WEBVTT

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Twenty-three years ago,

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at the age of 19,

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I shot and killed a man.

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I was a young drug dealer

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with a quick temper

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and a semi-automatic pistol.

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But that wasn't the end of my story.

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In fact, it was beginning,

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and the 23 years since

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is a story of acknowledgment,

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apology and atonement.

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But it didn't happen in the way

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that you might imagine or think.

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These things occurred in my life

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in a way that was surprising,

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especially to me.

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See, like many of you,

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growing up, I was an honor roll student,

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a scholarship student,

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with dreams of becoming a doctor.

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But things went dramatically wrong

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when my parents separated

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and eventually divorced.

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The actual events are pretty straightforward.

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At the age of 17,

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I got shot three times

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standing on the corner of my block in Detroit.

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My friend rushed me to the hospital.

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Doctors pulled the bullets out,

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patched me up,

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and sent me back to the same 
neighborhood where I got shot.

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Throughout this ordeal,

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no one hugged me,

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no one counseled me,

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no one told me I would be okay.

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No one told me that I would live in fear,

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that I would become paranoid,

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or that I would react hyper-violently

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to being shot.

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No one told me that one day,

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I would become the person behind the trigger.

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Fourteen months later,

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at 2 a.m.,

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I fired the shots

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that caused a man's death.

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When I entered prison,

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I was bitter, I was angry, I was hurt.

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I didn't want to take responsibility.

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I blamed everybody from my parents

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to the system.

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I rationalized my decision to shoot

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because in the hood where I come from,

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it's better to be the shooter

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than the person getting shot.

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As I sat in my cold cell,

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I felt helpless,

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unloved and abandoned.

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I felt like nobody cared,

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and I reacted

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with hostility to my confinement.

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And I found myself getting

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deeper and deeper into trouble.

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I ran black market stores,

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I loan sharked,

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and I sold drugs that were illegally smuggled

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into the prison.

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I had in fact become

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what the warden of the Michigan Reformatory called

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"the worst of the worst."

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And because of my activity,

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I landed in solitary confinement

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for seven and a half years

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out of my incarceration.

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Now as I see it, solitary confinement

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is one of the most inhumane and barbaric places

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you can find yourself,

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but find myself I did.

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One day, I was pacing my cell,

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when an officer came and delivered mail.

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I looked at a couple of letters

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before I looked at the letter

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that had my son's squiggly handwriting on it.

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And anytime I would get a letter from my son,

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it was like a ray of light

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in the darkest place you can imagine.

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And on this particular day, I opened this letter,

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and in capital letters, he wrote,

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"My mama told me why you was in prison:

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murder."

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He said, "Dad, don't kill.

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Jesus watches what you do. Pray to Him."

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Now, I wasn't religious at that time,

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nor am I religious now,

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but it was something so profound

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about my son's words.

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They made me examine things about my life

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that I hadn't considered.

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It was the first time in my life

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that I had actually thought about the fact

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that my son would see me as a murderer.

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I sat back on my bunk

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and I reflected on something I had read

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in [Plato],

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where Socrates stated in "Apology"

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that the unexamined life isn't worth living.

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At that point is when the transformation began.

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But it didn't come easy.

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One of the things I realized,

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which was part of the transformation,

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was that there were four key things.

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The first thing was,

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I had great mentors.

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Now, I know some of you all are probably thinking,

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how did you find a great mentor in prison?

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But in my case,

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some of my mentors

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who are serving life sentences

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were some of the best people
to ever come into my life,

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because they forced me to look at my life honestly,

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and they forced me to challenge myself

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about my decision making.

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The second thing was literature.

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Prior to going to prison,

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I didn't know that there were so many brilliant

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black poets, authors and philosophers,

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and then I had the great fortune

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of encountering Malcolm X's autobiography,

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and it shattered every
stereotype I had about myself.

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The third thing was family.

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For 19 years, my father stood by my side

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with an unshakable faith,

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because he believed that I had what it took

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to turn my life around.

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I also met an amazing woman

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who is now the mother of
my two-year-old son Sekou,

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and she taught me how to love myself

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in a healthy way.

