‘That’s what kept me alive: wanting to be free’

Telfair State Prison is located in Helena, Ga., about 150 miles southeast of Columbus. When 22-year-old Eugene Thomas arrived in 1995, he just wanted to survive the experience.

“Because I had been in prison twice, I wasn’t that fearful, but I knew that I was going into a prison that was notoriously violent,” he said. “My whole thought process was, ‘I’m not going to be no homosexual.’”

Thomas, now a 43-year-old manager at Chester’s Barbecue on Veterans Parkway, reflected on the experience during interviews with the Ledger-Enquirer. He spoke of his transformation from the mind of a criminal to an intellectual black activist behind bars.

Thomas went to prison in 1995 for the fatal shooting of Kevin Martin. At the time of the incident, he was a crack dealer on the streets of Columbus.

Thomas was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He also spent a year at the Muscogee County Jail. While incarcerated, he stayed at 28 different facilities throughout the state, he said.

Columbus connections

At Telfair, each building had two dorms, consisting of about 85 inmates, Thomas said. He was one of the youngest inmates at the correctional facility, so officers placed him in a non-violent dorm for his protection.

“At that time, young people coming to prison, it wasn’t like it is now,” he said. “It was rare. So you couldn’t put (a young guy) in the F Building, E Building, down there, because a young guy don’t know, and he might say something out of his head, and he’s just trying to be macho, and he gets killed.”

Thomas immediately began looking for people from Columbus that he could trust. He found three “homeboys” that he knew personally and a few others acquainted with some of his relatives. They taught him everything he needed to know about the dorm and the people who lived there.

Each cell had two inmates, and Thomas asked a lot of questions about his new cellmate.

“... He might be somebody that starts something, or he might be a person that don’t get along with guys from Columbus,” he explained. “You let your homeboys tell you about it. And if need be, your homeboys will even walk you up to your dorm, coming from lunch or dinner or breakfast, or coming from the yard or the gym. They’ll walk you up there so everybody can see who your homeboys are.

“It’s not like that really anymore because of the gang thing,” he said. “With gangs, people are from all over. It could be two guys from Columbus, but one is a Crip and one is a Blood. So they don’t really look out for each other. They look out for their gang buddy.”

Thomas said he still needed a way to protect himself when he they weren’t around. So he purchased a homemade knife from an inmate, and stashed it away in a door jamb so correction officers wouldn’t find it.

Thomas said he went on the offensive several times to fight off men who tried to make sexual advances at various prisons. In one instance, he busted a guy’s head open with a lock, and was placed in isolation for 21 days.

He was locked in a single cell with no windows, he said. The only items allowed in the space were underwear, two T-shirts, toothpaste, soap, deodorant, and a copy of the Quran.

“It’s breath-taking, especially in the hot months,” he said. “You feel like you can’t breathe. ...You get to panicking. I started having anxiety issues.”

The Million Man March

The year Thomas went to prison, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan organized a Million Man March, calling for black men across America to become better family and community leaders, which resonated with Thomas and other inmates.

On Oct. 16, 1995, Thomas watched the march in a common area at Telfair Prison, with about 30 other prisoners. He was overcome by emotion as he beheld hundreds of thousands of black men standing in solidarity. It made him yearn for freedom.

“I wanted to smell flowers. I wanted to touch trees. I wanted to walk on grass. I just wanted to be free...” he said.

“I wanted to go on picnics, go to movies. I wanted to hang out with my mom.”

“I wanted to be there,” he said of the Million Man March. “That’s what kept me alive: wanting to be free. ”

Thomas stayed a year at Telfair before being transferred to Macon State Prison, where he spent almost eight years, he said. Throughout his 21 years in prison, he continued to challenge the system, which led to many transfers.

While at Jimmy Autry State Prison in Pelham, Ga., he complained about the conditions in the isolation units, where he was placed on occasion. He asked his mother to contact State Sen. Ed Harbison to address what he considered deplorable conditions.

“When I started learning how to do legal work, that really put me in trouble,” he said. “Because now I could file lawsuits against the state.”

While in prison, Thomas said, he sued the state seven times. He also refused to participate in the prison labor program, a mandatory requirement, because he didn’t want to work for no pay. He just accepted the consequences, which included isolation and commissary restriction.

Seeking knowledge

Thomas remembered reading the autobiography of Malcolm X as a seventh-grader. In it, Malcolm X described being locked up in prison on a burglary charge. Instead of wasting his time, he read the entire dictionary for a better command of the English language.

