Shaka Senghor, Criminal Justice Activist | Super Soul Sunday S7E1 | Full Episode | OWN

What do you really want in your life?

Do you think everybody has a calling?

We are all looking for the same thing. What inspires you? Can we heal from everything? How do we live an awakened life? Why do you think we're here as human beings? To say yes to life, you gotta start saying yes to life experiences.

Think for a minute about the worst mistake you've ever made and imagine if you were forever defined by it. On this Super Soul Sunday, I'm joined by Shaka Senkur.

You just had an aha there. Yeah, yeah.

When he was 19 years old, Shaka was convicted of second degree murder and spent 19 years in prison, seven of those years in solitary confinement. Shaka says he takes full responsibility for pulling the trigger and taking a life. But today we're looking at the whole of his experience.

What your story says to me is that the power of love is transformative.

Some may never see more than a convicted felon with dreads and tattoos. But during the next hour, put yourself for a moment in his shoes.

All I ever wanted was a fair chance to just be a human and.

Ask, is it possible to earn true redemption?

So what I would like to do is actually hear how it came to be that you, a 19 year old young man, ended up in prison. So what was your life like growing up?

So growing up on the outside, looking in. I always say we had that ideal looking family. Father who worked. My father was in the Air Force reserves and he also worked for the state. My mother was a stay at home mother.

So you're a middle class black family?

Middle class black family.

In Detroit.

In Detroit, east side of Detroit.

And when did it start to go astray?

So from the time I can remember, there was always this element in the household which was the physical abuse, who.

Being physically abused, my mother, your mother.

Being physically abused to us and her children, and my father being a partner in that whole culture. And back then, I mean, we grew up in a community where whoopings were. That's the norm.

That's certainly how I grew up. You get whipped for the slightest infraction. Don't you remember?

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Like you're just doing normal kid stuff.

I think the thing that probably left the deepest impression on me is one time I was coming home from school and I was like the smart kid in the family. And so my grades was like the thing that I was most proud of. And so came home super excited to.

How old are you?

I'm probably in the fourth grade, so I'm assuming like eight now. I'm not sure yet. Right. I came in and she was at the kitchen sink washing dishes. And I was like, you know, Ma, I got this score on my test. And she rolled around and threw a pot with, like, such force that it broke the towels on the wall.

That's a life shattering moment when you think about it.

Devastating.

That's a life shattering moment when you think about being an 8 year old or 9 year old coming home and saying, mom, look at my grades. Did you ever find out what was she upset about?

I never knew my mother was upset, often about small things. And, I mean, I later discovered a lot of things that happened to her, and that's how I was able to get past that.

Yeah.

You know, I was able to really step outside of the anger, the hurt, the resentment, and really just say what happened to her to make her.

Yeah, but that's. You can't do that when you're eight. You're not even thinking about that when.

You'Re eight or nine because you just want to be loved and appreciated.

And hadn't you said, I want to be a doctor? Wasn't that your plan to be a doctor?

That's all I've ever wanted to do. Like, growing up like that was. And I think back to, like, why was that what I wanted to do? And I realized that I like nice people, and the doctor was always nice to me. And even when my mother would take me to the doctor, she was nice and like, I'm like, if I'm a doctor and she'll be nice. And so that. Wow.

You just had an aha there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow. Yeah. So, yeah. Just wanted to be a doctor.

I get that. I get that. So let me ask you this. Did you feel loved growing up?

I didn't feel like I was told, I do this because I love you, but it was always a whooping or a punishment.

Yeah. I mean, Shaka. I mean, I grew up like that, too. If I were asked that question, I would say, no, I didn't feel loved growing up. So you grew up like I grew up?

Yeah.

Shaka was raised as James White, one.

Of six children in a blended family. His parents separated when he was 11 years old. Shaka says that's when everything changed. He lost interest in school, gave up his dream of becoming a doctor. He started acting out.

And by the time he was 14.

He ran away from home. He was soon recruited by an older drug dealer. Shaka's riveting new memoir, Writing My Wrongs, paints a heartbreaking picture of how vulnerable he Truly was.

You consciously. And you make this clear. In righting my wrongs, you consciously chose the street life.

Yes.

The life of the streets. Why did you consciously choose a life of the streets?

