Inspired by student volunteers at the University of California, Santa Cruz and sociologist Megan McDrew, the Social Justice Autobiography Project is an essay-writing exercise sponsored by the United Black Family Scholarship Foundation’s “100 Prisoner Book Publishing Literacy Program”.

This project commissioned over 100 incarcerated participants across the United States to reflect on one or more factors that had most influenced their understanding and experience of social justice. Participants were then tasked to review and consider quotations from activists and innovators such as bell hooks, Albert Einstein, Pope John Paul, Helen Keller, and several other sources that varied in perspective on what social justice is and how it can be achieved. Drawing from these perspectives as well as their own understanding of the nature and achievement of social justice, each participant’s essay highlights key social, political and economic influences that shaped their childhood experience and present incarceration.