If You are Born in this Country with Black skin, You are Already in Jail

Mark P. Fancher

24 Jun 2026

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Two photos of Krystal Clark, one from when she was first incarcerated at the Huron Valley Correctional Facility and a more recent photo.

America has never stopped finding ways to cage Black bodies and extract their labor. Krystal Clark's case demonstrates a commitment to containment at all costs, regardless of life.

It’s troubling but never surprising when Barack Obama and other bourgeois Black politicians and mainstream pundits form their lips to spew love for the U.S. notwithstanding its history. In earnest tones, they declare their commitment to making the U.S. “a more perfect union.” More perfect? When has it been perfect? Back in 1852, Frederick Douglass didn’t believe the country was perfect. At a Fourth of July event, he said:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy— a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Douglass was speaking of slavery, but after its abolition, the U.S. improved not a whit. The forced, uncompensated labor of Africans continued well into the 20th century in the form of debt-tenancy, convict leasing, mining camps, and chain gangs. In his book Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War II, Douglas Blackmon describes how Black prisoners were effectively re-enslaved when they were rented out to plantation owners in the early 1900s. They were housed in stockades and forced to work from 4 a.m. until darkness fell. Blackmon explained:

The men slept each night in the same clothes they wore in the fields, on rotting mattresses infested with pests. Many were chained to their beds. Food was crude and minimal. Punishment for the disobedient was to be strapped onto a log lying on their backs, while a guard spanked their bare feet with a plank of wood. When the slave was freed, if he could not return to work on his blistered feet, he was strapped to the log again, this time facedown, and lashed with a leather whip. Women prisoners were held across a barrel and whipped on their bare bottoms.

The perpetuation of slavery beyond abolition affirms that Africans are in the Americas for only one reason, and that is to provide free labor. The Supreme Court made crystal clear in the 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, ruling that no Black person had citizenship rights and that not only was African participation in what is called the U.S. experiment never contemplated, but also that it would have been deplorable for the idea to have even been suggested.

Ultimately, the feasibility of forced labor declined. The country was then faced with a dilemma. What to do with an African population that outlived its reason for being in a country committed to the free use of their labor? Although a variety of theories and strategies to discard Black people were proposed, ultimately the country settled into a program of monitoring, containment, and control. Sociologist Loïc Wacquant has observed that the monitoring, containment, and control of Africans evolved from holding them on plantations to corralling them into so-called “ghettoes” in urban areas. In the 1960s, as Africans began to burn tenements and white-owned businesses in their neighborhoods (or “ghettoes”) in urban rebellions, those in power began the process of mass incarceration. Prisons gave license to tightly control and monitor African populations in a way that is only slightly different from what occurred on slave plantations. While Africans are locked away, their lives are governed completely by their captors, and they are even subject to providing uncompensated labor.

Deprivation of liberty is itself an act that has a profound impact on a prisoner, but the conditions of confinement have implications for the most basic notions of humanity and dignity of those who are affected. To subject a prisoner to living conditions that would be regarded as intolerable even for beasts of the field is to engage in a form of torture. This has never been a priority concern in this country because in the collective white supremacist mind, Africans – particularly those who are regarded as lawbreakers – are dangerous beasts who deserve to be degraded, dehumanized, and humiliated as much as possible.

Blackmon described conditions of confinement in the early 20th century, but those that exist in 2026 are in many ways no less disturbing. As just one example, the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility in southeast Michigan has become notorious for allegations that it not only maintains unhealthy conditions in the prison, but that it also fails to provide adequate medical treatment. Within a 30-day period this spring, three relatively young prisoners (ages 28, 57, and 36) became ill and died mysteriously. They were preceded by a significant number of other prisoners who had died in the facility in past years.

Krystal Clark, a Black prisoner at Huron Valley, who has been held there since 2011, was not intimidated and has publicly complained about toxic black mold for years. She says an outside physician determined that she is particularly allergic to it, and during the years of her confinement, she has experienced rashes, bodily swelling, headaches, intense pain, facial disfiguration, and, most recently, strange fuzzy growths from her ears. “The mold grows all around the ceiling, at the bottom of the ceiling, in the showers, everywhere,” Clark said. “When they see people come in, they want us to paint it, try to cover it up, so you won’t see the mold. They want us to paint over it. That’s not our job.”

A statewide movement has emerged to challenge conditions at the prison, and Clark is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit that contends the conditions at the facility violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court has held that denial of medical care to prisoners can be cruel and unusual, but as Africans have come to learn, laws exist not to protect the people, but they are instead usually used to justify crimes against the oppressed by those with power.

On one rare occasion when the Supreme Court saw fit to use the Eighth Amendment to protect an African prisoner’s rights, Clarence Thomas chose to break ranks and dissent. In the case of Hudson v. McMillian, the prisoner was held down and repeatedly beaten in the face by guards while their supervisor watched and told them “not to have too much fun.” Thomas argued that the beating and injuries were not severe enough to warrant constitutional protection.

Because of reactionary courts and certain Black bootlicking judges, Africans can never be assured of the law’s protection. As is the case with so many issues, the people must strategize and look to international solidarity for relief. The U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (or "The Nelson Mandela Rules") contain a provision specifically applicable to the Michigan women’s prison. These rules provide, among other things: "All parts of a prison regularly used by prisoners shall be properly maintained and kept scrupulously clean at all times."

There is no practical way of enforcing that rule. But it can be of great value in highlighting the contradictions of U.S. foreign policy. Historically, the U.S. has justified its intervention into the affairs of other sovereign countries by alleging human rights violations. On occasion, the U.S. has been deterred when it has been challenged to clean up its own house. Most notably, this occurred during the Cold War when the U.S. was forced to get off its moral high horse in the face of criticism of this country’s racial segregation and discrimination. Citing examples like Michigan’s women’s prison and measuring them against the standards contained in the Mandela Rules has the potential for the creation of enough embarrassment to prompt reform.

But it is important for the movement not to lose sight of the fact that making prisons more habitable is not the ultimate objective. It is but a short-term goal to ensure that warriors like Krystal Clark and others like her are able to survive their incarceration and hopefully engage in the long-term effort to abolish not only prisons, but also every other institution that has been designed to monitor, contain and control African people.

We may not all be in cages, but most of us are monitored, contained, and controlled in one way or another by invisible shackles. Musicians, writers, and other artists often dilute their own messages to avoid losing contracts. Professional and college athletes stand mute in the face of injustice to avoid career suicide. Politicians and pundits conform their rhetoric to acceptable “patriotic” analyses to avoid loss of their offices and media platforms. Even university professors decline to make waves to ensure their prospects for tenure are not threatened.

Malcolm X said it best when he declared, “You don’t have to go behind bars to be in jail in this country. If you are born in this country with black skin, you are already in jail, you are already confined, you are already watched over by a warden who poses as your mayor and poses as your governor and poses as your President.”

As far as the U.S. is concerned, the only good Negroes are those who willingly remain confined either by actual bars or by the invisible social, political, and economic shackles that subject them to the total control of the white supremacist, capitalist forces that dominate this country. Black people will be free only when they are ready to ignore the threats to their lives, liberty, and possessions, and they fight for liberation without fear of the consequences.

Mark P. Fancher is an attorney and writer. He can be contacted at mfancher@comcast.net

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