Because in that space, I felt accepted. So leaving home and I was around other broken, fragile young males that we banded together around our brokenness, and we just like, this is support, this is love. This is, I got your back no matter what.

Cause that's what gangs are, are they not? That's what gangs are being banded together around your brokenness.

Yeah.

Beautiful way to put it.

And so I started getting into, like, minor trouble, breaking in houses, stealing out stores, fights in school. And I'm always, like, shocked now when I look back that nobody saw the drop off. Like, you know, how does a kid go from honor roll scholarship to barely performing or not even wanting to do the work that.

Yeah. One of the things that struck me is that you say time and again in here that nobody ever asks you, what is wrong? Why are you behaving this way? Nobody ever stopped to say, maybe something's wrong, maybe he's not well, or maybe something's going on in his life. Nobody ever did that. People just beat you and kept moving. So time and again, I was thinking, where was the moral code? Because as a little boy who's in, you know, striving to do well in school and has these dreams of becoming a doctor, you had a sense of what was right and what was wrong. What happened to the moral code?

The environment, like, chipped away at that. You know, I was. I was. I was so naive.

Yeah. You were a crack dealer by 14.

Yes. Crack dealer and crack addict at 14. Yeah.

And that was also when you started to be sexualized and sexually abused. Women would sell their bodies to you for a piece of crack, Correct?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in that space, the thing is, it's a normalized behavior for young men in that. In that space. And it's seen as this twisted rites of passage.

Yeah. And one of the things that I think it's so important to understand, and you make it very clear in righting my wrongs, is that the culture, the entire environment perpetuated this idea that your virility, your strength, your power was, was who had the most money, who had the most attention. And you got attention through being the bad guy.

Yeah. When I look back now, you can just see, like, that's what the quest was, power.

Yeah.

And it became like your reputation becomes everything.

Yeah. One of my greatest lessons of the Oprah show, all those years interviewing Thousands of people was that I could see that there was a common denominator in our experience.

And more than power, what.

What people are looking for is validation.

Validation. Yes.

They're looking to see that they matter. And what I see from your life in the streets, the street life, and I think what a lot of people need to understand when we're looking at what's going on in inner city neighborhoods with a lot of our youth is that's where your power comes from. That's where your validation comes from. Right.

Like, do you matter to somebody?

To somebody.

Somebody will know I'm here. Somebody will know I'm present. You will not ignore my existence on this earth. And just unfortunately, we haven't figured out how do you empower young men and women in communities where powerlessness is the norm?

Yeah. How come those young men and women, you included, don't get that the way to success, the open door to freedom, is, you know, education is all the things that you later came to see for yourself when you were in prison. So what's missing in the neighborhoods that kids don't get that, oh, this isn't the way, but this is.

Yeah. So as a mentor.

Cause at one time, you didn't know it in the fifth grade, you knew it.

Right, right. And it's believing it, and it's. Which dialogue do you really believe the most?

Yeah.

Do you believe that you are a bad person who will never accomplish anything in life and that this is your lot, or do you believe that you're worthy of the abundance that the world is willing to bestow upon you if you take these steps? I get that it's hard to see that through the pain, through the trauma.

Through and what's being reflected to you daily in your neighborhood, in your life.

In your neighborhood, in your household, in your household, amongst your friends. That mentality is so, like, one of the things that.

Oh, okay, okay, I got aha here. So it's very easy for people who are sitting back in their, you know, environments, whatever that is. It's very easy to say, well, look at me. Look at what I'm doing, because they're not walking in your shoes. They're not in that neighborhood. They're not in that house. They don't see what the culture is.

You have to see it. You have to listen.

Coming up, in that moment that you realized that you had taken another man's life, what did you feel? And later, I am not black.

In this week's Super Soul short, visionary artist and activist Prince E. Challenges us to See beyond the surface of our skin to the heart of what makes us human.

When I grew up, it wasn't cool to be smart. So a lot of times I downplayed that.

Looking back now, Shaka Senkur says he once believed these streets were the only place he could find connection, protection, and even a sense of power. Despite all of the dangers.

I actually got shot on the corner down here. Just the energy over here reminds me of, like, a dark period in my life.

Let's start with the day you were shot.

