Yet history reminds us that laws have also defended injustice, prolonged inequality, and restricted opportunity. This sentence asks us to distinguish between respect for the rule of law and blind acceptance of every law ever written.
When I first began THE CONUNDRUMS QUOTATION PROJECT, it was inspired by my long-term fascination with curating quotes from the various books I read across genres. Some quotes are mine, annotations on books I’ve read, including the Bible. Writers, especially poets, look to write the perfect phrase or find the best word to describe that “thing.” When we find something noteworthy, we might jot it in a notebook, write it on an index card, or on the back of an envelope. Years ago, I read, “Truly Your Forgiveness I Implore,” a poem by the Romanian poet Nina Cassian, and a phrase from it, “the black blood of poetry,” profoundly struck me. One day, I knew that phrase would be the title of a collection of poetry. It took more than two decades, but I wrote that book with that title.
For many incarcerated people, the law library is more than a room filled with books.
It is a place where hope is researched, arguments are sharpened, and dignity is reclaimed one page at a time. Long before a case reaches a courtroom, justice often begins with someone determined enough to keep reading.
Where do people go when every other door has closed?
Others occur so quietly that we do not recognize them until years later.
Innocence rarely disappears all at once. It fades through disappointment, compromise, grief, and survival. Perhaps the soul is much the same. The challenge is not only to preserve it, but to remember what it looked like before the world demanded so much of us.
What parts of ourselves are worth protecting at any cost?
People often think this sentence is about despair.
It is actually about endurance.
For centuries, writers have imagined hell as separation—from hope, from community, from purpose. Yet even in places marked by confinement, people laugh, study, pray, dream, and continue searching for meaning.
Perhaps the greater story is not that prison resembles hell.
Perhaps it is that humanity survives there anyway. And the majority of people in prison are “prisoners of hope!”
On this day, 174 years ago, Frederick Douglass delivered his speech, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? On July 3, 2026, just before America’s 250th birthday, for the first time, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley delivered Douglass’ speech on the House floor.
Douglass, one of the great orators in American history, delivered this speech thirteen years before the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States. This speech is one of the greatest in American history, and is worth quoting in many respects, beginning with:
. . . The simple story of it is, that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects . . . You were under the British Crown . . . But, your fathers . . . They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to . . . To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy . . . but there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men’s souls . . . On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshippers of property . . . in the form of a resolution . . . it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it. “Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.” Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-‐day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history—the very ring-‐bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny . . .
Douglass goes on to speak about the hypocrisy of American revolutionaries and their descendants. Nonetheless, Douglass predicted that slavery in America would not last much longer. Despite his scathing speech, Douglass concluded on a hopeful note. His hopefulness is like a strand of DNA running through the gene pool of the descendants of the Africans brought to the colony of Virginia in August 1619.
Just before the nation’s 200th birthday, on February 19, 1976, President Gerald Ford issued a message recognizing Black History Month, becoming the first President to do so. In his message, President Ford called upon the public to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”
Douglass’ speech should be required reading in school, for any politician who takes the oath of office, and for people who become U.S. citizens.
The Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, was adopted on July 4, 1776, 250 years ago.
The first line might be the most meaningful in the annals of history, certainly for America! But it does not stand on its own.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
The man who wrote those lines owned slaves. To state that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves is an historical fact. America is uneasy with facts, especially facts surrounding her founders and heroes. To state facts is not unpatriotic. America would be a more perfect Union if it faced the facts of its history. Its history does not take away from what we think of as the “greatness” of America.
I was going to begin this blog with, “The facts before the rant,” but this is not a rant.
From the very beginning, Black folk served this country and fought in every major war, including the War for Independence. In my family alone, we served in four of the major wars of the 20th century. As a teenager, my father, a native Southern son, was drafted into the segregated U.S. Army to serve during World War II. His uncle had served in World War I. One of my father’s brothers served during the Korean War, and cousins served during the Vietnam War. Black folk have always put skin in the game for the country they love, even when the country did not show them love!
I was born at the very beginning of the Black Arts Era. Samuel Yette, the first Black national correspondent for Newsweek, wrote that the 1960s were the Decisive Decade. That decade shaped the future of America just as much as July 4, 1776. That decade, America stood on the precipice of becoming a more perfect Union, but we assassinated our great leaders: Malcolm X, JFK, MLK, RFK, Fred Hampton….
