"Montgomery! Pack your bags," the guard shouted. I was already packed and ready to go--sitting on the edge of my bed, chatting with a few of my close friends.

"Take care of yourself out there,"  Sabu said.

"Yeah, and don't forget to send me a food package," joked Reggie.

"Let's go," hollered the guard. The cell gates slammed behind me.

My body shook at the sound, but I kept my cool as I walked down the corridor. A young male guard walked beside me, escorting me along the way. I looked towards the corridor windows and could see groups of prisoners in the yard. Some were playing basketball. A few others were lifting weights or just walking around. We passed a prisoner mopping the corridor floor.  I didn't know him, but I'd seen him around from time to time. He stared intently at me and nodded. I nodded back.  It was a nod we both understood. He knew that my life was about to  change.

We kept walking. The walk seemed very long, much longer than when I had walked it many times before. As we passed a small group of prisoners on work detail, one of them shouted out, "Stay strong, man."  I knew he was talking to me.

We approached the front gate. "State your name and number," said a guard sitting in the large plexiglass control room. "Charles Montgomery, 75-B-1534," I said. He stared at me, then looked at a photo of me he held in his hand. Satisfied, he pressed one of the control panel buttons and the gate opened. I walked through and the gate quickly closed behind me.

I kept saying to myself,  "Finally, finally, this day has come." It was March 21, 1994. I had been granted parole, and was being released from Cayuga Correctional Facility. I had served twenty years for a crime I didn't commit. I entered prison at sixteen years old, and was leaving as a young man in my mid-thirties.  Freedom.

I was born and raised in Harlem, and grew up in the Polo Grounds Housing Towers. The Polo Grounds used to be the home field of the New York Yankees and the New York Mets.  I was the fourth child of seven. My mother, Helen, spent most of her years raising us as a single parent. My parents were separated, but not divorced.  My nickname during my early childhood and teen years was Buck.

When I was growing up, you were considered a square if you didn't hang out.  My friends and I hung out on the street corners, partied with the girls, played basketball at the famous Holcombe Rucker Park, and got into fights with other guys in the neighborhood. It was at Rucker Park that I first saw legendary NBA players like Julius Erving, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Nate Archibald, and Walt "Clyde" Frazier--and streetballers who never went pro and fell prey to street life. One guy, Carlton "Motto" Greene, lived in the nearby Colonial Projects. He was one of the best streetballers I ever saw. Watching him on the basketball court was like watching a magician perform. He was so good with the ball and quick with his hands. Carlton was recuited by the New York Knicks and the Atlanta Hawks. He was a nice guy, and showed me a few moves on the court. Eventually Carlton became homeless, and lived on the street for years, and never made it to the NBA. He's the subject of the book, Still Got Game.

Growing up I was always quiet. Never loud like some of my friends. When I wasn't hanging out with them, I was usually with my girlfriend. We would sneak off to some secluded area and spend hours hugging and kissing.  One night I was at Stacey's, a girl I'd just started dating, when her father came home early from work. He was about 6 feet tall and weighed about 200 pounds, and had a quick temper. He didn't allow her to have friends over when he wasn't home, and boys were definitely not allowed. We were sitting in the living room when we heard a noise at the door. "Hurry, get in the closet," she whispered when she heard him fumbling with his keys. I was terrified and had to stay in the closet for almost three hours, until her father went to bed around midnight, and she was able to sneak me out.  I got very religious in the closet that night. I kept praying over and over to God that her father wouldn't open the closet door. I knew for sure I would get an ass-whupping that night if he found me.

Harlem gave us bragging rights to the Apollo, Malcolm X, the Harlem Renaissance and the Globetrotters. Harlem is known internationally as the Black Mecca of the world, but it's also been home to many races and ethnic groups. Our streets are named after prominent figures like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Frederick Douglass.  Harlem is home to some of the world's most famous entertainers and political figures. Actress Cicely Tyson and writers Langston Hughes and James Baldwin are among a few of the famous people who lived in Harlem. Today Harlem is being gentrified. Tenements are being replaced with million dollar condos, forcing many Blacks who have lived in Harlem all their lives to move out of the neighborhood.

