McCall writes:

Blackmen born in the U.S. and fortunate enough to live past the age of eighteen are conditioned to accept the inevitability of prison. For most of us, it simply is the next phase in a sequence of humiliations. Being born a slave in a captive society and never experiencing any objective basis for expectation had the effect of preparing me for the progressively traumatic misfortunes that lead so many blackmen to the prison gate. I was prepared for prison. It required only minor psychic adjustments (149).

After being sentenced, McCall was sent to Norfolk jail for six months awaiting transfer to a state penitentiary. Jail is “the one place in America that black men rule” and all thirty-five inmates in McCall’s cell were black (149). The racial undertones of his sentence weren’t lost on him:

I shot and nearly killed Plaz, a black man, and got a thirty-day sentence; I robbed a white business and didn’t lay a finger on anybody, and got twelve years. I got the message. I’d gotten it all my life: Don’t fuck with white folks (150).

At Norfolk, a black revolutionary named Chicago ran McCall’s cell block. Chicago schooled McCall on philosophy, politics, and law.