[R-G] Dangerous Sport: What Texas Won't Let Kenneth Foster Read

[Anthony Fenton]

Dangerous Sport: What Texas Won't Let Kenneth Foster Read
by Dave Zirin
	
August 20, 2007
Star-Telegram

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=43&ItemID=13573

Who knew sports history could strike fear in the most fearsome prison  
system in the United States? But what other explanation could there  
be for the fact that the history of "America's Pastime" is being  
denied to Texas Death Row prisoner Kenneth Foster Jr.?

Kenneth's case has garnered international attention because both  
prosecution and defense agree that he was 80 feet away from the  
murder of Michael LaHood. Earlier in the evening, he had been driving  
the man who pulled the trigger, Maurecio Brown. In Texas, that's  
enough to land him on Death Row.

Foster and I began to exchange letters on sports and politics after  
he read my book Welcome to the Terrordome.

"I have never had the opportunity to view sports in this way," he  
wrote. "And as I went through these revelations I began to have  
epiphanies about the way sports have a similar existence in prison.  
The similarities shook me .... Facing execution, the only thing that  
I began to get obsessive about was how to get heard and be free, and  
as the saying goes -- you can't serve 2 gods. Sports, as you know,  
becomes a way of life. You monitor it, you almost come to breathe it.  
Sports becomes a way of life in prison, because it becomes a way of  
survival. For men that don't have family or friends to help them  
financially ...it becomes a way to occupy your time. That's another  
sad story in itself, but it's the root to many men's obsession with  
sports."

It didn't matter whether he was on Death Row or Park Avenue -- I felt  
smarter having read his words. But even more satisfying was the  
thought that thinking about sports took his mind -- for a moment --  
away from his imminent death, the 11-year-old daughter he will never  
touch again and the words he will never write.

I thought that sending him my first book, What's My Name Fool?:  
Sports and Resistance in the U.S., would be a good follow-up -- but  
here is where the Texas Department of Corrections got its briefs in a  
bunch. A form titled "Texas Dept of Criminal Justice, Publication  
review/denial notification" issued to Kenneth on Aug. 9 says that  
What's My Name Fool? was banned from the row: "It contains material  
that a reasonable person would construe as written solely for the  
purpose of communicating information designed to achieve the  
breakdown of prisons through offender disruption such as strikes or  
riots."

It specifically said that Pages 44 and 55 met this criteria.

After lifting my jaw off the ground, I went to read those dangerous  
pages. On Page 44, the radioactive quote in question was from that  
seditious revolutionary Jackie Robinson -- you know, the guy whose  
number is retired by all of Major League Baseball. I quoted  
Robinson's autobiography, I Never Had It Made, when he wrote about  
suffering racism early in his rookie season:

"I felt tortured and I tried to just play ball and ignore the  
insults. But it was really getting to me. ... For one wild and rage- 
crazed moment I thought, 'To hell with Mr. Rickey's "noble  
experiment." ... To hell with the image of the patient black freak I  
was supposed to create.' I could throw down my bat, stride over to  
that Phillies dugout, grab one of those white sons of  and smash his  
teeth in with my despised black fist. Then I could walk away from it  
all."

On Page 55, the offensive passage was about Jack Johnson's defeat of  
the "Great White Hope," Jim Jeffries. It read: "Johnson was faster,  
stronger and smarter than Jeffries. He knocked Jeffries out with  
ease. After Johnson's victory, there were race riots around the  
country -- in Illinois, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania,  
Colorado, Texas and Washington, D.C. Most of the riots consisted of  
white lynch mobs attacking Blacks, and Blacks fighting back. This  
reaction to a boxing match was one of the most widespread racial  
uprisings in the U.S. until the 1968 assassination of civil rights  
leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr."

Let's forget about the fact that there is something bizarre -- almost  
comical -- about Texas prison authorities believing that a sports  
history could lead to "the breakdown of prisons through offender  
disruption such as strikes or riots." Let's forget that they are  
denying a man reading material in his last hours.

There is something repugnant about the fact that they think a book --  
any book -- would be the source of resistance, rather than the  
reality that 159 people have been executed since Gov. Rick Perry took  
office in 2001, or the fact that the people on Death Row have no  
civil rights, no access to radio, television or even arts and crafts.

It reminds me of the words of Carl Oglesby of the 1960s group  
Students for a Democratic Society: "It isn't the rebels who cause the  
troubles of the world, it's the troubles that cause the rebels."

The officials' fear that ideas -- even the ideas of sports history --  
could cause a crisis in the Texas prisons reveals only how aware the  
Lone Star jailers are of how inhumanely they treat their prisoners.

There was a time in Texas when it was illegal to teach slaves to  
read. The fear was that ideas could turn anger often directed inward  
into action against those with their boots on black necks. It is  
perhaps the most fitting possible tribute to Jackie Robinson and Jack  
Johnson that their stories still strike fear into the hearts of those  
wearing the boots.

[Kenneth Foster is due to be executed on August 30th.  Visit  
www.freekenneth.com  for more information.  PLEASE KEEP CALLING  
GOVERNOR PERRY! In Austin, call 512.463.1782. From outside Austin,  
call 800.252.9600. Fax: 512.463.1849. E-mail: send message from  
website: http:// www.governor.state.tx.us/contact.  Contact Dave  
Zirin at edgeofsports at gmail.com]