Russ Roberts: Our topic today is Martin Luther King Jr.’s (MLK) “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” and an introduction to a new book of King’s writings. How did this all start?
Dwayne Betts: This is really amazing, because every good thing that’s happened in my life has happened when I’ve tried to do something for other people. And for the first time, the King family approved the publication of a collection of books, individual books, based on the speeches. And the first book was i have a dream, The foreword was written by King’s children. And this is amazing. The book is actually numbered and laid out the way King spoke, so you can actually read it and embody his voice. It’s like a poem, you’re living in the words. They wanted to take this book into prisons.
And my friend, Brother Yao Hawk S. Glover, who I met within a month of coming out of prison, I had read all these books about this. He was selling books out of his cart, and I was reading all these books. all He asked me, “What college are you going to?” I hadn’t even graduated. He asked, “What school are you going to?” I looked it up. I said, “Hey, I just got out of prison.” And he asked me, “So, are you a poet?” Who could ask that question after hearing the word “prison”?
I said yes, and we developed a friendship, and I ended up working at a black-owned bookstore called Caribe Books. So a lot of my life has come from there. But he knew the people at Harper Collins, and they wanted to get this book into prisons. So, he introduced me to those people, and we talked. They told me about the project, and I said, “Wait a minute. Has the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. ever written anything about prisons?”
And he didbut I must have been overwhelmed at that moment, because I was able to say, I’m going to distribute 1,500 copies of this book to prisons all over the country. And it felt meaningful, because it meant that I was doing it with Primo Levi, in debt. It meant that I was doing this important thing, and doing it for a kaleidoscope of a world that I care about. They said, “Yes, it’s ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail.'” And I said, “What a fool I am.”
So I said, “Wait a minute, let me just listen to you,” because they had people who wrote the introductions. I said, “Has anyone written the introduction for that piece? Because I should write that piece, and I’ll tell you why.” But they said, “Wait a minute, let me check.” And they said, “The strange thing is, everyone has someone to write the introductions except for that one.”
I said, “Look, let me tell you the story. I was booked into jail on December 8th, went to court on December 9th, and found out I was going to miss Christmas.”
And I started crying uncontrollably. The new Playstation was coming out and I was going to buy it. But they told me I couldn’t see my mom until the new year. That’s what they told me. So you can see I never understood that I couldn’t see my mom. Many It was New Year’s. But I explained that the only two times I’d ever cried in prison was that day. And the next year, I was in a top bunk. And it was the first of Martin Luther King’s birthday, and I’d heard this story so many times, but that day I heard about the bus boycott, the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the civil rights movement. And I just couldn’t stop crying.
‘Cause I knew I wasted my life for a pistol and $10. So I told them this story. I was like, “Hey, I gotta write this foreword.” And they were like, “That’s a great story, but your family, you need permission, so we don’t know if it’s going to happen. But you like it. You like it. You like Freedom Reads. Let’s check it out. Let’s see if your family approves of this.” And I was like, “Why, why would you approve?” myself?’ So I let it go, and then three or four days later they contacted me and said, ‘Dwayne, believe it or not, you were already on the short list of people who were approved by the family to write these testimonials.’
That’s hard for me to believe. You have to have faith in prison, especially when you’re the most vulnerable person in prison. And I was in the top 2% of the most vulnerable people in prison, at least. I weigh 120 pounds, I’m 16 years old, I’m from a state that’s not where I’m from, I have no friends, no cousins, no family. You have to have faith. But when you come home, you think that everything you do on the outside is in your hands.
And sometimes it’s really amazing to be reminded, wow, who would have thought something like this could happen? And that’s this story.
Russ Roberts: That’s amazing. You mentioned this in a previous episode, but you were in prison. For a pistol and $10. You stole someone’s car. I think you were 16. How long were you in prison?
