Ethical Guidelines for Engaging the Archive
136Interviews
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Rahsaan Thomas(Oakland, CA)Rahsaan Thomas traces how self-education, legal advocacy, and media work inside San Quentin enabled him to transform his incarceration into a platform for storytelling, organizing, and policy change.
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Selina Fulford(New York, NY)
Selina Fulford discusses her experiences with incarceration, addiction, education, and advocacy for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women.
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Erica Bentley(Chicago, IL)Legislative reform and healing justice advocate
Erica Bentley narrates her experiences teaching yoga in prisons and organizing with abolitionist groups in Chicago.
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Linda Small(New York, NY)Advocate for incarcerated women and founder of Reentry Sisters
Linda Small shares her journey from jailhouse attorney to founder of Reentry Sisters, a community-led support network for formerly incarcerated women. She advocates for collective leadership and comprehensive reentry support.
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James King( Philadelphia, PA )
James King narrates his experiences of incarceration and his development as an organizer within California’s prison abolition and decarceration movements.
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Women Transcending21 InterviewsExplore
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Sappho Fulton(New York, NY)
Sappho Fulton, activist and founder of Women Beyond Borders, discusses her experiences with incarceration, reentry, and advocacy for system-impacted communities.
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Tiara Cooper(Dallas, TX and Atlanta, GA)Criminal justice organizer and strategist
Tiara Cooper discusses her path from finding community support networks while incarcerated to her later organizing and advocacy work around bail reform, jail decarceration campaigns, and support for directly impacted individuals in Dallas.
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Joe Moreno(Chicago, IL)
Joe Moreno reflects on his involvement with the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, his work as an alderman from the 1st ward in the Chicago City Council, and his work to secure the Chicago reparations for Burge Torture Victims Ordinance.
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Sol Mercado(Philadelphia, PA and Santa Rosa, CA)
Sol Mercado discusses her experiences with incarceration, community organizing, and her work promoting healing and reentry support through environmental and gardening initiatives.
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Rosma Karlina(Bogotá, Colombia and Sao Paolo, Brazil)
Rosma Karlina narrates her experiences of incarceration in Indonesia and her work as a harm reduction advocate supporting incarcerated women and marginalized communities.
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Marketta Sims(Chicago, IL)
Marketta Sims reflects on her incarceration in Illinois, her development as an organizer while inside, and her continued advocacy for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women through reentry, expungement, and community-based support.
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Bridgette Simpson(New York, NY;New York, NY)
Bridgette Simpson, co-founder and executive director of Barred Business, discusses her childhood, incarceration, and advocacy on behalf of formerly incarcerated people.
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Chryl Lamar(Fresno, CA and Oakland, CA;Fresno, CA and Oakland, CA;Fresno, CA)
Chryl Lamar recounts her early life in Madera, California and reflects on how family instability, violence in the home, and church-based values shaped her outlook and later decisions.
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Charles Hoffman(Chicago, IL)
Charles Hoffman narrates his work as a lawyer and advocate in the movement to abolish the death penalty, recounting decades of legal defense, coalition organizing, and efforts to shift public understanding of capital punishment.
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David Ayala(Detroit, IL)
David Ayala reflects on his involvement in the juvenile and prison systems to his leadership in national organizing, detailing his role in Florida’s Amendment 4 campaign and his movement work for system-impacted voters.
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Ronald Marshall(Atlanta, GA)
Ronald Marshall reflects on growing up in New Orleans, his legal and political education while incarcerated at Angola, and his organizing through the Angola Special Civics Project and VOTE to advance policy reform and legal advocacy.
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Corry Thompson(Atlanta, GA and Atlanta, GA)
Corry Thompson, an organizer with Barred Business, discusses his experiences with incarceration and his subsequent advocacy for reentry and sentencing reform.
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Danny Dandridge(Birmingham, AL, and Pensacola, FL)
Danny Dandridge reflects on growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, his incarceration shaped by mentorship and advocacy, and his later work in reentry support and community-based services for formerly incarcerated and unhoused individuals.
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Adamu Chan(Oakland, CA;Oakland, CA)
Adamu Chan narrates his experiences with incarceration, pandemic-era organizing at San Quentin, and documentary filmmaking to amplify incarcerated voices and drive systemic change.
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Dena Dickerson(Birmingham, AL and Pensacola, FL)
Dena Dickerson narrates her experiences of incarceration in Alabama women’s prisons and her subsequent organizing work focused on reentry, parole reform, and community-based advocacy.
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Qiana Johnson(Clinton, MD and Atlanta, GA)
Qiana Johnson narrates her experiences of incarceration and her subsequent work in reentry advocacy and organizing through Life After Incarceration, focusing on community building and participatory defense.
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Pauline Rodgers(New York, NY)
Pauline Rodgers recounts her incarceration in Mississippi, the chapel she helped establish inside, founding the RECH Foundation, and her continued reentry advocacy.
Ethical Guidelines for Engaging the Archive
In preparing these histories for the public, each interview has passed through an extensive review process and received narrator approval. These oral histories will be physically archived at the Schomburg Center in Harlem, NY, and subsets of the archive will also be accessible at the Freedom Archives in the East Bay, CA, and at the Invisible Institute in Chicago, IL.
Movements Against Mass Incarceration is a public archive, and we encourage the use of these materials for public and community education and advocacy, journalism, research, and other endeavors that serve the public good and constructive social change.
Equally important, we wish to stress the ethical standards that all visitors to the archive are called to uphold. We are honored that you are taking time to explore this archive and ask that you enter the archive with the following principles in mind:
Respect the lives and stories of the narrators.
- Engaging in oral history is often a vulnerable process – we are deeply thankful to our narrators for entrusting us with their stories and hope the process of sharing these stories offers a kind of healing that only telling the truth can. Visitors to the website should recognize that our narrators are active, vital members and contributors to their communities; they have loved ones who care deeply about them. We entrust you to use the material respectfully and thoughtfully. As a witness, please refrain from misrepresenting their stories or taking things out of context, and please do seek out more context to better understand the issues and circumstances that narrators discuss. Witnessing the archives also comes with the expectation that you will not use this material as a mode for justifying harm or retribution. We hope that this project will inspire us to reconsider what real “justice” might look like.
Recognize that some of the content is difficult, and take care accordingly.
- Prison is a fundamentally violent institution, but people’s experiences with violence usually happen long before they experience incarceration. Therefore, some content explored in the archive may be distressing to some readers. We encourage visitors to read our full statement on these matters, and to take heed: we offer a general warning that the personal histories in archive do touch on themes of violence (physical, domestic, sexual, carceral, and self harm), substance abuse, injustice, and more that may be found across the archive. Please practice discretion when engaging the archive and take space as you need it. In particular, please take care when introducing younger audiences to the material or audiences for whom this material may be triggering.
Reference the archive and narrators appropriately.
- Our narrators own the copyright to their oral histories. When citing this material, please attribute it appropriately as: "Oral History of [Narrator First Name and Last Name]" by Interviewer First and Last Name, Movements Against Mass Incarceration. Month, Day, Year of publication, URL (accessed date). And as a courtesy, please inform us of how you are making use of this archive by filling out this short 4-question online form. It is helpful to us and our narrators to know how the archive is being used.