18

  OLE MISS: A HAPPY CHANGE

  When I left prison in 1976, racial conflict in America had decreased compared to the previous decade. In Mississippi and elsewhere, the Klan was nothing like it once was. And the civil rights legislation of the 1960s had given hope to many people that the plight of blacks would improve along with race relations in general. White resistance to civil rights gains was diminishing steadily. Like many, I assumed the worst was behind us and things would continue to get better over time. My focus was now on getting an education in preparation for ministry of some sort. It never occurred to me that part of that ministry might be in the area of racial reconciliation. Nor was I aware that in prison God had put me into a long-term training program in how to understand and love people who were very different from me. The journey that was unfolding before me would be one with unexpected twists and turns but with profoundly positive effects on my life.

  As Dr. and Mrs. Quarles and I drove toward Ole Miss, the brown cotton fields of the flat Mississippi delta gave way to the evergreen rolling hills of north central Mississippi. My new life was unfolding before my eyes. It was still only barely believable that I would be able to study at the University of Mississippi and move forward with my goal of serving God. My heart was overflowing with hope and excitement. My future, once bleak, was now growing brighter with every mile of distance between me and Parchman.

  Leaving prison is fraught with danger for most former inmates. A prisoner may be set free, but with that freedom comes the responsibility of making new choices. We make our choices; then our choices make us. For most prisoners, successful reintegration into society is not easy. The rate of recidivism is high. Two-thirds of released prisoners are rearrested within three years. I was determined not to be one of them.

  Before my arrest and conviction, I had made some terrible choices. The question—my challenge—was whether I would now make the right choices and adjust to normal society after eight years in prison.

  I believed that if I tried to live a life that pleased God, he would help me through whatever challenges were ahead. I was still a work in progress, and that gave me pause. But I also knew the Lord was merciful and gracious and was working in my life. While I was in prison, he had blessed me with a great support system in the form of people who believed in me and helped me. Now that I was free, he would do the same. With the support of a good church and mature believers, the process of transformation could accelerate.

  I also had my family. It was not perfect by any means. While I was in prison, my parents had divorced, and I was alienated from my father. But in spite of this, they were honest, hardworking people who loved me and my siblings, took good care of us, sent us to church, demonstrated good values, and taught us the difference between right and wrong. In short, they did the best they could. Thus, despite the wrong turns that defined my youth, I had a foundation of decent values to which I could return and build. And I had a praying mother. Augustine said of his mother, “I cannot sufficiently express the love she had for me, nor how she now travailed for me in the spirit with a far keener anguish than when she bore me in the flesh.”1 The same was true for me!

  In this, I was very fortunate. Most inmates have no such foundation.

  * * *

  Oxford, Mississippi, was a small, charming, and picturesque town with the county courthouse at the center of a town square. The square was surrounded by several blocks of small businesses, shops, and restaurants. Beyond them were homes and then the campus, only a few blocks away. The people of Oxford were friendly and welcoming. For its size, it had more than its share of educated, cultured people who were interested in music, the arts, and so on.

  The campus itself was graceful and serene, full of students walking here and there in pursuit of their studies. At the heart of the campus, on University Circle, stood the Lyceum, a large and stately Greek Revival structure. The Lyceum overlooked a grassy, tree-shaded area of several acres known as the Grove, where students met, talked, and hung out.

  No one would ever have guessed that fourteen years earlier students on this same campus had reacted with deadly violence to the admission of James Meredith, the first black person to attend Ole Miss. As I scanned the campus in December 1976, there was no evidence, at least not overt evidence, of that racism. As far as I could see, whites and blacks attended classes together without problems. In my former life, I would have seen this as compromise, but now I saw it as a sign of progress and was glad. Ole Miss was precisely the right university for me.

  I spent the Christmas holidays as a house guest of Dr. Quarles and his family and enjoyed getting to know them. Dr. Quarles would watch over and counsel me for the rest of my time at the university.

  Once school resumed for the spring semester, I moved into campus housing. Dormitory living was a good experience. I had three great roommates. We got along well, which was a blessing. We had rich fellowship during our time together. One eventually became a lawyer, another became a businessman, and the third went to seminary and became a pastor.

  My part-time job was also a blessing. I worked a few hours each week at a movie theater within walking distance of the campus. I couldn’t have asked for a better situation. A few months later, my mother bought me a car, which opened up new work possibilities. Now that I was mobile, Dr. Quarles offered me a better-paying job at a private security company that he owned. I worked as an unarmed security guard at a nearby manufacturing plant. I checked worker ID badges during the afternoon shift and directed any visitors to appropriate offices. This took relatively little time and left me several hours on each shift to do homework.

  Adjusting to life as a free man was proving to be less difficult than I had expected. It was exhilarating just to be alive and free. Prison life had been drab, dull, and gray, with numbing routines. Now, as I walked around campus, I was overcome by the beauty of God’s creation—green grass, the flowers, the great oak trees, and the blue sky. I felt alive in a way I had not felt in a very long time. I had been in prison from age twenty-one to twenty-nine, and I had been in intellectual bondage for several years before that. Having been given a second chance was yet another in a series of miracles that had brought me to this point.

  One of my main concerns initially was where to attend church. After visiting several, I settled on College Hill Presbyterian Church. I met students and leaders there from campus ministries such as Navigators, InterVarsity, and Campus Crusade for Christ. Becoming part of such a community of faith was a stabilizing force in my life.

  I found that I loved academics. Ole Miss provided me with the structure and the intellectual resources I had needed. I had come to Ole Miss to stud
y, and I thrived there. I had no interest in the partying or football games for which the school was famous. My chief goal was to prepare to serve God in some way, and I remained focused on that. While in prison, I had taken a couple of correspondence courses from the Moody Bible Institute in New Testament Greek, which enabled me to test out of first-year Greek and start with second year. I decided to major in Classics, with its focus on Greco-Roman culture and languages. I was especially eager to improve my ability to read the New Testament in Greek and to understand it better.

  I devoted myself to my studies and to my involvement in church and campus ministries. My understanding and choices were being formed by what I read in the Bible and through the influence of men and women further along in the faith than me. I had much to learn about God’s grace, far more than I realized at the time. But at least I was on the way.

  One day, I got a phone call from Leighton Ford, who earlier had encouraged Chuck Colson to invite me to attend his prison discipleship program in Washington, DC. Leighton invited me to speak at an evangelistic crusade he was soon to lead in the Chicago area. I did so, and afterward Leighton asked me to join him for dinner with Billy Graham, his brother-in-law, who was in town at that time. What a privilege it was to speak at an evangelistic crusade and then have dinner with Billy Graham, who, in spite of all his fame, remained a very humble man.