It was a cold winter night in 1973 when my friend Jerodus said, "Yo Buck, let's sneak in the Apollo, James Brown is there tonight." Several of us hopped the train down to the Apollo on 125th Street.  We snuck inside through a side door that stayed unlocked for fire safety reasons. We sat hiding up in the balcony and watched Brown as he mesmerized the audience with his electrifying dance moves. He was singing,  "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud." I remember this day like yesterday, because the audience stood up and was singing along with him. "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud," the audience chanted.  "Yeah, I'm Black and I'm proud," my friends and I joined in. We really were proud...proud to be Black. Brown made you feel this way when he sang that song. The most exciting part of Brown's performance was when he used his cape. The audience would roar when he snatched off the cape and ran back onto the stage dancing and singing again.

Neighborhood block parties were the best. There was always plenty of good food--fried chicken, potato salad, peach cobbler, watermelon--and lots  of beautiful girls. We would dance endlessly to the music of James Brown,  Smokey Robinson, the Delfonics, the Stylistics, New Birth and Marvin Gaye. Some of us managed to stay out of trouble with the law. Some of us didn't.  I got into trouble with the law at a very young age, when I was involved in petty robberies, and ended up at the Bronx juvenile detention center called Spofford. Spofford was notorious for its cruelty to children and its awful conditions. After fifty years in operation, it was shut down in 2011. It's now the site of an affordable housing complex called the Peninsula.        

In 1974,  Detective Chester Carter, from Harlem's 32nd precinct, brought me in for questioning. I was just sixteen years old, and was being detained at Riker's Island on a petty robbery charge.  He told me he was investigating a robbery-homicide that had occurred in Harlem on February 8, 1974: three assailants robbed a dry cleaners and shot the owner, who would die about a week later. Detective Carter took me into the interrogation room. No Miranda warnings were given to me, nor were my parents notified that I was being questioned. The room was dim, dirty and reeked with the odor of stale cigarette smoke. I took a seat on one of the dingy chairs and folded my hands on the table in front of me.

I wasn't looking in Detective Carter's direction, but I could feel him watching me. He approached me with a gun on his hip. "Where were you when this crime happened?"

"I was home with my brother and sister," I remember telling him.

"Well, your name  came up, and someone identified you as being one of the guys who committed this crime," he said. I reiterated that I was home, and asked him to call my family. I also told him that I was a friend of one of the young workers at the dry cleaners, whose sister was the common-law wife of the deceased, and that we all lived in the same building. I told him that these two individuals were present during the crime, and knew I had nothing to do with it. He mentioned something about me not being the shooter, and continued questioning me for about an hour, never once bothering to call my family. Even at my young age, I suspected that Detective Carter shouldn't have been questioning me without informing my parents, or the court-appointed attorney already assigned to represent me on the robbery case--but I  never raised the issue with him. He certainly took advantage of my youth, and my ignorance of my legal rights.

The next time I was brought in to see Detective Carter, an assistant district attorney and a stenographer were in the room. The ADA was young and a real jerk. He came straight at me. "Look, we know you did this, so tell us who else was there!" he shouted. Then he changed up, and said, "We know you didn't have anything to do with it, but tell us who did it." I felt he was trying to confuse me and get me to confess to something I didn't do. I remember getting frustrated and cursing at him.  He abruptly left the room. I paced up and down, cursing under my breath.

Days later I was brought in to see Detective Carter again. He told me that he was booking me for this crime. "It wasn't me, you got the wrong person," I shouted.

"Then tell  me who did it."

"I don't know," I said.

His last words to me were, "Tell it to the judge."

