A Knock at Midnight(90)
Listen to this, Britt. Get some nourishment. You gotta stay up.
I scrolled down to find the text of “A Knock at Midnight,” a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with a note from Corey telling me to find the audio online so I could be nourished by King himself.
I plugged in my headphones. In the sermon, King uses the parable of the neighbor who knocks upon his friend’s door at midnight, seeking three loaves to feed a hungry traveler. The man’s need is great, King reminds us, because the loaves of bread he seeks are spiritual loaves. The bread of faith, the bread of hope, the bread of love. The man’s friend refuses him. “Do not bother me; the door is now shut,” his friend says, “and my children are with me in bed, I cannot get up and give you anything.” In his tremendous tenor, his voice rolling with the calm power and depth of the sea, King explains that the man continues to persistently knock; he will not be denied. He urges us to embrace the hope, faith, and love necessary to continue our struggle for justice in midnight’s darkest hour. With faith in his friend’s generosity, and out of a deep need to provide loaves to his visitor, the man knocks. “Midnight is a confusing hour when it is difficult to be faithful.” His voice sonorous, King intones, “The weary traveler by midnight who asks for bread is really seeking the dawn. Our eternal message of hope is that dawn will come.”
Listening to King’s voice ringing out from the pulpit, I felt warmth begin to flow where only a wrung-out feeling had been. King’s tenor lifted me from within. His words were a balm for my wounds and his message soothed my soul. Dawn will come, the sermon promised. Even after the darkest night, dawn will come.
I listened to that recording on repeat the whole night through.
It was hard to know how to thank Corey Jacobs for everything he did for me. That night was so difficult—to have pushed so much over the last year, only to see thousands of people’s hopes dashed in an instant. My pain could not have equaled that of those whose last fire of hope for freedom had been extinguished. And I was just one part of a vast and growing movement; no doubt many of my fellow freedom fighters were feeling lost that night, also struggling to find the strength to go forward. But Corey would not let me fall into the depths of despair, would not let me relinquish hope. It was his enduring gift to me, to be there when I needed it, to help me see that midnight through to the dawn. To help me keep knocking when at first I had been refused.
Three weeks later, on December 19, the Department of Justice released a list of 231 people granted clemency by President Barack Obama. Corey Jacobs was one of them.
Chapter 16
GENIUS BEHIND BARS
The night sky alone in the mountains outside Tucson, Arizona, is enough to heal what ails you. The universe arches over you in a navy dome, every constellation as vivid and architectural as in an astronomy textbook. After seven years of nonstop hustle and work, it was time to rest, recuperate, and reflect. I had checked myself into a hotel and spa, and as I stood on my patio and looked up at the stars I inhaled the clean air and the quiet. I felt transported back to the Bogata of my childhood.
Anyone used to constant forward motion can tell you that it’s not always easy slowing down. You allow yourself to feel things you’ve held at bay until this point. Those things wash over you like waves. You can try to keep your feet rooted firmly in the sand, try not to be sucked in by the undertow. But the ocean is stronger than you and the waves will come.
There was still so much work to be done. But sometimes the task seemed so enormous, it was difficult to know where to begin. True, there had been successes. I had pursued sentence reductions for Duke Tanner and Robert Carter, and won. Duke’s reduction relieved him of a life sentence. Along with Corey, two more of the clients I had taken on in the last push of the initiative had received clemency, Trenton Copeland and Burnett Shackleford. Their calls had come from the pardon attorney himself, bringing my total to seven. I was tremendously proud and humbled to have experienced this part of the legacy of America’s first Black president, and of course I was elated for them. But as always, the successes made the road ahead seem that much harder. Corey’s clemency was a “term” commutation, which meant he’d have to spend two more years in prison before going to a halfway house. And of course, for every one of my clients who’d made it out, there were tens of thousands of people just as worthy still suffering behind bars.
In taking a break, I was seeking more than stillness. I was seeking clarity. The truth was I was scared. I’d slipped the golden handcuffs at ORIX to throw myself into a battle that had a clear end date. But now Obama was gone. Clemency was gone. The battle was over, but the war wasn’t. I didn’t know if there was a place for me in the battles ahead. I didn’t know if I had it in me.
At the Arizona resort, I signed up for private meditation sessions, hikes, massages, even equine therapy. I tried to live in the moment. To look out at the mountains without feeling that I should be on the phone, at my desk, on my laptop, looking for more legal loopholes. Just to breathe. There was so much work to be done. No wonder my breath felt ragged in my throat sometimes. No wonder it was so hard to be still.
Self-care for Black women is a radical act, made even more difficult now that the concept has been co-opted from its radical roots into a mode of escapism. I mean self-care in that early sense: to replenish in order to more fully engage with community and justice work, as when the poet Audre Lorde stated, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Like any radical behavior, it must be learned. And practiced. And learned again. It is one thing to know that consciously, and quite another to do it—to make oneself one’s sacred duty.