May 21, 2020 • 33 mins
Though only 6.5 percent of Californians are black, African Americans make up 29 percent of the prison population and 36 percent of those condemned to death. Jarvis was born into poverty and abuse so extreme, he shot past the “cradle to prison pipeline,” straight to the “cradle to death row pipeline.” Enlil McRae, from the Truthworker Theatre Company, reads passages from Jarvis’s memoir, “That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row,” You will learn about Jarvis’s formative years, his struggles to survive and the foster parents who imprinted on him the meaning of love.
Meet David Sheff, author of a new biography on Jarvis, “The Buddhist on Death Row: How One Man Found Light in the Darkest Place.” David has spent the last several years visiting with Jarvis, and has amassed hundreds of hours of interviews with him, and those people who had the greatest impact on Jarvis’s life. David is also the author of the memoir, “Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction.”
Theme song SENTENCED, is complements of the band Stick Figure, from their album “Set In Stone.”
Have a question for Jarvis that you’d like to hear him answer on the podcast, please leave a message on our hotline: 201-903-3575 or, AskJarvisMasters@Gmail.com
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dear Governor is a production of I Heart Media and
three Months Media. Dear Governor Newsom, Dear Mr Governor Newsom,
this is an open letter to Governor Gavin Newsom, Dear
Governor news Problem. To read Jarvis Master's book That Bird
(00:27):
Has My Wings and Autobiography of an Innocent Man on
Death Row is to know that his opportunity for success
in living the American dream was hijacked long before He's
So much is inhaled his first breath, and tragically, his
story is anything but an isolated experience. There's a disturbing
phenomenon in this country in which a population of babies,
(00:48):
more specifically babies of color, and even more specifically impoverished
baby boys of color, are pushed out of the womb
onto a direct pathway to prison. Marian Wright, a woman
President Emerita and founder of the Children's Defense Fund, who
identified this trend and coined the phrase cradle to prison pipeline, writes,
(01:09):
the most dangerous place for a child to try to
grow up in America is at the intersection of race
and poverty. Folk, you know, we're losing it and we're
going backwards in just one or two generations here and
this in my belief is that this is the worst
crisis based by the black community sent slavery in that
incarceration is becoming the new American apartheid. We're feeding poor
(01:30):
children about the hundreds of thousands each year into this
pipeline to prison and the dead in lives um and
um at younger and younger ages um. And we've got
to stay stopped because it's gonna under the last fifty
years of progress. Jarvis grew up on the corner of
race and poverty, but his particular intersection was so perilous
it spit him right past the cradle the prison pipeline
(01:53):
straight to the cradle to death row pipeline. We've enlisted
in Little McCray, a personal mentee of Jarvis and a
member of the Truth Workers Theater Company, to help us
tell Jarvis's story in his own words from That Bird
Has My Wings. It was the late sixties when my mother,
Cynthia and my stepfather Oldis from among the biggest heroin
(02:14):
users and deals in Long Beach, California. From the outside,
the house didn't look like a dope house. My parents
had lots of money from being in the drug underworld,
so they could afford a front house that drew no
suspicion or complaints from the neighbors. The house was a
place where my parents clientele and whoever they chose to
(02:35):
bring with them could always, the matter the time of day,
walk right in and shoot their dope indoors off the streets.
Many of their customers would nod themselves to sleep right
there on the living room or bathroom floor and stay
for hours and hours the house. You know, Heroin was
a big thing, Jarvis masters. Everyone had those little things
(02:59):
wrapped around on their arms and had a little uh
shaving kit. They shot dope in the kitchen, They shot
open in the living room, they shot dope in the restroom.
They argued about who was who had more dope in
the other and dope was like all over the place,
you know. To avoid the prostitutes and the narrow dwells
(03:22):
drifting in and out of their home, Jarvis, his older
sister Charlene, his younger sisters Bertie and Carlette, and baby
Dean found comfort in the safety of the attic, their
own private treehouse. We love that attic that at It
was somewhere where we just love staying at. You know,
when we when we thought there was gonna be violence downstairs,
(03:44):
We're going to that attic when we felt like, you know,
we were too hungry to move around, we'll go up
in that attic. We would that mean, Uh, it was
something that we found it. We thought no one in
that house would walk in that house or leave that house.
We know that exists. It was a good place for
us to be when we thought that there was something
(04:05):
going down in that house that we didn't want to
be around. So yeah, we we we were living that
attic and it was a really really good place for us.
It was here that they could sleep soundly like babies,
despite their empty stomachs, the lack of electricity, and their filthy,
ragged clothes. An old white woman lived in the house
(04:29):
behind us. Every morning she will put food off for us.
She someone knew that we were being left to starve
in our own house. We counted on her food sometimes
when no adult was around the house for days. This
was the only food we had. The white woman used
to set food out for us to and that was
(04:49):
our breakfast. You know, we always thought that's what we
had coming. You know, we didn't know if she was
a parent, and she was doing this for my mother.
We didn't have no idea about what that step was
going on, but we we survived off of it. Jarvis
has only one vivid memory of his father, just before
his stepfather Otis came into the picture, and little McCray continues,
(05:14):
We were all in the bedroom where Mama had been
trying to pack our stuff. In the chaotic frenzy, My father,
whose name I never knew, banked open the front door, yelling,
where are you, bitch? I'm gonna kill you and your kids.
Panic stricken, Mama grabbed me, jerked my face up to hers,
and shook me, saying if anything happens to me, you'd
(05:36):
take care of your sisters, and she crammed the three
of us under the bed, one by one, with me
on the outside. Now I heard my father yelling where
are those kids, sweat dripping from her face. Her mother
ran out of the bedroom, hearing the bam bam bam
about father's fists against her flesh. I knew what happened
(05:59):
when she got to the next from my sisters, and
I shook with every blow as if our mother's cries
or our own and one cries stopped. We can still
hear the blows. But that wasn't all we heard. The
furniture was breaking in, glass was flying as the pictures
fell down from the walls. My father had slammed it
(06:20):
to us like hurricane. Then with a kick of his foot,
the bedroom door smashed open, and the storm stood at
our threast hold From under the bed, while I could
see was these shoes, the scariest sight I've ever seen.
