Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch: Ep. 5

On this episode of Our American Stories, Every Sunday, Our American Stories host Lee Habeeb speaks with Mitchel "Big Mitch" Rutledge, who has spent more than forty years serving a life sentence in Alabama. Each call traces the shape of faith, regret, and forgiveness inside a place built for punishment.
In our fifth installment, Mitch reflects on the faith that steadied him through decades behind bars. He's watched men lose themselves to anger, but he learned to hold fast to something larger. What kept him steady was the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the Book of Daniel, a reminder that faith holds even when freedom does not. The Bible became a map for endurance, guiding him toward forgiveness and the strength to keep teaching others to hope. Before ending the call, he turns to a favorite topic—football—and shares his prediction for the next Super Bowl.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.
His next story is about a friend of mine. We're
close in age, but have little else in common. Mitchell
Rutledge aka Big Mitch, was born black and poor in Georgia.
I was born kind of brown and middle class in
New Jersey. He never met his father. I still talk

(00:33):
to my ninety four year old father every week. He
dropped out of high school in his early teens and
was illiterate into his early twenties. I was surrounded by
books growing up and finished graduate school in my early thirties.
Big Mitch spent the last forty four years of his
life in Alabama prisons for killing a man. But this

(00:56):
is not a story about an innocent man sentenced to
prison for a crime he didn't commit. Big Mitch never
denied the crime or made excuses for it. This is
the story of my friend's spiritual transformation while serving his
life sentence. It's also about a friendship. Only God could

(01:16):
have engineered a friendship that began with a single Sunday
morning call. Through these weekly conversations, I hope you come
to know and love him as much as I do.
Here's episode five. My conversation on February eleventh, twenty twenty four,
where Mitch begins describing how it is impossible to survive

(01:37):
prison as long as he has without God.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
This is a free call from an incarcerated individual at
Alabama Department of Corrections to accept this pre call. Press
one to refuse.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
This pre call, Press two. Thank you for using securis.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
You may start the conversation now, do guys. Hey man,
it's the same way out there, but especially in here.
You cannot survive this goblin here without Jee's gray. It's impossible.
They see everything. They see the trees, they see the stars,
the sky, the rain, the sun, bom. You know, they

(02:23):
see everything, but they'll never give you any thought to hey,
who created that? Why do that? It's just why through
the sun rise every morning? Think they don't understand? You know?
There there I do because I had time to sit down,
you know, and evacuate everything, because my life and everything

(02:47):
was in disliree. So God got my attention, and I
thank God for that.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
I didn't ask Mitch if he had a favorite story
from and this is what he told me.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
I guess one of them in particular will be Daniel
and me shack Sere and the Vidigo when uh they
took him before the king, and the king wanted them
to uh buy down before their gods and if they
didn't buy down that they will be thrown and the

(03:25):
virus punished. And they refused to buy down to their gods.
They said that they know that God can save them,
but even if He don't save them, they're still not
gonna buy down. Don't know that Jesus gonna save them,
but they know that he can. So my situation is

(03:51):
the same. I know Jesus can bring about my release
from prison. I don't know if he will, but I
know he can. But at the end of the day,
I'm still gonna serve Jesus Christ regardless. A lot of time,
individuals and and my position in here, they asking God

(04:13):
to do things for them. Mostly they're freedom, but over
a period of time when they continue to pray in
and continue to try to get things done and they
don't materialize, and then they'll or fugg and fugg away
from God because they feel that God isn't answering their

(04:35):
prayers and what have you. And I have witnessed this.
But me, I'm the officer if God don't bring me
out of here. I know he's able. I'm not gonna
turn away from him. I'm not gonna stop believing in him.
I'm not gonna stop testifying about him. I use that
as one of the fuse to light my fire, continue

(04:58):
to motivate me. And I mean I used that story.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Mitch continues to see himself in so many of the
old Bible stories, stories like that of Joseph.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Joseph being in prison for many, many years, and how
God had used him, why he was in there, gave
him favor, he was able to help individuals out, He
had favor with the gods, he had favored with the
chief in the head of the gods and gave him that,
and she gave him favor in all his life. And

(05:36):
that's the way I look at my situation, even though
I'm incncelerated, even though I've been inconceirations for going on
forty four years, I look at the plus side of
my life, and I see the favor that God have
restored on me and continue to restore on me. I
look at the many lives out and saved in here

(05:56):
by being a good disciple of God. The Bible is
full of so many interesting stories and and events. It's
just like a guy just you know how God even
though I'm in here, but God didn't continue it. And
He's still give me favor. You know, I believe act.
You know I'm still alive and one ofers in the

(06:18):
most dangerous prillism system in the United States at this moment,
Alabama prisal system. And forty some years you know, I
can have just got favor. Thank God for that.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
Mitch has made many friends over the years of his sentence,
but none quite like Bert and Anita Fulsome. And here's
the craziest thing. I've known Bert Fulsom for twenty years plus.
He teaches at Hillsdale College. He's retired, one of the
great history professors of all time. And until this meeting
with Big Mitch, I had not known he known Big

(06:54):
Mitch for decades. Here's Big Mitch talking about his friends
Bert and Folsom.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
You know him and Anedle, you know they are they
are one and the same. So he had he written
me probably about two weeks after Sister williaand written me,
and they pretty much he said the same thing as
Sister Legion said that I was the only one in

(07:22):
the Time magazine article. Out of all the other individuals
that was on there, throw that showed that said that
they were sorry or show remorse. And he just wanted
to let me know that that God just gave me
and that he'll willing to be my friend if I
wanted that. I got to meet bury in Aneedle in

(07:44):
January nineteen eighty three. They have been in my life
over forty one years, and you know that.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
God, much like the rest of America. Around this time,
the Super Bowl had the prison walls buzzing with excitement,
and mid shared with me a few of his predictions
for the big game.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Kansas City Patch mahme will win. I mean I think
he will win. I think I believe at the end
of the day that he will. I play Rot Perdy
as he do all the other quarterbacks that he go
up against. And he's, uh, he's just twenty twenty seven,
twenty eight.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, he's just a baby.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
He's just getting started. Yeah. So if he don't, if
he ain't in this one, got a give him three.
I don't know if he get the six, but who knows.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
You know, six is hard, but if anybody could do it,
my homes is set to do it.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, but yeah, that's why I feel to win. We
had so much faith in you know, like the Alabama
football fans here in Alabama and the faith that they
have in their team to win, like Kansas City whatever,
but Alabama fans in particular, you know, they got so
much faith in Alabama football that they would win in

(09:00):
their game, that they will be with it to bid
anything because they have so much faith in that. But
now in prison with me, they confessed that they believe
in Jesus Christ. But at the end of the day,
they really have more faith in Alabama football.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
And to Nick say, with any am in Christ and
a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by
our own Greg Hengler and Reagan Habib. And you've been
listening to Big Mitch talk about everything from the Bible
to Bama football and of course he being a Georgia Bulldog,
and I having lived in sec country for almost eighteen

(09:40):
years a fan of all miss we agree to disagree
about this most profound part of our life. Episode five
of Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch here on our American
Stories