While June 19th is an anniversary we always mark at the RFC, last month another significant milestone passed without fanfare. August 1, 1951 was the first time my dad and uncle were able to see their parents in Sing Sing prison after more than a year of separation. That date caused me to reflect on the RFC-funded trips which reunite our beneficiaries with their loved ones behind bars.
If my father hadn’t had those prison visits, he’d have no memories of his parents. So it’s not surprising that enabling children to see incarcerated parents or grandparents is a key priority for the RFC Board and staff. We began making grants for prison visits in 1995. In the first 10 years, grants from this program (later named the Attica Prison Visit Program in honor of generous gifts from a survivor of the Attica uprising, and several of the attorneys who won a settlement for the victims) totaled just over $87,000. In the last four years, we’ve awarded another $71,000. That’s a jump from an average of $8,700 to almost $18,000 per year or an increase of more than 100%!
The numbers are impressive, but in some ways they’re the least important part of the story. Instead, it’s the families and their individual experiences that illustrate the real importance of these grants, which allowed the four and six-year-old grandchildren of a former Black Panther and COINTELPRO tar-get serving a lengthy sentence across the country to visit him in prison and sit on his lap while he read them a bedtime story; made it possible for six chil-dren, ages eight to 20, to drive across the country with a family friend to visit their dad; and helped two teenage girls, reeling from the death of their older sister, give and receive comfort from their father despite his incarceration.
A significant percentage of the communication we receive from our beneficiaries comes from Attica grant recipients, many of whom are moved to share their experiences of both separation and too-brief reunions with us, including:
“I am still on a high from visiting my dad. It was something we all needed and as I said before, we are very grateful to you and the Rosenberg Fund for Children.”
“It’s difficult to put into words how much your foundation has meant to us. My daughter’s mom was incarcerated two years ago and faces over 20 years in prison. My daughter was sixteen at the time, was followed regularly by the FBI, and had guns pulled on her by federal officials twice in the course of her mother’s arrest … As difficult as this has all been for my daughter, the RFC has been a huge comfort.”
Next year will mark the RFC’s 25th anniversary and the 20th year of our Prison Visit grant program. While we wish these awards weren’t needed, as long as they are, we re-affirm our commitment to ensuring children can visit an incarcerated parent or grandparent.