I was arrested and would spend the next fourteen months at Riker's, before going on trial for this crime in August, 1975. My family was shocked when they learned of my arrest. I was convinced that the police would realize this was all a big mistake, and I would be released. I had heard from my court-appointed attorney, Herman Goldberg, that the suspect was described as "six feet two inches tall and very very darkskinned." I was just five feet nine inches tall, and brownskinned. I thought that this blatant disparity between my physical appearance and that of the suspect would raise serious doubt about my guilt, resulting in my release. I was terribly wrong.

One day that August, I was sitting in the jail bullpen, waiting to be called for court. My  attorney came to the bullpen to see me. My family couldn't afford to hire a private attorney. I didn't trust Goldberg at all, and I knew I wouldn't receive quality representation from him. "I think you're going home," he said. "I think they found the person who committed this crime." I asked where he got this information, and when would I be going home. He waved me off, saying, "I'll get back to you."  He never did.

In 1975,  I was tried and found guilty of felony murder. The trial took less than a full day, and the jury returned a guilty verdict in less than two hours. Goldberg presented no defense, and even failed to cross-examine the arresting officer. He persuaded me not to take the witness stand, something I wanted very badly to do. He didn't call my alibi witnesses, or other eye-witnesses who were working at the dry cleaners the day of the crime. Goldberg pleaded with the court to throw out the verdict, arguing that the jury couldn't possibly have considered all the evidence in such a short  time. The judge rejected this argument and adjourned the case for sentencing.

A few weeks later I returned to court. Goldberg pleaded with them to show me leniency, pointing out that I had maintained my innocence throughout the proceedings, and that I wasn't the person who actually shot and killed the deceased.  "Do you have anything to say before the court pronounces sentence, Mr. Montgomery?" asked the judge.

I stood there--my heart pounding, hands sweaty, feeling weak and defeated. I knew I should've said something, but I felt it wouldn't matter much now. "No," I muttered. I was sentenced to twenty years to life.

The judge noted that he wasn't giving me the maximium twenty-five years to life because of my age, and the fact that I wasn't the actual shooter. I thought: Here this old bastard is taking twenty years of my life away from me for something I didn't do--and he has the audacity to try to make himself appear reasonable by giving me just five years less than the maximum!  I wanted to curse his ass out so bad. On the day of sentencing, my mother, sister and brother were present in the courtroom. I looked back at them and saw that my mother was in tears. The only thing I could think of to say was, "I'll be okay, Ma."

By the time I got to state prison in the winter of l975, I was confused and filled with anger. I was sent to Elmira Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Chemung County, New York. It's normally used as a reception center, and  mostly for younger prisoners.

At Elmira I got into a lot of verbal confrontations with prison guards--mostly because I refused to allow them to treat or speak to me any way they chose. I hated them--hated their abuse of authority and mistreatment of prisoners. With a population made up of over 95 percent Black and Latino prisoners, over 95 percent of the guards at Elmira were white. Many of them were racist, and didn't respect or know how to relate to people of color.  I insisted on being treated with respect, and often ended up in solitary, or 23-hour confinement to my cell, on trumped- up disciplinary charges.  Guards didn't like you to question or challenge their authority. Once I received a disciplinary report for asking a guard not to use profanity at me. He accused me of being verbally abusive to him. I got three days of 23-hour cell confinement.

Years later, in 1990, in the case of Santiago v. Miles,  a federal judge in Rochester would rule that prisoners at Elmira were subjected to systematic racial discrimination in housing, job assignment and disciplinary practices. The case was argued by attorney Claudette R. Spencer. Ms. Spencer, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society,  was known for being progressive and very outspoken about racist policies and procedures at Elmira.  While working on the Santiago v. Miles case, Ms. Spencer met and married one of my close friends, Ernest Nurse, who was also serving a prison sentence in upstate New York. Today, they are living happily in Trinidad. Ms. Spencer is the author of All Tapped Out: The Disappearance of the Mountain Hill College Funds, and Memoirs  of a Prison Lawyer: Prison Wife.

