Word: taliaferro
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Power in prison falls to those who gather it, and Taliaferro prefers to hire men who, like himself, were convicted of capital offenses and therefore face long prison terms. "Short-timers have an ax to grind. They never learn anything in here. They blame everyone else, and they just can't wait to get out and screw up again. Then they come back. I committed murder. Homicide. I put myself in here. I take that responsibility, and I will deal with that...
...Taliaferro illustrates the theory that serious crime makes a good prisoner. A former drug addict who killed his wife, he has become a productive citizen of the Stillwater prison. He has almost completed his bachelor's requirements, and hopes to become a college professor someday...
Hovering over his keyboard, Taliaferro cradles the telephone receiver just above the monogrammed RT on his black jersey. Like the capable editor of a small-town newspaper, Taliaferro has the reader by the pulse. He is a leader of his captive constituency: vice president of the Jaycees' Star of the North prison chapter, a leader of a black-culture group and a big editorial voice inside these walls. "I'm a black redneck," he says with a casual smile. If he were free, he'd have voted for George Bush for President even though he thought his candidate didn...
...Taliaferro wanted to capitalize on his prison term and invested his time in the Mirror, where he's made big changes. He dropped "Prison" from the masthead, gave the front page a USA Today look, and brought into the cellblocks a broader view of things, quoting frequently from such outside papers as the nearby St. Paul Pioneer Press & Dispatch...
...read about gang rape, booze brewed in a toilet or how a man in C cellblock took a dive from the gym rafters and landed on a broom. Not even an obit for a lifer who died of natural causes. "It's bad enough just being in here," Taliaferro says...