{ "item_title" : "The Innocent Felons", "item_author" : [" Abdul R. a. Hasan "], "item_description" : "THE BANK TOLD HIM THE MONEY WAS HIS. A JURY WAS TOLD HE STOLE IT.In 1996, a federal wire transfer of $617,586.99 arrived in the account of the Cleveland anti-violence organization Abdul R. A. Hasan had built. He asked the bank whose money it was. He was told it was theirs. What followed was an indictment, a courtroom he believes was set against him, and three years in federal prison.A VIETNAM RIFLEMAN. A POSTAL WORKER. A COMMUNITY ORGANIZER. A FEDERAL DEFENDANT.Abdul R. A. Hasan has been all of these, and in The Innocent Felons he tells the whole of it in his own voice.He was born in Ruleville, Mississippi, in 1944 to two schoolteachers, moved north to Cleveland as a boy, and was drafted into the Army in 1965. He served with the Big Red One in Vietnam, was shot in the forearm, and came home carrying what he calls the things he brought back - a habit of keeping people at arm's length, and a war that followed him into ordinary rooms.Back in Cleveland he went to work at the Post Office and helped build Black on Black Crime Inc., an organization that stood with families when their people were killed and the questions were not being asked. That work made him known in the city. It also, he believes, made him a target.NOT A LEGAL BRIEF. A MAN'S ACCOUNT OF A LIFE.The childhood, the war, the work, the trial, the prison, and the faith in Almighty G-d that he says kept his mind whole when the rest was taken from him.The second half of the book turns outward, into seven chapters of reflection: on justice and the law, on race in America, on faith and leadership, on politics and public life, on family and friendship, on health and survival, and on a country he still believes can do better.Hasan writes plainly and without polish, the way he speaks. Readers who have been wronged by a system that looked the other way will recognize the voice immediately.INSIDEA Mississippi childhood and the family that shaped itVietnam, 1965-1967The postal sting and a first incarcerationThe building of B.B.C.I.The federal wire case, the trial, and prisonRelease, and the road after itSeven chapters of reflectionsA closing message to the readerABOUT THE AUTHORAbdul R. A. Hasan was born in Ruleville, Mississippi, in 1944 and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965, served in Vietnam with the Big Red One, and was wounded in December 1965. He worked for the U.S. Postal Service and became chairman of Black on Black Crime Inc., a Cleveland organization that advocated for families of victims of violence. In 1998 he was convicted in a federal wire case he maintains he did not commit, and served three years. He continues to speak and write about wrongful incarceration through his organization, Human Beings for Humanity. He lives in Ohio with his wife, Diana.WHO THIS BOOK IS FORReaders of memoirs about wrongful conviction and the criminal justice system. Readers of Black American life and the generation that lived it. Vietnam veterans and the families who waited for them. And anyone who has held onto faith while a system looked the other way.Two parts. Eighteen chapters. 222 pages.The bank told him the money was his. A jury was told he stole it.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers4.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/9/79/899/762/9798997622503_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "19.99", "online_price" : "19.99", "our_price" : "19.99", "club_price" : "19.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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