Sometime in l976, I was sent to Great Meadows Correctional Facility in Comstock--a prison notorious for violence and guard brutality.  It was nicknamed "Gladiator School," because of its reputation for violence among prisoners and between prisoners and guards. Prisoners were not afraid to attack guards. Violence was the norm. Extortion and prison rapes were rampant. Prisoners argued and fought daily. Minor disputes were settled with homemade knives, razors and pipes. One day while watching television in the recreation room, I watched a prisoner get stabbed to death over a pack of cigarettes he borrowed and didn't pay back.  Guards harassed and abused prisoners. They knew what they were doing. The harassment and abuse only served to increase the level of tension and anger between prisoners, who took it out on each other.

I was at Great Meadows less than two weeks when I got into my first fight. A menacing-looking prisoner, older than me, who looked like a miniature Arnold Schwarzenegger, demanded my cigarettes after I left the commissary, and threatened to "kick my ass" if I didn't give them to him. I kept walking. Suddenly I could hear the voice of one of my friends, when I told him I was being sent to Great Meadows: "Hey man, that prison is tough. Don't take no shit from anybody."

The guy grabbed my bag and all my food fell out onto the floor. I said, "Yo mothafucker," and picked up one of the cans of tuna fish and struck him in the head with it, knocking him to the floor. He got back up and we started throwing punches at each other like there was no tomorrow. Eventually guards came and separated us. My eye was swollen and his nose was bloodied. I was afraid he would retaliate later, so for the next few days I walked around carrying a sock with a padlock concealed inside. To my surprise, he never said anything to me again. I never had problems with any prisoners at Great Meadows after that day--mainly because I followed three simple prison rules: Mind your business, mind your business, mind your business.

A few weeks later, I was called before the Program Committee. It was the committee that determined what job you'd be assigned while at the prison.  I knew I wanted to work in the law library, or some other clerical position. "What skills do you have, Mr. Montgomery," one of the committee members asked.

"I'm good with clerical work, and have some legal skills."

I was lying about the legal skills. At that point I didn't have any. I did have some clerical experience, from working with a GED program at Riker's.

"How would you like to work in the soap factory," the committee man asked.

I told him I didn't want to work in any factory. He said, " Well, there's nothing else available--and  if you don't take the soap factory, you'll get a disciplinary report and be placed on lockdown."

I was young, but smart enough to know I didn't want a career in making soap. I'd heard that many prisoners developed skin problems from working with hazardous chemicals at the soap factory. And I was opposed to prison industries, because I knew they exploited prison labor. I'd also heard that the committee gave all the good jobs to white prisoners. "You go work in the fucking soap factory," I told him, as I stood up and walked out of the room.

Corcraft, a New York State correctional industry program, makes hundreds of millions of dollars from cheap prison labor. Back then prisoners were making less than 90 cents a day. Prisoners make mattresses, traffic signs, license plates, eyeglasses, pillows, clothing, office furniture and a host of other products. Corcraft even employs prisoners to take calls at the Department of Motor Vehicles call centers. They are paid meager wages. Today, Corcraft  is a multi-billion dollar industry, and prisons today are still used as an economic boom for poor upstate white rural communities. Prisons bring jobs, free water and sewer lines, taxes and businesses for otherwise economically depressed communities.

Corcraft also operates Ultra-Frame, where prisoners produce plush office equipment. During the height of the pandemic, female prisoners at Albion Correctional Facility were forced to work in the hand sanitizer industry. The federal prison system operates Unicor, which serves the same purpose as Corcraft, and grosses billions of dollars. The federal prison industry produces military equipment like helmets, bullet-proof vests, shirts, pants, ammunition belts and ID tags. Prisoners are clearly being used as an economic product.

Later that evening my cell didn't open for dinner at the messhall. "Hey, open my cell," I yelled to the guard. The guard told me I was on lockdown for refusing to work. I received a disciplinary report for my behavior, and the disciplinary committee gave me 23-hour cell confinement for seven days.