I freezed my eyes to catch a glimpse of the
(06:41):
man who filled the shoes, but his voice interrupted me,
where you motherfucking kids at. I'm gonna kill you too.
Thankfully he never thought to look beneath the bed, but
the violence their mother endured is indelible. Hearing our dreams,
a neighbor came in and called an ambulance from home.
(07:05):
After that, I never asked about my father. I've always
remembered those shoes trying to stump out the light, of
my mother taking me to paint the house lass of Forever.
Though only six point five percent of California's are black,
African Americans make up of the prison population and thirty
(07:26):
six percent of those condemned to death. The pipeline from
the intersection of poverty and race to the execution chambers
in California's state prison is difficult to refute, and along
the pathway looms largely a highly dysfunctional foster care and
juvenile justice system. Jarvis and his siblings were removed from
their mother's care after she was beaten within an inch
(07:47):
of her life. Though separated from his siblings, Jervis's first
four years in foster care was a brief, albeit profound
example of what's right with the system. Dennis and Mamie
PROCs were elderly, god fearing Christians who first took Jarvis
into their loving home and under their nurturing wings of
the Proxies. He writes their faith in the power of
(08:10):
loving hearts gave me the best years of my childhood,
somehow erasing many of the horrors I experienced before I
walked into their lives. Mammy and Dennis was my very
first foster home, and it was the first foster home.
It was the first place in my life that I
saw all the contradictions of where I had came from
(08:31):
and what I had now. They loved me morning anything
in the world. You know, I was the only kid,
you know, I had my whole little bedroom. I had
a whole huge backyard, a real huge backyard. Uh, the
red porch, the whole thing. You know, how was the
darling in the house, the darling in the whole block. Actually,
(08:54):
you know, it was when I first really went to school,
when I first really got the great first really played
in the sandbox. Uh, everything you know, and the difference
between there and where I came from was shocking. It
was it was like I didn't even want to tell
(09:14):
the stories after a while, and they didn't make each
other stories near they didn't need to know the stories.
Whatever Social services had communicated to them. They understood where
I had came from, and they were very understanding of
(09:35):
that life. They didn't show sadness for it because they
didn't want to wear that off on me. But they
understood it. They understood it, and they knew their role
and having this opportunity, you know, to care for uh,
to care for me. What are some of your Oh man,
(09:58):
what are my favorite memories? M hmmm, Uh, Christmas is
and my first bike and my first real day in
the first grade, in the second grade, and ah made me.
I loved her so much. Um. What was she like? Uh?
(10:21):
She was. She was rolled off. She was rolling into
a whole bunch of things. She was your your mother,
your auntie, your grandmother, uh, your disciplinarian. It was all
these things, you know, and she would try to be
all those things to be one kind of person, and
that's where she made herself into For me. Uh, Dennis
(10:44):
was the same way. You know. They were older folks.
They made life very very comfortable for me. You know,
I didn't have to do a whole lot. The child
in me just came rolling back, and I didn't know
how much hurt and pain I had suffered, um being
(11:06):
abandoned like that. Hm. You you you tell a story
about them taking you to church? What was that like? Oh? Wow, yeah,
you know. I at first, let me just say this,
(11:27):
I have never when I first went to church with
with Mammy and Dennis, I had never ever had seen
so many black folks in my life. So that was
the first thing that had just blown me away. You know.
Mammy was a very very light, loved, appreciative person in
(11:50):
the church and she always got the best seats. Jennie
was a deacon, so he always set way up there
and her friends were They were the most bizarre women
I never saw in my life. You know. Well, they
(12:11):
they would have them. They would go through these holy
ghost moments, you know, where they were, they were where
they be trying to get the devil out of them,
you know, and they'd be spinning on the ground and
sweating and kicking and like she's having a seizure or something.
And then Mammy would then down and put a fan
(12:32):
on her face, and I'm thinking, oh God, I got
you out of here, you know what I mean. They
didn't call the they to say we need some help
here where we need some help, We need to get
this woman off the ground. No, they just get real
close to her and fanner fan and woman on the
face like everything she's doing is okay. And I just
knew that wasn't cool. You know. I didn't like it.
(12:55):
I hated it. So I gave my life. I gave
my allowances back just so I don't have to go. Um,
so you gave your allowance back so you didn't have
to go to church. Yeah, they said they made it deal.
And they said if you go to church, which I
can't remember because they used to say three bits, four bits,
so they never said fifty said they I was calling bits,
(13:17):
you know. And at first I was collecting the money,
you know, coins and everything, and then one morning I said,
you know what, you guys can have this pack. You know,
I'm not going you know. Yeah, I was one of
the first executive decisions I ever made in my life.
This is not confident. Did you stay home? And they
(13:38):
went to church after he gave the money back. The
people a cross street babysit at me. I was cutting
their loss was twice as much, it was. That was brilliant, Yeah,
I was. I was cutting their lives with twice as much. Um. Yeah,
tell me about how it all came to an end. Well,
(14:00):
it was the reality that I lived in, and there
was reality that I learned later. The reality that I
lived in was that they were getting old and they
were just not able to keep up with me. It
just couldn't keep up, you know, and it broke their
heart to have to let me find me another place.
(14:22):
But in reality, Mamie was diagnosed with cancer and she
was dying. And that's the story I never got, you know. Um,
So they Dennis couldn't do it by himself. As soon
as I left, maybe a month or two after I left,
(14:43):
she died. I was crushed. That really spuned me in
a way where I compared everybody to her and no one,
no one ever got as close to her in my life.
Then she was. If the proxy showed what's right within
(15:06):
our foster care system, Earl and Florence du Pomp showed
quite the opposite. This was the next household. Jarvis was
shipped too, and it was nothing short of a nightmare.
