Karen Pearson
Freedom Reads Library at a correctional facility
The libraries—elegant, curving bookcases packed with hundreds of brightly colored books—are different from your average, purely functional shelving units; these are designed to inspire, to entice, and to uplift.
Reginald Dwayne Betts, who founded Freedom Reads in 2020, wanted it that way. The nonprofit aims to bring hundreds of books into prisons nationwide by opening handcrafted libraries in cellblocks, then filling them with a curated selection of literature. To date, Freedom Reads has opened 413 libraries—many of them in Louisiana. One of Betts’ very first Freedom Libraries found a home in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, the infamous maximum-security lock-up in West Feliciana. Each individual library comprises three handcrafted bookcases and a bench, filled with five hundred books.
Early on, Betts knew he wanted the libraries imbued with a warmth and beauty so often absent in penal facilities. The bookcases would be built from a hardwood, such as walnut, maple, or cherry. They should curve in a graceful, sinuous wave, a visual representation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quote that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Critically, the libraries must sit in the center of the dormitory or space where they are opened, with books accessible on each side to reduce the footprint. Betts hoped positioning the bookcases in the middle of the room would naturally draw people to them, creating a vibrant communal locus where bonds might be forged over the latest literary selections.
“It's something beautiful in a landscape where there’s often not anything that's beautiful,” he said. “It is fundamentally different. It's different from anything that exists in the prison.”
Cristoforo Magliozzi
Freedom Library at Elayn Hunt Correctional Facility
Betts’ interest in bringing literature to carceral spaces is deliberate, informed by his own experiences as an adolescent and, later, as a young man. At sixteen years old, he landed in prison after pleading guilty to a carjacking in Virginia. He was incarcerated for almost nine years, and while behind bars, Betts threw himself into books. Even in solitary confinement, although reading material was contraband, the men there found a way to share books with each other as a sign of solidarity, and of hope. When he emerged from his incarceration, Betts became a lawyer, receiving his J.D. from Yale Law School. He is now a poet and author of six books, his most recent of which, Felon, was awarded the American Book Award and an NAACP Image Award. In 2021, Betts was named a MacArthur Fellow.
Now, his mission is simple: To show up, and to show up with books. It is a tangible, concrete thing he knows will make a small difference to those inside—and helps lighten the considerable, omnipresent weight he carries of the remaining time his still-incarcerated friends have left before they are released.
"These books get me out of here, I am free when I read.” —a Louisiana inmate named James
“I said I would put millions of books in prison, because we put millions of people in prison,” Betts said. “My work is about mercy and forgiveness.”
During that strange, liminal time behind bars, Betts read too many favorite books to count. The Count of Monte Cristo, A Lesson Before Dying, Sophie’s Choice, and East of Eden stand out, among others.
“Some people read because it is a thing that they need to do to survive prison, and some people read because it is the way in which they breathe in the world,” Betts said. “I was the latter.”
Courtesy of Freedom Reads
The Freedom Reads team and library patrons at Raymond Laborde Correctional Center
Now so far removed from that time, Betts still struggles to articulate precisely what drew him to books in the first place, and what exactly the written word did for him. He was always a reader, even before incarceration. Saying books “saved him” feels simplistic, too understated, failing to encompass the enormity of their presence in that place. He wasn’t even trying to survive, but rather make himself move forward step by step, day after day.
He settled on the concept of expansion. Books expanded his world—so small and contained during those years confined to a cell.
“Books reminded me that I was getting knowledge of the world,” he said. “That I was getting knowledge of what I might have wanted to be in the world, and what I might not have wanted to be in the world. And books reminded me, constantly, that those things mattered.”
He knows books possess power. Despite all the libraries Freedom Reads has distributed in its brief existence, Betts sees it as barely a drop in the pool when it comes to need. He wants at least 20,000 libraries to be built, total.
His mission brought him first to Louisiana, because that is where he was welcome, Betts said. Former Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections Secretary Jimmy Le Blanc ushered the nonprofit into the state to transform its prisons into spaces of learning. An interactive map on the Freedom Reads website shows there are now libraries opened in six prisons across the state: Eight at Angola, two at Raymond Laborde Correctional Center, two at Dixon Correctional Center, ten at Rayburn Correctional Center, two at Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, and three at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center. Eleven of these were added as recently as this past summer.
“We are excited about expanding reading opportunities and twenty-four-hour accessibility to the portable libraries in the dorms,” said Le Blanc in an organization press release announcing the opening last summer. “This donation means so much to our prisoners as it will help broaden their horizons through reading. We’re hopeful this will help improve the educational level of those who take advantage of this gift.”