When Thomas went to the Muscogee County Jail for the fatal shooting, he picked up a dictionary and started reading. By the time he landed in prison, it was an obsession.

“My thing was the origin of the words,” Thomas said. “I love what they call etymology. I just got into words and I could spend days upon days studying one word, and groups of it. ... I could study that one word in different languages.”

Thomas also spent many days reading the Quran, and books about history, the Pan-African movement, and the prison industrial complex. One author who inspired him was George Jackson, a former Black Panther who wrote several books while incarcerated.

“I started reading his words, and I was like, ‘Man, this guy is powerful, because I read about how he started organizing black prisoners,” he said. “The whole world began opening up to me, and I started getting more political.”

He began writing letters to family and friends about criminal justice issues. That soon became a passion and he started writing articles for the San Francisco Bay View, a black newspaper covering prison issues.

Thomas wrote about poor conditions at various prisons and how he felt prisoners were being treated. One article, published on Feb. 19, 2011, was titled, “Still no news of 37 missing Georgia prison strikers.”

In another story, he wrote about “three young brothers” who were being held for murder and robbery of an older white prisoner.

“They haven’t indicted neither one of them, haven’t fingerprinted either of them, aren’t giving them their proper segregation hearing — just holding them in lockup. ... They’ve been in the “hole” now five months. I call them the “Reidsville 3.”

Mary Ratcliff, editor of the newspaper, said her favorite photo of Thomas is of him sitting on a bunk leading a prison study group.

“As I got to know him, what impressed me most was his organizing ability,” she said. “He was just so good at bringing the guys together, getting their spirits up, getting them in a frame of mind to learn, and then having something to teach them.”

Ratcliff recalls Thomas circumventing the prison outside-communication system by using a cell phone. At one point, prison officials tried to take his cell phone away. He challenged them on the issue, and he won.

“I’ve always been just crazy about Eugene,” she said. “He always stood out to me as someone who could stay positive, regardless. The first thing that seemed to go through his mind whenever there was an obstacle was, ‘How am I going to overcome this? I know I can.’ He was so sure that he was going to be able to overcome anything, and then he did.”

Younger prisoners

Thomas said when he entered the Georgia prison system, most of the prisoners were men in their 30s and 40s. Some of the older guys took him under their wings, teaching him how to box, stay in shape, and discipline himself.

But as the years went by, the prison population got younger and younger. More and more black males — ages 18, 19 and 20 — were entering the prison system for serious crimes. The younger population changed the dynamics of prison, disturbing the peace for older inmates.

“Everybody gets down to a routine in prison,” he said. “Let’s say that at 1 o’clock a guy normally wakes up. That’s his routine. But now you have these young guys in there. They ain’t got no routine. They don’t go to sleep at a certain time. They go to sleep whenever. ...When lights are out, they’re over there rapping.”

He always cherished those quiet moments when he had time to reflect on his life.

“It’s the peace of mind that’s of utmost importance in prison,” he said, “because everybody likes to think — whether you’re thinking about things that have taken place in the past, whether you’re reminiscing, or dwelling on mistakes you’ve made, or you’re just looking forward. People like to go into themselves and think.”

Headed back home

Thomas’s prison sentence began to wind down at Autry State Prison. He said the deputy warden of security, Jerry Jefferson, is from Columbus, and he helped arrange his transition back into the community.

In 2013, he and two other inmates wanted to be closer to home, so they asked Jefferson for transfers to Rutledge State Prison in Columbus.

One day Thomas learned that the two other inmates had been transferred. He became discouraged and thought he would never leave the prison walls. Every day, he asked Jefferson when he would be transferred, and was told to be patient.

A few weeks later, the deputy warden had good news. “He got me transferred to the Columbus Transitional Center, which is better than Rutledge, because now I’m half way in, and half way out,” Thomas said. “I get to make money and be in the world.”

Thomas still had no idea when he would be leaving, but he could see light at the end of the tunnel.

On Feb. 12, 2013, Jefferson checked on Thomas to see how he was doing. Thomas said he was doing fine.

The next day, officials called him to the ID room and transferred him to the transitional center on Schatulga Road.

He saw the familiar surroundings and tears just flowed.

“I saw it as freedom,” he said, “And I wasn’t going to mess it up.”

For more on Thomas’ story, go to http://bit.ly/2dPBQq2

This story was originally published October 25, 2016 at 9:03 PM with the headline "‘That’s what kept me alive: wanting to be free’."