In Black America; I Can Take it From Here, with Lisa Forbes

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. My mother taught me to read when I was three, even though she mostly only has growing up one is just to read things that were produced by the Jehovah's Witnesses, but she taught me to read. And so by the time I was in kindergarten, I was well ahead of the kids in the public school system. And teachers recognized that, so they just kept skipping me ahead. But the backlash to that was that I was much younger than all of the children that I was in class with, and so I had no ability to connect to them. No relationship with them, and none of them could connect to me, so that was just a little

kid. And not only that, but I was a little kid, I was a smart kid, and the teachers liked me. So being skipped ahead with nothing else around me, no other support really just left me more vulnerable to being bullied or anything else by the older kids I was in class with. These supports, author of, I can take it from here, a memoir of trauma, prison, and self-empowerment published by Steelforce Press. As the youngest of six children, Forbes grew up in a Chicago housing project, when she endured sexual religious and emotional abuse as a young girl. A baratian's reader, she graduated high school at 15, went to work as a secretary in a downtown insurance office to became president at 16, and at 19 unexpectedly and uncharacteristically committed a violent act, stabbing and killing the father of a daughter. Ford spent 14 years in prison, their ship tainted college degree and professional certificates. She also discovered writers like Shakespeare, UEP Newton, and Tony Morrison.

Upon her release, she faced the same obstacles to a normal life minute restored citizens' face, the lack of job opportunities and affordable housing. I'm John A. O. Hanson, Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America and the beginning of our 52nd season. On this week's program, I can take it from here with Lisa Forbes, In Black America. Somebody pulled back the curtain and closed it back. I just thought, I don't think that was him, and it wasn't him that came to the window, but I said to myself, even if he would leave me out there, I didn't think he would leave his two-year-old out there in the Chicago winter, it was December. So I thought something must be wrong there, and so at that point I had what I just could only call an irresistible impulse to get in the house and ironically think I was thinking maybe something bad was happening to him, something that maybe I would need to protect

myself and him from whoever it was that had peaked out of that house. So I walked to the Jewel grocery store, a couple of blocks away, and I bought a few couple of things for my daughter and I also bought a knife. Behind that knife was one of the biggest mistake Lisa Forbes could have made. That decision led to a 14-year-long stint in a maximum security prison in Dixon, Illinois, but her trauma didn't begin there, and older brother Sexley molested her for years, her sisters bullied her, her father drank, and her mother talked about the last days, for did her best to ignore a suppressor rage and pain. In a book I can take from here, for it to provide powerful insight into what we at society need to learn and confront, and the ongoing epidemic of mass reincarceration. She is a stunning example of an individual who through determination, knowledge, and hard work has been able to reclaim her own life.

It hasn't been easy. Forbes grew up poor on the south side of Chicago, the youngest of six children, and at time in her 30s, she started her own company, Lisa Forbes Inc., to help restore its citizen caught with false prison life. Recently in Black America spoke with Lisa Forbes. She said, It was going to be destroyed in any minute. Armageddon was going to come. We just need to huddle together and try to survive it and not associate with other people.

So it's all these different worlds I had to try to survive and most of them collide it with each other. When I went to grammar school, I had teachers who saw my potential. And so they would bring me books to read and things and try to show an interest in me. But there was no support for that from my family. So it was a lot of different worlds to try to negotiate as a kid who had no coping skills at all, of course, because I was a kid. I also understand that there were some trauma that was being afflicted on you. First, I want to talk to you about, used to babysit a young lady who was murdered and one of the elevated chefs, correct? Yes. So there was a woman who used to go to the kingdom hall with my mother. She had two young daughters. And I used to babysit her kids. And one day, I remember coming home from school and being told that she had been killed.

And just nobody was really talking to me directly about what was going on because I was a little kid. But just hearing the other adult conversations describe what was going on, I heard about the injuries that had been inflicted on her. How? You know, she had been stabbed in the throat, and the body was thrown down the elevator shaft, but just all these horrible descriptions. And you know, we think that sometimes when we're talking, that kids are not listening to us. So they're not being affected by what we say. But for years after that, first of all, I had trouble going into elevators. And then secondly, I had trouble holding my head back. I would go to a salon or something and get my hair done. And they would say lean back over the bowl. I could barely do it because I felt like something was going to happen with my throat. I had to hold my hand over my throat. It would literally always stay with me that somebody could possibly stab you in the throat. And so I just had all of these things

