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LIFE OF A BLACK PRISONER                         CHAPMAN

better; thus I began to think in terms of something dramatic.
  Two incidents made me decide in favor of more militant and dramatic action. One involved me and the other one involved a mentally deranged inmate. The incidents were as follows:
  First Incident: It was January, 1969. I was sick with Asiatic Flu and running a fever of about 101. I attempted to check into the prison hospital but was refused because I was not sick enough. In a few days I was so sick I had to stay in bed in my cell. The inmates nursed me and got food for me. Finally, one night, I got so sick that I asked the brothers in my cell row to raise hell to get the guard back there. The guard came back to talk to me and I told him I wanted to be checked in the hospital He said he would call "control center" and tell them I was very sick. The guard called around 1:00 A.M. but I was carried to the hospital at approximately 3:00 A.M. The reason for the long delay is that the guard a "control center" and refused to call the hospital because he didn't feel an agitator like Frank Chapman could be sick! A Black inmate who worked at "control center" named Elmer Hendricks intervened in my behalf and talked the superior officer of the shift into taking me to the hospital. When I was checked in the hospital I wrote an indignant letter to the Director of the Missouri Department of Corrections.
  Second Incident: A Black inmate named Theodore Taylor was going insane as a result of cruel and unusual punishment. He had been kept in solitary confinement for a year.
  After these two incidents, I began to draft a petition to the U.S. Dept. of Justice and the Missouri Human Rights Commission to end racism and guard brutality in the Missouri State Penitentiary. I conferred with other inmates on how to go about getting signatures on the petition. We decided to have several copies made up and to distribute them in the cell blocks for signatures. After we procured about 256 signatures, I signed my name as the author of the petition and dropped it in the mail box.
  The warden would not permit the petition to be mailed, and he tried to intimidate the signatories with threats of punishment if they would not remove their signatures. He also tried to get some of the inmates to lie and say I forced them to sign the petition against their wills. As a result of these pressure tactics, many inmates became violently mad and there was talk of burning down the penitentiary.
  Truthfully speaking, I felt the penitentiary really needed burning

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