He was little more than a paycheck to them, and
a lot less than an innocent nine year old boy.
This is what happened to him for confiding his grievances
to Mamie and Dennis. Florence looked down at my hands
(15:28):
and told me to wash before I left the house.
I was at the sink later in when she suddenly
came up behind me, gripping one of my hands. She
forced it down into the drain for split second. I
imagine she thought I dropped the soap and was wanting
me to retrieve it. And I saw a flip that
gob was disposal switch. Tips of my fingers felt bits
(15:50):
of food, bouncing multi role taking blades. I tried to
put my hand out as Florence kept pushing it down
for towards the blades. We were like two arm wrestlers.
I didn't know why Florence was doing this. She was
not only mean, she had become totally possessed. I could
feel her evil. That's willing to hear my screams. The
(16:14):
seconds felt like minutes thanks to the soul. She kept
losing her grip, which may have been was saved my fingers.
If you ever, Florence said, spinning into my air, try
calling somebody else about what goes on in this house.
You won't have this hand, don't you ever? Ever? She
(16:35):
seed it through her teeth. Do you hear me? Do you? Yes? Please?
I won't. I won't, I promise I won't. What the
trip tell me about him. I've been thinking about this
for many, many years before I even wrote that book,
(16:58):
and I realized there so many people in prison, not
just on death row, but in prison, had known someone
like that in their younger life. These are the faces
and names of people we can I can go out
to any yard and we can talk about for you
(17:18):
for for for hours. We can compare life experiences with
these people. We could show our rooms where we was
hit when we were first hitting, second hit, and third hit,
you know, and what that did to us when we
ran away from that, and we ran away from something
just like that and something just like that again, and
(17:40):
then we found the most safest place is in some
juvenile hall with the dormitory that had in the structure
that we went to school early in the morning. We
came back and when we got in trouble, we got
uh thrown into a hole. So the dew Ponts is
very much in that in that way they stack you up.
(18:03):
You went in there and there's five or six maybe
more than that, foster kids, and they're in a very
small room and there were three bump bets, so two
bump bets but three three decks. I was put at
the top. I was the smallest. I can raise my
arm halfway and I can touch the ceiling. It was
(18:26):
It was junky, it was stinky. It was just completely
utterly different from where I had been to me raised
with Mammy and Dennis. It was completely utterly different. I
didn't understand it at all. And even though I had
a little with my mother and we had that experiences
(18:49):
that I can always think about it and reflect back on,
this was totally different. This was a machine a systematic
way of because I'm in wealthy by the by the
exploitation of kids and a juvenile system that was just
bursting out the scene with what do we do with
these kids? So that story is a story that you know,
(19:14):
has all the environments everything you need to be horrified
to be that. So many people I know in jail
and prisons and wherever I've been know they know the
DuPonts Dupontsism very very It is one of those well
written books that we all can talk about. I was abused,
I was whipped, I was thrown, I was dropped out
(19:37):
of stairs. I was my hand was forced into a
a garbage disposed machinery type thing, a rotor everything you know. Um,
I was made to eat food out of garbage as
a distillery action. And it was the pits. It was
(20:01):
the pits. And I watched people for the first time
in my life at that point endure pain. Earlier, I
didn't know what I knew would being very hungry, starving,
you know, wanting to eat so bad that there was
(20:22):
nothing there to eat. I understood that. That's fine. I
did that, that was cool. I understood it. It was
something of an experience that Mammy and Dennis told me
that is not what real people do. Only sick people
do those things. And your mother and your father and
their friends were not well. I dug it. I understood it.
(20:44):
Maybe did I want to believe it so I don't
have to tell no hard story about my mother. That
might be the case. But this was systematic. This was
a design way of treating children. It was a way
of raising kids that were not your own. Their kids
(21:06):
lived upstairs, their vituals were flushed. We weren't allowed to
go up there, and we had to sleep down there. Um.
It was hell. It was real hell. And someone told
me how to go to juvenile Hall instead. They showed
me how to run away just so I can go
(21:28):
to juvenile Hall instead. So that was the kind of
place it was. I don't wish that only anyone you know.
It was not write at all. Jarvis eventually found the
courage to escape the bondages of the DuPont House of Terror,
only to find himself at times homeless or bouncing from
(21:50):
one foster facility to the next, in and out of
juvenile detention centers, from the notorious McLaren Hall Children's Center
to the even more notorious boys Town of the Desert.
McLaren Hall incidentally was shuttered years ago under dark clouds
of rampant abuse and molestation. Boystown the Desert was a
turning point in my life. It was because of where
(22:12):
I went after Boystown, After Boystown where all hell broke blues,
whereafter DuPonts was very abusive on every level. The academy
was very structured into a military cadet type school where
(22:35):
every act of violence was justified, every show of cowardness
were treated with the most disrespect, and it was a
challenge to keep up with that stuff. We were forced
to fight. We was forced to learn how to fight.
We were forced to run. We were forced to endure pain.
(22:58):
We were forced to give of pain, to issuate pain,
to to to enjoy it, to make people feel they
deserved it. We were programmed to be very very violent people,
young kids. We challenge each other by putting cigarettes between
our arms and to see who flinched. Counselors, cadet counselors
(23:22):
were bet on that, and I was trained to be
very very violent. That was a turning point in my life.
That child that was abandoned, that that small house and
that kid that that that toddler who was with Mami
and Dennis, that kids that didn't understand why people treated
(23:45):
people so bad, and the DuPonts, then the peer pressuret
boys town nothing. None of those compared to the California
Military Academy. Nothing. We were made to hurt people and
made to endure pain. I was pretty good at it
(24:09):
because I kind of looked up to these guys, you know,
the counselors, you know, who showed me how to kick
box and showed me how to fight, and showed me
how to not lose, and show me how to take
pain by cigarette butts, and who would buy me a
six pack up Sodas if I can keep my arm
(24:30):
there the longest. It was a very, very very painful thing.
