Alabama’s Black Sea: Limestone’s B-Yard 

by Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun, aka Melvin Ray

Far removed from that aquatic Black Sea in southeast Europe, another Black Sea ebbs and flows on the continent of the US at Limestone Correctional Facility in Harvest, Alabama, the site of Alabama’s largest men’s prison, with a population of approximately 2,500. While Europe’s Black Sea consists of a body of water, Alabama’s Black Sea consists of bodies of Black men, all concentrated on B-Yard at Limestone Prison. This sea of Black bodies was created by a familiar tool of the trade, racial segregation. 

A bed roster from October-November 2024 when Limestone’s population was approximately 2,367 shows a demographic of 980 white (41%), 1,350 Black (57%) and 37 other (2%). These groups of men are housed across three separate yards at Limestone CF, on A-Yard, B-Yard and C-Yard. Within this construct, Limestone has two separate prisons – one Black, one White, both separate and unequal, with privileges, security and educational resources designated by race. 

A-Yard 

A-Yard consists of five separate dorms and houses just over 500 people. There is A-Dorm (the Infirmary), B-Dorm, a “structured living dorm” with approximately 220 people, and three Restrictive Housing Units: C-Dorm (population approximately 147), D-Dorm (population approximately 68), and E-Dorm (population approximately 132). 

B-Dorm, as a structured living dorm, is one of the two main program dorms at Limestone Prison. B-Dorm’s population is 58% white (128), 38% Black (84) and 3% other (8). The “privileges” associated with being assigned to this dorm include 12 hours daily access to the recreation yard, a large weight pile, a volleyball court, basketball court and track. B-Dorm residents also enjoy daily access to the gymnasium, law library, chapel, mail room and package delivery station. They also have access to smoking passes, mandatory hygiene and bathing rules, an in-house library and zero-tolerance for drug use or violence. 

B-Dorm has a designated security supervisor assigned to their dorm, and individuals removed from B-Dorm for any reason are usually moved to B-Yard. The overwhelming majority of individuals removed from B-Dorm are Black. Most never receive any notice as to why they are being removed. 

Restrictive Housing Units: C-Dorm, D-Dorm and E-Dorm

Allocation of educational, rehabilitational and mental health resources in the RHU parallel those of general population and are distributed along racial lines. All three dorms have an A-side and B-side, with C-Dorm and E-Dorm having a program side and non-program side. Due to these units housing so many individuals with drug and mental health issues, access to programming, including mental health treatment and out-of-cell time, makes a tremendous difference to a person’s overall mental and physical health – and can be a matter of life or death. 

C-Dorm, for example, has a population of 147 people, consisting of 68 white, 78 Black and one other. C-Dorm’s program side, A-side, has 73 residents – 57 white (76%), 16 Black (21%) –  while C-Dorm’s non-program side, B-side, has 74 residents, with 11 white (15%), 62 Black (83%) and one other (1%). 

Just a cursory review of these numbers show that the majority of white males in C-Dorm are housed on the program side, even though the majority of individuals in C-Dorm are Black. Among the benefits of being on the “program” side of C-Dorm includes at least eight hours of out-of-cell time every day, daily access to mental health classes, daily access to showers, and daily access to the phone. 

E-Dorm mimics C-Dorm in that the majority of people in the dorm are Black, while the majority of those assigned to the rehabilitative program side are white. 

In contrast to these figures, D-Dorm, which is Limestone’s most punitive housing area, is overwhelmingly Black. There are 68 individuals in this dorm, and 62 are Black (91%), with only six white (9%). 

C-Yard: F-Dorm, G-Dorm and H-Dorm 

The other main program dorm at Limestone prison is H-Dorm, or the Faith Based Honor Dorm. H-Dorm has all of the privileges and amenities of B-Dorm, and additionally has its own kitchen. H-Dorm also offers a wide range of in-house services and classes, and they receive perks through the Chapel that include care packages, hygiene items, and free-world meals every 90 days. 

But don’t let the smooth-sounding name fool you. In reality, H-Dorm is a haven for conservative Christianity and white supremacist gangs. With 397 beds, H-Dorm, also known as “White Castle,” has 323 whites (81%), 69 Blacks (17%), and five others (2%). 

This dorm is littered with symbols of white supremacy and racism, nearly every coordinator or rep is white, and nearly everyone removed from this dorm is Black. When Limestone officials recently added more beds to H-Dorm, the percentage of white males increased to 83%. Well over one-third of all white males at Limestone Prison now reside in a single dorm, H-Dorm, and when the white male population of B-Dorm is added to the total, nearly 50% of all white males at Limestone reside in these two dorms. 

With F-Dorm and G-Dorm being emerging program dorms, and when the total white male population from the RHU is accounted for, white males occupy nearly 70% of all program beds at Limestone Prison, even though they constitute only 41% of the total population. Against this backdrop, someone has to be assigned to the non-program beds, and it should be quite obvious who that someone is. 

B-Yard: Dorms I, J, K and L, aka Chocolate City 

On paper, B-Yard is part of general population. In practice, this yard is on lockdown 24/6. Each dorm otherwise has one yard day per week where residents are required to report to medical appointments, receive canteen, go to the law library or gym, or attend a religious service for Earth-Based practices. All of this must take place within a three-hour window, and choosing one usually negates the opportunity to do any other. 

Only recently, and solely in response to the excessive incidents of violence, murders, stabbings, overdoses and other incidents, did these dorms receive even one security officer. Otherwise, they were and are denizens of evil, where violence, drugs, gangs, filth, sexual and mental abuse, and moral and physical decay are permitted to occur and are often-times encouraged by the administration. This area, dubbed “Chocolate City” and referred to as “the jungle,” is overrun with poverty and deprivation. At any given time at least 40 to 50 people are homeless, sleeping on the floors, under stairways and even in mop closets. 