When we look at the above leaders from the Decisive Decade, they were all young, in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Thomas Jefferson was 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. George Washington was 57 when he became America’s first president.
When we look at “leaders” today, most are past their prime and seemingly do not want to retire or cultivate the next generation of leaders. This might be America’s undoing. As we celebrate this Day, this is something we should think about, including a mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court Justices, as well as age limits on running for the presidency, say 67, which is the full retirement age for someone born in 1960.
Literature often imagines dramatic moments of moral collapse.
Life is usually quieter.
Sometimes we become strangers to ourselves one compromise at a time. Sometimes exhaustion, grief, fear, or survival slowly erase the person we intended to become. (And the worst thing that a person in prison can become is the stereotype of people in prison!)
I used to collect quotations. I collected thousands of them on index cards. I thought I would pull out quotations from my short story collection, Conundrums: Stories of Law & Justice, and write about them.
Every institution has its own personality and language.
Some speak through mission statements. Others speak through silence.
Prisons teach a different lesson. Privacy is nonexistent. Rumor runs rampant. Every action echoes through prison time, and beyond. Yet the deepest irony is that while almost nothing remains hidden inside, so much about life behind the walls remains invisible to the public.
This sentence, and the title of one of the short stories, asks a larger question than it first appears.
What happens to human dignity when privacy disappears?
This collection of short stories (ten plus one bonus story) by Easy Waters is an outstanding read! Each story pulls the reader in and leaves you on the edge of your seat. The first story, “Doing Hard Time,” is a hilarious account of a prisoner being given a ticket (charged with a violation of prison rules) for allegedly exposing his erection to a female officer. Easy Waters, a well-respected jailhouse lawyer, is tasked with representing the prisoner at his hearing to answer the charges. In a masterful display of lawyering, Waters presents institutional records to prove that the prisoner suffers from priapism, a medical condition characterized by persistent, painful erections. The dialogue between the lieutenant in charge of the hearing, the female officer, and Waters is absolutely hysterical, leaving the reader in stitches! The charges are dismissed, and the lieutenant tells Waters and the prisoner not to discuss the matter with anyone. The two men agree, and then can’t wait to tell everyone what happened. As they leave the room, Waters says to his client, “This incident gives new meaning to the phrase ‘doing hard time.'” After reading this initial story, one is eager to encounter the next one, and then the one after that. I literally could not put the book down!
Waters’ stories are filled with humor, wit, and great insight about the absurdities of prison and the legal system. Indeed, the title “Conundrums” is the perfect way to describe the many paradoxes that characterize the system. These matters are addressed in his brilliant story, “Days in the Life of a Jailhouse Lawyer.” Waters takes the reader into the daily, mundane routine of living in prison as a jailhouse lawyer. The early morning exercises in his cell before going to the mess hall for chow, the work in the law library (the reading of law journals and newspapers, filing appeals, and advising prisoners on the merits of their case), all of this is discussed in great detail. With nearly two decades of experience, Waters writes that “hundreds, if not thousands, of cases are imprisoned in my head. They are part of me, like a tumor on my brain that can’t be removed without jeopardizing my life.” Water’s deep investment in reading and studying the law raises a personal, complex dilemma he forthrightly admits: “I believe in it, the ideal. Sometimes I think it’s the only thing I have to weather the storm of imprisonment, a life preserver I won’t let go of…I realize we are a nation of laws, I just don’t trust the men and women who interpret the law, because by and large they are not motivated by its ideals.”
An inmate in an orange jumpsuit writes notes while studying law books in his prison cell.
More than a decade before Michelle Alexander published The New Jim Crow (2010), Waters was addressing the same issues in his short fiction, letters to newspaper editors, essays, and sermons. The stories in this collection expose the corrupt politicians who use “law and order” to get elected; the arbitrary, absurd decisions of parole boards who deny release to worthy candidates and give it to those who are not; the racist and capitalist nature of the carceral state, and a legal system more concerned about punishment than justice. Waters is a master at his craft! His writing is filled with brilliant, descriptive prose, poetic flair, and biting humor. There is also a refreshing honesty, vulnerability, and tenderness that appear in many characters in these stories that remind us of the humanity of incarcerated people. Indeed, the short story is a challenging genre. But I would put Waters right alongside some of the best, including James Baldwin, Anton Chekov, and Flannery O’Connor. This is an outstanding collection, a pure joy to read!
William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters 