Leo Felton/Prison Photo
The United States currently has the highest incarceration rate of its population in any country of the world. According to a Washington Post piece, that’s 716 people for every 100,000. While doing research on the prison industry complex, I came across men and women that were doing lengthy sentences at Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania and their story was so incongruous to society’s expectations that I had to find out more.
Mr. Felton is an olive skinned, shaved head Italian-American man. His striking frame was covered with the obligatory white pride, anti-Semitic tattoos. But he was smart and at towering 6’4 with over a 6-foot arm spam, he easily ran up the ranks of the white supremacy factions. Felton brought a spartan-esque militarization to his gangs. They were must read books for standard consumption and working out was a must. Mr. Felton however, was a true believer and became disillusioned with the gang doing business with other races, and once he got out, he knew he’d carry out the real missions.
Mr. Oládimu’s upbringing set him for a life of confusion. His mother, once a nun, left the convent to join the civil rights movement of the 60s. It was there she met an African-American architect and conceived Olàdimu, though shortly after admitted that she identified as a lesbian. She picked up and left for Gaithersburg, Maryland with her son. In an all-white neighborhood other children began to notice that they’ve never seen anyone with hair and skin like Olàdimu. Soon racial slurs would be thrown and fights would be had. Now, that his mother had made something of herself in the school system, she assumed her son was a violent lost cause, misunderstanding that he may be suffering in a bigoted town with lack of representation. So, she had her son institutionalized. “He must be violent and crazy,” she thought. Doctors came up with a different diagnosis. Her son was a genius and his IQ was in the top 1%. She didn’t need to call Bellevue, she needed to call MENSA. However, in a sort of mother-knows-best gone wrong, she pulled more strings and kept Olàdimu in mental institutions, where he would endure and witness grotesque levels of sexual, mental and physical abuse, until he was 18. By his release, he knew nothing but criminality.
Meanwhile, Felton was released from prison, linking up with a 19-year old white supremacist girl named Erica Chase and planning levels of domestic terrorism the world hadn’t seen in years. Bridges and Holocaust museums were their number one target. They had fertilizer and counterfeit bills—and those bills were their downfall. Upon trying to use one of the counterfeit bills at a Dunkin’ Donuts, an off-duty police officer was alerted by the cashier and after a long chase, feds were at Felton and Chase’s hideout, finding guns and plans. As much as it thwarted Felton’s plans, this wasn’t new for him. He knew how to lie to cops and survive a bid, if need be. However only after the trial started was it the end for life as he knew it–because Felton and Olàdimu are the same man.
When his federal trial began in 2002, the press leaked to his former constituents that Leo Felton, indeed had a black father. He wasn’t Italian; he was of mixed race with Nigerian roots. After the news went public, Felton had been ready to die, completely dejected that what was once his family had turned on him and testified against him. That night in his cell, he slit both side of his neck, his wrists and thighs, while keeping warm water around him to let the blood flow. He lay in and out of consciousness for hours until morning roll call, where miraculously he was still alive, though his neck had to have dozens of staples.
Before the arrest, the night came he was finally intimate with Erica. He describes “Freaking out. I had to shave everything. If she saw any of my body hair, it was clear I wasn’t just this white guy. Even my—and pardon my saying this, but even my member itself, it’s much darker than the rest of my already olive body. So, here I am, mounting this woman, who I lusted for, and she has this enormous swastika tattoo covering her whole back, I felt validation, like a Norse god.” Before the truth came out, Felton had to separate himself from what he thought other black men were; fallacies ingrained in him from his institutionalization.
Cut to 2008, Leo took on the surname of Olàdimu, the name of his familial tribe back in Nigeria, and through much self-reflection admits he was living a life of forced prison indoctrination after looking for a place to belong. With the lack of representation in his youth, he began a self-hate campaign, refusing to apply himself anywhere but the streets. by finding philosophers, orators and academics who believed race and ethnicity were spiritual based. In jail, he would admit he was mixed and they accepted him. It wasn’t until he would serve time in prison that men would tell him that he “had to pick a side.” He passed for white, so that’s what he claimed.
Today, Leo Olàdimu is the picture of the progressive left wing of American views and politics, while warning both his jailhouse and civilian academic peers of the growing dangers of white nationalist/Odinist terrorism (the religion of the Vikings and whose art often adorns alt-right rallies). His experience begs the age old question of “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” In a country with astronomical recidivism rates, (76.6% within the first three years of release by most estimates), awful race relations, disproportionate amount of people of color stopped by cops and the profit through prison privatization booming, does the US itself cause this racial split or does institutionalization help breed the problem like it did for Leo Olàdimu? For him, it was the later that radicalized him but with our current president, upon his release, he wants no parts of the USA. “I’m going to self-teach myself coding, reach out to some MENSA members in Uruguay, and I have to leave. This country has too much blood on its hands (the fact that he wanted to add to this blood seems lost on him at times) and it’s only going to get worse unless we have the right people in office. I can’t see that happening, But, Bernie 2020, for sure man.”
