The Letter (2016)

Shaka Senghor was incarcerated in Michigan for 19 years, seven of which he spent in solitary confinement. He ran away as a child to escape an abusive home. The closest thing to love and support he could find was in a community built around the crack cocaine trade. One night, he was at the wrong place at the wrong time and a man shot him multiple times. From that day forward he began to carry a gun and a few months later, pulled the trigger and accidentally killed a young man. He was charged with second-degree murder and sentenced to prison. Several years into his sentence as he was quickly losing hope that he would ever make it out, he received a letter from his son that changed his entire life trajectory. Today Shaka Senghor is the founder of Beyond Prisons, a humanization initiative of the Dream Corps. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Writing My Wrongs, a Ted speaker (his talks gave garnered more than a million views), a former fellow at MIT Media Labs and the proud father of three children.