Mixed media on paper
30”x 40”
 
Echo speaks to the effects the overwhelming number of black men who are incarcerated has on the black community.
 
“The United States is home to 5% of the worlds population and 25% of the worlds prisoners.
That’s one out of four humans in the world are locked up in the land of the free. Today we have a prison population of 2.3 million. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.” —-13th by Ava DuVernay
 
“The year the Civil War ended, the U.S. amended the Constitution to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude. But it purposefully left in one big loophole for people convicted of crimes.
 
The 13th Amendment, ratified in 1865, says: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Scholars, activists and prisoners have linked that exception clause to the rise of a prison system that incarcerates Black people at more than five times the rate of white people, and profits off of their unpaid or underpaid labor.” —History.com