The next time I appeared before the committee, they didn't offer me the soap factory. I accepted a job as a porter in one of the cell blocks. The porter was responsible for keeping the cell blocks clean. It allowed prisoners the privilege of staying out of their cell longer times than most of the other prisoners.

Sometime around 1978, I was sent to Eastern Correctional Facility. Eastern is a maximum security prison, located upstate in Ulster County. Most prisoners wanted to go there, because it operated like a medium security prison and was close to New York City, making it much easier for families to travel to when visiting their loved ones. One of my old girlfriends, Irene, started visiting me. I was happy to see her and to be able to reminisce about our time together when I was home. Her visits stopped when she moved to Cleveland to attend school.  "I'll come back to visit you," she said during her last visits, but she never did.

At Eastern, I was able to land a job as a law clerk at the prison law library--a job most prisoners coveted, because of the fringe benefits that came with it. My job basically was to assist prisoners in the preparation of legal briefs, motions, and letters. Eastern had its problems with racism too--some guards there were rumored to be members of the Ku Klux Klan.  In 1974, Earl Schoonmaker was suspended  from his job as school teacher at Eastern, following his admission of being a Grand Dragon for the Klan. The Klan had organized many guards at Eastern.  There was one incident at the prison where a few guards were brazen enough to wear Klan hoods over their heads and walk through the cell block late one night, when most prisoners were asleep.

Working in the law library at Eastern gave me complete access to the materials and time I needed to work on my appeal. I had developed a keen understanding of the law, and was successful in helping to overturn the convictions or sentences of a few prisoners. I taught law courses to prisoners, and was enrolled in an accredited law program at Blackstone School of Law in Chicago. Eventually, I earned the title of 'jailhouse lawyer,' and the respect of many prisoners, who sought my help with their legal matters. Around this time I was becoming very political and outspoken. I had witnessed a great deal of guard brutality and corruption, and felt I had an obligation to speak out against these conditions. I was also associating with a few political prisoners, who taught me a lot about racism and the prison system. Some were members of the Black Panther Party, who were framed because of their political views and beliefs.

One day while working at the law library, I heard a voice: "Can you type up a letter for me?" I turned around from what I was doing and froze, then stared--at the face of a man I didn't know personally, but despised. It was Thomas Hagan: the man who confessed to assassinating Malcolm X in 1965.

Hagan had been at Eastern when I first arrived there. He was the prison Muslim Imam. I knew it was my job to assist him--but my conscience and my love for Malcolm X wouldn't allow me to. I turned around and in a low voice asked one of the other law clerks if they would help him. I later learned from the library guard that Hagan told him that I refused to help him--I was reprimanded and warned I would lose my job if I ever did that again. I despised him even more for snitching on me.

One night I was sitting in my cell when a guard delivering the mail stopped at my cell.  "Here you go, Mr. Montgomery," he said, handing me several pieces of mail. There were letters from family and friends, but one was from my appeal attorney. I had been waiting for the appellate court to rule on my appeal. My hands started to shake as I sat down on the bed. I took a deep breath, opened the envelope and saw the words that no prisoner ever wants to receive from their attorney.

"I regret to inform you that the Appellate Division affirmed your conviction."

That was in 1978. I threw the letter to the floor and clenched my fist. The next day I went outside to the yard and jogged for what seemed like hours. For the next day or two I hardly spoke to anyone. I lost my appetite, and had trouble sleeping. I asked family and friends not to visit me. Not long after that, my appeal attorney informed me that the Court of Appeals denied me leave to appeal to that court. That meant all my state court direct appeal remedies were exhausted.

My attorney suggested I file a pro se writ of habeas corpus petition in federal court to further challenge my conviction. I felt like I was losing hope. The possibility that I would have to serve twenty years suddenly seemed more real to me. I even entertained the thought of trying to escape--but was talked out of it by an older prisoner. "Don't do it, youngblood," he said. "You'll have to spend the rest of your life running and looking over your shoulder. Stay in those law books and keep fighting."

