No Time to Grieve

YAHYA: My name is John Moore, but everyone calls me Yahya.

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I grew up in North Philadelphia, around 12th and Somerset in the poorest zip code of the city. And I was raised in a dysfunctional household. There was a lot of drinking, a lot card playing, sometimes until the wee hours in the morning. So I really didn’t have a curfew. And so I sort of lived two different lives.

So in the daytime I would hang with guys my age. And we would play basketball, we would play football, baseball. And I was a smart kid. Back then school came easy, especially when I was younger, but I got cocky about it and as high school came along, I wasn’t doing too well. At night time I would hang with older guys and we would get high, we would sell drugs, we would go to parties, and we would rob people.

So, it wasn’t long before my night life became my day life, and I began getting arrested. I was 13 years old when I went to my first juvenile placement, and from there, I continued down a path of looking for the answers and all in the wrong places.

And then, when I was 23 years old, well, actually, on my 23rd birthday, I was arrested for a major crime. Something totally different from the petty crimes that I was kind of like used to. And it was a crime that I did not commit. A murder.

I ultimately got sentenced to life without parole. Even though I never killed anyone. I got out eventually. But, it took over 25 years.

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JAMIE: From WHYY, you’re listening to Philadelphia Revealed.

I’m your host, Jamie J, executive director of First Person Arts, a nonprofit organization that believes everyone has a story to tell.

Across 10 episodes you’re going to get a tour of the Atwater Kent collection, sometimes called Philadelphia’s attic.

It’s a collection that’s grown over the decades, acquiring Philly’s material culture from individuals, families, institutions and shuttered businesses. And sometimes literally from the trash.

In every episode of this podcast, you’ll learn about an object in the Atwater Kent collection and hear a story inspired by it from a storyteller working with First Person Arts. We think every Philadelphian will be able to see themselves in this collection, and that learning about Philadelphia’s many histories can help us understand its present — and future.

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This is Episode THREE: NO TIME TO GRIEVE. With storyteller John “Yahya” Moore.

He studied the law for 22 years while incarcerated, becoming a certified legal reference aid and helping many other wrongfully convicted people win their freedom.

Yahya did ultimately get free too — he’ll tell you about that in a minute. And when he did, he came to visit the Atwater Kent collection.

STACEY: So you can see there are a ton of different kinds of materials in the collection.

He and other storytellers got a special tour from the curators.

STACEY: Furniture… signs, business industry, food related…

They’d laid out dozens of objects that might spark curiosity.

STACEY: So we have over here handcuffs. These supposedly were on John Brown and may have been on him when he was led to the gallows // He led the raid on Harper’s Ferry // a pivotal moment // sort of one of those dominoes that led to the Civil War.

Yahya found his inspiration right away

YAHYA: An artifact that actually spoke to me was the John Brown handcuffs. // I was recently released, July 11 // Today makes five months I’m at home. I was wrongfully convicted. I served 27 years in prison // And so it’s just a whole bunch going on with that. And so I’m right, I’m right there. I couldn’t even look at the other stuff.

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YAHYA: Here’s what happened: It was 1996. I knew this guy, he was like a little brother to me. I have a daughter with his sister. He was a juvenile at that time, and he’d had a life a lot like mine. He grew up in poverty. He’s from a dysfunctional household, he couldn’t read nor write.

He took part in a robbery and someone got killed. He was arrested and threatened with death row. So he signed a statement, pinning the murder on me. At first, he actually gave a different name, but that person turned up dead not long after. So this juvenile, based upon coercion, he made a statement to the police that I was responsible for the murder.

I was innocent, like truly innocent. But even a lot of people that knew me and loved me didn’t believe me because of the life I lived prior. That weighed so heavy on me.

So when I was sent to Greater Ford, I became determined to change my life. I entered all kinds of programs. I was in the Villanova University bachelor degree program. I became a trauma informed yoga instructor, a personal trainer, a tutor. I got a culinary certificate, a business administration certificate. A lot of my cellies didn’t even realize that I had a life sentence because at that time, I was so focused on changing my life. That I didn’t even show any traits of being miserable.

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So I studied the law as well. And I became a legal refugee. I worked on my own case and helped countless other people with theirs. There’s a difference between learning the law in school, And learning it because your life depends on it

During my studies I learned about the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, “except as a punishment for a crime whereof the parties shall have been duly convicted.” And learning that just added insult to injury. I thought to myself, wait, am I a slave? And if I am a slave, should I really expect to get free?

