/reconstructions sep 28 '17
Sharon Wiggins was 43 at the time of this 1992
recording. She recalls her grandmother’s memory of the
Ku Klux Klan. Her grandmother, who raised her, died
when Wiggins was 14. Wiggins was homeless in a
Pittsburgh ghetto before she committed her crime at the
age of 16. The terror that both Wiggins and her
grandmother’s teen-aged brother experienced at similar
ages- he at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920’s
and Wiggins as a child on the streets alone and on
death row in the 1960’s, reveal the continuity of the
institution of slavery in the United States- from the
Jim Crow south to the New Jim Crow of mass
incarceration.
Mary DeWitt, September, 2017
recording. She recalls her grandmother’s memory of the
Ku Klux Klan. Her grandmother, who raised her, died
when Wiggins was 14. Wiggins was homeless in a
Pittsburgh ghetto before she committed her crime at the
age of 16. The terror that both Wiggins and her
grandmother’s teen-aged brother experienced at similar
ages- he at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920’s
and Wiggins as a child on the streets alone and on
death row in the 1960’s, reveal the continuity of the
institution of slavery in the United States- from the
Jim Crow south to the New Jim Crow of mass
incarceration.
Mary DeWitt, September, 2017