How Birmingham’s Randall Horton Went From Inmate to Tenured College Professor

By Sym Posey | The Birmingham Times Before Randall Horton became a professor at the University of New Haven, a private university in West Haven, Connecticut, he was a drug smuggler facing almost 15 years in prison at the Roxbury Correctional Institution in Hagerstown, Maryland. “I spent almost five years on the inside. I am the only full tenured professor with seven felony convictions that I know of,” said Horton, who was incarcerated from 1996 to 2000. Born and raised in Birmingham, Horton graduated from A.H. Parker High School and left Alabama to begin his education at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he studied economics. During his senior year in college, he dropped out because of exposure to the drug trade. “I got turned on to that and spent 30 odd years in that life. I was all over the world. If you’ve ever seen ‘Snowfall,’ that’s my life. It just happened on the East Coast,” said Horton jokingly, referring to the American crime drama television series that revolves around the first crack epidemic and is primarily set in Los Angeles, California. The series was created by renowned African American director, screenwriter, and producer John Singleton, who passed away...