I compared its training bulldogs at an early age. It
was training bulldogs at an early age for me to
a flick violence. I've seen guys get buffed in their
(24:52):
head with sticks and they did not had cried, you know,
and they didn't if they had a has to have
a pistol that was shut up everybody in there. Then
I see that a lot when I think about some
of the virus I see today. I was taught violence
and then and I don't never think I I really
(25:14):
came back from that. In my early age teenage years,
I learned almost everything that I needed to learn to
defend myself, and I got pretty good at it. Just
something about me just locked up, just locked in, you know.
It was something about me that just said that you
on your own. Now, you know, when you were the way,
(25:34):
you know, make sure no one hurts you when you
any other place you go to, you know, make sure
no one hurts you. You're not going to depend on
asking people are telling on anyone or you know this
guy he hit me in the face. There was none
of that, no more. There was none of that. And
I met all these guys in prison almost you know,
(25:57):
this is what blows me and where even when I
think about it today, it was based on your performance
in the academy that reflected who you were when you
got to prison. If you were week depended upon someone else,
(26:17):
scared taking advantage of in the academy, you was expected
to be that same person when you got to prison,
and people made you that same person when you got
the prison got stabbed because they were that same person.
So that would make me strong that would make me survive,
(26:40):
because my track record as a kid really reflected everywhere
else I've been. Even today, I know, I know that
young kids who are in June all they're trying to
get out of for who they were when they were
in June the hall when they come to prison, because
the history follows you. Those life experiences as children in
(27:05):
foster homes, boys homes, champs has follow us where we
go if we're going in the direction of prisons. Dear
Governor Newsome, I want to tell you about a man
I've come to know, someone extraordinary. His name is Jarvis j. Masters.
He inspires people and helps them. Indeed, he's changed lives
(27:27):
and save them. But what's most remarkable is that Jarvis
has done this while being incarcerated on death row in
San Quentin. He's there because he was framed for a
crime he didn't commit. There's in controvertible evidence to prove this.
But in spite of that, he's been on death row
for three decades, including twenty two years in solitary confinement.
Even amid that injustice and in those appalling conditions, he's
(27:50):
been a force for good. My name is David Chef.
I'm a journalist who has written about social justice, politics,
mental health, and many other issues, most recently folk sing
on our nation's drug use and addiction crises. In addition,
I'm in the final stages of a book I've been
working on for three years, a biography of masters entitled
The Buddhist on Death Row. When I met David Scheff,
(28:12):
he convinced me, with very few words that that I
had a story. It's an extraordinary story. And when I
hope and believe will enlighten and inspire. She did not
just come here one day in this start tape of
me and that was it. She came here consistently going
over things, going back over the finding out things, wondering
(28:34):
about this. I mean, he is a real biographer. I
suspect that he has at least fifty takes, you know,
two hundred, three hundred, maybe fourred of tapes. In the book,
I chronicled Jarvis's journey. He had a difficult childhood characterized
by neglect and physical abuse, and as he fully admits,
he committed crimes when he was a teenager. Jarvis has
(28:57):
never killed. I'll say that again. He has never are killed,
but he's open about the crimes he did commit, and
he's repeatedly described his remorse. When Jarvis was incarcerated in
San Quentin, it was different than it is now. A
former warden described it to me as a war zone.
Jarvis was thrown into that war zone when he was
still an adolescent. He was only nineteen. Four years later,
(29:20):
a terrible crime was committed. A correctional officer was murdered.
Jarvis wasn't involved with the murder, but he was framed.
He couldn't defend himself. He would have been murdered himself
if he had. As a result, Jarvis was condemned and
sentenced to death. Tragically, we've all heard similar stories about
wrongful convictions, innocent men being locked up in our nation's prisons.
(29:41):
Far too many languish there for the remainder of their lives,
and many in that situation grow angry and bitter, and
many have killed themselves. Jarvis went another way. As I said,
he has changed lives and saved them. Jarvis has taught
so called troubled teenagers non violence and challenged them to
rethink their definitions of man hood. He's taught them that
(30:02):
being a man isn't what they had been taught someone cold,
hard stock and violent, but instead is someone conscientious, open
and loving, a good father and friend, a citizen who
contributes to his or horror community. A condemned prisoner told
me about Jervis's breaking in viable prison codes, intervening in
conflicts on the yard that would have led to violence,
and helping inmates who are vulnerable to attack even more improbable.
(30:26):
In my research, I found examples of Jarvis's preventing murder
of prisoners, and in two cases I've documented preventing the
murder of correctional officers. I am now writing you to
look to ask you to look into Jarvis's case and
right a terrible wrong that has been done to him.
He has talked to me about one of the things
he would do he's freed from San Quentin. He would
(30:49):
return to the kinds of neighborhoods in which he grew
up to teach California's lost children. He guide and mentor
kids and teach them to value themselves and live authentically,
with the aim of helping them avoid gangs, drugs, and violence.
I want to thank you for listening, and I want
to send my respect David Chef. I'm left side you
(31:10):
know this opportunity to have someone like him sit down
for all these as, to spend this time with me
answer right about my life. The system taught Jarvis how
to fight, and while still a boy, defined for him
what it meant to be a man, fierce, angry and proud.
There were times when he tried to rise above and
escape the cradle to prison pipeline, but the gravitational pull
(31:33):
was too strong to resist. Next week, we'll hear directly
from Jarvis about the crimes he committed the first put
in behind bars. In we'll hear what manhood meant to
him then, and what manhood means to him now, and
how that transformation came to be. Today's episode was written
and produced by Donni Fazzari and myself, Corny Cole. Our
(31:56):
theme song sentenced his compliments of the band Stick Figure
from their album Set in Stone. Excerpts from Jarvis's memoir
That Bird Has My Wings, a Harper One publication, were
read by n Low McCrae, a member of the Truth
Worker Theater Company. To learn more about the outstanding work
they do, please visit truth Worker dot com. Stu Sternbach
(32:19):
has composed the original music. Nate Dufort did the sound design.
