Former Inmate Who Received Contraband Book While in Solitary Has Now Built Hundreds of Prison Libraries

Reginald Betts was only 17 years and imprisoned in solitary confinement when the lifeline arrived that would change everything.

Someone delivered a book.

“Imagine yourself as a teenager, 17 years old, in solitary confinement, and you’re just calling out, ‘Yo, somebody send me a book,’” Betts, who’s now 45, told the Washington Post . “Somebody sent me Dudley Randall’s The Black Poets , and it radically changed my life.”

Betts entered the prison system after he carjacked an automobile in Fairfax County, Virginia, while a man was sleeping inside. He was tried as an adult and spent almost a decade in prison, with most of his sentence in solitary confinement.

But one day, fellow prisoners used a rudimentary pulley system rigged up with torn sheets and a pillowcase to deliver the poetr