Yeah. So I'll never Forget the Mornings. March 8, 1990. Couple of days prior, I had an argument with an old girlfriend. She told her boyfriend, and he pulled up. I had never seen this guy a day in my life. And we had a little back and forth, and I'm like, well, get out the car. We can fight. And instead of getting out, he just started shooting and shot me three times. And I remember I ran into this lady's house, and she was just like, no, don't come in here. Don't come in here. Don't come in here. And then I ran out the side door, and then a guy on the block who I knew, he knew us from selling drugs, whatever. He came out with a gun and, you know, kind of escorted me back to safety.

It sounds like a war zone, you know?

Yeah. So he drove me to the hospital, got me in, and they pretty much pulled the bullets out, patched me up, was like, you go get this prescription and you can go back home. So the next day, I was back in the same neighborhood on crutches. No intervention, nobody to say, you're going to carry all these feelings, this fear, this paranoia, this shouldn't have happened to you. And I began to just, like, internalize all these different things, you know, all the conversations of, you know, worthlessness, not feeling like my life mattered or not feeling like I could be safe. It was like it went from this fear to, like, this anger and, like, this sense that I will never allow anybody else to hurt me. And so from that point forward, my gun was never out of my reach. And I became fixated with that, with, like, you know, if conflict arises, you have your gun. I got my gun, and I'm shooting first. And so.

At 17.

At 17. And so 14 months later, I was DJing the party, and an altercation broke out at the party. And so we ended up leaving. And we're coming back down the street, and a car pulls up, and the guy called me from the back seat, and I realized that it was a High spender. He would come multiple times a day from the suburbs, and he usually came and spent, you know, three, four hundred dollars every trip. But we had an agreement, like, you never bring anybody to my home. And on this night, he was with two guys, neither of which I knew. And that's how me and David ended up getting into an argument. Cause he was like, well, just make the transaction. And I was like, you don't have nothing to do with this. So we started arguing. It was kind of like, you know, just get off the block. Like, y' all gotta go. And they just refused to leave. So.

So you got three guys in a car, they're trying to buy drugs. You don't know two of them. So you are saying, I'm not gonna do this. Cause I think maybe one of you are the police right now.

This argument has escalated to, like, high level now. And I pulled a pistol out, and David opens the car door. And when he opened his car door, that triggered the fear of being shot or being hurt. And I just turned the shot multiple times.

And.

I immediately knew it in my soul, like, that I had just caused this man's death. It was just like this darkness that was just like, this is it. Like you've taken somebody's life. And then the kid in me was like, I just wanted to run away.

And in that moment that you realized that you had taken another man's life, what did you feel?

I felt like everything else was a facade. I felt like it was fake. It no longer felt. The reputation no longer mattered. It's just like, this is real. And I was scared. Like, I felt scared.

Yeah. You say here I didn't know where the shots I fired had landed, but something in my soul told me a terrible thing that happened in that moment. I knew the guy had died. You know what's interesting that struck me in your Righting My Wrongs memoir is that I could tell that you were a nice guy, you were a good person. Because even when you were getting in all the trouble, this is how I could tell that the moment you were going to kill yourself. There was a moment before this happened. Can you tell us about that moment?

Yeah. So me and my friends, we were just sitting up one night, we were drinking, and I was like. I asked him a question like, what if I decided to kill myself? And in that moment, it was a cry for help from my friends, who probably couldn't help themselves, but they just thought I was playing because I was, like, the tough guy, you know, the street savvy cat and, and so when I got home, I allowed that thought to take root in a way that it started growing. You know, I'm like, wow, what would happen if I did kill myself? Like, would they finally care? Like, would my mother really, like, care at that point? You know? And so I went home and I had a shotgun. And I was like, I'm gonna do it, you know, because the feeling of not being loved by the woman who gave birth to you, I wanted that to go away. And I wanted that final moment to be. For her to say, wow, he was special and I should have loved him, but I didn't.

So you were gonna kill yourself. So your mother would finally say, I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so I should have loved you more.

Yeah, yeah. And so I thought about it, you know, I had the shotgun and then I just like, thought about my nephew, you know, what would that be like for my nephew or my family to like, see that level of devastation, you know? Cause my nephew, he used to clam down the stairs like every morning and wake me up to get cereal.

Your two year old nephew?

Yeah.