Courtesy of Freedom Reads
Freedom Libraries being delivered at Angola.
Freedom Reads has brought libraries to other spaces, as well—juvenile facilities, jails, and even the stark, sterile spaces of solitary confinement. Betts knows the work is important; it’s part of what drives him. He does wonder, however, about how to quantify the impact of the books, to judge how effective they truly are in the right hands.
“What does it mean to put possibility within someone’s reach?” he asked. “I don’t know what you become when you read Don Quixote. I don’t know what you become when you read The Iliad.”
In prison, color is an afterthought. There are often no more than three colors displayed at a time throughout any given facility, according to James Washington, a carpenter at Revival Workshop in New Orleans—which has built every single Freedom Library in Louisiana.
Washington spent much of the twenty-five years he was incarcerated at Angola. In the course of its long, contentious history, the sprawling penal campus has been the subject of numerous books, documentaries, and investigations—many of those regarding alleged abuses and corruption. Washington rattles off Angola’s color palette: white, gray, yellow. Or, in some places, blue, gray, white.
Then there’s the metal and brick, the very skeleton of the prison. Those cold, lifeless materials and the relentless dearth of color drain you, Washington says: “It’s dehumanizing.”
That, in part, is why he builds the libraries, conceiving of the work in much the same vein as Betts himself. “The bookshelves were created for that very thing—to make a man feel like a human,” Washington said.
For those who remain incarcerated, who Washington calls his family, he has to do more now that he has emerged on the other side, free. It affirms that their lives still matter, that they haven’t been forgotten. “That’s my duty,” he said. “That’s my brothers.”
A supervisor at Revival Workshop, he and his fellow formerly incarcerated colleagues fabricate the libraries Freedom Reads brings to Louisiana—and sometimes other prisons outside of the state.
“Books reminded me that I was getting knowledge of the world. That I was getting knowledge of what I might have wanted to be in the world, and what I might not have wanted to be in the world. And books reminded me, constantly, that those things mattered.” —Reginald Dwayne Betts, founder of Freedom Reads
Revival, owned and operated by former Tulane architecture professor Doug Harmon, is contracted with Freedom Reads as a regional fabricator for the libraries.The two companies share a common goal to give new life to those mired in the often brutal churn of the criminal justice system. At Revival, Harmon offers formerly incarcerated individuals a one-year paid apprenticeship to learn the craft of woodworking—a practice that drew Betts to the workshop and fostered their partnership.
Washington, who was released in 2022, has witnessed first-hand the grace afforded him by participating in the program, and the lessons that extend beyond the craft itself.
“The adversity that you go through while fabricating a piece—it helps you to learn problem solving,” Washington said. “Wood is still alive. It still moves. It bends and it does things you do not want it to do. You have to first learn the principles that govern what’s going on, then learn to manipulate it.”
Christopher Spruill, another formerly incarcerated carpenter at the workshop, believes that with his work building the libraries, he is doing something good; he has completed something to be used for meaningful change.
“I’ve been in a cell,” he said. “And having these bookshelves in there, that just gives somebody incentive to actually want to learn something or to occupy their mind with something other than what goes on in jail.”
In excerpts of letters provided by the Freedom Reads team from incarcerated people across Louisiana, the hope inspired by the libraries shines forth. These are called “kites”—passed to and from people in prison, or sent to people on the outside.
“Coming out of the hole to see the new bookshelves & books brought a smile to my soul and then noticing that the books were being read brought a smile to my face so I thank y’all for the kindness, love & support in which that one act projects,” wrote an inmate named Terry. “Rushing to the shelves, I started to read the titles & to my surprise there were classics I heard about [i.e. Raisin in the Sun] but never had the opportunity to read. I must confess, I was like a kid in Toys-R-Us for the first time.”
He thanked the team for doing work that matters for “a group of people who some think don’t matter.”
“I live in the assisted living area and can barely see or stand sometimes,” wrote Jasmine from Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women. “The bookcase is gorgeous and the wide choices of books to choose from make me wish I could read all of them. Thank you so much.”
Other messages are brief, but full of emotion.
“What you are doing means A LOT to people like me,” wrote an inmate named James. “No friends, no family. These books get me out of here, I am free when I read.”
The possibilities for so many people behind bars have already been foreclosed upon, Betts says. They have been sold a lie that they don’t deserve happiness, which he believes is the first step to one’s mind folding in on itself. Through this lens, reading is a form of redemption, of struggling toward the light that has been withheld for so long.
“Many of us turned to books when people said that we were going to be ruined. Many of us spent those years in prison resisting being ruined," he said. “It’s an act of resistance, even when it’s reading a romance novel. To believe you deserve to smile.”
