Meet Mitchell Rutledge, better known as Big Mitch. Born into poverty in Georgia, illiterate into his twenties, Big Mitch’s path led him to spend 44 years in Alabama prisons after taking a life. It’s a stark contrast to many, including Our American Stories host Lee Habib, who, despite their differences, forged an unlikely friendship with Mitch. This isn’t a story of denying a crime, but of a man who owned his actions and found a new path within the walls of a prison cell.
Big Mitch’s remarkable journey is one of profound spiritual transformation. Through weekly phone calls, Our American Stories host Lee Habib discovered how faith became Mitch’s lifeline, helping him not just survive but thrive in the Alabama prison system. Mitch finds strength in ancient Bible stories, drawing parallels to his own life and using them to fuel an unwavering spirit. This powerful episode explores his friendships, including those with Bert and Anita Folsom, and reveals how even in the most challenging circumstances, hope, redemption, and connection can bloom.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. His next story is about a friend of mine. We’re close in age, but have little else in common. Mitchell Rutledge, a.k.a. Big Mitch, was born black and poor in Georgia. I was born kind of brown and middle class in New Jersey. He never met his father. I still talk to my ninety-four-year-old father every week. He dropped out of high school in his early teens and was illiterate into his early twenties. I was surrounded by books growing up and finished graduate school in my early thirties. Big Mitch spent the last forty-four years of his life in Alabama prisons for killing a man. But this is not a story about an innocent man sentenced to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Big Mitch never denied the crime or made excuses for it. This is the story of my friend’s spiritual transformation while serving his life sentence. It’s also about a friendship. Only God could have engineered a friendship that began with a single Sunday morning call. Through these weekly conversations, I hope you come to know and love him as much as I do. Here’s Episode Five. My conversation on February 11th, 2024, where Mitch begins describing how it is impossible to survive prison as long as he has without God.
00:01:41
Speaker 2: This is a free call from an incarcerated individual at Alabama Department of Corrections. To accept this free call, press one. To refuse.
00:01:52
Speaker 1: This pre call, press two. Thank you for using Securus.
00:01:56
Speaker 2: You may start the conversation now. Do, guys. Hey man, it’s the same way out there, but especially in here. You cannot survive this goblin here without Jee’s gray. It’s impossible. They see everything. They see the trees, they see the stars, the sky, the rain, the sun, bom. You know, they see everything, but they’ll never give you any thought to, hey, who created that? Why do that? It’s just why through the sun rise every morning? Think they don’t understand? You know? There, there I do, because I had time to sit down, you know, and evacuate everything, because my life and everything was in disliree. So God got my attention, and I thank God for that.
00:02:57
Speaker 1: I didn’t ask Mitch if he had a favorite story from, and this is what he told me.
00:03:03
Speaker 2: I guess one of them in particular will be Daniel and Me Shack Sere and the Vidigo when, uh, they took him before the king, and the king wanted them to, uh, buy down before their gods, and if they didn’t buy down, that they will be thrown and the virus punished. And they refused to buy down to their gods. They said that they know that God can save them, but even if He don’t save them, they’re still not gonna buy down. Don’t know that Jesus gonna save them, but they know that he can. So my situation is the same. I know Jesus can bring about my release from prison. I don’t know if he will, but I know he can. But at the end of the day, I’m still gonna serve Jesus Christ regardless. A lot of time, individuals and and my position in here, they asking God to do things for them. Mostly they’re freedom, but over a period of time when they continue to pray in and continue to try to get things done and they don’t materialize, and then they’ll or fugg and fugg away from God, because they feel that God isn’t answering their prayers and what have you. And I have witnessed this. But me, I’m the officer if God don’t bring me out of here. I know he’s able. I’m not gonna turn away from him. I’m not gonna stop believing in him. I’m not gonna stop testifying about him. I use that as one of the fuse to light my fire, continue to motivate me. And I mean I used that story.
00:05:03
Speaker 1: Mitch continues to see himself in so many of the Old Bible stories, stories like that of Joseph.
00:05:12
Speaker 2: Joseph being in prison for many, many years, and how God had used him, why he was in there, gave him favor. He was able to help individuals out. He had favor with the gods, he had favored with the chief in the head of the gods and gave him that, and she gave him favor in all his life. And that’s the way I look at my situation, even though I’m incarcerated, even though I’ve been incarcerations for going on forty-four years, I look at the plus side of my life, and I see the favor that God have restored on me and continue to restore on me. I look at the many lives out and saved in here by being a good disciple of God. The Bible is full of so many interesting stories and and events. It’s just like a guy, just, you know how God, even though I’m in here, but God didn’t continue it. And He’s still give me favor. You know, I believe act. You know, I’m still alive and one ofers in the most dangerous prison system in the United States at this moment, Alabama prison system. And forty-some years, you know, I can have just got favor. Thank God for that.
00:06:30
Speaker 1: Mitch has made many friends over the years of his sentence, but none quite like Bert and Anita Fulsome. And here’s the craziest thing. I’ve known Bert Folsom for twenty years plus. He teaches at Hillsdale College. He’s retired, one of the great history professors of all time. And until this meeting with Big Mitch, I had not known he known Big Mitch for decades. Here’s Big Mitch talking about his friends Bert and Folsom.
00:07:01
Speaker 2: You know, him and Anedle, you know, they are, they are one and the same. So, he had he written me probably about two weeks after Sister williaand written me, and they pretty much, he said the same thing as Sister Legion said that I was the only one in the Time Magazine article. Out of all the other individuals that was on there, throw that showed that said that they were sorry or show remorse. And he just wanted to let me know that that God just gave me and that he’ll willing to be my friend if I wanted that. I got to meet bury in Aneedle in January 1983. They have been in my life over forty-one years, and you know that.
00:07:51
Speaker 1: God, much like the rest of America. Around this time, the Super Bowl had the prison walls buzzing with excitement, and Mitch shared with me a few of his predictions for the big game.
00:08:02
Speaker 2: Kansas City Patch mahme will win. I mean, I think he will win. I think I believe, at the end of the day, that he will. I play Rot Perdy as he do all the other quarterbacks that he go up against. And he’s, uh, he’s just twenty-seven, twenty-eight.
00:08:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, he’s just a baby.
00:08:24
Speaker 2: He’s just getting started. Yeah. So if he don’t, if he ain’t in this one, got a give him three. I don’t know if he get the six, but who knows.
00:08:34
Speaker 1: You know, six is hard, but if anybody could do it, my homes is set to do it.
00:08:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, that’s why I feel to win. We had so much faith in, you know, like the Alabama football fans here in Alabama, and the faith that they have in their team to win, like Kansas City, whatever, but Alabama fans in particular, you know, they got so much faith in Alabama football that they would win in their game, that they will be with it to bid anything because they have so much faith in that. But now, in prison with me, they confessed that they believe in Jesus Christ. But at the end of the day, they really have more faith in Alabama football.
00:09:17
Speaker 1: And to Nick say, with any am in Christ and a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler and Reagan Habib. And you’ve been listening to Big Mitch talk about everything from the Bible to Bama football, and of course, he being a Georgia Bulldog, and I having lived in SEC country for almost eighteen years, a fan of all miss, we agree to disagree about this most profound part of our life. Episode Five of Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch here on Our American Stories.
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