An Oral History Project Conducted by John Robert Lewis Scholar Cece King
Project Description
For this oral history project I interviewed Jacqueline. Jacqueline spent the majority of her career representing wronged plaintiffs in class action suits and recently pivoted to asylum law. Despite having spent the better part of the last decade engaged in grueling, harrowing aspects of the law that directly perpetuate the marginalization of already disenfranchised populations, Jacqueline doesn’t see herself as an activist. That’s why I titled the reflection “Innocent Activism.”
Prior to working at this asylum clinic, she taught trauma-informed yoga at Rikers Island Jail, a story that makes up the majority of our formal oral history. She was drawn to this form of movement after an acutely distressing personal experience. She ended up at Rikers not out of a need to proselytize the benefits of her cathartic practice, but to find a community of other women, and mostly mothers, who were working through their trauma too.
One of her students, Fatima, gifted a poem she wrote to Jacqueline that ends with: “I wanna shout but I’m just a flower ready to grow.” These women were learning their worth together, but they were frustrated that the world didn’t value them. Attached are poems from two of Jacqueline’s Rikers students that they gifted her upon release that show just how much her humble, innocent path to understanding her own trauma and rediscovering law for social change means to the world.
Oral History Interview with Jacqueline
Poems Gifted To Jacqueline by Fatima - A Yoga Student at Rikers Island
Poem 1:
I’m locked in a room with
No space to crawl
I wanna scream I wanna shout
But can’t open my mouth
Somehow I find myself falling from
A life I was balling. But as I sit
down and write I know I’ve missed my
Calling
Poem 2:
Time moves, but is it moving fast enough?
Seasons changing making life a tad bit
Rough.
I am a seed trying to grow
But how can I grow taking all the wrong steps. So I change my ways and
Step on different soil. Now it’s time
For my seeds to sprout I wanna scream
I wanna shout but I’m just a flower ready to grow.