“My mind was racing with thoughts I couldn’t even grasp mentally.  I went home and sat in the house with all the lights out, scared to move, didn’t know what to do nor to say.  My mom was gone to a choir convention in Mississippi during the time of the incident.  While I sat in our house quietly and somberly in the front room, my mother pulled up with no clue of what just happened. When she came in the door, turned to lock the door, I was sitting there in the dark room.  I scared her out of her wits.  As a mother who knew her child, she instantly asked me, ‘Boy, what’s wrong with you sitting in here with all the lights out?’  I was so discombobulated I honestly couldn’t speak, it seemed like somebody had my soul…”

It’s been twenty-six years for me now.  I’m in solitary confinement and have been for almost six months.  It’s the first long stretch I’ve done in lock-up, and I’ve learned if you aren’t mentally strong, it can break you.  I’ve thought about everything from being three years old, to that day, to this place I am in now.  I’ve probably aged ten years in the last six months, but I think I’ve made it.  My blood pressure is crazy, but I think I’ve put it under control by relaxing and focusing on better things. 

I was seventeen and still in high school when my mom came home that night.  I’d just shot at some men.  For months I’d been shot at, intimidated, ‘bullied’, by an adult.  I’d sat in a car as it was beaten with a crow bar. I’d had a gun pointed at my head.  My parents knew, the school knew, the police knew.  They all knew.  I can never take back what happened that night.

I now understand what they mean when people talk about the school to prison pipeline.  Things are a little different now in Mobile, Alabama, where I came from.  I hear there are anti-bullying laws in place to protect kids like I was.  There are laws to keep kids from being followed around and shot at, as well there should be.  No kid should ever have to grow old in a place like this.  No kid should ever be expected to know how to make people stop shooting at them.

I went from going to high school, playing football and dreaming, to living in a nightmare.  No, I can’t take it back.  I should never have had to.   It should have never gotten to that night in my living room.

ABOUT THE WRITER: Mr. Singleton’s story has been shared here, but this is the first time he has written for WITS. I hope he continues to write about his life in the Alabama Department of Corrections. Louis Singleton can be contacted at:
Louis Singleton #179665 0-24
Fountain Correctional Facility
9677 Highway 21 North
Atmore, AL 36503