Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch: Ep. 8

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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, aka 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. Welcome to Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch. Here’s episode eight: our conversation from March third, twenty twenty-four, where Mitch begins by describing prison life as life on the Serengeti and discussing how he broke the mold of the predator versus prey environment he’s subjected to each and every day in prison.

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Speaker 2: This is a free call from.

00:01:57
Speaker 1: An incarcerated individual at Alabama Department of Corrections. To accept this free call,

00:02:02
Speaker 2: press one. To refuse this free call, press two. Thank you for using Securus. You may start the conversation now. Well, you know, uh, at the end of the day, I tell everybody, you know, I give credit to God for allowing me to still be here with my health and strength, right mind, to whatever the greed is and the respect level that and the favor that He allowed me to be able to maintain, as I said, living on the Serengeti. And it’s a predator and prey environment. And most guys, it’s either one way or another. Are you a predator or your prey? And are you somewhere alike, I guess, in the middle? But that’s what type environment is. And it’s hard to survive him like that because individuals in here, you know, the kind it’s for weakness. They, they pray upon kindness and generosity. They pray upon peace and love. If they see that, they’re like ravenous wolves, you know. So they look at it like it’s an opportunity to pounce upon you. And what I did, and went out of, wrote upon that, I wrote, ‘Cause it’s Serengeti plains. And I said, ‘Well, you know, I’m neither predator nor prey,’ which is a unique foundation to be in, to be in an environment where individuals love the concept ‘predator and prey.’ They live by it. So to be neither one, it’s a unique situation because that’s the concept of it. So I said that. I said, ‘Well, I view myself as I’m not prey, and I choose not to be predator.’ It’s not necessarily just a physical core aspect of individual preying upon the individual. It’s still psychological as well. You know, individuals just have so many different agendas to want to talk to you, of being your friend. You just don’t know, you know. It’s so many games they have played, and it’s old, vicious, and so loud, and it’s so chaotic, and it’s just, it’s not a good place to be.

00:04:29
Speaker 1: And the next part of this conversation is one of my favorites of all of the conversations I’ve had with Big Mitch, and this one has to do with something that happened years ago with a friend that I’ve come to know in Memphis. Family in Memphis who also know Big Mitch and have been speaking to him for years: the Wilson family, Kim and Norma Wilson. Well, a couple of years ago, one of Norma’s grandchildren, Willow, sung Big Mitch a bert a happy birthday song over the line while he was in prison. And I got a copy of that song, and, well, take a listen to what happens next.

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Speaker 2: I’m going to play you something here.

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Speaker 1: Miss Norma wanted me to play this for you.

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Speaker 2: I can’t believe it. It wasn’t even my birthday, and to hear a little how, you know, singing to me at birthday, it just meant something to me. You know, it was very special, and I wanted to commemorate that by doing something. You know, it was in my heart to write a poem about it. But yeah, I wrote that. I came back that night and I thought about it. I was so touched by it, and I told several guys about it. You know, it was just, you know, just to, you know, hear a little child, you know, singing after birthday, and which I never had that happen to me before. It was just amazing, you know. And it was touching because she could have been doing anything, you know, a child. And that, you know, I’m talking to her grandmother, and she said, ‘Well, let me sing happy birthday to him.’ And she could have been playing and done other things where she chose to do that. And I thought it was special. So I wrote a poem, uh, dedicated to her for that, Willow.

I have yet to hear the heavenly choir.
I have yet to hear one of the voices that made the Heavenly Father sing along,
Until it came out the mouth of Precious Willow,
A two-year-old singing ‘Happy Birthday’
To an agent prisoners that have been in captivity for thirty-nine years.
As she sang, Jesus said, ‘Same, Precious will of sing these!’
His soul moved; his spirit renewed the jaws of yesterday.
He’s the eels of captivity.
In that moment, she been to me, being sixty.
We was in the heaven and realms as she ministered to my soul.
Jesus was saying, ‘Same, precious will of sing!’