Well, that's when I felt, I knew that there was in that story something redeemable, that you are a human being worthy of redemption. Because in the moment of your greatest pain, when you're thinking, I want to kill myself just so I can end this pain, and so maybe then my mother will love me, you think I don't want to do that because my two year old nephew, who comes down the stairs every morning, will find me here? And what will that do to him? Your ability to love and care for your nephew is what kept you alive in that moment. So you weren't so heartened that you had no love. Yeah, you had enough. What made me, like, open my heart to your story is that in spite of everything that had been done to you as a little boy, makes you want to cry, that you still didn't want to do that to another little boy.

Coming up. After six years in prison, Shaka receives a life changing letter.

She wanted me to know, like, the hurt that I had caused. But she went on to say that she loved me and, like, I didn't know what to do with that part. When I entered prison, I was bitter, I was angry, I was violent. And I made it up in my mind that day that I had to be a lion and I refused to be a sheep.

So this is what I don't understand. Okay, so you're in prison and you decide that you're gonna have the same Kind of attitude in prison of dominance and control that you. You did on the street. Did that work for you?

Initially it did. When I first went in, I had no expectations of ever getting out. When I was 19, I had been sentenced to a total of 17 to 40 years in prison. At 19, you can't even see two weeks down the line, let alone 17 years down the line.

Yeah.

So I rebelled from the very first moment I attempted to escape. I got into physical altercations with other guys.

Yeah.

It's a very violent culture, Very broken culture. And in that environment, it's better to be feared than to be fearful. And what I knew about myself every day was that I was willing to die or kill for what I believed in.

What did you believe in? What was your belief?

It was so distorted. The belief was like survival of the fittest. It was just straight primal, barbaric. This reputation that I brought from the street now lands in prison.

Yeah.

And you realize very quickly that there's this. This battle where everybody's juggling for who's going to be the man.

Yeah. In spiritual law, which we talk a lot about on this show, It's a culture. It's a broken culture that feeds your brokenness.

Definitely.

Yeah.

Yeah. It reinforces everything that you've been taught negative about yourself. And that becomes the more negative you are, the more validated you are in environment.

In that environment.

In that environment.

Yeah.

And so it's the complete opposite of what life is. What life is.

Yeah.

Like, it's just a different culture, which.

You know, I want to stop you here because I think that's what people need to understand. First of all, 90% of the people are coming out at some point, and we are creating these prisons and institutions where there is no sense of rehabilitation. But you go into this world where you are consistently dehumanized to be punished for the dehumanization that you brought to someone else. And people come out worse than they were when they went in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

While serving his 19 year sentence, Shaka spent a total of seven years in solitary confinement as punishment for assaulting a guard and other inmates, attempting to escape, and many other violations.

Explain what that feels like the first time you're taken to solitary confinement and what that's like.

So the prison is own other world, and solitary confinement is a subculture of this world. It has its own language, it has its own rhythm. That's very different from general population.

You're still on a row, though, but you're. And you're next to other People, you're just alone in yourself.

Just alone in yourself. Yeah, but the thing is, that environment, the level of mental illness in there is unbelievable.

People screaming all night, screaming all night.

Beating on lockers, throwing feces and urine on each other.

Cause you're in solitary confinement. You're allowed one hour a day, One hour a day. Out on the block is it called.

So it's basically like dog kennels. And when they come to get you from the cell, they cuff you up, and the cell is attached to a dog leash. And they walk you down the tier, take you outside, put you in a dog kennel. So you get access to that five times a week. It's a very cold, indifferent, barbaric environment.

And in that cold, indifferent, bizarre, out of touch with our reality environment, your transformation begins.

Yeah.

While behind bars, Shaka had begun a journey to discover his true self. He became fascinated by books written by Malcolm X and Donald Goines, and spent hours writing and reflecting on his past. Then, six years into his sentence, he received a letter from a woman named Nancy, the godmother of David, the man he had killed. Nancy's letter became the genesis of Shaka's transformation.

What did she say to you in that letter?

So she started off telling me who David was. He had a 10 month old son that he never got a chance to see his first birthday. He had a daughter who was struggling greatly. But she wanted me to know, like, the hurt that I had caused, the devastation I caused their family. But she went on to say, despite that, that she loved me. I didn't know what to do with that part, you know, and then she said she forgives me. Like, I just couldn't imagine how this woman could love me, knowing that I had caused her and her family so much devastation.

