Author Archives: William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

About William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Award-winning poet, playwright, and essayist. Author of three books of poetry, "Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass: Remembrance of Things Past and Present"; "Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats"; "The Black Feminine Mystique," and a novel, "Streets of Rage," written under his pen name Easy Waters. All four books are available on Amazon.com. Waters has over 25 years of experience in the criminal legal system. He is a change agent for a just society and a catalyst for change.

Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature – The Series

Posted on February 17, 2026 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

In this series, I trace how a teenage brush with homicide headlines became a lifelong interrogation of justice. From police tape and tabloid “if it bleeds, it leads” narratives to courtrooms, prisons, and the literature that wrestles with guilt, I ask what truth survives punishment. Along the way, I revisit forgotten voices, personal losses, and hard-earned lessons—seeking a language that honors victims, confronts systems, and insists on humanity, story at a time, without flinching. Continue reading →

Posted in being a teenager, Black History Month, Education, ezwwaters, Genealogy, Growing Up, Justice Chronicles, juveniles, Life Sentences, Martin Luther King, Murder, Parole, parole board, Politics, race, raising black boys, Reentry, remorse, Segregation, Slavery, Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, Streets of Rage, The Black Blood of Poetry, urban decay, Urban Impact | Leave a comment

Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature, Part IV

Posted on February 16, 2026 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

I began writing this fourth and “final” installment of “Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature” on Martin Luther King Day. I re-read Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (16 April 1963), not for purposes of this series, but on this … Continue reading →

Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Growing Up, Justice Chronicles, Life Sentences, Martin Luther King, raising black boys, Slavery, Streets of Rage, urban decay, Urban Impact | Tagged 13th, 13th Amendment, 1863 Craft Riots, Alexis de Tocqueville, Ava DuVernay, Black Codes, Charles Hynes, Conviction Integrity Unit, Darryl Alston, De Profundis, Dostoevsky, EJI, Gustave de BHZeaumont, Hillary Clinton, hyperincarceration, Johnson Crime Commission, Jonathan fleming, Kenneth Thompson, LBJ, Letter from Birmingham Jail, Loic Wacquant, mass incarceeration, Michael G. Pass, Nuremberg, Oscar Wilde, Post-Reconstruction, prison industrial complex, Reconstruciton, Red Summer, richard nixon, Rosewood massacre, Sara Mayeux, school-to-prisoh pipeline, The House of the Dead, Tulsa Race Riot, war on crime, War on Drugs | Leave a comment

One Hundred Years of Black History

Posted on February 16, 2026 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

My father was born the same month Negro History Week was announced, timed to Lincoln’s February 12 and Douglass’s February 14 birthdays. Nearing his centennial, he embodied Black history: North Carolina segregation, a segregated WWII Army, then migration to New York. He rarely spoke of it, but history and literature helped me understand. Continue reading →

Posted in Black History Month, Black patriotism, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Family, Fatherhood, Fathers, Growing Up, Lest We Forget, Martin Luther King, race, raising black boys, Segregation, The Black Blood of Poetry | Tagged Abraham Lincoln, Associaiton for the Study of Negro Life, Bard College, Bicentennial, Black Arts Movement, Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson, Decisive Decade, Douglass, Fourth of July, Frederic, Kent State, Negro History Week, North Carolina, President Geral Ford, Samuel Yette, Segregation, The Ethics of Living Jim Crow, The Ethics of Living Jim Crow-An Autobiographical Sketch | Leave a comment

Blood at the Root: Then and Now

Posted on February 5, 2026 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

My first book, the award-winning epic poem, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass: Remembrance of Things Past and Present, deals with the theme(s) of “the captivity, exploitation and suffering of Black people in America.” But not all of … Continue reading →

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, crime, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, Murder | Tagged books, Equal Justice Initiative, Movies, radio, soundtrack, Strange Fruit, Whit Mob Lynches Thomas Brown on Courthouse Lawn in Nicholasville KY | Leave a comment