Following a physical altercation with several guards at Eastern, some of who were rumored to be in the Klan, I was placed in solitary confinement and transferred to Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, twenty miles from the Canadian border. This prison is sometimes referred to as "Little Siberia," due to the cold winters and the isolation. Guards at Clinton were racist and brutal, and some didn't hide it. Many were rumored to be in the Klan or some other white supremacist group. Prison was the only interaction some of these guards ever had with people of color in their entire lives.

Less than a year later I was transferred from Clinton to Auburn Correctional Facility, after prison officials at Clinton accused me of trying to organize a work strike among prisoners. The charges were actually in retaliation against me for organizing a petition drive, calling for an outside independent body to investigate the death of a prisoner at Clinton, who was beaten to death by several racist guards [The City Sun, May 22, 1991]. While at Clinton, I adopted the African name Kenya Nkrumah, taking my last name after Kwame Nkrumah, president of Ghana. I wanted a name that identified me with my African culture and roots, and I admired Nkrumah for his Pan-Africanist views.

I was at Sing Sing in 1986 when I received a letter from an interesting young woman. Her name was Yvette Givens. She lived in Philadelphia, was a college graduate, a single mom, and was doing volunteer work for incarcerated women. Yvette wrote to me in response to an article I had written on women's rights, published in a paper called Women News. She was energetic, intelligent, ambitious, funny, and very passionate about women's issues. She was also very beautiful, and often dressed in traditional African attire, which I loved. After corresponding and talking on the phone for a month or two, Yvette said, "I would like to come visit you." The next week she came, with her seven-year-old daughter, Nadjahi. When I walked into the visiting room, Yvette approached me smiling, and gave me the biggest hug.  We sat and talked like we'd known each other all our lives.

Nadjahi and I played and joked with each other throughout the visit, and ate ice cream together. Yvette and I would eventually fall in love, and for the next eight years she was a major part of my life. She visited me regularly, met my family, and supported my prison work and efforts to prove my innocence. Shortly before I was granted parole, we got married. We had a wedding ceremony at the prison chapel, attended by a small number of family and friends. It was a wonderful moment for us. We really loved each other and were excited about having a shared future.  We lived together for a short time after my release. Unfortunately, our marriage became complicated and ended with us separating and divorcing years later. Today we remain distant friends.

Disappointed over the denial of my appeal, I spent years writing letters to public officials about my wrongful conviction. In 1985, I wrote to  then Manhattan District Attorney, Robert Morgenthau, and asked for permission to take a polygraph test. By this time I had been transferred back to Eastern--prison officials were constantly transferring me from prison to prison, to frustrate me and discourage my prison work.  Former Congressman Charles B. Rangel, who had taken an interest in  my case, also appealed to Morgenthau to grant my request to take the test. The request was denied.

Undeterred, I sought out the private services of a polygraphist. In 1988 I retained Victor Kaufman, a former police detective, to give me the polygraph. After work one day, and the day before I was scheduled to take the test,  I went to the prison yard to hang out with a few of  my friends. A group of them were standing near the basketball court. As I approached they started laughing. "What's funny?" I asked.

"We figured you really must be innocent," said my friend Roscoe, "because you're too stingy to spend hundreds of dollars for a lie detector test knowing you're guilty." We all burst out laughing.

The warden at Eastern allowed the test to take place at the prison. That day I was nervous as a pig in a slaughterhouse, and thought, 'Maybe this isn't such a good idea.' 'Too late,' I thought, as he hooked me up to the machine.

"Try to relax," Mr. Kaufman said, sensing my nervousness. I listened to the sound of the machine behind me as Mr. Kaufman asked me questions about the crime.  After the test, I nervously waited outside the room for what seemed like hours, but was actually only minutes. When Mr. Kaufman  came out of the room, he approached me and asked, "How long did you say you've been in prison?"

"Too long," I said.

"Well, you passed the polygraph," he said.

