The City: Prison’s Grip on the Black Family

(October 20) – They used to pray together before school each morning. Dawn Hawkins would take her son’s hands, and with clenched eyes she’d ask for safe passage from their home through the hard streets of North Philadelphia, a sometimes-dangerous maze of gang lines, drug corners and police dragnets. “Be a shield of protection for my baby,” she’d say as part of their daily ritual.