“WHAT IS BLACK AUGUST?” A CHILDHOOD FRIEND ASKED ME. “Am I supposed to know about it?” I wasn’t surprised by her question because I wasn’t told or taught about Black August myself prior to my capture, kidnap, and enslavement by the state. Most of our people are not made aware of the struggle for freedom until a situation arises when their own, or someone dear to them, has their lived-perception of physical freedom suddenly snuffed out. Black August is the raw education rooted from the struggles of men and women who fought against a trained system of oppression, in an effort to live in a world free from Black bondage, killings of Black lives, and all oppressed peoples whose freedoms have been snuffed out in some way or form.

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There are many undocumented chronicles of struggle undertaken by past and living elders. Sundiata Acoli, Janine Africa, Herman Bell, Robert Seth Hayes, Mutulu Shakur, Ruchell Magee, Ed Poindexter, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Assata Shakur, and many others all of whom struggled against the ideals of white hegemony and were severely punished for challenging it. This knowledge is what sculpted my understanding of Black August and has allowed me to embody the spirit of those who’ve come before me to stand perpendicular against it.

BLACK AUGUST IS THE RAW EDUCATION ROOTED FROM THE STRUGGLES OF MEN AND WOMEN WHO FOUGHT AGAINST A TRAINED SYSTEM OF OPPRESSION, IN AN EFFORT TO LIVE IN A WORLD FREE FROM BLACK BONDAGE, KILLINGS OF BLACK LIVES, AND ALL OPPRESSED PEOPLES WHOSE FREEDOMS HAVE BEEN SNUFFED OUT IN SOME WAY OR FORM.

I stood perpendicular when the state ordered that I’d be identified for the remainder of my natural life as #W89316 despite my parents’ colonial attribution of naming me Derrick Washington. I merely saw it as one slave name succeeded by another, though one of them had been associated with freedom, familiarity, family, and friends. This new numerical attribute felt a lot emptier and incredibly lonely. I was in a world outside of the world I knew. For me, prison, for “the very first time, was like dying. Just to exist at all in a cage calls for some heavy psychic readjustments. Being captured was the first of my fears. It may have been inborn. It may have been an acquired characteristic built up over the centuries of Black bondage,” was what our brother George Jackson had written in his prison letters in Soledad Brother, and I identified with every word of it.^[1] 

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Black August originated from the struggles of George and Jonathan Jackson. I soaked up every word of George’s when navigating the unnatural world of incarceration. It made me aware that when they initially stripped me of my street clothing, it was an attempt at stripping me of everything I identified with my sense of freedom. The scrubs, which came pressed and folded, implicitly carried a message to take pride in the new identity being imposed upon me for, “I must be grateful to be lucky enough to receive such crispy, new, and fresh scrubs because most folks were given the used and wrinkled ones,” was the state communicating to me that my human status was now permanently inferior.

Upon entering MCI Cedar Junction Walpole, which at various points had a reputation for being one of the most violent institutions in the country (violent in a dual sense, however, I emphasize the violence against the incarcerated population by bigoted officers abusing their authority), made me hypersensitive to the fact I was confined in a graveyard of exclusion. I was civically dead and excluded from everything I knew. George’s prison letters took the shape of shovels that I’d use to dig myself out of this graveyard, and the profound wisdom in each passage read helped contextualize what I was experiencing. One excerpt read, “Black men born in the U.S. and fortunate enough to live past the age of eighteen are conditioned to accept the inevitability of prison. For most of us, it simply looms as the next phase in a sequence of humiliations.” I had just turned twenty and began writing the ID number they gave me below (opposed to beside, as we were told to do), my government name on outgoing letters as a show of resistance to the slave status the state was imposing on me.

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I gravitated to brothers like ARAB, Sundiata, Fuquan, and Divine-Truth who instructed me in the importance of being disciplined in everything from dietary to exercise. I quickly cut red meat from my meals, began doing intense workout regiments daily, and entirely murdered the “N-word” from my vocabulary as I began to see it as something beyond the mere extension of endearment. I followed my newly acquired practices of discipline by implementing consecutive hours-long reading periods while simultaneously building habits to increase my working vocabulary, improve my grammar, effectuate my writing, as well as fine tuning my ability to communicate effectively. Their constant challenging of me to challenge myself instilled an urgency in me, as if my incarcerated elders could be gone at any minute. I’d then be charged with having to repeat the same process of educating another as they educated me, as newer and younger brothers entered this graveyard. However, their cumulative instruction bequeathed an ability in me to transform these graveyards into graduate schools. Fuquan once told me, “build or be killed, not a physical death but a mental death—you’re only as good as what you can reproduce. If you’re intelligent, you should be reproducing five individuals just as intelligent as you—if not more.”

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I’ve been reproducing the spirit of Black August with urgency for the past 21 years that I’ve been kidnapped. The natural order for me and all my comrades is to continuously build and teach. We build and teach the spirit of resilience daily! Long live the spirit bound in Black August where we celebrate the excellence of those past and present thriving in chaos! Peace.

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Derrick Washington has been incarcerated for twenty one years serving a life sentence in Massachusetts. He founded the Emancipation Initiative organization in 2012 which is a group that advocates for ending Life Without Parole (LWOP) prison sentences and advocates for universal incarcerated voting rights. In 2023, he founded the incarcerated self-improvement group Black, Latino, Asian, Cultural Coalition (BLACC) at the MCI Shirley prison. He is currently working to overturn his conviction; the Supreme Justice Court has just overturned his case, which will now result in a retrial. He can be reached through the prison email system at corrlinks.com by searching for: Derrick Washington and inputting the prison ID: W89316).

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