Visit free Jarvis dot org to find out more about
Jarvis's case and to sign your name to our Dear
Governor Newsom petition. And if you have questions for Jarvis,
please leave a message on our hotline at two zero
one nine zero three thirty five seventy five. That's two
zero one nine zero three thirty five seventy five. And
(32:43):
you can also preorder David Chef's biography about Jarvis, the
Buddhist on Death Row, How One Man Found Light in
the Darkest Place. Dear Governor Newsom is a production of
I Heart Media and three Months Media. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
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H m hm
Dear Governor is a production of I Heart Media and
three Months Media. Dear Governor Newsom, Dear Mr Governor Newsom,
this is an open letter to Governor Gavin Newsom, Dear
Governor news Problem. To read Jarvis Master's book That Bird
(00:27):
Has My Wings and Autobiography of an Innocent Man on
Death Row is to know that his opportunity for success
in living the American dream was hijacked long before He's
So much is inhaled his first breath, and tragically, his
story is anything but an isolated experience. There's a disturbing
phenomenon in this country in which a population of babies,
(00:48):
more specifically babies of color, and even more specifically impoverished
baby boys of color, are pushed out of the womb
onto a direct pathway to prison. Marian Wright, a woman
President Emerita and founder of the Children's Defense Fund, who
identified this trend and coined the phrase cradle to prison pipeline, writes,
(01:09):
the most dangerous place for a child to try to
grow up in America is at the intersection of race
and poverty. Folk, you know, we're losing it and we're
going backwards in just one or two generations here and
this in my belief is that this is the worst
crisis based by the black community sent slavery in that
incarceration is becoming the new American apartheid. We're feeding poor
(01:30):
children about the hundreds of thousands each year into this
pipeline to prison and the dead in lives um and
um at younger and younger ages um. And we've got
to stay stopped because it's gonna under the last fifty
years of progress. Jarvis grew up on the corner of
race and poverty, but his particular intersection was so perilous
it spit him right past the cradle the prison pipeline
(01:53):
straight to the cradle to death row pipeline. We've enlisted
in Little McCray, a personal mentee of Jarvis and a
member of the Truth Workers Theater Company, to help us
tell Jarvis's story in his own words from That Bird
Has My Wings. It was the late sixties when my mother,
Cynthia and my stepfather Oldis from among the biggest heroin
(02:14):
users and deals in Long Beach, California. From the outside,
the house didn't look like a dope house. My parents
had lots of money from being in the drug underworld,
so they could afford a front house that drew no
suspicion or complaints from the neighbors. The house was a
place where my parents clientele and whoever they chose to
(02:35):
bring with them could always, the matter the time of day,
walk right in and shoot their dope indoors off the streets.
Many of their customers would nod themselves to sleep right
there on the living room or bathroom floor and stay
for hours and hours the house. You know, Heroin was
a big thing, Jarvis masters. Everyone had those little things
(02:59):
wrapped around on their arms and had a little uh
shaving kit. They shot dope in the kitchen, They shot
open in the living room, they shot dope in the restroom.
They argued about who was who had more dope in
the other and dope was like all over the place,
you know. To avoid the prostitutes and the narrow dwells
(03:22):
drifting in and out of their home, Jarvis, his older
sister Charlene, his younger sisters Bertie and Carlette, and baby
Dean found comfort in the safety of the attic, their
own private treehouse. We love that attic that at It
was somewhere where we just love staying at. You know,
when we when we thought there was gonna be violence downstairs,
(03:44):
We're going to that attic when we felt like, you know,
we were too hungry to move around, we'll go up
in that attic. We would that mean, Uh, it was
something that we found it. We thought no one in
that house would walk in that house or leave that house.
We know that exists. It was a good place for
us to be when we thought that there was something
(04:05):
going down in that house that we didn't want to
be around. So yeah, we we we were living that
attic and it was a really really good place for us.
It was here that they could sleep soundly like babies,
despite their empty stomachs, the lack of electricity, and their filthy,
ragged clothes. An old white woman lived in the house
(04:29):
behind us. Every morning she will put food off for us.
She someone knew that we were being left to starve
in our own house. We counted on her food sometimes
when no adult was around the house for days. This
was the only food we had. The white woman used
to set food out for us to and that was
(04:49):
our breakfast. You know, we always thought that's what we
had coming. You know, we didn't know if she was
a parent, and she was doing this for my mother.
We didn't have no idea about what that step was
going on, but we we survived off of it. Jarvis
has only one vivid memory of his father, just before
his stepfather Otis came into the picture, and little McCray continues,
(05:14):
We were all in the bedroom where Mama had been
trying to pack our stuff. In the chaotic frenzy, My father,
whose name I never knew, banked open the front door, yelling,
where are you, bitch? I'm gonna kill you and your kids.
Panic stricken, Mama grabbed me, jerked my face up to hers,
and shook me, saying if anything happens to me, you'd
(05:36):
take care of your sisters, and she crammed the three
of us under the bed, one by one, with me
on the outside. Now I heard my father yelling where
are those kids, sweat dripping from her face. Her mother
ran out of the bedroom, hearing the bam bam bam
about father's fists against her flesh. I knew what happened
(05:59):
when she got to the next from my sisters, and
I shook with every blow as if our mother's cries
or our own and one cries stopped. We can still
hear the blows. But that wasn't all we heard. The
furniture was breaking in, glass was flying as the pictures
fell down from the walls. My father had slammed it
(06:20):
to us like hurricane. Then with a kick of his foot,
the bedroom door smashed open, and the storm stood at
our threast hold From under the bed, while I could
see was these shoes, the scariest sight I've ever seen.
I freezed my eyes to catch a glimpse of the
(06:41):
man who filled the shoes, but his voice interrupted me,
where you motherfucking kids at. I'm gonna kill you too.
Thankfully he never thought to look beneath the bed, but
the violence their mother endured is indelible. Hearing our dreams,
a neighbor came in and called an ambulance from home.