The statisties used for this article are nearly one year old. At the time, every dorm on B-Yard was at least 73%-78% Black. These figures are even worse today because when F-Dorm and G-Dorm on C-Yard were restructured into program dorms, the white residents from B-Yard were filtered off B-Yard and exchanged out with Black males who were removed from F- and G-Dorms and placed onto B-Yard. 

During this phase, I-Dorm on B-Yard was temporarily converted into a punitive Behavior Modification Unit. In May-June 2025. Every white person on the A-side of I-Dorm was removed except two. Not a single white person was moved into this punitive dorm, meaning that the Limestone administration deemed every person being a problem there was Black. This experiment failed miserably when stabbings, gang-violence and drug overdoses skyrocketed. These occurrences should have been predicted, as they were consistent with patterns of violence that have plagued B-Yard for the past 60 months. In the preceding 30 months, every murder, nearly every stabbing, assault, excessive use-of-force, extortion, kidnapping etc. took place on B-Yard. 

Another telling fact that indicates the intent on behalf of the Limestone staff to exploit and abuse B-Yard residents resides in the fact that every officer arrested or forced to resign from Limestone in the past 24 months for drug trafficking or distribution was delivering their drugs to B-Yard. This ignoble list of disgraced officers includes none other than Limestone’s former head warden, Chadwick Crabtree, and his wife. This duo was arrested and charged with manufacturing and distributing drugs on state property at Limestone Prison on April 19, 2024. 

Countless lives and families have been decimated financially and subjected to death, extortion and physical and mental abuse due to the intentional construction and maintenance of Limestone’s B-Yard. Limestone’s security staff has stood at the epicenter of this problem. 

The easy access and unlimited availability of dangerous drugs such as flakka, fentanyl, meth and other substances, all being made available to a population of the prison that is segregated by race and overwhelmingly Black, reeks of chemical warfare and poisoning. Prisons across the US are notorious for being used as laboratories for drug testing and social control experiments, and Limestone fails the smell test and cannot expect to avoid scrutiny and suspicion. 

The fact that they can so easily eradicate drugs, violence and inhumane conditions from the predominantly white areas of the prison proves that B-Yard is intentionally maintained to cause harm to its majority Black residents. 

Racial segregation and creating a caste system is nothing new for the state of Alabama; this policy and practice has carried over into their prison system. In the late ‘60s and early to mid ‘70s when the federal government took over Alabama’s prison system, the federal court noted that excessive lockdowns, filth and denial of access to educational and rehabilitational resources over long periods of time causes both “mental and physical degeneration.” See Pugh v. Loche ex rel. James v. Wallace, 406 F. Supp. 318 (M.D. Ala. 1976). The Court noted that “unbroken inactivity increases boredom, tension and frustration, which in turn promotes incidents of violence.” 

In 2005, the United States Supreme Court addressed racial segregation head on in Johnson v. California, 543 U.S. 499, and held that “racial segregation of inmates may exacerbate the very patterns of [violence that it is] said to counteract.” The fact that a single yard at Limestone Prison of approximately 900 individuals had at least six murders in the past 24 months, all of the victims being Black, should have sounded an alarm that something was wrong at Limestone Prison. Yet, to this day, the one feature that the courts had already identified as a known cause of violence– racial segregation in a heavily restricted and locked down area remains intact and unchanged. 

Recently, in Williams v. Pelzer, et. al., 5:24-cv-00706, a federal magistrate judge recounted an exchange between the plaintiff and one of the defendants upon his arrival to Limestone: 

Defendant Pelzer: Are you in a gang? 

Plaintiff Williams: No, why I got to be in a gang? 

Pelzer: Because you’re Black. 

For his Blackness, Mr. Williams was cast into Limestone’s Black sea on B-Yard, where he was ultimately the victim of violence, harassment and retaliation before being placed into a racially segregated unit in RHU. While there, and for the pretextual reason of growing his hair “two to three inches” in accordance with his spiritual beliefs and practices, Mr. Williams was “hog-tied,” sprayed in a solitary cell at least three times with riot spray, dragged down a flight of stairs, and beaten. And as the federal magistrate found, he was charged with a disciplinary infraction that was being used almost exclusively against Black males at Limestone. 

As I write this article, Limestone’s Black Sea is under siege. A tangle of fences and razor wire is being erected to place the Black population under more intense and dangerous confinement — but without any investment for education, rehabilitation, drug treatment, violence intervention or trauma related to living in this environment. 

Part of the purpose for this social experiment is to breed racial division and tension with the hope that we are unable to step across this false barrier to continue building momentum for our Human Rights Movement. Their plan is to pit us against each other and against ourselves. 

This is Part 1 pf a three-part series about Limestone Prison. The facts in this article are part of a larger lawsuit being filed in the Northern District of Alabama to hold the ADOC accountable for their acts of deliberate indifference and state-created dangers that have led to deaths, assaults, extortions, sexual abuse and other injuries to countless families. 

My name is Bennu Hannibal Ra-Sun, aka Melvin Ray, and I am the founder and spokesperson for the Free Alabama Movement. Be on the lookout for the upcoming documentary film, “The Alabama Solution,” which first aired on HBO on Oct. 10, 2025. “The Alabama Solution” is an uncensored and unprecedented exposé about the Alabama prison system with exclusive insights and footage filmed by incarcerated activists without the knowledge, authorization or consent of Alabama’s prison authorities and leaders. 

You can reach me at: Melvin Ray, 163343, L-14, Limestone CF, 28779 Nick Davis Rd., Harvest, AL 35749. Reach our outside support at freealabamamovement@gmail.com.  

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