Education versus Incarceration
A small Louisiana town struggles to shut down a prison and build a school
Jordan Flaherty
November 14, 2007
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=101&ItemID=14270
Tallulah is a small town in Northeastern Louisiana, one of the poorest regions
in the US. It is about 90 miles from the now-legendary town of Jena, and like
Jena it is a town with a large youth prison that was closed after allegations of
abuse and brutality. Also like Jena, residents of Tallulah are involved in a
modern civil rights struggle. Their town has become a battleground in the
national debate on whether to spend money to educate or incarcerate poor, mostly
Black, youth.
On a recent Saturday afternoon I visited Hayward Fair, a civil rights movement
veteran from Tallulah. Mr. Fair is one of the founders of People United for
Education and Action, a grassroots organization dedicated to transforming the
local prison (now called Steve Hoyle Rehabilitation Center and primarily holding
adults convicted of nonviolent offenses) into a "success center" which would
give classes and training. If they succeed in their struggle it will be the
first time in this country - where for decades funding for education has been
cut while prisons have been built – that a prison has been shut down and
replaced by a school, a groundbreaking reversal of the nationwide trend.
When I met with Mr. Fair he was going door to door with activists from the
grassroots organizations Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated
Children, Southern Center for Human Rights and Safe Streets Strong Communities.
At nearly seventy years old, with muscular arms and a shaved head, he shows no
sign of slowing down. "I've been doing a little community organizing," he
explained, modestly. As he went from house to house, it seemed everyone in the
city knew and respected him, and everyone had an opinion about both the prison
and what Tallulah needs. Wielding respect from both his age and his reputation
for fighting for justice locally, Fair was bringing a vision of a new Tallulah
to residents who have seen a town die around them.
Speaking in a gravelly voice and a deliberate step weighted with experience, Mr.
Fair led me to the site of the prison. "When the prison came to town most
people weren't even aware of what it was going to be," he said. "It was
something that produced jobs and people needed jobs so there wasn't no real
resistance to it." But now, the local economy is devastated, and Fair blames
the prison, at least in part. "It's killing the economy of the area, in my
opinion," he claims. "Prisons only bring money to the owners."
When you enter the city limits, the first thing you see after you pass the
"Welcome to Tallulah" sign is the prison, a large complex of 33 buildings
surrounded by fence and barbed wire. Standing nearby, Fair gestures down the
street. "We're about a block and a half from the junior high school, we're
about 5 blocks from the senior high school. Our children have to walk out from
the classroom and the next thing they see is all these bars and towers and all
these big buildings. It had a psychological effect on the children and the
adults as well. It really just devastated this whole city." For several years,
the people of Tallulah, aligned with Families and Friends of Louisiana's
Incarcerated Children, have fought this struggle, to not just close the local
prison, but to open something different in its place, to demonstrate that small
rural towns don't have to turn to prisons for jobs.
Tallulah, which is seventy percent Black, used to be a town that Black folks
would travel from all around the region to visit. To demonstrate his point,
Fair took me to the downtown, to street of shuttered storefronts, with virtually
no people out. "On a day like this, on a Saturday evening, you could hardly
walk down the streets of Tallulah, you'd be bumping into people. You had all
businesses on this end of town," he gestured across the street. "All the way
down, nothing but businesses; grocery stores, cafes, clothing stores, barrooms,
you name it. The town was wide open, stayed open 24 hours a day, seven days a
week."
Now Fair says, the town is a very different place. "We are working trying to
bring our image back up, but we are now labeled as a prison town." As in much
of the country, prisons are a big business in rural Louisiana, and this part of
the state has several. "You go east you got a youth prison. West down here you
got this facility, you go south you got two prisons right outside the city
limits." Tallulah is now far removed from its former glory. Young people move
away as soon as they're able. "We lose maybe 70% of our young people," he
says. "Why should they stay? There's no opportunities here for them."
The prison in Tallulah has a long and notorious reputation. Minnesota Senator
Paul Wellstone visited in 1998, and incarcerated kids broke onto a roof to shout
out complaints about their treatment. The New York Times wrote several articles
that same year, including a front page report calling Tallulah the worst youth
prison in the US, and the US Justice Department sued the state of Louisiana over
the systematic abuse at the prison, where even the warden said, "it seemed
everybody had a perforated eardrum or a broken nose."
New Orleans-based journalist Katy Reckdahl chronicled the beginnings of the
struggle to transform this prison in an important series of articles several
years ago. But now the effort is nearing its final days. Activists have lined
up local and statewide support for this important transition, from the community
level to meetings with the Governor, to support of national allies such as the
Center for Third World Organizing and the Southern Center for Human Rights.
With a new Governor on the way, the next few weeks will be crucial for this
struggle, and for the fate of Tallulah. If the people of Tallulah win, it will
be an important victory for people everywhere concerned about issues of race,
education, and criminal justice.
Mr. Fair is proud of the civil rights history of Tallulah, which is located not
far from where the Deacons for Defense, a pioneering Black armed self-defense
group active during the civil rights movement, was formed. "We had some people
here that went off to world war two, then they come back here and were second
class citizens," he explained. "They had to ride in the back of the bus. They
said were not going to put up with this. So we started a movement ourselves, to
eliminate that."
Fair experienced intense white resistance to basic rights for Black folks. "At
one point the Klan met about three miles outside of town and had a rally and
they was going to come into town that evening. They thought they were going to
run all the Blacks out of town," Fair says. But resistance in the town was
strong. "When they came into town the streets was crowded. People were walking
stiff legged, with their shotguns down under their pants. We told the police
were going to take care of ourselves; we don't need you to take care of us.
They thought they were going to scare somebody, but nobody here was afraid of
them."
I asked Fair how Tallulah fits into a wider struggle. "All the eyes of the
world is focused on the Jena Six. But every small community in the south, and in
the north, has its Jena Six. Maybe you can't visualize it or maybe you don't
want to visualize it, but this is not just small rural towns. Look at New
Orleans, during the storm. When the people was trying to cross the bridge to
get out of the flood, there were people on the other side, armed, that would not
let them cross. In the rest of the nation people are being treated the same
way. Chicago, New York, it don't matter where you are."
Before leaving, I asked Fair what kept him in the struggle. "I ain't
struggling, I'm free," he answered, explaining that this struggle is not about
him. "I'm gonna do what I know is right, and I don't care who you are. I see the
young people in the community that need help. That's what keeps me going. If you
see something and you feel it aint right, don't say they ought to change it, get
in there, roll your sleeves up and say lets change it. That's the only way. You
gotta keep a cool head and do the thing that's right. When you know right and
fight for it, you're gonna win."
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Jordan Flaherty is an editor of Left Turn Magazine. He was the first journalist
from outside of northern Louisiana to write about the case of the Jena Six. You
can see more reporting on the Jena Six case online at
http://www.leftturn.org.