RESISTANCE IN RACIST HELLHOLE
Angola prison and the Black Panthers
By Richard Becker
Amite, La.
The retrial of Albert Woodfox in the small town of Amite,
La., began the same week as events worldwide and in this
country marking the 50th anniversary of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. The United States government likes
to pose as the great guardian of human rights, often to the
point of bombing cities in countries it deems to be
violators.
Woodfox and Herman Wallace were tried and convicted in 1973
for the killing of a guard, Brent Miller, in the Angola State
Prison the previous year. Woodfox and Wallace, the Angola 2,
were convicted on the bought testimony of two fellow prisoners,
and condemned to life in prison. Woodfox served the next 24
years in solitary confinement. Wallace remains in solitary
today.
A quarter-century in solitary confinement--isn't that a
violation of human rights?
And, as cruel and inhuman as their sentences were, the
conditions in Angola that Woodfox and Wallace were fighting
against were even greater violations of people's most basic
rights.
Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace were organizers of the
Black Panther Party chapter inside Angola. Brent Miller was
white, as were all the guards then. Angola, labeled by many as
the worst prison in the United States, was still a thoroughly
segregated institution in 1972. The white prisoners all lived
in their own complex, went to the dining hall first, and so
on.
Angola is located on 16,000 acres of what used to be a
cotton plantation. And it is still run like a plantation. In
1972, prisoners made 3 cents an hour cutting sugar cane,
picking cotton and growing food in the often-stifling heat and
humidity of southern Louisiana. The prison administrators and
guards shared in the benefits, according to their rank.
There were only 300 "freemen," as the white guards and staff
were called, for an overwhelmingly African American population
of 4,500.
To maintain control of their corrupt and racist system, the
prison administration allowed prisoner "cliques" to select
inmate guards. The administration armed them with rifles to use
against other prisoners. Rape and enslavement, especially of
young prisoners, was common practice, tolerated and encouraged
by the administration.
A pervasive network of snitches existed--prisoners who
provided information in exchange for favors.
The horrors of Angola prison began to become known
nationally in the 1960s. In one dramatic incident, a group of
white prisoners cut their Achilles' tendons to protest
conditions. A Black prisoner died of heat stroke after being
locked in a box without food and water for five days.
Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace and the Angola chapter of the
Black Panther Party (BPP) fought to change these conditions.
The Panther program called for uniting the prisoners--Black and
white--and for ending violence and exploitation among inmates.
They organized to improve working conditions through work
stoppages and other job actions. The BPP helped illiterate
prisoners learn to read and write.
Prisoner organizers faced fascist-like repression. But they
were succeeding. In the dormitories where the BPP became the
leadership, violence among prisoners largely came to an end,
replaced by a new sense of unity.
The Panthers were threatening the old, corrupt system and
this was what the prison administration feared the most. That
is why they framed up Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace. Both
Woodfox and Wallace were railroaded after short trials in St.
Francisville, the town right outside the Angola prison
walls.
In the three years that followed, more than 30 prisoners,
many of them BPP supporters, were killed or disappeared. Some
of their bodies were exhumed from the surrounding swamps
decades later.
But their struggle was not in vain. Like the rebellions in
Attica, San Quentin and many other prisons across the country,
the resistance inside Angola forced some limited concessions
from the authorities. These struggles exposed the reality that
U.S. prisons are really racist concentration camps for poor
people.
Woodfox and Wallace, despite all they have been through,
have never surrendered their convictions. Together with their
comrade Robert Wilkerson, they have worked from within the
maximum security unit to help dozens of prisoners win their
freedom through legal briefs.
Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace should be recognized as
true people's heroes. They should, at long last, be set
free.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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