Why I’m building libraries inside prisons | Reginald Dwayne Betts

0:02You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Lawyer and poet Reginald Dwayne Betts ate his first mango in solitary confinement. He thought it was an apple until he bit in and the juice ran down his hands. At the time, he was 16, staring down a nine-year sentence and teaching himself to juggle to keep himself from losing his mind. But that mango became the seed of an idea that would shape the rest of his life. That's how prison taught me, that you find what you look for. Who would expect to hear a story about prison that includes a mango?

0:45In his talk, he describes what he chose to focus on in that cell and the people he found around him. A boxer who taught him discipline, a man who argued law with him for an hour, the friends he made. He walked out of prison and became a writer and then a lawyer and then went back again and again for the people still inside. We put millions of people in prison. I will put millions of books inside when she asks me how. I say one library at a time. Dwayne has since opened more than 600 freedom libraries inside prisons across the country, putting the books he once dreamed of reading into other people's hands.

1:24and some of the men who taught him how to hope are now handing it out themselves. That's coming up right after a short break.

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3:35And now, our TED Talk of the day. I ate my first mango in a hole. with some called a shoe, the box, ass, egg, lock up. But no matter what you call solitary confinement, no one expects it to be where you eat your first mango. And me, I thought the oval-shaped fruit that came with lunch that day was an apple. I've been teaching myself to juggle to keep from losing my mind. imagining that I could manage my troubles if I could float apples into an orbit of my creation. When I sank my teeth into the unfamiliar fragrant fruit, juices ran down my fingertips. I ate until I chipped the tooth, scraping it along the mango seed.

4:34I never saw another mango in prison. And I only learned the name of the fruit when I was home and in my mother's kitchen. Before I started juggling, I trashed the mostly riding apples without a second glance. Then juggling transformed the apples into my way of escape. That's how prison taught me that you find what you look for. Who would expect to hear a story about prison that includes a mango? I got locked up in 1996. I was 16 years old, 5 '5 and 125 pounds. I hadn't won a fight since the second grade. Becoming a brawler overnight wasn't in the cards for me. That's why people often ask me how I survived.

5:31What if I say, I survived prison because I believe you find what you look for. because of what it means to notice the mango, to commit yourself to the possibility of a miracle even without a name for the wonder. I should thank my judge. After I pled guilty to carjacking and he sentenced me to nine years in prison, I was certain that I was going home. I waited for him to tell me it was all a dream. Then he confirmed my intuition. I don't have any illusion that sending you to the penitentiary is going to help. Do you know what the cruelest word in the English language is? The preposition, but. The judge said, but you can go down there and you can make the best of it or not.

6:36I figured the judge was saying that I could choose what I looked for in those sales. Becoming a computer engineer was now out of the question. Earning a college degree from prison was just as unlikely. But because of what the judge said, I thought not only of what I would lose, I was 16 years old planning who I would be when I left. I've loved books since I was a kid. And so on my sentencing day, I told myself that I would be a writer. In a crucible that is prison, I learned to see other people. I remember Star. We spent months in adjacent cells in a hole. we were both obsessed with stories of our past and with fantasy novels like Lord of the Rings.

7:36Books that let us imagine ourselves as people who chose to be heroes instead of villains. He was a boxer. I wasn't. Star taught me what he knew, how to train, how to breathe, how not to let frustration and a lack of discipline turn into something that ends up costing you far more than you can afford to lose. He was not the only one. I remember Mike G. One day he asked, if you slipped at McDonald's and broke your leg and they had one of those wet floor signs up. Could you sue? Of course I could sue. We argued. I knew I was right. An hour later, he says, you know you're wrong. And then he shows me a page in a faded yellow book with the word torch on the cover.

8:37Who asks a question they don't have answered to and then argues about it for an hour. The devil on my right shoulder says swing. Now remember, I hadn't won a fight since the second grade. So instead, I picked up a tatted issue of prison legal news from his locker. An ad for a paralegal course caught my eye. My mom paid for the classes. I didn't want to be a lawyer. I just didn't want to be anybody's fool. I almost didn't finish the class. You see, I was at Sussex One State Prison. And they had these lines, these yellow lines that you cannot cross. But I was a perpetual line crosser. I would cross lines to get stamps, to say hello to friends, to borrow food, to give people food.

