- That's me and that's my brother.
When I first got out, me and my brother
was trying to good for the community.
We go up there and register to vote and they said,
'Hey, you can't register to vote.
As a matter of fact, you can get a felony charge
for what you're about to do.'
It was like, what?
I'm a citizen. I should have a political voice
in the United States of America.
I have a huge family.
I adopted some children. I'm a licensed foster parent
out of Union County.
I've got nine kids.
I got two already in college, thank God.
This is my beautiful wife right here.
- Hey, and it's snowin'!
- Yay!
I think it is ironic.
You know, hey, you're working for a government,
but the same government don't want you to vote.
You're a peewee football coach.
I got 430 kids that I mentor and coach.
I'm proud of you. So you gonna get to go to the game
'cause you got all your AR points.
- Yup.
- Ah, that's good.
See, that's what it takes.
For a long time, I was ashamed to tell my kids.
They're like, 'Daddy, are you not gonna go vote?'
And some of them actually asked me, 'Hey,
can we go with you to vote? We wanna see.'
And then I have to tell them, 'No, I can't vote.'
[mumbling]
Since I've been out, I ain't even had a speeding ticket
since then. Hadn't done nothing.
I have dedicated myself to the state of Mississippi,
to the children, to the community.
[mumbling]
Life in prison was very hard.
I was ashamed. I had done let my community down,
my mother down.
I done let my family down.
But I had my brother there the whole time;
me and him was never separated.
We spent the entire time there together,
so that helped a lot.
We really wanted to get out, and make good,
and let people know that that's not who we was.
So we joined the local fire department up here.
It was mopping floors and doing anything
that we can do to give back to the community.
We just kept climbing the ladder, and
I wound up being the chief of that fire department.
We went and tried to vote, and they said,
'Hey, you know, you gotta register to vote.'
And then, so we go up there and register to vote,
and they said, 'Hey, you can't register to vote.
As a matter of fact, you can get a felony charge
for what you're about to do.'
It was like, what?
I'm a citizen. Why can I not vote?
I have a right to vote.
I don't have a voice. I can't be heard.
My opinion doesn't matter.
You're nothing. You're scum.
- Currently, Mississippi is one of three states
in the country that takes away people's right to vote
for life for conviction of all disqualifying crimes.
There is functionally no way to get your right to vote back.
Except if you're handpicked by the governor
or if you are handpicked by a legislator to file a bill
in your name that must pass Mississippi's Legislature
by two-thirds of both houses.
When you're talking about 50,000 people
who lose their right to vote,
30,000 people who've completed their sentence—
including probation, parole— and then you're talking
about, you know, between 10 and 20 people
over a five-year period who actually get their right
to vote back by this suffrage bill process.
We don't have a meaningful way for people
to get their right to vote back in Mississippi.
[upbeat music]
White people who had been in political power
and who were in political power sought to consolidate
white political power.
They used violence, fraud, intimidation
to carry elections.
And when African Americans were still
actually winning elections,
they called a constitutional convention in 1890
for the express stated purpose of finding ways
to take the vote away from African Americans
and to consolidate political power for white Mississippians.
Sweeping up poor people of all colors.
but, you know, we understand that this law was rooted
in racial animus, but it will include a lot of people,
you know, in Mississippi who are all citizens
who deserve the right to vote back.
[upbeat music]
We are still in the midst of trying to chip away
at the 1890 Constitution, which Mississippi then
exported to other Southern states,
to the Northern states, along with the Great Migration,
with a lot of people who became fearful of African Americans
gaining political power.
But the main fight is to educate people about what
these voting bans are, where they come from,
why they're un-American.
They're absolutely unconstitutional, but people can change
these voting bans at the state level, and they ought to,
because the states are the people that took a carving knife
to their own constituency.
Dennis is a important example of some of the costs
to everybody else of taking these people
out of the electorate.
- My brother died December 16, 2017.
I lost him in an auto accident,
and that killed me right there.
That hurt.
Everything me and him went through,
everything we fought for,
that was one of the worst—
that was the worst thing that I've ever
went through in my life.
He was gonna join with us, too,
and try to get his rights back and help fight,
but unfortunately, he got killed on that Saturday,
so he had to give up the fight then.
And that's why I felt inspired that for him and me,
I'm gonna fight this.
In the state of Mississippi, throughout the United States,
we all need to stand up and fight for our right to vote
and let our voice be heard.
Dr. Martin Luther King said it wisely:
I am a man, and I will not go away.
I'm gonna get my right to vote back,
and I'm gonna be a proud American.
And if you give me a chance,
I will make the government proud of me.
And every other convict out there in the world'll
make you proud if you give them the opportunity
because we're not dogs.
And we're not animals.
We're human beings that made a mistake.
[gentle music]