Photo: NEW YORK, NY – JANUARY 29: (L-R) Juju Chang, Nightline Co-Anchor, ABC News, Venida Browder mother of Kalief Browder and Paul V. Prestia, Esq., Civil Rights Attorney speak at the 2016 ‘Tina Brown Live Media’s American Justice Summit’ at Gerald W. Lynch Theatre on January 29, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Paul Zimmerman/WireImage)
Just days after Jay Z announced that he would be producing Time: The Kalief Browder Story, a six-part documentary series chronicling the tragic life and death of a teenage boy wrongfully imprisoned for three year at Riker’s Island, Browder’s mother, Venida, 63, died after a series of heart attacks on October 14, 2016.
Also: Ava DuVernay’s Documentary “13TH” Exposes the Horrors of Modern Day Slavery in the USA
Venida Browder was laid to rest on Saturday, October 22, leaving behind five children between the ages of 39 and 24. Kalief, her youngest, committed suicide in the family home last June at the age of 22.
NEW YORK, NY – JANUARY 29: Venida Browder, mother of Kalief Browder attends the 2016 ‘Tina Brown Live Media’s American Justice Summit’ at Gerald W. Lynch Theatre on January 29, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)
Kalief Browder was only 16 years old when he was arrested, tortured by prisoners and guards alike, and kept in solitary confinement for nearly 300 days because he refused to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit. In a clear violation of his Sixth Amendment right to due process of the law, Browder remained incarcerated for three years because his family could not afford $3,000 in bail to bring him home.
In June 2013, after numerous postponements and 31 hearings, his case was finally dismissed. For all that he suffered, Browder would not be silenced. In October 2014, Jennifer Gonnerman brought the horrific details of his story to light in a widely read feature that ran in The New Yorker.
In the two years before his death, Browder gave numerous interviews, including one with Ava DuVernay for her new documentary film, 13TH, a searing examination of the ways that African Americans have been systematically criminalized to feed the prison industrial complex, the latest incarnation of legal slavery in the United States of America.
The film reveals that 97% of all people arrested never go to trial; they take plea deals even when they are innocent. Browder refused to do just this, and in standing up for his rights, he was repeatedly victimized. “If I would have just plead guilty, my story would have never been heard. I would have just been another criminal,” he says in the film.
The Kalief Browder case became a symbol for injustice while he was alive, but in his death, it became evidence of a scale of corruption and abuse that must end.
Six months after his death, President Barack Obama wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post criticizing the use of solitary confinement in prisons, explaining, “Research suggests that solitary confinement has the potential to lead to devastating, lasting psychological consequences. It has been linked to depression, alienation, withdrawal, a reduced ability to interact with others and the potential for violent behavior. Some studies indicate that it can worsen existing mental illnesses and even trigger new ones. Prisoners in solitary are more likely to commit suicide, especially juveniles and people with mental illnesses.”
In 2013, Kalief Browder told HLN, “Prior to going to jail, I never had any mental illnesses. I never tried to hurt myself, I never tried to kill myself, I never had any thoughts like that. I had stressful times prior to going to jail, but not like during jail. That was the worst experience that I ever went through in my whole life.”
Browder had attempted suicide on five or six separate occasions prior to his death. The night before he killed himself, he told his mother, “Ma, I can’t take it anymore.”
His suicide is evidence that freedom can come too late. His mother’s death is evidence that the victims of injustice are not only those who have been wrongfully imprisoned but the families who suffer right along with their loved ones.
Family lawyer Paul Prestia told the New York Daily News that Venida Browder died of a “broken heart.”
At her funeral, her children spoke of their mother’s legendary sweet potato pie, her poetic gifts, and her days as a singer in the soul music trio Lady T and the Shontels. But it was her children who were her heart: of her six, the four youngest were adopted. Akeem, the oldest of the adopted children, said, “Her legacy is her kids. She took us in, she took in everybody.”
And now she is gone.
NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 06: (L-R) Producer Harvey Weinstein, President of Spike TV Kevin Kay, rapper Shawn “JAY Z” Carter, and Venida Browder attend Shawn “JAY Z” Carter, the Weinstein Company and Spike TV’s announcement of a documentary event series on Kalief Browder on October 6, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images for Spike)
Jay Z announced the production of Time, in partnership with the Weinstein Company and Spike TV, at a Manhattan press conference on October 6. His voice strained with emotion, saying, “It’s difficult for me to find the words, it’s so inhumane.”
Jay Z had reached out to Kalief Browder after reading the story in The New Yorker. Less than a year later, when he received a call saying Browder was gone, he remembered, “I was thrown. … I was asking myself, man, this story doesn’t end like this. It’s not supposed to end this way. That’s not how this story goes, not in the movies, not in real life.”
When he spoke these words, Venida Browder was sitting beside him. And now she is gone. Undoubtedly, he was not prepared for this new chapter of a tragedy that never seems to end. The horror is realizing that what has happened to the Browder family happens every day in the United States.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