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The final thing was writing.

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When I got that letter from my son,

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I began to write a journal

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about things I had experienced in my childhood

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and in prison,

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and what it did is it opened up my mind to the idea

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of atonement.

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Earlier in my incarceration, I had received

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a letter from one of the relatives of my victim,

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and in that letter,

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she told me she forgave me,

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because she realized I was a young child

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who had been abused

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and had been through some hardships

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and just made a series of poor decisions.

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It was the first time in my life

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that I ever felt open to forgiving myself.

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One of the things that happened

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after that experience is that

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I thought about the other men who were incarcerated

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alongside of me,

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and how much I wanted to share this with them.

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And so I started talking to them about

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some of their experiences,

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and I was devastated to realize

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that most of them came from
the same abusive environments,

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And most of them wanted help
and they wanted to turn it around,

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but unfortunately the system

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that currently holds 2.5 million people in prison

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is designed to warehouse

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as opposed to rehabilitate or transform.

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So I made it up in my mind

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that if I was ever released from prison

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that I would do everything in my power

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to help change that.

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In 2010, I walked out of prison

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for the first time after two decades.

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Now imagine, if you will,

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Fred Flintstone walking into an episode

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of "The Jetsons."

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That was pretty much what my life was like.

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For the first time, I was exposed to the Internet,

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social media,

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cars that talk like KITT from "Knight Rider."

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But the thing that fascinated me the most

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was phone technology.

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See, when I went to prison,

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our car phones were this big

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and required two people to carry them.

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So imagine what it was like when I first grabbed

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my little Blackberry

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and I started learning how to text.

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But the thing is, the people around me,

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they didn't realize that I had no idea

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what all these abbreviated texts meant,

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like LOL, OMG, LMAO,

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until one day I was having a conversation

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with one of my friends via text,

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and I asked him to do something,
and he responded back, "K."

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And I was like, "What is K?"

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And he was like, "K is okay."

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So in my head, I was like,

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"Well what the hell is wrong with K?"

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And so I text him a question mark.

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And he said, "K = okay."

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And so I tap back, "FU." (Laughter)

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And then he texts back, and he asks me

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why was I cussing him out.

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And I said, "LOL FU,"

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as in, I finally understand.

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(Laughter)

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And so fast forward three years,

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I'm doing relatively good.

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I have a fellowship at MIT Media Lab,

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I work for an amazing company called BMe,

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I teach at the University of Michigan,

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but it's been a struggle

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because I realize that there are more

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men and women coming home

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who are not going to be
afforded those opportunities.

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I've been blessed to work with some amazing

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men and women,

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helping others reenter society,

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and one of them is my friend named Calvin Evans.

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He served 24 years for a crime he didn't commit.

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He's 45 years old. He's currently enrolled in college.

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And one of the things that we talked about

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is the three things that I found important

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in my personal transformation,

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the first being acknowledgment.

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I had to acknowledge that I had hurt others.

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I also had to acknowledge that I had been hurt.

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The second thing was apologizing.

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I had to apologize to the people I had hurt.

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Even though I had no expectations
of them accepting it,

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it was important to do because it was the right thing.

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But I also had to apologize to myself.

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The third thing was atoning.

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For me, atoning meant

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going back into my community

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and working with at-risk youth

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who were on the same path,

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but also becoming at one with myself.

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Through my experience of being locked up,

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one of the things I discovered is this:

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the majority of men and women

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who are incarcerated are redeemable,

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and the fact is,

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90 percent of the men and
women who are incarcerated

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will at some point return to the community,

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and we have a role in determining what kind

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of men and women return to our community.

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My wish today

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is that we will embrace

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a more empathetic approach

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toward how we deal with mass incarceration,

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that we will do away with

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the lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key mentality,

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because it's proven it doesn't work.

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My journey is a unique journey,

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but it doesn't have to be that way.

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Anybody can have a transformation

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if we create the space for that to happen.

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So what I'm asking today

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is that you envision

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a world where men and women

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aren't held hostage to their pasts,

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where misdeeds and mistakes

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don't define you for the rest of your life.

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I think collectively, we can create that reality,

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and I hope you do too.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)