00:07:42
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Big Mitch Rutledge. Those words of his: “It’s hard to survive in here because individuals, you know, they take kindness for weakness. They pray upon kindness and generosity. They pray upon peace and love.” I view myself not as prey nor predator. And this isn’t just a physical aspect, or an individual preying upon an individual aspect. It’s the psychological aspect too, and one can only imagine what that must be like, being locked up for that many years and dealing with, well, what Big Mitch had to deal with, paying the price for his crime. And then, of course, that singing of the song by Little Willow, and what I learned from Big Mitch: he had never been sung ‘Happy Birthday’ to before. And to hear it from a little girl, from a two-year-old girl, the pure joy, the pure innocence, just touched him deeply. And of course, his poem and all that sprang.

00:08:42
Speaker 2: Out of it.

00:08:43
Speaker 1: When we come back, more of Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories and our continuing series, Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch. This is episode number eight. We pick up with Mitch explaining the spiritual, physical, and psychological toll that being in prison takes on a person and how he overcame those challenges through Jesus Christ.

00:10:01
Speaker 2: We are in this world, but we’re not in your world. We, uh, isolated in a particular area back somewhere like in Alabama. We’re stuck away deep in the woods. And what we do, we observe life from the television. We don’t observe life in no other way. In other words, we don’t see cars. We don’t, you know, no more than the cars of the officers patrolling the perimeter. So we are living in an environment that it took away from the world that you are living in, and we dream of one day coming back to that world. So it’s so different, you know. As you take me, for example, I’ve been a locked life going on forty-four years, and put it like this: I have been watching life go on for forty-some years, but I’ve never been able to participate in. And so this caused many guys to lose hope. This caused many guys to give up. This caused many guys to lose their sanity. This caused many guys to just get buried in the prison life because being in here so long and just watching the world continue to move and you’re not being a part of it. It’s a psychological, it’s traumatization, really. But, you know, the only way you can survive is you’ve got to have God, and your life’s God. Have Jesus, because like I said, you know, it’s a mind game. It’s like you then and it’s here and get it. You know, in Tanzania, over where you’ve got lions, you’ve got the jackals, you’ve got the hyenas, you’ve got the leopards, cheetahs, running rhinoceros. You know, you’ve got all forms of predators. And here it’s Serengeti. This is the human Serengeti. Well, when you walk through here, you can feel, you know, it’s a dangerous atmosphere. It’s prison. And, you know, when you have the personality of a lion, you have the personality of hyenas, you have the personality of the jackal. You know, it’s the same concept in that sense, but they’re the human form. And that’s when I wrote the poem called ‘The Den of Jackals.’ You know, and, uh, it’s a rough life. And a lot of guys give me a lot of credit for, ‘Well, Mitch, you, you’re strong, Mitch, you, uh, you know, you don’t do this, you don’t do that.’ But, and I tell them, ‘Hey, it’s not me, it’s Jesus Christ.’ You know, they can’t see Jesus. But I know who keeps me. I know who’s still helping me walking in this Serengeti, on the Serengeti plain, after forty-some years. And I have a certain amount of fear, especially when I’m getting older, you know, because I’m not one to say that I don’t have fear in me, because I do. It’s the thing is, wise fear. Fear is not necessarily a bad thing, you know, because when you have a certain amount of fear of a particular situation or a particular thing, then you are more cautious by what you do it; how you do it. You are not loose. So, yes, I don’t necessarily walk in fear, but I have enough sense to know that to be in an environment like this, you have to have a certain amount of fear, you know, to even realize what’s going on, because you have one life. Because you can easily find yourself in a bad situation. I walk through here with God’s protection. I pray, and I respect everybody, trying to do the best I can. Try to be a big brother to somebody, that I can be a big brother to, a big ulcohol, or just a friend. If I can shell, but which in any kind of way in Health County, I do that. And that the only thing I can do. And tell you something good, and will tell you nothing negative. You know, and how I live, you know. You know, when the whole thing, Jesus Christ is going to part the Red Sea for me one day.

