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PAGES FROM THE LIFE OF A BLACK PRISONER FRANK E. CHAPMAN, JR. To enter prison at the age of 19 is no extraordinary event for thousands of young Black people in the Ghetto-it merely happens every day. The day I entered the Missouri State Penitentiary was November 3, 1961. To me it wasn't just another day because I entered those gray walls with a sentence of life and fifty years for murder and armed robbery. Elsewhere I have told the story of how this came about, so here I will tell about my experience in prison and my current effort to secure freedom. I was brought to prison in a train along with fifty other inmates. When we arrived at the train station, we were picked up by a bus which transported us inside the prison. Upon arrival we were all taken past an iron gate into a large room. We were lined up and told to take off all our clothing. After we were all naked, the guards told us to bend over so they could inspect our rectums, then we were told to open our mouths so they too could be inspected. After this ordeal we were all given a pair of overalls and taken into another room to be photographed and fingerprinted. All this tool several tedious hours. We arrived at prison at noon. However, for the foregoing reasons, we were not assigned and taken to cells until around 6 o'clock in the evening. The cells were just large enough to accommodate two men and were about 7 ft. wide and 11 ft. long, and 10 ft. high with one set of double-decker bunks. They were located in a building called the "Reception Diagnostic Center." We were to be kept here for about thirty days before being released into the general prison population. During my thirty days in "Reception" I brooded quite a lot about what life could be like if I were in prison. Jail is not something one can adjust to overnight. However, the most disgusting part of my stay in "Reception" was having to sit in a room and listen to the prison officials lecture about the prison rules and codes of conduct. At one lecture the warden said, "In here every son-of-a-bitch [[footnote]]Frank E. Chapman has been corresponding with the Editors of FREEDOMWAYS since 1964. An earlier article "Science and Africa" was published in Vol. 6, No. 3 (1966) in a special section on prison writings. [[footnote/]] 332
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Reopened for Editing 2024-02-14 09:48:54