Oral history interview with Akilah Shedrick, 2018

Biographical Note

Akilah Shedrick was born in Brooklyn, New York and was raised in the South Bronx. She was incarcerated at the age of 17 in North Carolina at Bragg Street North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women for 10.5 months. She works as a television producer

Scope and Contents

Akilah Shedrick discusses her childhood, growing up in Brooklyn and the south Bronx, and experiencing homelessness. She talks about carrying drugs to North Carolina for a friend and being arrested and incarcerated for her first offense. She details what jail and prison were like in terms of conditions, work assignments, relationships between prisoners, and the inadequacy of the legal aid system. She then discusses her experience with parole, focusing on her undergraduate education and the financial difficulties of being a student. She talks about later in life going into mass communications as a TV producer

Subjects

• Boone, Kurt B., interviewer.
• Families, Black--Effect of imprisonment on.
• Homelessness--United States.
• Interviews.
• Legal aid--United States.
• Mandatory sentences--Law and legislation--United States.
• Mass incarceration--United States.
• North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Parole--United States.
• Shedrick, Akilah--Interviews.

Access Conditions

Copyright by Akilah Shedrick. The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York hold a non-exclusive license to enable library activities