I almost fell over as I jumped up out of the chair to shake his hand. Mr. Kaufman shook my hand and wished me good luck.

I was extremely excited. I was certain this would get the state to at least re-open my case for an investigation. I was wrong.

The District Attorney refused to consider the polygraph results at all. I was devastated and angry. A few of my friends saw the change in my mood, and asked what was wrong. I showed them the letter. "Man, this is bullshit, how can they ignore this?" one of them asked. My friends felt that the state knew they wrongly convicted me and were reluctant to admit to their error.

At this point in my life, I was doing a lot of prison activist work. I had developed a passion for writing, and was writing extensively to news reporters and public officials about prison conditions and guard brutality. Guards at Clinton had ransacked my cell and destroyed my typewriter, and the manuscript of a memoir I had been working on, in an attempt to discourage my prison work.

Years later I would end up back at Great Meadows. While there, my close friend Jamal Thomas and I founded the African Cultural Organization. Jamal, a former Black Panther, is serving a life sentence. He was a gifted speaker and well read. He spoke with authority and other prisoners listened to him. He disliked guards, and, like me, found himself in constant conflict with them.  Jamal has spent more than ten years in solitary confinement, and remains there today, because he refuses to compromise his principles  and beliefs. He has suffered a great deal of physical abuse from guards because of his political beliefs. I've visited him since my release and his spirit is still strong.

We were well organized and respected by the prison population, and to some degree by prison officials too. Dr. David J. Hodges, a brilliant and compassionate man, an anthropologist at Hunter College, served as outside sponsor for the organization. Dr. Hodges also taught classes on the civil rights movement at the prison.  Less than a year later, I and other members of the organization were transferred from Great Meadows, in retaliation for petitioning the Black and Puerto Rican Legislative Caucus to investigate brutal beatings and the killing of one prisoner by guards. Assemblyman Roger Green and other legislative officials protested the transfers. In a letter to the Commissioner, Assemblyman Green stated, "The transfers appear to be in violation of the inmates' First Amendment right to complain about prison conditions."

I was still fighting to prove my innocence. The federal court had denied my petition for a writ of habeas corpus in 1979. Years later a post-judgment motion I filed to vacate my conviction was denied. In 1990, the Many Races Cultural Organization--fighting against racism and social injustice, based in Long Island, and led by Katherine M. Garry--launched a letter-writing campaign calling for my release. Joel Freedman, a social worker and teacher from upstate, NY, and writer for the publication Justicia, wrote extensively about my case and supported my efforts to be exonerated. The efforts of Mr. Freedman and of Many Races on my behalf gave me renewed hope, because by this time I had lost complete faith in the criminal justice system, and was convinced that I would never get justice from this legal apparatus.

I had been in prison almost eighteen years when, in 1992, my mother visited the New York Daily News and asked to speak to the editor about my case. She spoke with reporter Daniel Hays--Mr. Hays corresponded with me and agreed to review the trial minutes and other documents. After his review, he informed me that he was convinced I was the victim of "incompetent counsel" and had been "railroaded."  Before Mr. Hays could do more on my behalf, new management took over the Daily News, and terminated the employment of 180 workers. To my dismay,  Mr. Hays was one of them.

On February 2, 1994, I nervously appeared before the parole board. Many of  my friends advised me against maintaining my innocence. I had heard rumors that the board didn't like to hear this from prisoners, and would arbitrarily deny parole. Some friends told me my objective should be to get the hell out of prison, and yes, if necessary, that meant admitting guilt for a crime I didn't commit. Why would I spend almost my entire life, I thought, trying to prove my innocence, only to appear before the board and tell them I was guilty? I knew there was no way I would ever do this, even if it meant staying in prison another two years.

The board allowed me to speak, and I did. I told them in great detail that I was wrongfully convicted, and had twenty years of my life taken away from me. I told them of the pain I and my family had suffered. "What would the Charles Montgomery of today do if he was released?" one board member asked. I told them I was guaranteed employment with a company that worked with ex-offenders, and would continue my education to help my transition back into society. I told them I would also continue my efforts to prove my innocence.

