“I am blessed and highly favored.” John White is forever thankful. The fact he is home and out of prison–after serving five months of a two-to-four-year sentence–is not lost on him. On the Wednesday before Christmas, then-Governor David Paterson shocked everyone by commuting the sentence of the Long Island father who had defended his family in August 2006 against an armed gang of white boys in a car. They had come to confront White’s son Aaron, and threatened to rape White’s wife Sonya. In the resulting fracas, the leader of the pack, one Daniel Cicciaro, 17, was shot.
While John White’s many supporters and legal team claimed self-defense, he was convicted of manslaughter, and was sent to prison for two to four years. He began serving his sentence last July. He was home by Christmas.
“I was at home and went to the Faith Baptist Church of Coram at Christmas. As a deacon in the church I have responsibilities. I continue to carry on my life in the church, devout Christian that I am. I know that. God never quit on me. I asked him to use me as he saw fit–so be careful what you ask for.”
White added, “I wanted a full exoneration for what happened to me, and that didn’t happen, but I am grateful.”
Last week, coincidently, both White and Paterson were in attendance at the Comus Club gala at Terrace on the Park. Asked what that meeting was like: “He embraced me,” White said of the governor.
Truly thankful and incredibly humble as he is, White said, “The way the case happened in Suffolk County–you had to be there to see it. It was a kangaroo court, an upside-down trial. Things that should have been done were not. If I had been white it would have not gone this way.”
There were rallies and protests in support of John White as the trial and appeals went on. Members of the Nation of Islam, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement and the Black Law Enforcement Alliance stood post for John White and his family on numerous occasions.
“Many people supported me, both upfront and in the background – many who can’t come forward. I won’t say who they are. If anything else happens I might need them again, or someone else might need them. There were many people not of African-American descent. But I got a lot of support from churches and politicians; but most of most of the support came from the little people who wrote letters, signed petitions called their politicians; and the NAACP, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement and the Nation of Islam–who gave me support inside and outside of the jail system. These people came wherever I was. Some had members inside the jail. There was a full support system. God had his way with this case. Correction officials who knew who I was protected me in this case.”
On a certain level humanity beat out racism, White said. “People are people and when they see someone in a situation they shouldn’t be in–they go out on limb. All of us have people we love, and people just asked themselves, ‘What would you do? Would you stay in your house or go out and defend your family?’ What happened to me is in our history. I feel for that young man because I feel if his family had taught him better he wouldn’t have been out there that night.”
Meanwhile White said that his wife and two sons are “trying to cope and move on.”
White plays down a report that while in prison he talked a man out of committing suicide. The Miller Place resident told the Amsterdam News, “Being a deacon in church, people do come to you and they want to talk. Sometimes they need more help than you can give them – so I contacted a councilor or a pastor for them to go to. Being incarcerated for 23 hours [a day] does get to you.”
Hitting the ground running, White became a deacon in the prison shortly after his arrival there. “I had no choice because that’s where God put me. At home from Mount McGregor Correctional Facility, there was no protestant pastor–he had retired. I was told to stand down, be quiet, but I gravitated to the pulpit.”
While he waits to return to work, White has plenty of time to consider the saga he has just been through. “Prison is the upside-down kingdom where everything is in reverse,” said Deacon White, “where people who are killers and murderers are regarded in a higher state than a guy who goes to work every day. He is looked down on. I was seen in-between that as a deacon. It was a trying time for me. I had long days. I was a maintenance electrician,” he said, recalling his days working in the maintenance department as full mechanics. He kept himself busy and occupied, he told the Amsterdam News, by going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and the narcotics program not just for fellowship, but “because we are invited to speak there and we were trying to get their members to come to church.”
Sometimes it was a rally, or a letter, a press conference, a phone call, or a petition–the fact is that “a Movement” helped free John White.
“Jail is not a practical place to be in. If you have someone in there for 8 years or 30 or 15 you should still try and write to them. A letter from home means a lot. When I got one, I read it, I responded to it, read it again. It helps pass the time and it helps the jail officials– who read all mail going in and out, know that you have support. If you don’t get letters, if you don’t get support, you get treated with indifference.”
Waiting for the winter conditions to be less severe, the paving road builder is anxious to get back to the grind, and is grateful that his job is still available and that his bosses and coworkers have been supportive since the beginning of this odyssey. “I still have a lot of legal bills, I used a lot of charge cards. But the bills pile up. It’s gonna take a while to catch up.
“I thank all my supporters,” reiterated White. “I want to thank groups like Men of Faith and Brooklyn Congregations Together–when no one else believed in me, they did. We need to stick together. This should not be the last time that this is done because it will happen again. It is 2011, but America is not ready to let racism go.”
This experience has birthed an activist in the man with the quiet demeanor. “We need a united front, we need to come together. If it had not been for the support I received…” White stopped momentarily. “it proves we can do this economically, politically, educationally. We do have some say in our lives; whether it is about fair housing or fair education–we need to keep this united front. How it was done for me is how we can do it for us.”