“Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir” by Stanley Tookie Williams is a first-hand account of Williams’ personal journey from co-founding the notorious Crips gang to becoming a reformed prisoner and activist for youth from behind bars on California’s death row. The book, which has an epilogue by Barbara Becnel and a foreward by Tavis Smiley, details how Williams became a powerful anti-gang activist during the two decades he spent on death row prior to his December 2005 execution. Williams’ book openly discusses the life of drugs and violence that led to the formation of the Crips, and then offers an inside look into his personal transformation: “Black Redemption depicts the stages of my redemptive awakening during my more than twenty-three years of imprisonment… . I hope it will connect the reader to a deeper awareness of a social epidemic,” Williams wrote after finishing the book. (Touchstone Books, 2007). See Books.
