Life After Racism - (Terry Hansen) - Part 1

Iowa Civil Rights History

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When Merry Brown the tattoo artist and the owner of Studio 65 received a call to help a new client to cover his tattoos, Merry didn’t know what to expect. When that client showed up to his appointment and showed Merry what he wanted to be covered, Merry had mixed feelings; shocked and happy about the fact that this new client wanted to cover his tattoos.

Terry is a former member of a white supremacy gang. From the time he was a little boy, he was taught to hate all races that weren't white and not mixed with other races. That hate grew stronger as Terry spent most of his life in the American prison system, where race mixing is a violation that could get a prisoner killed. For almost 50yrs of his life, Terry segregated himself from other races and didn’t care for them, to say the least.

All that changed when Terry met Emily Minear, a therapist/counselor at Prairie Ridge who challenged Terry’s thought patterns. Those exercises of thinking differently and integrating with other races led Terry to slowly start to question everything he was taught and everything he learned and believed in his entire life.

I had the great pleasure of sitting down with Terry and his tattoo artist/friend/counselor Merry Brown to talk about Terry’s life journey, his struggles in this new life, his family, his regrets, and his future.

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