On the last day of the Spring 2023 semester, Dr. Joseph Richardson, MPower and Joel & Kim Feller Professor for African American Studies and Anthropology, invites Mr. Tony Lewis Sr. and Mr. Tony Lewis Jr., Community Leader and Author of Slugg: A Boy's Life in the Age of Mass Incarceration, for a lecture and book discussion with students in his AASP187 course titled, "The New Jim Crow: African-Americans, Mass Incarceration, and the Prison Industrial Complex." 

According to the main website, "Tony Lewis Sr. was in prison for 34 years, on a life sentence for a non-violent drug offense. That’s 7 presidents, 3 full wars, including both Iraq wars and the war in Afghanistan, which is recognized as the longest war in American history. But really, the longest war in American history has been the war on drugs, a war that has been waged by and large on black people who happen to use, possess, or sell drugs. This war started with Richard Nixon in the 70’s, and since then has made the United States the greatest jailer in the world. Our country has more incarcerated people than China, and, collectively more than Russia, Brazil, and India, a country of 1.3 billion, combined. With black people as its focus, the war on drugs and the resulting mass incarceration has devastated millions of black families. Generation after generation have suffered by the merciless and relentless aim of our carceral state, three generations in fact, grandfathers, grandmothers, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters severely impacted."

On March 20, 2023, Tony Lewis Sr. was released. 

Slugg: A Boy's Life in the Age of Mass Incarceration is a blueprint for survival and a demonstration of the power of love, sacrifice, and service. The son of a Kingpin and the prince of a close-knit crime family, Tony Lewis Jr.'s life took a dramatic turn after his father's arrest in 1989. Washington D.C. stood as the murder capital of the country and Lewis was cast into the heart of the struggle, from a life of stability and riches to one of chaos and poverty. How does one make it in America, battling the breakdown of families, the plague of premature death and the hopelessness of being reviled, isolated, and forgotten? Tony Lewis' astonishing journey answers these questions and offers, for the first time, a close look at the familial residue of America's historic program of mass incarceration.