Mama, They Got Me Too: My Family Has Survived Incarceration Over Generations

"They locked my mother away for assault and battery of a "peace officer," a charge that still makes me let out that sharp, hollow laugh, the kind that rises just to keep the tears from falling. Because the truth is, she never assaulted anyone. And in all my years growing up Black in America, I had yet to meet an officer who brought anything resembling peace."

"Seven years before that, I'd watched a police officer brutally beat my mother in a doctor's office in Pantego, Texas. Her crime? Being a Black woman who dared to ask for her medical records. She was walking out of the office when the officer grabbed her like she was nothing, body-slamming her to the ground with a violence that made the walls seem to shake."

At 15, a trip from Florida to Texas brought a visit to a prison to see my mother incarcerated for assault and battery of a "peace officer," a charge described as false. Seven years earlier, a police officer had brutally beaten my mother in a doctor's office in Pantego, Texas, after she requested her medical records. The officer body-slammed her, repeatedly struck her, and used handcuffs against her skull, leaving blood on the floor. My childhood shattered and a deep conviction grew that police uniforms offered no protection. The prison loomed like a fortress for the forgotten as the visit approached.

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