Unshackled Book

This is the story of two men. One, Harold Morris, was white - a sharecropper's son from South Carolina. The other, Marcus "Doc" Odomes, was black - raised by his mother in inner city New York. Both men were poisoned by the hatred of racism. They both chose to live their lives in the fast lane: alcohol, drugs, and running with the wrong crowd.

Both were doing life sentences in Georgia State Penitentiary when the prison was forced to integrate under federal mandate. It was the last prison in America to do so.

After the prison rioted against integration, the warden threw Harold and Doc into an eight-foot by ten-foot cell and the door was slammed shut. The warden wanted to show that a black and a white inmate could live together. Inmates and guards were laying odds on which would kill the other.

Both were all-state athletes before entering the prison, and they were used by the warden to recruit other inmates to play in the first organized integrated basketball game in the history of the prison. This game was the catalyst for the successful integration of the prison.

Through living together, fighting together, coaching together, and playing together they came to respect one another, learn from one another, fight for one another, and finally love one another. Through this gripping story of two men's lives we see how hatred and racism were overcome, and we see the prejudice, pain, suffering, and the thread that binds us all. This is their story.

In a special afterword, Harold Morris talks to parents and teens about the law of the harvest - a simple truth that applies to the physical as well as the spiritual universe: you always reap what you sow in life.

"I am a perfect example of this," he writes. "What did I sow into my life? I associated with the wrong kinds of people, I drank, I did drugs, I had immoral sex, and I was proud to call myself a racist. What did I reap? Two life sentences at Georgia State Penitentiary for armed robbery and murder. And I almost died there."

After sixteen years of speaking to millions of teenagers all over the world, Harold Morris gives parents and teens the benefit of his experiences in a colorful narrative that goes right to the heart of the problems today's teens face and vividly illustrates the crucial importance of making the right choices early in life.