The American criminal justice system continues to operate as a giant machine of punishment that disproportionately consumes the lives of people of color.

Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt's land. Tell old Pharaoh: let my people go.


— traditional spiritual

I. I SAW THE BEST MINDS OF A BLACK NATION

I watched a Black nation routed through county and city 
     and borough and parish,
I watched them in the intake line at Orleans Parish 
     and Milwaukee, and Cook County jails,
through metal detectors, intake glass,
     and fluorescent noon,
          through the clerk’s square handwriting 
               that turned a name into waiting
                    before the family found a seat.
I saw the bail set high as a wall
And his people back home
     counting seconds between shifts
          counting shifts in a week
I watched mothers count bus fare with one hand
     and court minutes with the other.
I saw pretrial detention sign the plea
     before the lips ever moved
I watched the prosecutor-king
     in his robe of discretion
          offer nine months
          or roll the dice on nine years,
Who knew the plea was not a bargain.
Their names kept becoming case numbers,
     their case numbers dockets,
          their dockets a debt
the building never meant them to repay.

White hands wrote the law
     to trust my face, my fear
          I was not born under this sentence. 
I stand here because my distance serves the cage.
     And I was given the seat farthest from the chain.

I heard a freedom song older than these laws.
I heard a freedom song stronger than these cages.
I heard a freedom song lay claim to Pharaoh.

Pharaoh of the charging decision.
Pharaoh of the mandatory minimum.
Pharaoh feeding on arrest records.
Tell old Pharaoh: let my people go.

II. WHO WERE ASSIGNED A NUMBER

Who were assigned a number before counsel,
     who were scored before heard,
who sat in a room where law and fatigue and routine
     moved faster than mercy,
          where judge and prosecutor
               and the defender with forty open files
               pushed bodies like cattle through a gate—
who the court said was a risk
     because the precinct patrolled their block
          like occupied ground,
               because the arrest record is not a fact
               but an artifact
of where the squad cars are pointed.

Who appealed and were told the deadline was last Tuesday,
     who the lawyer abandoned, who the clock outlasted,
          who the Great Writ was great for
               ask the slaveholder who used it to drag freedom
               back beneath the lash,
               ask the nineteenth-century court that found liberty
                in the slaveholder’s hand.
Who missed by one day and watched the promise become turnstile,
     the turnstile become wall,
          the wall become country,
               the country call itself free.

Pharaoh of finality.
Pharaoh of the plea that punishes trial.
Pharaoh of the date stamped in red above the locked door.
Pharaoh of the clean report laid over the dirty patrol map.
The freedom song comes for release.
Tell old Pharaoh: let my people go.

III. AND WHAT OF THE BLACK WOMAN ON THE BENCH

And what of the Black woman on the bench,
     who looked up and saw the human side,
          who carried her roots into the robe and the robe held them—
          but less than ten percent,
While Black women and men were fourteen percent
     of the breathing and dying and
          mothering and being stopped
          at the corner and being
          sentenced at the county,
          their math was never neutral.
Every empty seat is policy.
Every bench with one face only
is a ballot already cast.

And white resentment looked at her gavel
     and saw a Black woman in the robe,
     in a chair they had not meant for her—
as if the five centuries of partial justice before her
     had come from no body at all,
          from no history,
               from no hand.
I have seen her hand on the gavel
     and felt generations enter the room with it.
I have watched her pronounce sentence
     and heard mercy speak in the language of survival.
Motley in the record.
     Jackson on the marble.
A widening of the room
     the room didn’t want.

Pharaoh of resentment performed as temperament.
Pharaoh of the bench that mistook one history for none.
Pharaoh of one standard, applied twice,
Tell old Pharaoh: let my people go.

IV. I AM SINGING TO YOU FROM THE UPSTREAM

I am singing from upstream,
where arrests accumulate like sediment,
the stop that became a record,
the record that became a score,
the score that became detention,
detention that became pressure,
pressure that became plea,
plea that became history,
history that came back to court
proof the machine had been right all along.

This is the path.

A school door sees the shadow of a patrol car
     before it sees repair.
A family loses a paycheck to a night in county.
     The apartment goes.
          The job goes.
A child learns how to make a collect-call home.
Five hundred fifty-two to one hundred fifty-five—
     by design. 

From downstream
     where habeas waits in a plastic chair
          where every prior is written down
as if it had not begun here,
     as if the patrol route,
          the bail they could not pay,
          the body waiting in a cage
          had not already entered the record.

I know where I stand in this map.
     I have an exemption I drag into daylight,
          I have a seat farthest from the chain.

Pharaoh of the patrol map.
Pharaoh of the bond schedule.
Pharaoh of the shadow negotiation.
Pharaoh of the vanished trial.
Pharaoh of the evidence buried in a drawer.
Tell old Pharaoh: let my people go.

V. BUT I HAVE SEEN THE PROGRESSIVE PROSECUTOR

I have seen reform come in with its tie straight.
I have seen the progressive prosecutor lift one lock
     and leave the hinges, the door, the wall.
I have seen a lawsuit win
     and the courthouse take the credit
          for what it was forced to surrender.
I have seen the street’s demand come into the building burning
          and leave as a shrug with the blood washed off.

Holy are the small mercies.
Holy is the shortened sentence.
Holy is a door opened.
Holy is going home.

But my voice will never mistake relief for reckoning.
     Not when punishment keeps talking after release.
          Not when fees and fines still keep hold of the wrist.
          Not when the sentence ends on paper
          and keeps walking in the world.
A registration form.
          A fee notice.
               A man home from prison still being counted
by what was taken from him.
     A woman at the kitchen table
          reading the conditions of freedom after the sentence ends.

Pharaoh of the fee.
Pharaoh of the hand still in the pocket after the cage is opened.
Pharaoh of the law that follows the body home
and still calls itself finished.
The freedom song does not stop at the prison door.

VI. HOLY

Holy the woman in the Ohio courtroom who saw the human cost.
Holy the judge who would not let a deadline do the killing.
Holy Constance Baker Motley taking a bench they fought to keep from her.
Holy Ketanji Brown Jackson climbing marble steps
     in a country that had spent generations building doors against her.
Holy the defender with forty files
     still fighting like the life in front of her was the whole world.
Holy the one who said not guilty and meant it
     and got years for telling the truth.
Holy the ones the file called collateral
     and the family still called by name.
Holy the mother who says this is not justice
     and makes the room hear her anyway.
Holy the organizer who will not let the fire go out.
Holy the one who came home with the state still on his back
     and put his name on the line anyway.
Holy the ballot taken back from the fine print.
Holy the promise of review when it is more than paper.
Holy the fury that lives after procedure is done with its lies.

Black boys born in 2001
     four times as likely –
not four times as criminal,
     four times as caught,
          four times as processed,
               four times as consumed.
Ol’ Pharaoh is still counting.

I was not born under this sentence.
     I inherited the seat farthest from the chain.
But I am not done with this country.
     Not with its courts.
          Not with its lies about fairness.
              Not with its cages.
Not with a sentence that ends on paper
     and keeps grinding through a man’s life
          long after the cell door opens.

And still the old song rises
where the law would bury it,
     rises past the bars,
     rises through the docket,
     rises in the throat of the ones
          who have already paid enough
and are still being told to pay.

Pharaoh of the gate.
Pharaoh of the docket.
Pharaoh of the vote denied
after the sentence is supposed to be over.
Pharaoh of the hand still in the pocket
after the cage is opened.

Tell old Pharaoh: let my people go.