About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

35 Harv. B.L. Law J. 27 (2019)
21st Century Harriet Tubman: An Interview with Susan Burton

handle is hein.journals/hblj35 and id is 31 raw text is: 21ST CENTURY HARRIET TUBMAN?: AN INTERVIEW WITH SUSAN BURTON Bryonn Bain* Then the Lord said to Moses, Rise up early in the morning and present yourself to Pharaoh, as he goes out to the water, and say to him, 'Thus says the Lord,' Let my people go, that they may serve me. -Exodus 8:20 Los Angeles is ground zero for mass incarceration. With an average of 17,000 people incarcerated daily (as of 2015),1 LA incarcerates more peo- ple than any city in the world. The City of Angels is, in fact, the City of Incarceration. I have worked in prisons for over 30 years. In the late 1980s, I began performing hip hop, spoken word, blues and theater in prisons on the other side of the country in New York. But it was only after I was racially profiled and wrongfully jailed by the New York City Police Department that I saw the power of my work as an artist to be used for activism. I have spent my career since working to build transformative learning communities by bridging prisons and institutions dedicated to the arts and education. After more than a decade of facilitating and teaching pro- grams linking facilities like Rikers Island and Sing Sing prison to institu- tions like NYU, Columbia University and Carnegie Hall, I was invited to UCLA to develop a Prison Education Program linking the nation's lead- ing public university2 to those incarcerated in Los Angeles. * Director of the UCLA Prison Education Program and Associate Professor of African American Studies and World Arts and Cultures/Dance at the University of Califor- nia, Los Angeles. J.D., Harvard Law School. This article was written as a part of the Narrative of Freedom (NOF) Research Collective, a participatory oral history project that explores the effects of racialized hyper-incarceration on families. I would like to thank Matthew Griffith, Rosie Rios, Dianna Williams, Joanna Navarro, and other members of the NOF Collective for their research contributions and suggestions. Lastly, and most importantly, many thanks to Ms. Susan Burton whose unyielding commitment to liberation is a beacon of light for me and many others around the world. 1. Breeanna Hare & Lisa Rose, Pop. 17,049: Welcome to America's largest jail, CNN (Sept. 26, 2016), https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/22/us/lsa-ling-this-is-life-la-county- jail-by-the-numbers/index.html. 2. See Top Public Schools: National Universities, U.S. NEws & WORLD REP. (2019), https:// www.usnews.com/best-colleges /rankings/national-universities/top-publlc (rank-

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most