00:14:24
Speaker 1: Mitch next explains that there are many types of bondage, and a man that’s free can be just as bound up, just as imprisoned as a man like himself. That we can all be prisoners of vice, of sin.

00:14:39
Speaker 2: We look at being bound, you know, with physical restraint. In other words, you know, uh, being physical restraint in prison, you’re still bound in a whole lot of other areas. You know, you could be financial abound. You could be bound in greed. You can be bound in lust. You know, you be bound in envy, and so many aspects of being bound. And I was telling this particular guys that were, ‘Man, you know you was bound, or still have some aspect of being bound up.’

00:15:17
Speaker 1: Mitch next read from one of his original poems, this one entitled ‘Bound.’

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Speaker 2: Why does man measure the limitations of being bound? Does ‘bound’ only exist in the form of physical restraint, or does it exist with any particular condition of life? Does it result from the lack of material necessity? ‘Bound’ is a mental interpretation that enslaves and destroys its possibilities that God intended for humans. Bound, we have been manipulated and placed in a state of constant illusion by the true master of illusion, the enemy of man. In God, bound, we have been led to seek ourselves and everything but God. Once the illusion disappears, we become bound with the elements from which we were deceived. A word from a true seeker: seek God, find oneself in truth. Free as you bound the lie and seek to control and destroy the human spirit. Nay, brother, that yet I come forth. And that’s, you know, regardless of the situation that I’m dealing with, regardless of how long I’ve been locked up, regardless of what it looked like, I still continue to believe in Jesus Christ and I continue to still continue to move forward. I wrote this in January thirty-first, twenty-fifteen, because I wanted to keep myself. I didn’t keep going strong because Sister Mania had, you know, she was on the verge of leaving this world at that time. She died two months after that. So, anyway, I titled this poem right here. ‘Yet I Come Forth.’ Born in the graveyard of poverty, condemned to ignorance and chaos. ‘Yet I Come Forth,’ as I stand upon my feet to move amidst chaos. I’m raised with no father and a child for a mother. ‘Yet I Come Forth.’ So, as I moved forward, as I grew, only to become a victim of the trap that resides in the graveyard of poverty. ‘Yet I Come Forth.’ I had been conditioned to survive poverty, the hood, prison, the system that made me. ‘Yet I Come Forth.’ I was buried alive in the pit of the beast, in prison, chained to hope, to despair, frustration, mistrust. ‘Yet I Come Forth.’ Yet now see me rise from the ashes of life by the grace of God. Like the phoenix bird flying out of the ashes, my spirit flies free.

00:18:23
Speaker 1: ‘Yet I Come Forth.’ And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Reagan Habib and Greg Hengler. And a special thanks, as always, to Mitch Rutledge, who has spent the last forty-five years of his life in prison and who I’ve had a conversation of running one now for years. It’s my favorite part of my weekend, my hour with Mitch. And my goodness, his words towards the end are just so powerful. “We observe life from the television.” That’s what we see, Mitch was describing his life in prison. “We don’t observe life in any other way. In other words, we don’t see cars, we don’t see life. We are living in an environment that’s tucked away from the world.” And then those words of that final poem. “‘I’ve been conditioned to survive poverty, the hood, prison, the system that made me.’ And ‘Yet I come forth,’ he says a little bit later. ‘Yet I come forth.’ ‘Yet now see me rise from the ashes of life by the grace of God. Like the phoenix bird flying out of the ashes, my spirit flies free.'”

00:19:34
Speaker 2: ‘Yet I come forth.’

00:19:36
Speaker 1: Dazzling words of hope and dazzling words of faith. The story of Big Mitch Rutledge, our episode eight of Sunday Mornings with Big Mitch, here on Our American Stories.