where there was really exposure to severe trauma and then no protection from it. And no awareness from the adults around me that kids are listening to you and being affected by what you're describing. So that stayed with me for years. I mean, literally I was an adult and I would still think about that woman every single day. She just lived in my energy system. The trauma that had happened to her got absorbed by me. I also understand you were pretty smart, kid. You skipped first and seventh grade? I did because my mother taught me to read when I was three. Even though she mostly only has growing up wanting us to read things that were produced by the Jehovah's Witnesses, but she taught me to read. And so by the time I went to kindergarten, I was well ahead of the kids in the public school system. And teachers recognized that so they just kept skipping me

ahead, but the backlash to that was that I was much younger than all of the children that I was in class with. And so I had no ability to connect to them. No relationship with them. And none of them could connect to me. So that was just a little kid. And not only that, but I was a little kid. I was a smart kid and the teachers liked me. So being skipped ahead with nothing else around me, no other support really just left me more vulnerable to being bullied or anything else by the older kids I was in class with. Now understand that you could have gone to Martin Luther King high school, but you ended up going to Dunbar, which was, I guess, close to the home? Well, actually it was the reverse. I wanted to go to Dunbar, which was a better school. Had a better reputation. But I would have had to take the bus every day to school. And my mother just said, that's not an option.

You got to go to school where you can walk. And besides all the other kids are going to King high school. And you know, who do you think you are? So I went to having graduated from eighth grade when I was 11. I went to the neighborhood school just a couple of blocks away. And it was just throughout the city understood to just be a terribly underperforming school. And really just got almost no education out of that school. And just filled with children who really were not literate. The teachers were not concerned. To the point where one of the administrators in the school called me down to the office one day because she looked at my birth date and she thought they must have had the wrong information. And she said, you're actually 12. So I was 12 years old at that point in ninth grade. And I said, yeah, and she said to the other teacher standing around, she said, if my child was 12 years old and already in high school, I would show

have them in a better place than this. But that wasn't a thing that my mother even would consider because to her it was irrelevant because it doesn't matter what kind of education you're getting now. If Armageddon is going to come at any minute now, that's what we need to be focused on. So you don't need worldly knowledge anyway. So it was irrelevant to her what school I went to. Give us an idea because I think a lot of the audience don't understand the type of neighborhood that you had to walk through. Give our audience an idea of the things you had to walk past just to get to school every morning. Well, we lived in the projects. So it was a cluster of tall 16 story housing projects. And you're in soaked, dark, the lights and the stairs were always busted out. We lived on the sixth floor. So we always had to walk up and down six flights of stairs because the elevators were broken 90% of the time.

Gunshots, day and night, gangs, people standing around, just like grown men hanging out on the corner all day long. You're walking by them. Dark alleys is just really a situation where you would think if a person had any chance to get out of it, they had a smart kid or whatever that they would have had some thought. Let me not put my 12-year-old in the situation where this is where they're walking through. Back and forth, it ain't alone every day to go to school. And we hear so much about this now sometimes with the news in Chicago, but as if it's something new. But this is not new. Our kids have been having this trauma all along. And just so the constant fear. I remember being maybe seven or eight years old and hearing that one Halloween was a new year when they were shooting that a friend of mine

who was also in grammar school got shot in the leg in her bed a bullet came through the window. So this has been happening for decades where we're living in these violent, traumatized, wild west neighborhoods, and it's just presumed that you're gonna grow up fine. Well, why would you? You graduated, like you say, at 15 from high school. Everybody else going off to college, Mom and Dad said, I don't think so. And you end up working downtown Chicago. Right. So again, I'm again, it's still not here yet, but it's gonna be coming any second now. So you don't need any more worldly knowledge what you need as a job. So at 15, when I could have gone to any university probably in the world on a scholarship, my mother took me to get a work permit and I became a clerk typist at an office in downtown Chicago.

