This piece was originally published in Scalawag, which amplifies the voices of activists, artists, and writers reckoning with the South. You can read the original here.
We ascend through darkness, the sound of our boots on the steep metal steps of the guard tower echoing against the cement walls. When we emerge onto a platform, Zeke Jones, Derek Cummings, and I look out at an empty prison yard. It’s almost cartoonishly prisonlike: two sinister cell blocks side by side, bars over the windows, loops of razor wire. We could be in Season Three of “The Walking Dead,” walled off from the zombie apocalypse in this 1930s nightmare version of a prison.
But at this prison in southeastern North Carolina, the gates are open. At the center of the yard below us, there’s a circle of neat brickwork with a sunflower garden exploding out of it. Down past another chain-link fence is a field of pumpkins these guys just finished harvesting.
“This is going to be a climbing wall,” Zeke says excitedly, explaining their future plans for the guard tower. “And there’s gonna be an adventure slide over here, going down. We wanted a waterslide but the insurance was too much.”
[For more on this story by Lewis Wallace, go to http://www.yesmagazine.org/peo...prison-site-20180522]
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