Revisiting _The Miseducation of the Negro_ This Black History Month

Posted on February 3, 2026 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Carter G. Woodson’s seminal book, The Miseducation of the Negro, published in 1926, is a book Black folk should periodically revisit, perhaps every three years, ideally every year. If you are Black and you have not read the book, then … Continue reading →

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Education, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, Politics, race, raising black boys, Slavery | Tagged 1619 Project, african-american, Aristotelian Logic, Aunt Jemima, Black history, Black History Month, Brown v. Board of Education, Candace Owens, Carter G. Woodson, Clarence Thomas, Classical Rhetoric, Compulsory Education Act (1852), culture, General Grammar, history, Jim Crow, Nicholas Capaldi, Plessy v. Ferguson, Russell Sage College, The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, The Miseducation of the Negro, Tribium, U.S. Senator Tim Scott, Uncle Tom, writing | Leave a comment

Daddy Dearest

Posted on February 2, 2026 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

My father, a Native Southern Son, was born in the same month and year Negro History Week was established. Then, we were Negroes. Thirty-four years later, when I was born, we were still Negroes. When my father died at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Family, Fatherhood, Fathers, Lest We Forget, race, raising black boys, Relationships, Slavery | Tagged 1960s, Black Arts Era, Civil War, Confederacy, Decisive Decade, Emmett Till, Fourth of July, history, Jim Crow, NOrth Carolina Governor Michael Easley, politics, Richard Wright, Segregated South, Slavery, Southland, The Ethics of Living Jim Crow, Virginia, War of Northern Aggression, World War II | Leave a comment

Black History Month: Celebrating a Legacy of Resilience

Posted on February 1, 2026 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Uplifting my Black History Series Blog. This year is the 100th Anniversary of what we know call Black History Month! Continue reading →

Posted in Black History Month, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Lest We Forget | Tagged 1619, 1880 U.S. Census, african-american, Barbados, Black history, Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson, culture, history, Lift Every Voice and Sing, Negro History Week, North Carolina, racism, The Miseducation of the Negro | Leave a comment

Happy Black History Week!

Posted on February 1, 2026 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Uplifting my Black History Month Series Blog! Continue reading →

Posted in Black History Month | Tagged Black History Week | Leave a comment

For the Love of Poetry

Posted on January 13, 2026 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

I love poetry. It is only fitting that my fourth book of poetry, The Black Blood of Poetry, will be released this Valentine’s Day. Although this forthcoming selection, on its face, may not seem like “love poetry,” it is, because … Continue reading →

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Growing Up, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Poetry, Politics, race, Revolution, Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, Streets of Rage | Tagged 1960s, Countee Cullen, Decisive Decade, JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, RFK, The Black Blood of Poetry, William Blake, William Carlos Williams, William Shakespeare, Willliam Wordsworth | Leave a comment

Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature, Part III

Posted on January 3, 2026 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Continued… (If you missed the second installment, then click here: Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature, Part II) The modern War on Crime, as we know it, was inaugurated with Richard Nixon’s campaign for the presidency in 1968. Nixon declared … Continue reading →

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, Politics, race | Tagged Abel Meeropol, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Alexis de Tocqueville, Attica Correctional Facility, Attica Rebellion, Billie Holiday, cien anons de soledad, Class, De Profundis, Democracy in America, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Great Society, Gustave De Beaumont, Hudson Valley Black Press, hyperincarceration, Loic Wacquant, Medellin Cartel, Michelle Alexander, Nelson Rockefeller, News on a Kidnapping, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Oscar Wilde, prisonm-industrial complex, race, revanchist America, Reynold's Magazine, richard nixon, Strange Fruit, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, THe Four Zoas, The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, The House of the Dead, The New Jim Crow, The United States Penitentiary System and its Application in France, war on crime, War on Drugs, Watergate, William Blake | 1 Comment

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