Just to Be Free: Searching for Hope In a Death Sentence

Willie Green grew up in Canton, Mississippi, and he never saw any white people unless he went across the railroad tracks. But his mother’s best friend was white, and whenever they met, they pressed their hands together. This simple act showed him that everyone could get along—something that would stay with him when the Civil Rights Movement swept through the nation. But after helping a cousin move his things out of a girlfriend’s place—things that in fact, belonged to her—Green was arrested for burglary. When that same girl ended up dead, he was convicted of murder. He’d end up spending twenty-five years in prison—most of them in San Quentin—after a witness who had been high on cocaine and pressured by police blamed him for the crime. Green would not be freed until 2008, after the witness set the record straight. He looks back on a life defined by unexpected turns, race relations, his despair while on death row, and how he found hope and freedom in Just to Be Free.