(07:05):
After that, I never asked about my father. I've always
remembered those shoes trying to stump out the light, of
my mother taking me to paint the house lass of Forever.
Though only six point five percent of California's are black,
African Americans make up of the prison population and thirty
(07:26):
six percent of those condemned to death. The pipeline from
the intersection of poverty and race to the execution chambers
in California's state prison is difficult to refute, and along
the pathway looms largely a highly dysfunctional foster care and
juvenile justice system. Jarvis and his siblings were removed from
their mother's care after she was beaten within an inch
(07:47):
of her life. Though separated from his siblings, Jervis's first
four years in foster care was a brief, albeit profound
example of what's right with the system. Dennis and Mamie
PROCs were elderly, god fearing Christians who first took Jarvis
into their loving home and under their nurturing wings of
the Proxies. He writes their faith in the power of
(08:10):
loving hearts gave me the best years of my childhood,
somehow erasing many of the horrors I experienced before I
walked into their lives. Mammy and Dennis was my very
first foster home, and it was the first foster home.
It was the first place in my life that I
saw all the contradictions of where I had came from
(08:31):
and what I had now. They loved me morning anything
in the world. You know, I was the only kid,
you know, I had my whole little bedroom. I had
a whole huge backyard, a real huge backyard. Uh, the
red porch, the whole thing. You know, how was the
darling in the house, the darling in the whole block. Actually,
(08:54):
you know, it was when I first really went to school,
when I first really got the great first really played
in the sandbox. Uh, everything you know, and the difference
between there and where I came from was shocking. It
was it was like I didn't even want to tell
(09:14):
the stories after a while, and they didn't make each
other stories near they didn't need to know the stories.
Whatever Social services had communicated to them. They understood where
I had came from, and they were very understanding of
(09:35):
that life. They didn't show sadness for it because they
didn't want to wear that off on me. But they
understood it. They understood it, and they knew their role
and having this opportunity, you know, to care for uh,
to care for me. What are some of your Oh man,
(09:58):
what are my favorite memories? M hmmm, Uh, Christmas is
and my first bike and my first real day in
the first grade, in the second grade, and ah made me.
I loved her so much. Um. What was she like? Uh?
(10:21):
She was. She was rolled off. She was rolling into
a whole bunch of things. She was your your mother,
your auntie, your grandmother, uh, your disciplinarian. It was all
these things, you know, and she would try to be
all those things to be one kind of person, and
that's where she made herself into For me. Uh, Dennis
(10:44):
was the same way. You know. They were older folks.
They made life very very comfortable for me. You know,
I didn't have to do a whole lot. The child
in me just came rolling back, and I didn't know
how much hurt and pain I had suffered, um being
(11:06):
abandoned like that. Hm. You you you tell a story
about them taking you to church? What was that like? Oh? Wow, yeah,
you know. I at first, let me just say this,
(11:27):
I have never when I first went to church with
with Mammy and Dennis, I had never ever had seen
so many black folks in my life. So that was
the first thing that had just blown me away. You know.
Mammy was a very very light, loved, appreciative person in
(11:50):
the church and she always got the best seats. Jennie
was a deacon, so he always set way up there
and her friends were They were the most bizarre women
I never saw in my life. You know. Well, they
(12:11):
they would have them. They would go through these holy
ghost moments, you know, where they were, they were where
they be trying to get the devil out of them,
you know, and they'd be spinning on the ground and
sweating and kicking and like she's having a seizure or something.
And then Mammy would then down and put a fan
(12:32):
on her face, and I'm thinking, oh God, I got
you out of here, you know what I mean. They
didn't call the they to say we need some help
here where we need some help, We need to get
this woman off the ground. No, they just get real
close to her and fanner fan and woman on the
face like everything she's doing is okay. And I just
knew that wasn't cool. You know. I didn't like it.
(12:55):
I hated it. So I gave my life. I gave
my allowances back just so I don't have to go. Um,
so you gave your allowance back so you didn't have
to go to church. Yeah, they said they made it deal.
And they said if you go to church, which I
can't remember because they used to say three bits, four bits,
so they never said fifty said they I was calling bits,
(13:17):
you know. And at first I was collecting the money,
you know, coins and everything, and then one morning I said,
you know what, you guys can have this pack. You know,
I'm not going you know. Yeah, I was one of
the first executive decisions I ever made in my life.
This is not confident. Did you stay home? And they
(13:38):
went to church after he gave the money back. The
people a cross street babysit at me. I was cutting
their loss was twice as much, it was. That was brilliant, Yeah,
I was. I was cutting their lives with twice as much. Um. Yeah,
tell me about how it all came to an end. Well,
(14:00):
it was the reality that I lived in, and there
was reality that I learned later. The reality that I
lived in was that they were getting old and they
were just not able to keep up with me. It
just couldn't keep up, you know, and it broke their
heart to have to let me find me another place.
(14:22):
But in reality, Mamie was diagnosed with cancer and she
was dying. And that's the story I never got, you know. Um,
So they Dennis couldn't do it by himself. As soon
as I left, maybe a month or two after I left,
(14:43):
she died. I was crushed. That really spuned me in
a way where I compared everybody to her and no one,
no one ever got as close to her in my life.
Then she was. If the proxy showed what's right within
(15:06):
our foster care system, Earl and Florence du Pomp showed
quite the opposite. This was the next household. Jarvis was
shipped too, and it was nothing short of a nightmare.
He was little more than a paycheck to them, and
a lot less than an innocent nine year old boy.
This is what happened to him for confiding his grievances
to Mamie and Dennis. Florence looked down at my hands
(15:28):
and told me to wash before I left the house.
I was at the sink later in when she suddenly
came up behind me, gripping one of my hands. She
forced it down into the drain for split second. I
imagine she thought I dropped the soap and was wanting
me to retrieve it. And I saw a flip that
gob was disposal switch. Tips of my fingers felt bits
(15:50):
of food, bouncing multi role taking blades. I tried to
put my hand out as Florence kept pushing it down
for towards the blades. We were like two arm wrestlers.
