Dedication: To Friends who led the way
Honoring Eddie Ellis, Latif Islam, Arlene Mohammed, and Father Stephen Chinlund, who lived lives with great vision, bringing education, friendship, and light across perceived boundaries. And to the vibrant Women of Bedford Hills, who were college students during the late 1990s and continue to work for equality and education for all, you are our heroes!
Latif Islam (1949-2005)
Remembrance; In Their Diversity, Mourners Honor the Spirit of a Leader - New York Times
Latif Islam was a brilliant orator and community leader who could bring people together across racial divides. He was born in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where his youth was marked by addiction and violence. In 1984, while incarcerated in Greenhaven Prison, Latif earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Marist College. The next year, he was released and began to work for Marist College, where he was hired as the Academic Coordinator for the same program he had attended. He later became a Marist adjunct instructor in 1995. In Latif’s passionate speech at the last Greenhaven graduation, he challenged the graduates to “make this degree your teaching degree.” In 1997, he helped found the Family Partnership Center in Poughkeepsie, NY, a collection of 30 private agencies with a variety of mandates, including literacy, nutrition, sheltering battered women, and helping the homeless. Latif was a big man with an unforgettable laugh and he touched the hearts of all who knew him.
Arlene "Mo" Mohammed (? - 2018)
Her Name Was Mo and She Brought People Together - Prison Writers
Mo was a long-termer at Bedford Hills who rallied her peers to organize and demand changes, beginning with education. During the height of the AIDS epidemic, with rates of HIV infection at an all-time high, Mo helped create the AIDS Counseling and Education Program (A.C.E.). Incarcerated men later adopted the program, calling it the Prisoners for AIDS Counseling and Education Program (P.A.C.E.), which quickly spread across New York State prisons. Shortly after her release, Mo became the beloved Academic Coordinator for Hudson Link at Sing Sing. There, she was deeply respected by administrators, successfully unified her students, and left a lasting legacy. Hudson Link opened Mo’s House, a residence for newly released men.
Father Stephen Chinlund (1934-2020)
Director of Episcopal Social Services (ESS)
As a young Episcopal priest, Father Chinlund worked with the poor and marginalized in his New York community after attending Union Theological Seminary. He then served on the NYS Special Commission on Attica, following the Attica Rebellion in 1971, and his activism continued to bring him into jails and prisons, where conditions jarred him to the core. In 1979, he founded the Healing Communities Network, which addressed the trauma of incarceration through support groups. These groups operated both inside and outside prison, and they worked to build self-esteem and a sense of community. Father Chinlund then served as the Executive Director of Episcopal Social Services from 1986 -2005. In 2002, he offered College Initiative its first home base and was deeply involved with helping CIU to become successfully established in NYC.
A Salute to the Women of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility
The women at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility (BHCF) have achieved a seemingly impossible task - building a community that knows no boundaries through time and space. Today, the women together as students in the BHCF College Bound Program in the 1990s are still learning together, working together, and helping each other in the world “outside”. The majority of sisters live in NYC, but their extended family includes the entire state and beyond. Sadly, a few are still behind bars. It is said that adversity makes us strong. While that is often true, the women of BHCF know that love and friendship make us, and keep us, stronger.