Joe Ligon is pictured in 1963, 10 years into his prison sentence. The son of Alabama sharecroppers, Ligon entered prison when Dwight Eisenhower was president. During the 68 years that he spent incarcerated in a half dozen penal institutions, the world outside moved on. At the one-day trial in 1953, Ligon and his co-defendants were referred to as “coloured.” At school, his special education classes were designated for the “orthogenically backward.” He was incarcerated in a facility named the Pennsylvania Institution for Defective Delinquents in the US, the inmates classified by courts “as mentally defective with criminal tendencies.” Ligon, 83, has never had his own place, operated a cellphone, paid a bill, cast a ballot, earned the minimum wage, lived with a partner, fathered children.