9:37One day, I crossed the yellow line to get a book. A new book is a rare occurrence in prison. Betts, I'm so tired of you stepping over my lines. This time, you're going back to the hole. The lieutenant said before he cuffed me. From the second tier, Luke saw it all. We hadn't exchanged more than a dozen words in his life. But when they opened his cell door, he pushed all his property out of his cell and said, if Shai go to the hole, I go to the hole. Others began banging on their cell doors, also demanding to go to solitary confinement. It was another miracle. I didn't go to the hole that day. Luke only knew me from the times we hooped together, but that was enough for him to see me as worthy of more than a sale.

10:34Even then, I guess I was finding what I was looking for. Now, I left prison on March 4th, 2005. Before April 1st, I tried to enroll at the University of Maryland. I didn't even know what the word semester meant. When I told this kind counselor that I had just came home from prison, he suggested community college. I took refuge there. Then I started picking up college degrees like felonies.

11:10I had an AA, a BA, an MFA. I published a memoir and a collection of poetry before I turned 30 years old.

11:27But I couldn't even get an interview for a teacher gig. I was 33. I had two small sons, a felony record. I was unemployed. But I was once a jailhouse lawyer. And for a pack of tuna, a box of crackers and ramen noodles, I got five years off somebody's prison sentence.

11:51I decided to go to law school a year later I've been admitted to as many law schools as prisons where I serve time Harvard Yale the University of Pennsylvania Georgetown Michigan I went to Yale wanting to be a public defender but I was working in a public defender's office and I couldn't stomach my young clients being locked up. Every one of them reminded me of friends in prison doing football numbers, 30, 40, 50 years life. Then Juvie asked me to help him get out. I started representing my friends, failing and failing and failing again. Then Luke found me. I hadn't talked to him in 20 years. I walked into the parole board with his blind mother on my arm as if I were her son.

12:48He made parole. Then Keith did, and then Fats, and then Juvie, and then Terrell, and I got Dempsey out too. Six men all sent to prison as teenagers. All out. because my mom spent money for me to take a paralegal course in the middle of a prison sentence that neither one of us knew if I would survive. I left prison on March 4th, the only date that is also a command, advising me to march forth out in the world and leave everything about prison behind.

13:30but I found myself returning again and again for friends for clients to read poems so when someone asked what would you do for people in prison if money wasn't an issue I said we put millions of people in prison I will put millions of books inside when she asked me how. I said one library at a time. In 2020, it was all a dream. A little over a year later, we opened our first Freedom Library in a gutted cell in MCI Norfolk, a prison where Malcolm X served time. Our second was in Louisiana's Angola State Prison. We put freedom libraries on the sale block so that men can step away. No, so that men, women, and children can step away from their bunks and reach for a book that would be the start of the freedom they look for.

14:33We've opened more than 600 freedom libraries, putting books I once dreamed of reading into the hands of others. What we've heard often makes me weep. Like when Hillary, one of the first women in prison to touch a freedom library, wrote, the smell of wood and the smell of a new book takes me right out of this place. I have been incarcerated for 20 years and I'm doing life. I love books and I'm an avid reader. I have been since I was a little girl. Hillary makes me think about myself. 30 years ago, I walked into a prison barely older than my 14-year-old son. My 18-year-old is choosing a college.

15:16I am the father I am because of what I found in those prison cells. Long ago, I found out that you found what you look for because there is always someone who believes that you'll be searching. These days, I've returned to prisons with something as improbable as the mango I once found in solitary confinement. Luke and Terrell have both returned to open freedom libraries with me. The men who taught me how to hold on to hope are now handing it out to others, unnamed, unannounced, one book at a time. Thank you.

16:01You are listening to Reginald Dwayne Betts speaking at TED 2026. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet.

16:44Thanks for listening.

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