- For you to think that we don't need the education,
but we're gonna do better all of a sudden because
you put us behind bars, no, doesn't work like that.
If you don't make the environment inside better,
you're going to get the same results
that you got before they came in.
- What if you don't remember
Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally?
You know what I'm sayin'?
- You don't have to do the math,
you just have to know what the math problem needed.
- I need all this to stop doing this.
Hi, my name is Toc'quianna Culver.
I have been at Mabel Bassett Correctional
Facility for 12 years.
I am now in the new Last Mile computer coding class.
So I am going to be a computer software engineer.
The Last Mile is a class that helps you become
a front end and back end computer coder,
learning HTMLs, CSS, and JavaScript.
It's Monday through Friday, we meet for eight hours a day.
Right now we are learning Java,
which is like learning French
at the age of you know, plus plus.
- What's going on here?
What am I missing?
- We started the first class at the Last Mile,
I felt like, what am I doing here?
I know nothing about computers,
I know nothing about them.
You turn them on, you type a paper in Word, you know?
I talked to my Mom like a week later,
and she never ever, ever, ever lets me forget
that I am the epitome of perseverance.
So if I was strong enough to keep it together,
keep my family together,
I'm strong enough to keep this together.
I dropped out of school when I was 13 years old.
It was due to the fact that I needed a job, you know.
I had a little sister, I had a little brother,
it just was a matter of feed them, go hungry, lights off,
lights on, water running, simple things.
I always wanted to go back.
I instilled in my children the importance of school.
I mean, almost like a just fanatic like,
no you have to go to school!
Like, I stayed in a panic about, are you sick?
Okay we can get some Tylenol .
I'm thankful to God that they all graduated high school.
You know, that was just one of the things that
I'm very proud of.
So.
When I got arrested, I realized,
I didn't have anything, I didn't have anything
that I was holding on to, I didn't have anything
that I was fighting for, and I was at rock bottom.
First of all, I was sentenced to 20 years
for second degree murder.
Detailed details
are hard for me, because I still dream about them.
But in short, I met a guy.
All the wrong person from the jump.
But, not but, just sometimes we make that choice.
We make that choice of ah, he's just who he is,
and I'm gonna be who I am and it's gonna work and.
On this particular day in time,
he was out with other people in another situation,
and instead of him keeping me separate from that situation,
I was involved, brought into that situation.
So once I entered into the room where it was happening,
it made me a part of what was happening,
because once the door opened and the door closed,
I was part of that.
Someone died, but it wasn't by my hands.
So you're still in the presence of a felony murder
happening, there you are, second degree murder.
I don't blame anyone for the decisions that I made,
I do not.
I take full responsibility in that.
I don't ever want to become that type of person
of woe is me and if it wasn't for this, you know,
because I'm not that person.
I made a choice.
Am I sorry?
Absolutely.
Would I ever make that choice again?
Absolutely not.
And so I settled into this 20 years,
and I was like, okay, it beats nothing and let's go.
I had to start this knowing my end was gonna be better.
Came to Mabel Bassett, I got into the adult basic
education program here.
I got my GED in less than three months,
and fortunately for me, I was on a roll, it was, I was high.
Got valedictorian and it was a full scholarship behind that
and I'm the first African American woman to complete that,
here at Mabel Bassett.
We are working on hovering, mouseovers, and mouseouts.
We're creating boxes, so when you hover over the tab
that says click me, it'll be an alert box.
That's what we're working on.
To the individuals that feel that we don't need
free programming, lighten up.
Give us a break.
If we would have had the opportunity to do these things
before we came to prison, do you really think
that the first choice we would have made
was to be in prison?
Who grows up and says, my biggest aspiration,
I aspire to be a criminal!
That's insane.
For you to think that we don't need the education,
for you think that we don't need better,
but we're gonna do better all of a sudden
because you put us behind bars,
no, doesn't work like that, I'm sorry to tell you that.
You cannot take a whole bunch of people,
stick 'em in a place and say, oh, I'm gonna leave you here
for 20 years and maybe you'll learn better.
It doesn't work like that.
If you don't make the environment inside better,
then you're going to get the same results
that you got before they came in.
You're already complaining about the tax dollars
and what you're paying, you may as well allow us to have
the education that it takes to do better,
so that we won't keep on incringing
upon your tax dollar, okay?
Give it to us, let us have it.
So that we can be the tax payer.
I know about 25, 30 women right now,
would love to go out and pay taxes.
I'd love to give you every dollar back.
And fortunately, I'm gonna be able to now.
We live in such a Bible-belt of women should
be in the kitchen, they should be morally right,
and they shouldn't have done anything.
But I think that Oklahoma forgets to look at the fact
that somewhere down the line, the tradition of homemaker
was broken a long time ago.
And when you incarcerate us, you incarcerate our children.
It took away my oldest daughter's childhood.
I didn't get to see her graduate,
I didn't get to see her go to prom,
I didn't see, I didn't get to celebrate
her passage into womanhood.
You know?
None of them, I have three daughters and one son, so.
I didn't get to kiss my son on the cheek
and tell him that I approved of his first girlfriend
or didn't approve.
Or tell him how much I appreciated him becoming
a beautiful young man.
My middle daughter had a lot of issues.
And she ended up having some time in jail.
I believe that she was so devastated
because she was my middle child,
and she's so me.
Like .
So,
what I'm showing them now,
what I hope that they can see,
is the true meaning of a phoenix.
To people that believe once a criminal, always a criminal,
I wanna ask you a question.
When you said, oh I believe in my higher power
and I believe in forgiveness, I believe in God,
I believe that you know, Jesus died on the cross,
and he forgave me my sins,
does forgiveness only account for you?
Or is that for everyone?
I believe that a criminal is someone with the intent
to continue to do the things that they are doing.
I believe that mistakes are lessons
and I don't believe that a person
is the epitome of their mistake.
So that once a criminal, always a criminal,
very small thinking.
The Last Mile reached into Mabel Bassett
at a time when women needed to know that it wasn't
just about, oh we can learn something.
But it was about people out there actually cared
about people in here.
They understood that there's Mothers, daughters, sisters,
aunts, cousins, locked up behind these bars,
and we are not the sum of our mistakes.
I don't have to be Toc'quianna that felon.
I can be like, hey, that's some good work, who did that?
Toc'quianna Culver.
Oh, okay, so she's a web designer.
And for a lot of women it means to be a superhero
for their own children.
It means that they can actually from this point on,
not have to go back to that same man that led them here.
Those same addictions that tore down their lives,
those same unworthy issues.
They feel simply empowered.
What do I love about myself?
Let's see.
My new thing about liking me is that I'm getting ready
to be a computer programmer, so .
I like that.
I like the fact that I can turn on a computer,
pull up files, rename things, put stuff where they belong.
I have so much fight in me, because I know I can.
I can do anything that I think I can do.
My future looks unstoppable.
It looks unstoppable,
so.
- [Narrator] Hi everyone, thanks for watching.
Currently, every single person who has taken
the Last Mile and been released,
has acquired a full-time job or higher education.
So we are asking you to please consider donating
to the Last Mile, so they can continue transforming
the lives of incarcerated individuals.
- I would like to add that I'm really grateful
to see this side of social media.
To see that I didn't have to stay in a box
to do this interview.
I could laugh and smile and cry and it felt okay.
So I just want to thank you for that.