MUMIA ABU-JAMAL FROM DEATH ROW
Panthers still encaged in Angola
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
` ... for people of color, doing time is only one among
many terms of
imprisonment legitimized
by the concept of
race.'
--John Edgar
Wideman,
"Behind the Razor Wire:
Portrait of a Contemporary
American Prison System"
(New York: NYU Press, 1998)
If ever there was any question of the slave parentage of the
American prison system, one glance at the massive penitentiary
known as Angola in steamy Louisiana removes all doubt. Once a
group of slave plantations, it earned its name from the
southwest African kingdom which was colonized by the Portuguese
in the 1600s. It was from this region of Africa that a majority
of Black slaves were taken in chains to people Louisiana's rice
plantations, and it is here, Angola, where the state
concentrated its penitentiary, and its attempt to stifle
righteous Black resistance to racist repression.
It is here that a young prison guard joined the mound of
dead bodies manufactured in Angola, and several young Black
men, members of the state's Black Panther Party, were unjustly
targeted, tried, and two convicted in his killing.
The year was 1972, several months after then-U.S. President
Nixon's visit to China. It was the year the late Alabama Gov.
George C. Wallace was shot and paralyzed while campaigning for
the U.S. presidency.
One year later, Watergate exploded across the nation, and
four imprisoned members of the Black Panther Party were
formally tried for killing the prison guard. One, Gilbert
Montegut, was acquitted; two, Albert Woodfox and Herman "Hooks"
Wallace, were convicted; and another, Chester Jackson, turned
state's witness and snitched. Both Woodfox and Wallace have
served a quarter of a century in continuous solitary
confinement, locked down 23 hours a day.
There is every indication today that both men were framed
for the killing. Indeed, after Montegut's acquittal, even
Angola's then-warden, C. Murray Henderson, later admitted that
Montegut was framed because of his "militancy." (Disbarred,
Spring 1999, p. 14)
Ironically, ex-warden Henderson, convicted of shooting his
wife five times, is doing a 50-year sentence for attempted
murder.
The crime's only "witness"--now dead--was a notorious prison
snitch named Hezekiah Brown, known as a "soft cop." What wasn't
known at the time of trial was that Brown was at and after the
time of the stabbing not only a snitch, but a paid snitch, who
received "one (1) carton of cigarettes per week," according to
a letter from Angola warden F.C. Blackburn to C.P. Phelps,
secretary of corrections, on April 7, 1978. The letter refers
to "the original agreement with Brown" made by ex-warden
Henderson years before, in "partial fulfillment" of their
agreement "with respect to his testimony in the state's
behalf."
Several years ago, Woodfox submitted to a polygraph
examination, and his denials of involvement in the stabbing
were found to be "truthful."
Like Montegut, Woodfox and "Hooks" Wallace were tried
because they were "militant" members of the Black Panthers who
organized the deeply oppressed brothers of Angola to rebel
against that repression. They were so skillful that, before the
killing, they organized a prison chapter of the BPP, an
astonishing feat given the site.
As they face life without parole in solitary, it is past
time for people to organize for their life in freedom. They are
political prisoners of the highest caliber who deserve your
support.
They need immediate legal aid to file appeals.
Please contact: Angola 2 Support Committee, P.O. Box 15644,
New Orleans, LA 70175; (504) 227-5946; or
www.prisonactivist.org/angolatwo.
Free the Angola 2!
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