C.T.

Hello,

I received your letter the other day, I’m still trying to get my work time to see what day I really get out, officer is taking his time about it. They did not break my charge down, they found me not guilty on the breaking and enter charge, the reason they found me guilty on the misdemeanor charge is because I did help Mr. — hold a cabinet on top of the van and someone said that they seen me talking to him. That’s when he call me and ask me to help him hold the cabinet so that it would not fall off of the van. And I was in the van when the officer stopped the van, only if I had kept on walking.

I would not be here today, this black woman D.A. tried everything she could to try and get me 10 to 12 years for something I did not do, you should have been at the trial.

My operation that I was supposed to have received for my right sternum–(which is) swollen and hurts–Duke made my appointment, but this black doctor here cancelled it because he said that the people in Tennessee did not think I needed it. I told him how in the hell (does) some cracker (I really did say cracker) in Tennessee know what I need concerning my body, and that’s the last time I heard from them here, until I wrote them and said that my trial was over and that I need to see a doctor. They sent me back out to Duke for another appointment so that I could not file a law suit.

They do not understand that I still have grounds to file one because they cancelled the first one that I was supposed to have. They thought I was going to get some time, but Allah and Christ fooled them and they won’t give me my medical records because I’m trying to find out who cancelled my operation a month ago.

My brother, trying to get a petition (going) with these brothers you will have to have an act of congress. This is the work pod, they are not going to do anything. I’m still trying to get them to write the Department of Labor, federal and state. Nothing but one brother has written. The state wrote back and gave me another address to write. I haven’t heard from them or the federal yet. Someone in here told the sergeant that I was writing these people. And I don’t think she sent the letters out, that — and me mailed out.

All these brothers in this pod think about is football, how many guns they had and who got killed, and talking about each other, and begging to work for free. They would not let me work for a month, because I told them that I was not going to paint a pod for two trays of food at night that consists of beans and rice and bread. It would cost them twenty five thousand dollars to hire some one to paint just one pod, and they have these black men doing it, for a tray of food.

Several people have quit, because I explained to them how much it would cost to paint that pod, and she be yelling at them all day. I told my cousin that he was a slave, for letting that (unknown word) holler at him, and saying what he better do, and rushing them. This is the third pod they have painted, that’s 75-80 thousand dollars, for a tray of beans and rice.

It’s bad enough that we are doing kitchen work, janitor work, waxing, stripping floors for nothing. And you try to get me to paint, even the officer said that they were crazy to paint those pods, they have said that they won’t do it, the kitchen head man said that he had been trying to get them to write the board of labor for years. That’s what he said to me and —, what;s wrong with our people. Do some of us rather (that we are) in bondage? Do you really think so?