So I left every morning at 15 years old going to work took the bus and the train and went to work as a clerk typist. It was surrounded by all of these adults. And again, I'm only 15 years old. I mean, most 15-year-olds are just going into high school. And this is what I'm doing having already graduated from high school. And so it was on that job where I met my daughter's father within a few months of meeting him. I was pregnant at 16. And Mr. Banks didn't promise to marry you. You didn't. You moved to Milwaukee. Came back that December went to the house. Tell us what happened. Well, I always tell people that, you know, I accept for responsibility for what happened. I didn't write this book to try to justify myself, but to just simply to explain that what was caused by trauma,

what was caused, what if I had met James Banks and were knocked on his door in December 1985 and had not already had a lifetime of trauma behind me, it would have been a completely different situation. But because it was, I always had, for instance, this fear, or even after the murder of Ron DeSander's being stabbed in the throat, I always had this feeling like death was near. This is just constant haunting that something bad, really bad could happen to me. And of course, bad things had been happening to me every day throughout my entire life. So I always had this fear, like I needed to be able to protect myself. And so when I knocked on his door and somebody pulled back the curtain and closed it back, I just thought, I don't think that was him. And it wasn't him that came to the window, but I said to myself, even if he would leave me out there,

I didn't think he would leave his two-year-old out there in the Chicago winter, it was December. And so I thought something must be wrong there. And so I went, at that point, I had what I just could only call an irresistible impulse to get in the house. And ironically, I was thinking, maybe something bad was happening to him, something that maybe I would need to protect myself and him from whoever it was that had peaked out of that house. And so I walked to the jewel grocery store, a couple of blocks away. And I bought a few cover things for my daughter to eat, but I also bought a knife. Not even have the knife unwrapped. When I went back to his house and somebody opened the door who had been previously introduced to me by him as his cousin, but I found out after all of this happened that in fact she was his wife, when she made me in, I just, and I realized what was happening.

And it really, John, it was just the case of the other humiliation, the laughter, the mockery, all of the things that happened in that moment. When I was thinking, maybe something was wrong with him. And maybe I need to get in there and find out and see if I could help him. What happened was simply that in that moment, I just projected a lifetime of trauma onto a single individual and just punished him for my whole life. The situation that there were people there that I didn't know who they were, he was laughing at me, people were standing around. And I just really, at that moment, just had an emotional breakdown. And that is really what happened. So when people say, why didn't you make a different decision? Why didn't you just turn around and leave? I was a teenager still then, who had been so traumatized throughout my entire life,

that I could only make the decisions that my traumatized mind would allow me to make. And so I just, I responded violently, I responded irrationally and appropriately. And there's, I tell people, if I had been on my jury, I would have convicted me too, because none of them heard anything about my life. But what caused that moment was an emotional breakdown caused by trauma. And there's no way to explain it logically. It's the only way to explain it is in the context of what my entire life had been like. 1987, you're convicted of the offense. You go off to the white correctional center and Dixon, Illinois. Tell us what was it like that first day that you spent night in the penitentiary? Well, that first night, I used to have these constant feelings of like, this is a dream. I used to be in a dream like state a lot of times. Like, things are not real.

So I spent probably the first few days just feeling like this is not actually happening. And then finally, I started settling into, okay, you know, they put you through quarantine and all these things. And the psychologist comes back and says, you're, oh, you're not a typical, you know, inmate. Well, you know, gee, thanks. That's not really helpful. But, you know, so I finally had to just focus on the fact that my appellate public defender was saying, I had a really great cause for an appeal. There have been several things that had gone wrong with the trial. Some of them, the judge had even acknowledged. She said it might take a while. Things are really backed up, but don't worry. I'm really confident you're going to get, you're going to win your appeal. And so after a while, that just became what my life line. I just lived for the thought that, hey, I'm not going to do this time. I'm going to get out. I found it amazing that your court

upon attorney eventually became a judge. It is just totally amazing, considering all the missteps that he had in your defense. Mm-hmm. He became a judge and, and, you know, it was, as if it was like the beat goes on. So when people talk now about, you know, people being found factually innocent, or, you know, even though I may not have been factually innocent, but when people talk about how people are coming off of death row, being found out that it could not have been then DNA exonerates them, people really need to understand that this is not a new thing. This has been like business as usual in the black community forever. Well, with people who are supposed to be representing us or judging us situation, just have no interest whatever in defending us is just like pigs on a slaughter, and then you just have to spend the rest of your life trying to prove what happened.

