Solitary

Woodfox returned to New Orleans after his second stint in Angola. He began to spend his days socializing and doing odd jobs in the Sixth Ward by day, and robbing people’s houses at night. In time, Woodfox tried heroin and became addicted, even as his approach to crime became more violent, escalating to armed robbery. Looking back at this point in his life, Woodfox writes that he felt ashamed for stealing from and hurting people who had very little.

After two years of freedom, Woodfox took part in an armed robbery of a grocery store; though he initially managed to escape, he was eventually caught and taken to lockup, where he was assaulted by police attempting to force his confession. Though he denied knowledge of the robbery, he was nonetheless found guilty, and due to the “one strike, you’re out” practice in New Orleans, was sentenced to life in prison due to his past felony conviction. 

On the day of his sentencing, when he was given a 50-year sentence, Woodfox managed to escape, and fled to New York, where he found a place to live in Harlem. When his money started to run out, Woodfox made a bet on a football game. When he went to collect his winnings, he was beaten and eventually arrested over a report that he was attempting to rob the bookie. Woodfox gave the police a false name—Charles Harris—and was sent to the Manhattan House of Detention, aka The Tombs, where conditions were terrible, but inmates were supported by members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, who had themselves been arrested on false charges. Through them, Woodfox describes how he came to see his experiences differently, including the actions of the most violent prisoners he’d encountered: “It was as if a light went on in a room inside me that I hadn’t known existed” (66). From here, Woodfox goes on to describe the Black Panther Party—how it arose of a desire to protect Black communities from harassment and intimidation by police, and how it was undermined by politicians, the FBI, and local police.

After several more months in pre-trial detention in New York—which included participation in protests over conditions at the Tombs, and brutal beatings by guards in retaliation—Woodfox’s real identity was discovered, and he was sent back to Louisiana to serve his sentence at Angola. While outwardly he was returning to the same situation he’d been in before, “inside, however, everything had changed” (79). He was placed in the same part of Orleans Parish Prison as members of the local Black Panther Party. Collectively, they advocated for improvements to conditions in the prison, which were similar to those Woodfox had experienced in the Tombs. Though Woodfox was eventually transferred to Angola, the party agreed that he would not resist the transfer and would instead form a chapter of the party at the notorious institution.

At Angola, Woodfox found the same violence and poor treatment he’d encountered before, but Woodfox began applying the principles of the Black Panther Party—of not retaliating with violence—to instances where he was threatened or insulted. Other teachings of the Party were affirmed when the Attica Prison Riots happened in September 1971, when prisoners took hostages in protest over poor conditions and treatment in the prison. While those riots ended tragically—with ten hostages and 29 inmates killed by police—Woodfox says the fact prisoners had acted together underscored a principal of the Black Panther Party, that “the need to be treated with human dignity touches everyone. And the key to resistance is unity” (90).

In time, Woodfox began to worry that as an outspoken proponent of the Black Panther Party, he was making himself into a target for prison officials and guards, and inmates who profited off sexual slavery and other businesses within the institution, alike. This fear was eventually borne out when a guard named Brent Miller was killed, and Woodfox was beaten and taken to Closed Cell Restricted (CCR), or solitary confinement. At the close of the chapter, waiting in the cell to discover his fate, Woodfox realized there was little to stop him from being set up for Miller’s death.

Chapter 17 opens with Woodfox and fellow Black Panther Herman Wallace feeling hopeful that their mistreatment by guards and punishment for a crime they had not committed would spark mass protests led by the Black Panther Party—assumptions he says underscored how naïve they were. Meanwhile, the Warden of the prison, C. Murray Henderson, claimed that prison officials had intercepted a letter by a black militant organization called The Vanguard Army claiming responsibility for the killing of the prison guard. Though there was no evidence that the letter, or the Vanguard Army, were real, the idea that Black militants had killed Miller persisted, and Woodfox and other inmates in CCR remained confined in their cells 23 hours a day, without access to exercise, phone calls, or reading material.

After several weeks, Woodfox, Herman Wallace and two others were charged with the murder of Brent Miller, because, Woodfox argues, “prison authorities wanted to wipe out the Black Panther Party at Angola” (109). As it turned out, only Woodfox and Wallace were with the party—the other two had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Nonetheless, Woodfox and Wallace began organizing the other men in their part of the jail. They were eventually joined by another Panther, Robert King. These organization efforts were often met with suppression from guards, in the forms of beating, tear gas, and the removal of possessions from cells. This was so frequent, Woodfox notes, that prisoners became somewhat immune to the effects of the gas. At the same time, Woodfox began learning about pursuing resistance through the courts; he and other prisoners began filing lawsuits alleging violations of their constitutional rights, as well as filing petition of grievance to Angola’s warden, over prison conditions. Together, these two mechanisms—along with ongoing protests—led to increased privileges, such as permission to have books and record players in the cells.

But when it came to Woodfox’s trial for the killing of Brent Miller, the law did not work in his favor. This was in part because the Black Panther committee tasked with fundraising for his legal representation had been infiltrated and sabotaged by undercover FBI informants. Though Woodfox had lawyers representing him pro bono, they were no match for the “old boys’ club” of prison officials, prosecutors, and judges. The jury deliberated for less than an hour and returned a guilty verdict.

Subsequently, Herman Wallace was also convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to life in prison, despite five alibi witnesses and contradictory testimony from the prosecution. Though they were kept apart for decades, Woodfox ends Chapter 21 by talking about how he and Wallace maintained a connection: “after being railroaded and lied about, after our unjust trials and wrongful convictions, we knew we were in this for life” (149). 

Between Woodfox and Wallace’s trials, Robert King had also been framed for murder of a prisoner. As with Woodfox and Wallace, he was targeted for being a leader, an organizer of prisoners, and a Panther. Though a dozen witnesses saw that another prisoner had committed the murder, King was found guilty (in a trial in which he was gagged with duct tape over his mouth) and sentenced to life in prison.

Despite the injustice they’d experienced, Woodfox, Wallace and King continued to organize for better conditions, including protecting a teenage boy who’d been sent to Angola from being raped by other prisoners. The boy, Gary Tyler, had been framed for shooting a white boy amid violent protests against the desegregation of Tyler’s school. They also led a hunger strike against the practice of serving prisoners in their unit their food on the floor, so that it had to be slid under their cell doors. After 45 days, prison officials agreed to their demand to have slots cut in the doors to pass the food trays through, although it took 18 months—and the threat of another hunger strike—for officials to deliver on the promise for the Panthers’ unit.

In Chapter 25, Woodfox describes how, throughout this time, reading was his salvation, and that, because of donations from libraries and universities, the prison library was well stocked with books from writers like Franz Fanon and Malcolm X. The reading Wallace was doing eventually informed his view that strip searches of prisoners echoed the bodily inspection of enslaved African men and women in the period of chattel slavery. Woodfox writes that these searches are “one of the most humiliating experiences a human being can endure” (165). Woodfox, Wallace, King, and other prisoners in the unit signed a petition asking for a change in the strip search policy. When that petition was ignored, Woodfox and others began to physically resist strip searches. As punishment, he and others were beaten and put in the dungeon where, among other humiliations, he was forced to drink toilet water. Yet relief eventually came, in the form of a lawsuit filed by and organization called New Orleans Legal Assistance, with Woodfox and another inmate as plaintiffs. That lawsuit was successful, and brought limits to the use of strip searches.

Woodfox ends Chapter 27 by describing an encounter with Herman Wallace in which they asked each other if their suffering was worth it, and concluded that their struggle was essential. “We were there because of who we were. Sacrifice was required in order to achieve change. Neither of us had any regrets” (172).