Yahya’s experience in prison immediately drew him to one object in the Atwater Kent collection : a set of austere metal shackles. Two big loops like horseshoes, connected by three long links of chain.

YAHYA: I turned the corner, and I seen them handcuffs. I really thought that it was // destiny or something like. Like, I’m supposed to be here, right here, right now. I’ve read some things about John Brown. But I never thought that those cuffs would be there.

These cuffs may have been used to imprison the radical anti-slavery campaigner John Brown, after his raid on Harpers Ferry. They’re among a group of objects related to Brown in the Atwater Kent collection.

YAHYA: He was an abolitionist. That’s what he was about. Right? // Fighting slavery, fighting this idea of slavery. Prison is considered to be modern slavery. // And so these handcuffs, I’m looking at them like, wow.

John Brown was born in 1800, and was an abolitionist from an early age. As an adult, he moved frequently, often to better support the anti-slavery cause. The longest Brown lived anywhere was Richmond Township, Pennsylvania — near Kutztown, where he operated a tannery that doubled as a stop on the Underground Railroad.

He developed relationships with many other abolitionists, white and black, free and enslaved, all across the country – among them Freemen and Quakers of Philadelphia.

CONNIE: The earliest form of abolitionism was expressed by those enslaved Africans who were running away. A lot of people say the Quakers started. No, no, it started with people wanting to be free and being captured and brought here // So that was the first form of resistance.

This is Connie Swinson, the executive director of the Johnson House Historic Site in Germantown, Northwest Philadelphia. It’s a National Historic Landmark — a big beautiful stone house, built in 1765 and used for decades as a stop on the underground railroad.

It was once home to the Johnson family. They were prominent Quakers, contemporaries and allies of John Brown and other famous abolitionists of the time, like reformer Lucrecia Mott and father of the underground railroad, William Still.

Though the abolitionist movement began with enslaved people themselves, people like the Johnsons were crucial allies — white people, with resources, willing to take action at great personal risk.

CONNIE: Those were the people who believed that, um, for a variety of reasons that, um, enslavement was wrong. Whether they felt that, okay, God is going to judge them, whether they felt guilt about owning another human being at some level…

The Johnsons were part of a network of abolitionists who helped ferry enslaved people north, and gave them places to stay on their journey. Someone traveling on the Underground Railroad would approach the back door, probably under dark of night, and a member of the Johnson family would hide them in one of several attic rooms. Then, the Johnsons might help that person get to the next stop — another ally, further north.

YAHYA: it has always been my understanding that, um, you know, many of the slaves who were running, they were running north. Kind of like to get free.

Yahya came to tour the Johnson house, too

YAHYA: And so // once they got here, North, or if they were going farther, what constituted freedom here? // Were they actually free when they got here?

CONNIE: Well, people think that if you got to Pennsylvania or if you got to Philadelphia, you were free and it’s complicated because // there was what was called gradual abolition.

In 1780, Pennsylvania passed the first comprehensive abolition legislation in the US — some would say in the world. But it was a big compromise with slave owners. The Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery didn’t immediately grant emancipation to all enslaved people, but phased it out over a long, ambiguous period of time. So for quite a while, slavery in Pennsylvania was a gray area, a dangerous situation for Black people, free or not.

CONNIE: You look like you and me, you’re up here, if you don’t have any papers on you and the slave catchers picked you up // you might be free and you actually are free // but you can easily just by the color of your skin be taken back to where you were. To a // state that still had slavery.

At the time, a person could automatically get their freedom by living in Pennsylvania for 6 months. So, Connie pointed out that the owners of another historic house just up the road in Germantown would bring enslaved people from Delaware to Pennsylvania in shifts

CONNIE: I’m enslaved. I’m working here for, for five months, 15 days, I’m going back down. They’re taking me back down to Delaware. And it starts all over again.

YAHYA: Sounds like parole being revoked. It does.

