I Am Jack's Seething Cauldron Of Rage

The now defunct Queensgate Prisoner Facility outside downtown Cincinnati. Preface: Justice is an uncertain thing. The testimony of a single witness, with no supporting evidence whatsoever, can put a man behind bars his entire life whether a crime has taken place or not. The following is a true story. I. They came for me in the middle of the night. Sitting up in my bed, I heard the low, garbled squawk of a police radio echoing in the alleyway. Someone cursed. The radio went silent. Bodies rushed past my window and then heavy hands slammed on my apartment building's thin common front door. Cops. It had to be cops I remember thinking. I got up and walked out of my apartment. At the front door I greeted the newest series of police with a half-asleep smirk at the door. This expression was quickly wiped off my face when the hand cuffs came out. "Are you Mr. XYZ?" one of the four police officers croaked with hand cuffs at the ready. The croaker, he coul

Ruins of Freemont Street in the affluent black suburb of Greenwood in Tulsa, May of 1921. In the chapters of American history, there are stories of tragedy and senseless death that are very carefully and almost entirely forgotten. These tales are conveniently forgotten by the wise and craftily ignored by the haughty. This particular tragedy raged in 1921, in a Tulsa Oklahoma neighborhood that was burned to the ground by a mob. 300 people were officially reported killed. Those killed weren't soldiers or insurrectionists - they were a small community of successful minority business owners who were murdered by a mob of angry white Oklahomans for no better reason than hatred and ignorance. When the story of Greenwood is foggily recalled it makes Americans, as a people united by common cause, law and geography, question the value of life itself when witnessing that life so carelessly snuffed out. Life snuffed out like stray sparks from an untended fire - crushed under the collect

The September 15 th 1963 Birmingham church bombing killed four girls - the oldest was fourteen. When man made injustice is done in the name of man's justice, in any age, it renders the man to whom that injustice happens helpless. This was the case in 1960's America as a growing population of black Americans became educated enough to realize that laws were a creation of a multi-cultural society not the immutable, unchangable commandments from a paper god. Many black American leaders fought for these changes in law and society but did not live to see them take place. These mens' rebuke, their punishment for seeking equal status, came for generations in the guise of official policy. Their consolation came in the form of official lies that stripped them of hard-earned dignity. Their shelter was the bitter cold. All the while, an inequitable society expected a smile on the wronged mens' faces. When these man continued to question official hypocrisy - they were quickl