It was strange. The way the board questioned and spoke to me gave me an uncanny feeling that even they doubted my guilt. They all had a look of sympathy on their faces. They told me they had received dozens of letters, some from politicians and public officials, including one from 1988 presidential candidate Lenora B. Fulani, in support of my release. It took four or five days to receive the board's decision in the mail. I tore open the envelope and saw two words: 

    PAROLE GRANTED

I was overwhelmed with joy, and yelled out to my friends from my cell that they gave me parole. They couldn't believe the board granted me parole even though I'd strongly maintained  my innocence.  I called my family that night and gave them the news. They were ecstatic. Yvette came to visit me that same week. We sat in the visiting room holding hands, and I watched as tears of joy rolled down her face. "I'm so happy you're finally getting the hell out of here," she said.

When I was released, the Legal Aid Society's Prisoners' Rights Project hired me as a legal assistant. My parole officer didn't like that I was working there, but tried to hide it. I remember her comments to me one day: "How'd you get a job there?"  "Do they know you're an ex-offender?" I told her they were very much aware of my past, and hired me based on my legal skills and experience.

Working with the Legal Aid Society gave me the opportunity to continue helping prisoners. My job was to respond to prisoners' complaints and attempt to resolve their problems without litigation. I had to communicate directly with prison officials and administrators. Sometimes a simple telephone call or letter to prison officials solved the problem--other times it took litigation. I was already very familiar with prison law, and with the administrative rules and procedures of the Department of Correctional Services--so this made my job a lot easier. Some prison administrators who remembered me from when I was inside didn't like that they now had to deal with me from the outside, as an employee with the Legal Aid Society. Unfortunately, my work there was short-lived. When Mayor Rudolph Guiliani cut millions of dollars from the Legal Aid Society's budget, they were forced them to let many workers go, including me.

Eventually I landed a job as a case manager with a social service agency, where I monitor children in foster homes and help parents plan for reunification with their children. I've held a number of positions in the twenty-seven years I've worked with this agency.  The work is challenging and demanding--my reward comes from knowing I'm helping to improve and save the lives of many children. I continue to write, and in 2019 published my first book, Sheila Gets a Lesson in Foster Care. In July of 1998 my daughter, Davina, was born. Her birth added new meaning and purpose to my life. A warm and kindhearted person, she inspired me to write my first book, and helped me to become the father and person I am today. Being a parent is truly a blessing. You get to nurture yourself again in a  new generation.

I realize that statistically I'm not supposed to be in the position I am today--I'm supposed to be back in prison, homeless, strung out on drugs, or dead.  I'm supposed to be devoured by the mighty jaws of recidivism. Our criminal justice system not only failed me--it continues to fail hundreds of other men and women.  According to the National Registry of Exoneration, as of 2020, there were 2,55l  known exonerations. 1,471 Blacks have been exonerated since 1989. A Black person is 7 times more likely than a white person to be wrongfully convicted. These are alarming numbers, and a reminder of the systemic racism that continues in this country, particularly in the criminal justice system.

In response to the growing number of exonerations, some District Attorneys have established "conviction integrity units" to investigate credible claims of innocence or wrongful conviction. There are currently about twenty-eight units nationwide. It's not enough. More needs to be done to protect the innocent from over-zealous prosecutors, and from law enforcement officers whose only real objective is in using criminal cases to advance their careers. Efforts are being made in New York State to pass the Challenging Wrongful Conviction Act--a bill that will reveal and prevent wrongful convictions, which grew out of the wrongful conviction of the Central Park Five. I can only imagine today what might have happened if these units had existed at the time of my arrest. I never would have suffered this.  When our system allows just one person to be wrongfully convicted, it has failed a nation. I don't know if I will ever receive justice, but I know that I will never stop trying.