And that's kind of what happened with my child, public defender, he just basically had no, I mean, there were times when I could tell, he could barely remember my name. And then he just, go ahead. Just goes, then he just, yeah. He goes through and it's so business as usual that he just goes through his job performance and eventually gets promoted to judge. I found it interesting that the initials, public defender, PV, or days to penitentiary deliver it, that's what they told you. Well, yeah, my mother was ahead. It was like, well, we're not gonna raise any money for a private attorney because, you know, we were told that a public defender would be just as good. And I was like, oh my God, you can't be serious. You know, but it keeps, it's, again, it's one of those things that you just don't understand what's happening until you're on the back side of it. No, I understand. If you're just joining us, I'm John E. Johansson, Jr., and you're listening to In Black America

from KUT Radio and speaking with Lisa Forbes, founder and CEO, Lisa Forbes Inc. An author of, I can take it from here, and meanwhile, trauma, prison, and self-empowerment, Lisa. What brought you to the decision that you were gonna try to escape from prison? Well, as I said, my life line that I had been holding on to was the certainty of my appellate defender that I was gonna win the appeal. When I, and then when I did, and when I saw the reasons that I did, it wasn't that the appellate court said none of these inappropriate things happened. The appellate court literally said that there were about four or five things that happened in my trial and sentencing that should not have happened, but it really didn't matter because it wouldn't have changed things anyway. When I saw that reasoning, I said, okay, I'm never gonna get out of here,

and there is no way I'm gonna do all this time. And so, you know, I didn't know how to get out legally at that point, but I felt like I knew how to climb a fence, right? But the thing is, if you look at it, that really was just a continuation of a traumatic state because I had no plan, no anything. I guess I was just gonna climb this fence and walk to Chicago, but that is really the continuation of, you know, one thing I wanna say, John, is that something that people don't often factor in, the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is responsible for reason and judgment is not fully formed until people are in their early 20s. And that's why teenagers have should be looked at differently in the criminal justice system because when the prefrontal cortex is still not formed, when you ask a person why you did something, when they look back on it as an adult,

there is no rational answer for that. I did that because I have no idea. Even I know it doesn't make sense now. But at the time, it seemed like a great idea, you know? But I had no plan, no anything. My entire thing was I am, these people are not gonna let me out so I'm gonna let myself out. Now, when you attempted to escape, obviously you entered yourself. So at some point, authorities are gonna know what you attempted to do, correct? Correct. So I fell back, I got to the top of the fence, got all cut up, sliced up by the razor wire. Lost my balance and I fell back from the top of the fence, landed on my back and shattered my left ankle. So at that point, I know I'm not going anywhere, but I've got to get to the hospital now. So I dragged myself to the road where I could be seen by the passing patrol car and actually slapped her down when she drove by. And I just knew the end that it was over

and I had to get to a hospital. And so from there, the first guard who saw me thought I had been attacked. So she took me to the hospital inside the prison and then called the warden and they told them I needed to be transported to the outside hospital. But when the warden came, she took one look at me and she did not think I had been attacked. She said, Lisa, you and that fence cannot tango. So she was a little more astute in the guard. She recognized what had happened. And so after that, I did go out to the outside hospital and I had surgery and actually the surgeon told me that I was probably gonna live for the rest of my life. But I didn't and that was really the first time I realized that I could use my mind to help myself. Now you did your 14 years and you released from prison. Talk to us about that. Well, I came out and I went to the Safer Foundation which is a place that was well known

throughout the Illinois Department of Corrections for helping people find jobs and they get out. If they give you this manual, when you go through the pre-release program and it's got all these places and numbers to call, you think, okay, I've got some support. So I'm going through this manual. Most of these places don't exist anymore. The numbers don't work. It's just, it's really just a sham. But I went to the Safer Foundation because I've got a little resume. I'm thinking, well, I've at least been a secretary before and unlike most of the people who incarcerated who are not literate, I was able to read and write. And so I'm thinking, surely they're going to help me. And when I get there, they tell me they are not allowed to work with me because the prison put it on my release papers that I needed therapy before I could go into the workforce. And I'm thinking, I've been sitting in your day room for 14 years.

If you thought I needed therapy, why didn't you give it to me then? And so to then to add insult to injury, they gave me then a list of places to go to get therapy. One of them happened to be with a couple of blocks from where I was staying with my parents. So I went back home, walked to that place and they tell me, no, you're not in our district. Lisa Forbes, author of, I can take it from here, a memoir of trauma, prison, and self-empowerment. We will conclude our conversation on next week's program. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions ask your future in Black America programs, email us at inblackamerica at kut.org. Also, let us know what the radio station you heard us over. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. You can get previous programs online at kut.org. Also, you can listen to a special collection of in Black America programs at American Archive of Public Broadcasting.

That's American Archives.org. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for Tech Fico-produced David Alvarez, I'm John A. Henson Jr. Thank you for joining us today as we began our 52nd season. And please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America CDs. KUT Radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America CDs, KUT Radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712. This has been a production of KUT Radio.