You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Upon receiving his execution date, one of the thousands of men living on death row in the United States had an epiphany: “All there ever is, is this moment. You, me, all of us, right here, right now, this minute, that's love.” Right Here, Right Now collects the powerful, first-person stories of dozens of men on death rows across the country. From childhood experiences living with poverty, hunger, and violence to mental illness and police misconduct to coming to terms with their executions, these men outline their struggle to maintain their connection to society and sustain the humanity that incarceration and its daily insults attempt to extinguish. By offering their hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears, failures, and wounds, the men challenge us to reconsider whether our current justice system offers actual justice or simply perpetuates the social injustices that obscure our shared humanity.
Imprisoned since age nineteen, Alim Braxton has spent more than a quarter century on North Carolina’s death row. During that time, he converted to Islam and dedicated his life to redemption. Braxton, a rapper since the age of thirteen, uses his rhymes as a form of therapy and to advocate for prison reform, particularly by calling attention to the plight of the wrongfully incarcerated. This book, a hip-hop-rich prison memoir, chronicles Braxton’s struggles and triumphs as he attempts to record an album while on death row, something no one has done before. Braxton’s world is complex: full of reflections on guilt, condemnation, incarceration, religious awakening, and the redemptive power of art. Ultimately, Braxton shows us that even amid the brutality of our prison system there are moments of joy, and on death row joy may be the most powerful form of resistance.
Although Scots-Irish immigrants settled this area in the 1740s, completion of a rail spur from Hillsborough to a point 1 mile west of Chapel Hill in 1882 was the critical event that spawned Carrboro. The rail line was built to transport ore from an iron mine that closed after a few years, but the spur provided a vital means to transport local goods to market. Thomas Lloyd realized the commercial potential and built a gristmill and cotton gin beside the rail head in 1883. These enterprises prospered, and in 1898 Lloyd built the Alberta Cotton Mill, establishing the mill town identity that persists today. In the century since its founding, Carrboro has evolved from mill town to a progressive and diverse community. Images of America: Carrboro provides a visual history of the transition of Carrboro from humble agrarian origins to an important center for innovation in the performing arts.
Borrowing from Our Foremothers offers a panorama of women's struggles through artifacts to establish connections between the generations of women's right activists. In a thorough historical retelling of the women's movement from 1848 to 2017, Amy Helene Forss focuses on items borrowed from our innovative foremothers, including cartes de visite, clothing, gavels, sculptures, urns, service pins, and torches. Framing the material culture items within each era's campaigns yields a wider understanding of the women's metanarrative. Studded with relics and ninety-nine oral histories from such women as Rosalynn Carter to Pussyhat Project cocreator Krista Suh, this book contributes an important and illuminating analysis necessary for understanding the development of feminism as well as our current moment.
A first-hand account of the death penalty's wholly destructive nature. In Witness, Lyle C. May offers a scathing critique of shifts in sentencing laws, prison policies that ensure recidivism, and classic "tough on crime" views that don't make society safer or prevent crime. These insightful and analytical essays explore capital punishment, life imprisonment, prison education, prison journalism, as well as what activism from inside looks like on the road toward abolishing the carceral state. No outside journalist can adequately report what happens inside death row or what it is like to live through thirty-three executions of people you know. May's grounded writings in Witness challenge the my...
In 1750, Peter Craven (ca. 1712-1792) settled in North Carolina from New Jersey. His ancestors were originally from England. Descendants and relatives lived in North Carolina, Missouri, Kansas and elsewhere.