I didn't know why Florence was doing this. She was
not only mean, she had become totally possessed. I could
feel her evil. That's willing to hear my screams. The
(16:14):
seconds felt like minutes thanks to the soul. She kept
losing her grip, which may have been was saved my fingers.
If you ever, Florence said, spinning into my air, try
calling somebody else about what goes on in this house.
You won't have this hand, don't you ever? Ever? She
(16:35):
seed it through her teeth. Do you hear me? Do you? Yes? Please?
I won't. I won't, I promise I won't. What the
trip tell me about him. I've been thinking about this
for many, many years before I even wrote that book,
(16:58):
and I realized there so many people in prison, not
just on death row, but in prison, had known someone
like that in their younger life. These are the faces
and names of people we can I can go out
to any yard and we can talk about for you
(17:18):
for for for hours. We can compare life experiences with
these people. We could show our rooms where we was
hit when we were first hitting, second hit, and third hit,
you know, and what that did to us when we
ran away from that, and we ran away from something
just like that and something just like that again, and
(17:40):
then we found the most safest place is in some
juvenile hall with the dormitory that had in the structure
that we went to school early in the morning. We
came back and when we got in trouble, we got
uh thrown into a hole. So the dew Ponts is
very much in that in that way they stack you up.
(18:03):
You went in there and there's five or six maybe
more than that, foster kids, and they're in a very
small room and there were three bump bets, so two
bump bets but three three decks. I was put at
the top. I was the smallest. I can raise my
arm halfway and I can touch the ceiling. It was
(18:26):
It was junky, it was stinky. It was just completely
utterly different from where I had been to me raised
with Mammy and Dennis. It was completely utterly different. I
didn't understand it at all. And even though I had
a little with my mother and we had that experiences
(18:49):
that I can always think about it and reflect back on,
this was totally different. This was a machine a systematic
way of because I'm in wealthy by the by the
exploitation of kids and a juvenile system that was just
bursting out the scene with what do we do with
these kids? So that story is a story that you know,
(19:14):
has all the environments everything you need to be horrified
to be that. So many people I know in jail
and prisons and wherever I've been know they know the
DuPonts Dupontsism very very It is one of those well
written books that we all can talk about. I was abused,
I was whipped, I was thrown, I was dropped out
(19:37):
of stairs. I was my hand was forced into a
a garbage disposed machinery type thing, a rotor everything you know. Um,
I was made to eat food out of garbage as
a distillery action. And it was the pits. It was
(20:01):
the pits. And I watched people for the first time
in my life at that point endure pain. Earlier, I
didn't know what I knew would being very hungry, starving,
you know, wanting to eat so bad that there was
(20:22):
nothing there to eat. I understood that. That's fine. I
did that, that was cool. I understood it. It was
something of an experience that Mammy and Dennis told me
that is not what real people do. Only sick people
do those things. And your mother and your father and
their friends were not well. I dug it. I understood it.
(20:44):
Maybe did I want to believe it so I don't
have to tell no hard story about my mother. That
might be the case. But this was systematic. This was
a design way of treating children. It was a way
of raising kids that were not your own. Their kids
(21:06):
lived upstairs, their vituals were flushed. We weren't allowed to
go up there, and we had to sleep down there. Um.
It was hell. It was real hell. And someone told
me how to go to juvenile Hall instead. They showed
me how to run away just so I can go
(21:28):
to juvenile Hall instead. So that was the kind of
place it was. I don't wish that only anyone you know.
It was not write at all. Jarvis eventually found the
courage to escape the bondages of the DuPont House of Terror,
only to find himself at times homeless or bouncing from
(21:50):
one foster facility to the next, in and out of
juvenile detention centers, from the notorious McLaren Hall Children's Center
to the even more notorious boys Town of the Desert.
McLaren Hall incidentally was shuttered years ago under dark clouds
of rampant abuse and molestation. Boystown the Desert was a
turning point in my life. It was because of where
(22:12):
I went after Boystown, After Boystown where all hell broke blues,
whereafter DuPonts was very abusive on every level. The academy
was very structured into a military cadet type school where
(22:35):
every act of violence was justified, every show of cowardness
were treated with the most disrespect, and it was a
challenge to keep up with that stuff. We were forced
to fight. We was forced to learn how to fight.
We were forced to run. We were forced to endure pain.
(22:58):
We were forced to give of pain, to issuate pain,
to to to enjoy it, to make people feel they
deserved it. We were programmed to be very very violent people,
young kids. We challenge each other by putting cigarettes between
our arms and to see who flinched. Counselors, cadet counselors
(23:22):
were bet on that, and I was trained to be
very very violent. That was a turning point in my life.
That child that was abandoned, that that small house and
that kid that that that toddler who was with Mami
and Dennis, that kids that didn't understand why people treated
(23:45):
people so bad, and the DuPonts, then the peer pressuret
boys town nothing. None of those compared to the California
Military Academy. Nothing. We were made to hurt people and
made to endure pain. I was pretty good at it
(24:09):
because I kind of looked up to these guys, you know,
the counselors, you know, who showed me how to kick
box and showed me how to fight, and showed me
how to not lose, and show me how to take
pain by cigarette butts, and who would buy me a
six pack up Sodas if I can keep my arm
(24:30):
there the longest. It was a very, very very painful thing.
I compared its training bulldogs at an early age. It
was training bulldogs at an early age for me to
a flick violence. I've seen guys get buffed in their
(24:52):
head with sticks and they did not had cried, you know,
and they didn't if they had a has to have
a pistol that was shut up everybody in there. Then
I see that a lot when I think about some
of the virus I see today. I was taught violence
and then and I don't never think I I really
(25:14):
came back from that. In my early age teenage years,
I learned almost everything that I needed to learn to
defend myself, and I got pretty good at it. Just
something about me just locked up, just locked in, you know.
