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behind her, working at desks. Her eyes are wary and mournful as I tell her why I have come.
    She calls the warden on the intercom, briefly turning her back to me. A moment later she says: “I’m sorry, but he says your name is not on the list.”
    “Check again,” I say. “I am here as the paralegal of Ms. Woods’s attorney. He cleared my visit to his client. Tell the warden that.”
    Again she speaks into the intercom. Then she turns to me. “He says there’s no record of anything like that,” she says. “Besides, Dessie Woods is in solitary and can’t see anyone.”
    We look at each other hard. And I “recognize” her, too. She is very black and her neck is stiff and her countenance has been softened by the blows. All day long, while her children are supported by her earnings here, she sits isolated in this tiny glass entranceway, surrounded by white people who have hired her, as they always have, to do their dirty work for them. It is no accident that she is in this prison, too.
    Because it is obvious that black women do not have the right to self-defense against racist and sexist attacks by white men, I realize I am in prison as well. In the prison visitors’ book, under the date November 10, 1980, I sign my name as witness to our common oppression, and add “ Tried to see Dessie Woods,” as a witness for myself.
    1980
    Postscript
    At the time that I wrote to Dessie Woods, the warden, Leland Linahan, was under pressure from Linda Rogers’s parents about their daughter’s death. In my letter to Dessie I had said I intended to try to publish my interview with her in order to bring more attention to her case. I believe the letter was confiscated, and that she never received it.
    After being turned away at the prison, I called Dessie’s lawyer and received this grim news: Four days before my visit, she had appeared before the prison parole board. During the proceedings, the new acting warden (Linahan was apparently removed because of the Linda Rogers controversy) became so enraged with her that he physically attacked her and had her thrown into a solitary-confinement cell.
    Meanwhile, I read in the newspapers that the proposed $16,000,000 prison for women is not being built after all. Not because of protests from the Georgia Alliance or others who object to the imprisonment of poor and black women when other alternatives are available, but because wealthy white people, who would be living some distance from the facility, did not want it in their neighborhood.
    Dessie Woods was released from prison on July 9, 1981.

THE DUMMY IN THE WINDOW:
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS AND THE INVENTION OF UNCLE REMUS
    [This was originally delivered as a talk at the Atlanta Historical Society in 1981.]
    About three years ago I was asked to write an essay on folklore and what it had meant in my own writing and my own development. So I thought about it, and I became very depressed—depressed, because when you think of folklore in America, you have to think of Uncle Remus and you have to think of Joel Chandler Harris. Despite this, I went to the library to begin research on Harris, partly because he lived in Eatonton, Georgia, which is my hometown. I had deliberately repressed that connection; it was really too painful to think about. And as I read his letters, collected by the wife of his son, I realized that the subject was also too painful for me to write about in an essay. So the essay is still on the shelf, but I did take some notes, and I want to share those notes with you.
    Joel Chandler Harris is billed as the creator of Uncle Remus. Uncle Remus told the stories of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox, all the classic folk tales that came from Africa and that, even now in Africa, are still being told. We, too, my brothers and sisters and I, listened to those stories. But after we saw Song of the South, we no longer listened to them. They were killed for us. In fact, I do not remember any of my relatives ever telling any of those tales