Talking Volumes: A conversation with Reginald Dwayne Betts

Reginald Dwayne Betts animates the ideals of justice, integrity and equity in his work as both an attorney and a poet.

Betts is also the founding director of The Million Book Project, which aims to establish freedom libraries in prisons across the country. He said it exposes people to the various ways that poetry, fiction, memoir and other literature operate.

“Prison is a brutal place, but I don't want to act like prison is just a brutal place. A man I didn't know heard me ask for a book and slid me ‘The Black Poets’ because he thought it might matter to me. It profoundly changed my life,” Betts told MPR News host Kerri Miller.

Their conversation is the first of four included in MPR and the Star Tribune’s Talking Volumes series centered around race in America.

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To listen to the full conversation you can use the audio player above.