DECEMBER 9th - 66 Years--Locked Up



On this day in 1974, Johnson Van Dyke Grigsby, at the age of 89, shuffled out of prison to freedom for the first time in 66 years. That is a long time to be in prison. Not sure I would last a week. Too pretty. Undersized as well. But mostly too pretty. Grigsby, a black man, was convicted of murder after knifing the white James Brown in 1907, and entered the prison system in 1908. So Grigsby’s life breaks down as follows: The first 22-23 years of his life were lived outside of confinement until a poker game went bad and he stabbed Brown (his story about how this occurred changed over the course of his prison term). The next 66 years--locked up. Then he spent 17 months free before voluntarily going back to prison after finding life on the outside strange and boring. Then he left for good at age 91 in 1976 and lived the next 11 years as a free man. So Grigsby lived to be 101 and only about 35 of those years were spent in freedom. Not getting into the issue of culpability and whether Grigsby should have served 66 years, the fact that he did and then was released makes him an extremely interesting figure. Shawshank dealt with freedom and institutionalization extremely well (Brooks and ‘get busy living’), but I doubt that anybody had a more personal view on the topics than did Grigsby. Freedom is one of the things we take for granted in this country. It’s easy to forget just how fickle it can be and the fact it is still absent in places throughout the world. And while Grigsby forfeited his freedom through his own actions, at the very least, he was a survivor. That alone not does not merit admiration, it is impressive. Johnny Cash thought so to and wrote Michigan City, Howdy Do as an ode to Johnson Grigsby. America is a country obsessed with many things. Survival and Freedom are among them. I’d be willing to bet Johnson Van Dyke Grigsby had something to say about those subjects and the human condition.

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