By Vernon Nelson
An inside look behind the wall into the mind of prison author Vernon Nelson
“Mr. Nelson, will you please stand for sentencing? I hereby sentence you to life in prison with parole eligibility beginning after twenty years.”
I heard the words, but I was too far gone in the dizzy haze of those words for the grief to fully register. Yet and still, that’s some sobering shit to hear at twenty-two years old. People often ask me how I managed to weather nineteen years of imprisonment. How did I survive the harsh elements of oppression and the many obstacles placed before me? One of my cellmates told me once, “Vernon, you are a walking, talking story of redemption.”
To this date, his words still echo in my mind and bring a certain warmth to my heart. NIneteen years in a prison cell is a small existence designed to break the human spirit.
I arrived in prison at the tender age of twenty-two years old. By law, I was an adult but realistically I was still a kid in darkness, waiting for someone to light the torch and show me the way, to trust and believe. The criminal justice system did not intend for me to survive, or to have you read any of my story, but now I am nineteen years into a twenty-year sentence.
Perhaps I should not have survived the torturous elements in this ruthless jungle, because prison is a bloody arena – a blood sport of sorts. In them, I have seen riots, violent rapes, stabbings, and murder; and I can tell you assuredly there is nothing worse than seeing a man stripped of his manhood (forcibly) by other men. It’s a city of its own in here and from much experience, I’ve learned the general public – with the exception of family and loved ones – generally does not give a f*ck about us behind these walls because we have committed crimes against people. It’s as if we’ve been discarded and the poor (and sometimes inhumane) treatment against us is justified by our crimes. No one will admit this, but I’ve been here so long that if these walls could talk, they would tell the stories of prisoners that were beaten by officers and died because of refusal by doctors and Departments of Corrections to give surgeries to those in need, therefore ending in their death. They would tell these stories and so many more.
But in these same prisons that I’ve witnessed so evil, I’ve also seen prison-intellectuals with such vast knowledge and understanding that they could whip many seasoned-politicians in debate with their sharp minds given the chance. Some of the brightest minds and greatest thinkers have come out of the shadows of prison.
But you won’t hear many stories like these because they don’t paint the picture of people who actually profit from locking up people in need, to keep both the confidence and fear in the public to support building more prisons.
The fact of the matter is that every prisoner that has a murder charge is not inherently evil. But many politicians and the system promote this notion to blur the lines for the public and to dehumanize prisoners. It’s another form of devaluing our humanity.
To be fair, there are some people who need to be in prison, and they can usually be identified as those who can’t stop themselves from continuing to do the violent things that brought them there. But there are also so many in prison who have paid their debt, served their time and overcome their shortcomings, liberating themselves mentally. When we see those men and women in our midst, we should wrap our arms around them and uplift them with our love and support.
We live in a hypocritical world that judges harshly and struggles with the action to forgive. Our answer to every offense has generally become, “lock them up in prison and give them life.” Then, we as a society go to church and call ourselves good Christians, morally upstanding good people. Even though scientists have done studies that show the human brain doesn’t become fully developed until age twenty-five, we still have no problem as a society giving a fourteen year old (or anyone else under age twenty-five) life in prison. That kind of absurdity brews the blood that runs through my veins. We say that black lives matter, but the truth is society demonizes, dehumanizes, and devalues black lives each day across America, both in the free world and in the criminal justice system. From police brutality, to extremely harsh sentences for the same crime our white counterparts receive less time for, on a broad scale.
I couldn’t have known when I arrived at prison at twenty-two years old that I would become the enlightened, conscious black man that I am today. A lot of that is because when you are still frozen in adolescence it’s easy to make bad decisions. You are lost within your own self.
It wasn’t until several years into my prison sentence that I was able to hold the mirror up to myself and examine why I had made the mistakes that brought me here. Until that point, I had been running from confronting myself like a speeding ghost across the wall. It’s hard to feel judged by others, not to mention myself. It’s hard to accept the things I am not proud of that I did in my youthful stupor.
But it was in that mining within myself that I was able to find the black gold and jewels inside me. From that point on, I began to read, study and cultivate a great mind, shaping myself into a greater self. I identified my shortcomings and reformed them. I learned about myself and others.
Isolation yields clarity and through growth and maturation I have liberated myself mentally from the falsehoods of this ever-changing world, and I want to help others do the same. And now I’ll leave my burning cigar in the window of your eye in hopes that it will be a slow burn as you re-read and ponder on this jewel.
In the end, I weathered the elements of nineteen years of imprisonment by confronting my value and going beyond the walls of concrete and steel. When I elevated my thoughts I was able to rise and wear my crown as a black king.
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