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THE STORY OF THE ANGOLA THREE

The civil rights movement was late in coming to the old plantation, but it finally managed to slip past the razor wire and iron gates of Angola in the early 1970’s through two African-American prisoners – Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace. Arriving on unrelated armed-robbery convictions and being sentenced on questionable evidence by all-white juries, they came to the prison having already earned reputations as political activists.

Woodfox and Wallace were escorted into an institution that Collier’s magazine had just dubbed “The Bloodiest Prison in America.” Inside its walls, violence was so commonplace that inmates slept with lunch trays or bibles strapped to their chests in case they were stabbed as they slept. Because of a serious shortage of guards, “trusty” inmates were permitted to carry guns and guard other prisoners. Murders were a near daily occurrence.

Woodfox and Wallace immediately began peacefully organizing their fellow inmates against racial segregation, sexual slavery, rampant violence and systematic brutality inside a prison that would soon be under federal investigation for its abhorrent conditions. Their methods included hunger strikes and escorting weaker inmates through the prison yard to offer them protection.

Shortly after their arrival, a white prison guard named Brent Miller was found stabbed to death in one of the black inmate buildings. Woodfox and Wallace were immediately identified as suspects, despite no witnesses or any physical evidence to link them to the crime. They were transferred into solitary confinement cells that same day. Thirty-five years later, that is where they remain.

Just after the US Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in 1972, citing racial disparity in its implementation, the men were convicted of the guard’s murder by all-white juries and sentenced to life in prison. The administration at Angola has determined that they will spend that sentence confined to the hell of solitude. Over three decades later, they are longest known survivors of solitary in the history of the United States.

Over the past 35 years, attorneys and investigators have turned up a mountain of evidence to indicate that not only were Woodfox and Wallace not guilty, but they were set up by an Administration that openly admitted it benefited from the sexual slavery rings. Woodfox and Wallace were working to stop prison rape, and they had also founded the first and only Black Panther chapter inside a penitentiary. This was not appreciated by the all-white staff, most of whom actually lived on the prison grounds. Angola is the only prison in the country that has a residential neighborhood within the gates of the penitentiary. Housing is provided to employees, free of charge, because the institution is so isolated. Many of the residents have bloodlines that date back to Angola when it was a slave plantation.

Among the evidence that seems to exonerate Woodfox and Wallace are the bloody fingerprints which were found at the crime scene. They failed to match the state’s chosen suspects – so authorities never bothered to run them against anyone else, despite the fact that they had the prints of every inmate and every employee of Angola on file and readily available. After Woodfox and Wallace were already in solitary confinement, “eye-witnesses” started popping up. Each testified with a wildly different story – and it has recently been verified through prison documentation that each was handsomely rewarded for their statements, with cigarettes, cushy jobs and pardons. Every living eye-witness has now recanted their testimony and provided an affidavit that they felt pressured to lie.

Two days after Brent Miller’s murder, a friend of Woodfox’s and Wallace’s, Robert King Wilkerson, arrived at Angola, also bringing with him a reputation for activism. He was immediately placed under suspicion for the killing, even though he could not possibly have participated in it, and sent to his own solitary cell. A year later, he would be charged with the murder of a fellow inmate, despite no physical evidence and the repeated confessions of another prisoner who insisted he had acted alone. A Louisiana state court judge ordered that Wilkerson be shackled and his mouth covered with duct tape during his trial. He also was convicted of murder by an all-white jury and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Robert King Wilkerson’s conviction was overturned in 2001, after spending almost 30 years in solitary confinement, and he walked out of Angola to a throng of supporters who had gathered around the gates of the remote prison. He addressed them and said simply, “I may be free from Angola, but Angola will never be free from me.” It was his vow to work on behalf of the release of his friends. It is a vow that he has kept. He has also earned a bevy of honors for the work he has done with numerous humanitarian organizations.

The state of Louisiana has gone to great lengths to silence these men, but they have yet to be broken. In addition to surviving three decades of solitary confinement, they have managed to build a support network that includes the ACLU, a Dame of the British Empire, exonerated political prisoners, a few rock stars, Amnesty International, and support organizations in five U.S. cities and half a dozen foreign countries.

Many of these supporters traveled to Louisiana to attend the recent evidentiary hearing granted by a Louisiana court on Herman Wallace’s case. The hearing was held in an administration building at Angola, as it had been determined unsafe to have it held in the courthouse. It was the first time in the institution’s history that a post-conviction criminal proceeding was held behind the penitentiary’s gates. Supporters had been assured that they would be allowed to attend the hearing, as it would be open to the public, just as it would have been had it been held in a courtroom. However, they were instead greeted by armed police teams who refused to let the supporters approach the prison’s entrance. Attack teams on the roofs of nearby structures kept guns and video cameras trained on the group of supporters until the assembly received the news that the hearing had concluded, and they began their long journeys back to their various homes all over the world.

If the attempt of the authorities was to make Herman Wallace appear to be a threat and therefore undeserving of justice, it did not work this time. On November 7, 2006, after almost 35 years of solitary confinement, a Louisiana State Court Commissioner recommended to overturn Wallace’s 1972 conviction. He still has many legal hurdles before he can join his friend Robert King Wilkerson in freedom, but this is a remarkable victory and Wallace believes he has his “foot on the stairway to freedom.”

Albert Woodfox’s last state appeal was denied by the Louisiana Supreme Court ten days after Wallace’s hearing concluded. He now has the opportunity to present his case in federal court and Woodfox is optimistic that this is his best chance for a fair and impartial court ruling.

The story of the Angola Three is one of crime and punishment, statewide political corruption of legendary proportions (including a governor and warden who would soon be serving their own prison terms, for extortion and attempted murder respectively), the legacy of the Antebellum South and the continuing fall-out from the civil rights era that swept through the Deep South in the late 60s and early 70s. It is also a story of survival and hope, and three men’s extraordinary fortitude in the face of all of this, inside 6-by-9 foot cells, 23 hours a day, for three decades – and the lifelong friendship that has survived all of it.

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