CONNIE: Yes. It does. Yes. It does. Yeah. This was a slippery, strategic, hard won fight. And it was not for the faint of heart. If you were an enabler, as I would call it, they would say it was illegal. // This family and other abolitionists, white, black, and both free and enslaved blacks, they were the abolitionists to really, set the bar for what it takes to get the hard work done // And so John Brown was a part of that movement

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Brown had no patience for gradual abolition. Throughout his life, he became more and more devoted and radical, moving to Kansas territory to physically battle with pro-slavery forces there.

And for years, he plotted his most famous act — a full-on assault on the American institution of slavery. He believed that a small number of people could “break slavery to pieces” if their actions inspired a widespread revolt.

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On October 16, 1859, Brown and a force of 22 men — a mixture of formerly enslaved, Black Freemen, and whites — captured a federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. They planned to seize the town, free all the enslaved, and then move south, emancipating people as they went and recruiting them into the fight.

The raid started off promising, but within two days Brown and his men were surrounded by US Marines led by Robert E Lee and caught in a firefight. They refused to surrender. Many were killed. Brown was captured.

The raid didn’t immediately kick off a rebellion or the end of slavery, as Brown had hoped. But it sent a shockwave across the nation, galvanizing people for and against. Many historians see it as one of the opening salvos of the Civil War, paving the way for eventual abolition.

YAHYA: his his spark enabled a lot of others to pick up the torch in their own way. // He seen something that was wrong. He felt it in his body that it was wrong. And he spoke out about it. Even acted out about it. I cannot be a human being and see something happen to you and not cringe. // That’s human… that’s how we are fashioned.

he was brave enough to say what a lot of other people weren’t // Just because they were white, that don’t mean they didn’t feel it. I mean we’re human beings

John Brown was taken to a prison in Virginia. And that’s where those shackles come in. They are believed to have restrained Brown while he awaited his execution.

We asked Connie of the Johnson House to take a look at the shackles. They’re simple, crude. Not unlike slave shackles.

CONNIE: it’s sad to really look at that. It’s really sad. I look at it as a tragedy, um, and a commitment. Um, to continue to do the work that we do here today.

An older Black man who was guarding Brown apparently kept the shackles, later giving them to a Union soldier, who gave them to an exhibit in Philadelphia in 1864.

Brown was tried for treason, found guilty on all charges, sentenced to death, and executed by hanging. His last words — “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”

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While she waited to hear of his fate, Brown’s wife Mary stayed in the homes of sympathetic Philadelphian abolitionists. After his death, Philadelphia’s anti-slavery community honored Brown by draping homes and businesses in black, holding vigils, and declaring a “Martyr Day.”

Brown’s coffin was loaded onto a train heading north. The plan was to bury him in New York after his body was prepared in Philadelphia. But there were many pro-slavery medical students here, and they refused to work on Brown. When his casket arrived in the city of brotherly love, the mayor came to the train station and said that public order could not be maintained if Brown’s body stayed in the city. So officials used a second, dummy casket to deceive the crowds that had assembled, and sent his real casket onto New York.

The Atwater Kent collection has a piece of that dummy coffin, along with the shackles, and a pike and musket from the Harpers Ferry raid.

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YAHYA: John Brown is… he’s history. He’s a part of American history.

But there is the Philadelphia history and much of the Philadelphia history, such as wrongful convictions // are not told. // When I was arrested mass incarceration was at its highest // People from Philadelphia were getting arrested and convicted at as highest as ever been, right?

And most of the people who were in these prisons were people from Philadelphia, people who look like me. people who were poor and from under resourced communities.

That’s also Philadelphia history.

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By 2005, I’d been in prison about ten years. And ten years is a long time, especially when you’re innocent. I’d go years without visits, years without seeing my mother. And being in prison, you see a lot of similarities of slavery. Not just the lack of freedom, but the impact that it has on everyone else around you. Like the second hand trauma. That happens to your family watching you being punished Possibly even watch you get killed and feeling like They’re helpless It’s traumatizing to be a part of that and witness it

Having been inside for that long and having been fighting my case for so long, you develop a rule of thumb. And one of the rules is you have no time to grieve. You have no time to grieve. You have four hours at the most. So cry, you know, do whatever you want to do in that four hours. And when that four hour’s over, tie your shoes up, you sharpen your pencils, you know, get some coffee, burn that midnight oil, you really get to work.

