Reginald S. Lewis is being held on Death Row in Pennsylvania. He is also an award-winning african american poet, playwright, short story writer, and essayist. He has won three awards in P.E.N. American Center Writing Awards for prisoners. His semi-autobiographical, anti-death penalty play An affinity for Angels was selected for the 4th Annual Juneteenth Festival of new works, June 17, 2000 at the Actor's Theatre of Louisville. Here is a brief photo essay from Reggie's life.

I am a preteen, during the late 60's, heavily influenced by the Motown sound. I had grand dreams of being a singer, and my two old heads often pretended to be a singing group, performing on stage. Several years later , I did sing in a band, and I had an excellent singing voice. You couldn't've told me that I wasn't Stevie Wonder.

This was the beginning of my troubled youth, when my nerdiness was to be masked over by a facade of toughness that allowed both my and my older brother, Tyrone, to survive the mean, lawless streets of Philly. Our schools were ruled by tough gangs. To survive in the jungle, I joined the "12th and Oxford street gang." This is a photo from that time.

Like most young men, I floated through a series of adolescent dreams, experiences, phases, and trends. I saw the 70's usher in the era of blaxploitation flicks and hollywood gangster movies that glorified a dangerous and glamorous lifestyle that impressed me, and screamed out at me. I imagined myself as some throwback to the 40's, yeah, a pretty boy playa the women adored. Days of glittering gold, champagne, cocaine, wild sexual abandon - and guns and hard cash. I was a bad, baaad boy.

These are happier days, at a family gathering on the fourth of July, in 1981. I'm flanked by my two younger sisters, Diane "Dee Dee," is on my left, with her son, and Sandra "Bay-Bay," is at my right, with her little daughter. That day, we laughed, drank, sang, and feasted, then took pictures, of the entire family. Today, like so many families in America, my family is fractured, scattered like dust blowing on the wind. I haven't seen or talked to my sisters, neices and nephews, in many, many years.

The remaining photos are all taken on death row, different prisons, in years gone by.