The Final Words of Texas’ Death Row Offenders Made Visual
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
The poet Elizabeth Alexander once asked, “What if the mightiest word is love?”
For the 280 men and one woman executed in Texas between 2000 and 2012, “love” was the mightiest word — by an overwhelming margin, with three out of five saying the word in their last living moments.
Dylan C. Lathrop and GOOD created this graphic with a word cloud generated from the offenders’ final thoughts shortly before they were put to death. The word “love” was used by 173 of the 281 people. That’s more than 60 percent. Nearly half of them mentioned religion in some form, using “God” and “Jesus” and “Lord,” to name a few. And note the petitions of prayer, expressions of apology and notions of family are present in their minds. Some were silent, others were defiant — and I’m guessing that’s why “warden” shows up so prominently.
A Texas Roadside Holy Ghost Revival
Photo by Trey Ratcliff/Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Day 12 - Sabiha Shariff: “Awareness of Abuse and Domestic Violence”
Revealing Ramadan: 30 Days, 30 Voices [mp3, 2:30]
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Our twelfth voice on this twelfth day of Ramadan is Sabiha Shariff, an Indian woman who grew up in Mumbai and has lived and worked in New Jersey for nearly 25 years. Now retired and living in Dallas, she is active in her Muslim community on issues of homelessness and domestic violence.
Check back on this blog each day or on our Facebook page to hear a new voice in our “Revealing Ramadan” series. If you’re the on demand type or simply need a more automated form of listening, we’ve produced a special podcast feed that’s available now. Oh, and a special show too!
Day 11 - Nicole Queen: “From Party Girl to Belonging”
Revealing Ramadan: 30 Days, 30 Voices [mp3, 3:13]
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
On this eleventh day of Ramadan, Nicole Queen, a native-born Texan who was raised Southern Baptist, speaks about the initial isolation of being a convert to Islam. While learning about the tradition, she found strength in the ideas and teachings of Yusuf Estes, a fellow Texan convert. Now in her late 20s, she is a practicing Muslim and is active in her community in Dallas. She continues to photograph and blog about Islamic subjects.
Check back on this blog each day or on our Facebook page to hear a new voice in our “Revealing Ramadan” series. If you’re the on demand type or simply need a more automated form of listening, we’ve produced a special podcast feed that’s available now. Oh, and a special show too!
I look back at the fork in my road and often wonder if I should have, could have, taken the vocational, farming route. But, at the time, nobody valued that route. Everyone valued ‘education.’
— Michael Sanchez, a chemical engineer living in upstate New York who grew up on a farm in east Texas, in his lovely reflection on “The Meaning of Intelligence.”
Trent Gilliss, online editor
