My portrait of Rodricus Crawford, a Louisiana man who had been wrongfully convicted in the death of
My portrait of Rodricus Crawford, a Louisiana man who had been wrongfully convicted in the death of his infant son, and sentenced to death in Angola State Penitentiary, where he served years alone in a tiny cell on death row before the state Supreme Court ordered his release.This happened in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. Do you know that America incarcerates more people than anywhere on earth, and my home state incarcerates more people than anywhere in America? And in Louisiana, Caddo Parish is the capital of incarceration, and the death penalty. A single man, the prosecutor responsible for sending Rodricus to death row, Dale Cox, was responsible for more than a third of all death sentences in Louisiana, more per capita than anywhere. He was quoted as saying the state needs to “kill more people,” and in Rodricus’ case he wrote to the parole board to request that the prison inflict on him “as much physical suffering as it is humanly possible to endure before he dies.”Caddo Parish was the last capital of the Confederacy in Louisiana. It was a stronghold for the Confederate army. It was the last place to bring down the Confederate flag. During Reconstruction it was known as Bloody Caddo, for its campaign of systemic racial terror meant to maintain the apartheid of the Confederacy. More lynchings happened in Caddo than in any other parish in the state.Rodricus spent his time on death row at Angola, Louisiana’s notorious state prison. Before Angola was a state prison it was a slave plantation. But what’s the difference between Angola the plantation and Angola the prison? Prisoners, mostly black, still are forced to work the fields, guards, mostly white, guard them from horseback with shotguns raised. Systemic racial terror.Faulkner famously said “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Bloody Caddo isn’t past. Angola isn’t past. Lynchings aren’t past. This is all happening right now during your life. During your parent’s life. And their parent’s before. It’s never been past.For the sake of Rodricus, and for justice, we need to make it past.(via Clayton Cubitt on Instagram https://ift.tt/2xzRzmE) -- source link
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