Ken Fears For His Life After Refusing to Participate in a Riot (Prison Chronicles #5)
Rewarded for Doing the Right Thing
NOTE: As with all the episodes of "The Prison Chronicles," the name of the protagonist has been changed to protect his privacy (in other words, "Ken's" name is not really Ken).Prison detainee Ken was in the recreation yard one day walking around the track, when he heard a noise behind him. He turned to see that a race riot had broken out about 20 feet behind him. As he is instructed to do by the prison officials, he stayed where he was, immobile — neither participating nor running.
Among the detainees, there is an unwritten rule that if your race is involved in a riot, you must get involved and personally take part in it. Ken is black, and the riot involved blacks.
Ken always takes all of his Bible literature with him when he goes to the yard (his Bible, his Watchtowers, his Enjoy Life Forever study publication, and so forth) so that he can study on the benches with his fellow Jehovah’s Witnesses who are in the yard at the same time and also be prepared to give an informal witness about God and the Kingdom message whenever that is possible. It is generally understood among the detainees that if you leave anything in the yard, one of two things will happen to it: It will be either stolen, or thrown away.
When the guards arrived on the scene to quell the riot, they told Ken to put everything he was carrying (his Bible and Bible-based publications) on the ground, after which they escorted him back to his cell. He did as he was told, but feared that he would never see his Bible and other publications again (thinking that they would be stolen or thrown out).
For days following that incident, Ken expected to be physically attacked for not getting involved in the riot. He especially feared a certain individual in his wing, who was the “shot caller” (leader) of the gang he feared would seek reprisal. Finally, after being concerned about this for several days, a note was slipped under Ken’s door; he picked it up and unfolded it, fearing that it would convey a threat or warning, and saw that it was, indeed, from the individual he was afraid would assault and maybe even kill him for his non-participation in the riot.
It turned out, though, that the letter was the exact opposite of what he had feared: Instead, it expressed admiration for Ken sticking to his convictions as a promoter of peace and racial equality.
Oh, and one other thing: As for Ken’s Bible and literature that he had to leave in the yard, and thought that he would never see again: A few days later, there was a plastic bag hanging on the door of his cell. You can guess what was in it. Somebody had, rather than steal or discard the items, hand-delivered them back to his wing, at which point a fellow believer recognized them as belonging to Ken, and hung them on his cell door.