Were you able to receive that at the time?

Mentally, so mentally I got it. But on a deeper level, it was the seed. In hindsight, looking back and watching the incremental growth like that was the seed that was kind of blossoming.

Because the first time you received that letter, it let you know what?

It let me know that I was redeemable.

And wasn't that the first time, too, that you came to understand that this was a life you had taken, that this was somebody's life, somebody's son, somebody's brother, somebody's father that you had taken. And that up until then, you really kind of, in your distorted thinking, blamed him for being in the wrong place, blamed him for saying whatever it is he said to you. And so you felt justified in Firing those shots.

Yeah. It was my way of excusing away the behavior.

Yeah.

And of not taking responsibility and so dehumanizing of who he was. Because in my mind, there was no face. There was no father, there was no brother, There was no son. There was no friend that makes people laugh. He was just a person who caused me to mess up my life. That's it.

He caused you to mess up my life?

To mess up my life.

Wow.

So it did two things. It humanized David.

Mm.

But also went into this different type of funk.

Because now you fully realize what I've done.

Fully realize what I've done.

Yeah. Got that. It cracked you, but it didn't open you up, Right. Yeah.

Coming up.

So the epiphany comes in solitary confinement. Your son writing you that letter was the beginning of your awakening.

That was the awakening.

It was your born again moment.

Yeah.

And later, isn't it funny how no.

Baby is born racist, yet every baby cries when they hear the cries of another.

A super soul short on connection, perception, and the labels that were created to divide us. While Shaka served his time in prison, he tried to stay connected to his young son, Jay, through writing. They would also outline their hands on paper to send to one another. And then in one letter, his son's words would finally break Shaka open.

So the epiphany comes in solitary confinement.

I was waiting on mail call, which is. And you're in solitary confinement's absolutely most important part of the day, outside of eating, and largely because you're hoping that somebody just thought about you and somebody cared about you. And this particular day, I got a few letters, and I got one from my son, my oldest son, Jay.

How old was he at the time?

Around about 11.

11.

Yeah. When I opened the letter, everything, all the street savviness, the prison toughness, like, it just crumbled to the ground. Because for the first time, I was seeing myself through the eyes of a child I helped bring into this world. And I read the letter, and he said, my mother told me, while you.

Was in prison, tell me what the whole letter said. Dear dad.

Dear dad. My mother told me he was in prison for murder. Dear dad, don't murder anymore. Jesus watches what you do. Pray to him and he'll forgive your sins. That part is what just shattered everything. It was like, I can't. Whatever I do, if I never get out of prison, I refuse for that to be the legacy for my child. Like, I couldn't go through the rest of my life with him. That Being a final way that he sees me. And it was heartbreaking. It was heartbreaking on so many levels. It was the first time that I actually even was able to look at myself as this monster in my child's eyes.

You certainly knew you were in there for murdering someone. And your son saying, I heard you're in prison for murder.

Yeah.

Is that what did it?

That was part of it, but it was the other part that Jesus watches what you do.

Jesus watches what you do.

And for this child to have this view of life, of good and bad, evil. And I'm being placed in this category where I'm not what a father is to a son. I'm not a hero. I'm not the provider. I'm not a role model.

Mm. And now what's amazing to me is.

How could you possibly thought you were before?

Because the abnormal is normalized in the space that I came from.

Okay.

You know, you talk to guys that hustle in the street. What are you hustling for? Hustling to take care of my family. I gotta get this money so I can make sure I provide for my family. I gotta protect the block. Cause I gotta make sure my family is good. So it's distorted. Everything is turned upside down.

Yeah.

You know, in the hood, the bad guy's a hero.

But your son writing you that letter was the beginning of your awakening.

That was the awakening.

Your born again moment.

Yeah. That was the moment when I decided that I would never go back to the darkness. And that I had to find my light. And that I owed it to him to find my light.

What your story says to me is that the power of love is transformative. Because your love for your son and your desire to be better came from not wanting your son to have that as his only perception of his father. As somebody who was in jail for murder.

Yeah.

Coming up, how do you emerge in a society that's so unforgiving?

Since Shaka's release from prison in 2000.