- Columbus, OH
November 1971
Pages 7‐9 of 1971 letter from Umi, then Audrey, to childhood friend, Violet.
Notes: This letter is written by a 21-year-old with radical politics who was paying attention to the world. I find this letter really powerful in range and scope, in the history it tells and the future it forebodes. The letter ends with a prescient critique of drug and prison “reform.” This letter was written in 1971, two months after Attica, five months after Nixon announced the war on drugs, and not too long before mass incarceration grew exponentially. Fifty years after she wrote this letter, the US, which comprises only 5% of the world's population, erected a Prison Industrial Complex that holds 25% of all people imprisoned globally. And of the 2.12 million people in US prisons, they are disproportionately Black and many imprisoned on drug charges.
Letter Transcript