The COVID-19 plague gives us a small taste of jail and prison life, the forced isolation for those of us fortunate to have shelter. In “Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement, My Story of Transformation and Hope” by Albert Woodfox and Leslie George, we get a full picture of what it means to live your life behind bars in a 6 foot by 9 foot cell.
To me, Woodfox’s memoir reads a little like “Manchild in the Promised Land” and “The Autobiography of Malcom X.” In their own memorable ways, all three books are windows into growing up and coming of age as a black person in America.
Woodfox delivers an intimate look at the daily, harsh realities of life inside the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, an 18,000-acre former plantation named for where the enslaved people had lived in Africa. He resists the dehumanizing conditions there, drawing on his remarkable grit to survive.
“Solitary” has a linear structure. That aids its readability.
Woodfox begins with the 1960s, then moves to the 1970s and so on. His political awakening arrives while incarcerated.
Unlike Malcom X, who discovers the Nation of Islam in prison, Woodfox while incarcerated meets members of the Black Panther Party.
These men, by deed and word, help Woodfox to discover what it means to be a revolutionary human being in solidarity with other oppressed people. It is a pivotal point in his life.
Together, Woodfox and other Panthers oppose guards and wardens who seek to divide and conquer the incarcerated. Woodfox and two other imprisoned Panthers, Herman Wallace and Robert Hilary King, bond.
They lift each other up. They prevent inmate rape, a violent feature of Angola.
In 1972, the state convicts Wallace and Woodfox of murdering an Angola prison guard. The prosecution’s case against the two lacked any physical evidence connecting them to the crime and their trials saw such exculpatory evidence suppressed, as witnesses give conflicting testimonies.
In time, King, Wallace and Woodfox become the Angola 3. Eventually, they attract a global and national support network who, with outstanding counsel such as Scott Fleming and others too numerous to name, win the trio’s freedom after they serve decades in solitary confinement, a euphemism for torture.
In solitary confinement, Woodfox educates himself on the law. He becomes a lifelong reader, reading two hours a day, a ritual he continues since his 2016 release.
Woodfox, Wallace and King organize to improve the horrid Angola prison conditions. One of their tactics is the hunger strike, painful but effective.
Woodfox has a calm yet firm voice. He does not avoid self-critique of his younger days as a petty criminal victimizing poor and working people.
Woodfox’s relationship with his mother and siblings helps to keep him going. She is a positive force in his life, and her death is a major loss for him.
Angola Prison authorities’ cruelty does not stop at beatings of dissident prisoners such as Woodfox. There are the daily strip searches and walking to and from tiny cells in chains.
How Woodfox endured such mental and physical humiliation and retained his humanity makes his memoir a must-read for your summer. You will, I think, be glad that you read Solitary.
Seth Sandronsky lives and works in Sacramento. He is a journalist and member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Email sethsandronsky@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2020
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