It was something about me that just said that you
on your own. Now, you know, when you were the way,
(25:34):
you know, make sure no one hurts you when you
any other place you go to, you know, make sure
no one hurts you. You're not going to depend on
asking people are telling on anyone or you know this
guy he hit me in the face. There was none
of that, no more. There was none of that. And
I met all these guys in prison almost you know,
(25:57):
this is what blows me and where even when I
think about it today, it was based on your performance
in the academy that reflected who you were when you
got to prison. If you were week depended upon someone else,
(26:17):
scared taking advantage of in the academy, you was expected
to be that same person when you got to prison,
and people made you that same person when you got
the prison got stabbed because they were that same person.
So that would make me strong that would make me survive,
(26:40):
because my track record as a kid really reflected everywhere
else I've been. Even today, I know, I know that
young kids who are in June all they're trying to
get out of for who they were when they were
in June the hall when they come to prison, because
the history follows you. Those life experiences as children in
(27:05):
foster homes, boys homes, champs has follow us where we
go if we're going in the direction of prisons. Dear
Governor Newsome, I want to tell you about a man
I've come to know, someone extraordinary. His name is Jarvis j. Masters.
He inspires people and helps them. Indeed, he's changed lives
(27:27):
and save them. But what's most remarkable is that Jarvis
has done this while being incarcerated on death row in
San Quentin. He's there because he was framed for a
crime he didn't commit. There's in controvertible evidence to prove this.
But in spite of that, he's been on death row
for three decades, including twenty two years in solitary confinement.
Even amid that injustice and in those appalling conditions, he's
(27:50):
been a force for good. My name is David Chef.
I'm a journalist who has written about social justice, politics,
mental health, and many other issues, most recently folk sing
on our nation's drug use and addiction crises. In addition,
I'm in the final stages of a book I've been
working on for three years, a biography of masters entitled
The Buddhist on Death Row. When I met David Scheff,
(28:12):
he convinced me, with very few words that that I
had a story. It's an extraordinary story. And when I
hope and believe will enlighten and inspire. She did not
just come here one day in this start tape of
me and that was it. She came here consistently going
over things, going back over the finding out things, wondering
(28:34):
about this. I mean, he is a real biographer. I
suspect that he has at least fifty takes, you know,
two hundred, three hundred, maybe fourred of tapes. In the book,
I chronicled Jarvis's journey. He had a difficult childhood characterized
by neglect and physical abuse, and as he fully admits,
he committed crimes when he was a teenager. Jarvis has
(28:57):
never killed. I'll say that again. He has never are killed,
but he's open about the crimes he did commit, and
he's repeatedly described his remorse. When Jarvis was incarcerated in
San Quentin, it was different than it is now. A
former warden described it to me as a war zone.
Jarvis was thrown into that war zone when he was
still an adolescent. He was only nineteen. Four years later,
(29:20):
a terrible crime was committed. A correctional officer was murdered.
Jarvis wasn't involved with the murder, but he was framed.
He couldn't defend himself. He would have been murdered himself
if he had. As a result, Jarvis was condemned and
sentenced to death. Tragically, we've all heard similar stories about
wrongful convictions, innocent men being locked up in our nation's prisons.
(29:41):
Far too many languish there for the remainder of their lives,
and many in that situation grow angry and bitter, and
many have killed themselves. Jarvis went another way. As I said,
he has changed lives and saved them. Jarvis has taught
so called troubled teenagers non violence and challenged them to
rethink their definitions of man hood. He's taught them that
(30:02):
being a man isn't what they had been taught someone cold,
hard stock and violent, but instead is someone conscientious, open
and loving, a good father and friend, a citizen who
contributes to his or horror community. A condemned prisoner told
me about Jervis's breaking in viable prison codes, intervening in
conflicts on the yard that would have led to violence,
and helping inmates who are vulnerable to attack even more improbable.
(30:26):
In my research, I found examples of Jarvis's preventing murder
of prisoners, and in two cases I've documented preventing the
murder of correctional officers. I am now writing you to
look to ask you to look into Jarvis's case and
right a terrible wrong that has been done to him.
He has talked to me about one of the things
he would do he's freed from San Quentin. He would
(30:49):
return to the kinds of neighborhoods in which he grew
up to teach California's lost children. He guide and mentor
kids and teach them to value themselves and live authentically,
with the aim of helping them avoid gangs, drugs, and violence.
I want to thank you for listening, and I want
to send my respect David Chef. I'm left side you
(31:10):
know this opportunity to have someone like him sit down
for all these as, to spend this time with me
answer right about my life. The system taught Jarvis how
to fight, and while still a boy, defined for him
what it meant to be a man, fierce, angry and proud.
There were times when he tried to rise above and
escape the cradle to prison pipeline, but the gravitational pull
(31:33):
was too strong to resist. Next week, we'll hear directly
from Jarvis about the crimes he committed the first put
in behind bars. In we'll hear what manhood meant to
him then, and what manhood means to him now, and
how that transformation came to be. Today's episode was written
and produced by Donni Fazzari and myself, Corny Cole. Our
(31:56):
theme song sentenced his compliments of the band Stick Figure
from their album Set in Stone. Excerpts from Jarvis's memoir
That Bird Has My Wings, a Harper One publication, were
read by n Low McCrae, a member of the Truth
Worker Theater Company. To learn more about the outstanding work
they do, please visit truth Worker dot com. Stu Sternbach
(32:19):
has composed the original music. Nate Dufort did the sound design.
Visit free Jarvis dot org to find out more about
Jarvis's case and to sign your name to our Dear
Governor Newsom petition. And if you have questions for Jarvis,
please leave a message on our hotline at two zero
one nine zero three thirty five seventy five. That's two
zero one nine zero three thirty five seventy five. And
(32:43):
you can also preorder David Chef's biography about Jarvis, the
Buddhist on Death Row, How One Man Found Light in
the Darkest Place. Dear Governor Newsom is a production of
I Heart Media and three Months Media. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(33:06):
H m hm
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