Memorial by Neni Panourgia for JIE Scholars Program

It is with great regret that I announce today, 21 August 2025, the untimely death of our JIE alumnus, friend, collaborator, Shedrick Blackwell, or “Panama” as he was widely known. All of us at JIE are deeply moved by his passing away.

I taught Shedrick in two classes at Sing Sing and was deeply impressed by his intelligence, his intellect, his determination to get out of prison and stay out of prison. He was still inside when Covid hit, and communicating with him was very difficult, but Ivan Calaff, his dear and close friend, asked Shedrick if he wanted to be included in a Special Issue that I was putting together for the journal Synapsis, and he agreed. He wrote a poem about confinement at a time of a pandemic, presenting his vulnerability as an incarcerated grandfather. He recited it to Ivan over the phone who recited it to me. I wrote it down and included it with Ivan’s own poem in the issue.

After many trials and tribulations, Shedrick finally came home in January 2024. In February, we included him in a panel discussion on Justice Forum on “Art as a Practice of Freedom.” Shedrick was an accomplished percussionist and at the panel, he spoke about the freedom gained through playing music while incarcerated. He was excited, exuberant, and he filled the room with his presence on the panel.

Shedrick came to every Justice Forum and was very often at the JIE office, talking about music, asking about books, throwing ideas around. We will miss his wide smile, his silly baseball hats, the twinkle in his eye. His was a senseless death, but we are sending him off with our best thoughts and our best memories of his music and his laughter.