Original reporting · The Birmingham Times
What happened
A documentary about two men incarcerated at Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly known as Angola, turned a Birmingham movie night into a conversation about coming home, The Birmingham Times reported. Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice and the Just Trust hosted “Justice & the Next 250 in Alabama” at Sidewalk Cinema on Oct. 7 and 8. The second night screened Leaving Angola, which the Times described as award-winning.
After the screening, Justin Singleton, one of the film’s subjects, spoke with Ronald McKeithen of Alabama Appleseed, who the Times reported spent 37 years incarcerated in Alabama. Of Derek, the other man in the film, who remains in prison, Singleton said, “Being in prison is not who he is. It’s just where he is,” according to the Times.
The Times reported that Singleton began mentoring at 23 in a Louisiana parish prison, when a man with a reputation for fighting asked him to read a letter from his mother. They started with the alphabet, and months later the man read his first paragraph. “I realized that his inability to read caused him to put up a defense for something else,” Singleton said, as quoted by the Times. He later continued mentoring at Angola, where he pursued seminary studies.
Despite three degrees and 11 certifications, Singleton said, about 60 applications and nearly two dozen interviews brought rejection until an HVAC company hired him; the Times reported he now manages its installation department. He said corrections should be “the place that’s supposed to help them become a better citizen,” and raised concerns that mandatory minimums limit consideration of individual circumstances. The account includes no comment from corrections officials. Asked about his lost years, Singleton said: “Resentment is poison.”
Our reflection
Start with the man Singleton called Chuck. A grown man in a parish prison, known for fighting, who could not read a letter from his own mother. I have sat across from young men like that in detention, and the fists are almost never the whole story. Singleton saw it: the fighting was a defense for something else.
Most of us carry an envelope like his, and a wall built so nobody gets close enough to read it. For some it is a temper. For plenty of educated, churchgoing people it is polish.
Then there is the wall Singleton hit after he came home. Three degrees. Nearly two dozen interviews, and rejection after rejection until one company said yes. Each interview had a person across the table, and the decision kept landing on his past. That is a sin of sight, seeing a man only by his worst chapter. The church has done it too, and so have I.
Jesus knows that wall from the inside. In Nazareth he unrolled Isaiah and read that he had come to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the room answered, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4:22). They thought they knew where he came from, so they could not hear who he was. The Son of God was filed under his hometown.
When the injustice went all the way to a cross, he did not let it turn to poison. Peter writes that when he was reviled he did not revile in return, and kept entrusting himself to the One who judges justly (1 Peter 2:23). Singleton admitted resentment can be warranted, and Scripture agrees a wrong is a wrong. The wound can still be handed to a just Father instead of carried in the chest for decades. Forgiven people learn that slowly, by the Spirit.
When an Ethiopian official was stuck on that same prophet, he asked Philip, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” Philip climbed up and sat beside him (Acts 8:31). Singleton did the same with the alphabet. In his telling, change came through people who stayed close and one employer willing to look twice. That is our work at We The Revolt: twelve months beside a young person after release, when the risk is highest and support usually ends, with job and money skills that make a different life practical.
A film gave a Birmingham room a reason to stay after the credits. You can open that room where you live. Host a screening and leave real time for the talk. Mentor a young person coming home. If you hire, read your own application the way a man with a record would. And pray for Derek and the men still inside, who are more than where they are.
And he said, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
Acts 8:31
Your move
Source: The Birmingham Times, “‘Leaving Angola’ Sparks Conversation on Redemption, Reentry and Criminal Justice at Birmingham’s Sidewalk Cinema”