What you have in your mind is a reality. You’re reminded by the next door neighbor who you remember used to be so strong, and now he can’t even walk. // You’re reminded everywhere you turn, that you may die in prison. That you may never get out. That’s a reality. No matter how hard you fight, no matter how hard you try, it is still a reality.

So that motivated me.

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Ultimately I filed another petition for a new hearing. This time, I made a novel legal argument. There’s this case, Miller vs. Alabama, that ruled that a juvenile does not possess the culpability to appreciate the seriousness of their crimes. The person who gave up my name was a juvenile, so in my case I argued that this juvenile witness, his testimony should not have been admissible.

My argument had no precedent, so my petitions just sat for 12 years.

Until finally, the Abolitionist Law Center decided to take my case pro bono. and the attorneys named Brett Grote and Nia Holston took up my case they amended my petition, they asked for the homicide files and found new evidence that probably if it had been used at the time of my initial trial, I might never have even been convicted or even charged

There was a whole campaign supporting me. People who cared about restorative justice, people who cared about prison abolition, they all played a part in my campaign to freedom.

Every time I had to go to court, all of my supporters were there.

And it meant so much to me because here it is, a guy from North Philadelphia, come from a dysfunctional household, And when I used to go to court, there would be nobody in the courtroom for me.

No one. And I went from that, to having standing room only. And it was amazing. It was amazing.

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And then, one day, in 2023, I received an email, and the email says, Call me as soon as possible. So, naturally, I rushed to the phone, got on the phone and called. So I said, Hello? Hello? And Nia Holston on the other end said, Hi, how are you? And I’m nervous. My heart is racing. And I said to her, I said, Give it to me straight. What’s happening. She said, um, well, um, they want to give you time served.

I could not believe it. I said, what? Suddenly everything went blank. I couldn’t hear anything. I didn’t know anything else that she was saying. And somehow just the phone call was over. And I go to my cell. I sit on the stool. And I’m thinking like, wow.

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My 27 hard long years was coming to an end.

I get time served. That meant that my life sentence was over and my time in prison would be done, but I wasn’t freed immediately. First I had to go to court and the judge had to first vacate my sentence

They said that if I could go back to the prison and be released before 5 o’clock, then I could actually go home that day. But, Unfortunately, I got back to the prison after five, and I was immediately taken to solitary.

The reasoning was that I was actually a civilian. I no longer had, I was under sentence. And so, they put me in solitary, and, I could not sleep. Obviously I stayed up all night thinking like, Wow, tomorrow I’ll be home.

So six o’clock in the morning, um, I think that they usually, I thought that they usually let people free. Just come and open the door and let them out. So I knock on the door, says to the guard, Open. I said, hey, my sentence has been vacated, I’m supposed to go home today. He says to me, I don’t know anything about it. My heart dropped. I said, what? He says, I don’t know anything about it. So I told him, I want a lieutenant, I want a sergeant, I want a captain, I want a major, I want the warden here right now.

And then after some time, they opened the door, and I walked to sign out. And when I got into the parking lot, all of my supporters was there, all of them. It was amazing.

It was amazing. And we went to go eat breakfast. And that was my journey. That was the beginning of my journey of freedom, out here

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On July the 11th, 2023, after twenty seven years behind bars, I walked out of prison a free man.

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YAHYA AT COURT: We’re at the Juanita Stout Center // which is the, um, the place where defendants go to court.

I’m still in this fight. On the outside, I’ve started a nonprofit, called Way More Justice support. We show solidarity for people who are wrongly convicted.

YAHYA AT COURT: When I was on the inside, I realized that I had support. But some of my supporters didn’t even really know each other. And // sometimes they get to feel like they’re the only one that is helping.

What Waymore Justice Support tries to do is to help with that.

YAHYA AT COURT: Most of these courtrooms in Philadelphia, they don’t have cameras, right? // And so, um, the only way that we can actually, um, extend this sense of accountability is if people show up and people, people will be the human cameras. People view it. People say, Listen, we see you

YAHYA AT COURT: Being, um, a person who was freed by the Abolitionist Law Center and understanding John Brown’s work // Yes, they’re totally connected and I would love for people to understand this

I don’t know if John Brown had this feeling, right? But sometimes when it comes to fighting a good fight, sometimes we have to do it just because it’s the right thing to do.And sometimes we may not see the effects of our work. Sometimes we may not see it but we still have to do it because it’s right, you know, and it matters.