Albert Woodfox: My name is Albert Woodfox. My African name is [inaudible]. I’ve been housed in Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola since 1971, which is approximately about 34 years. Well, basically since I was put in CCR [Closed Cell Restriction] in April 18, 1972 for investigation of the murder of correction officer Brent Miller, basically I tried to use that time to self educate myself, to try to be as much help as possible to other prisoners around me. Throughout the years, we’ve had educational classes in which we taught inmates how to read and write, a mathematic class in which we taught basics in mathematics, history classes, social study classes; we’ve just had classes on various philosophies, and we just try to instill and maintain in ourselves, and instill in other prisoners around us, a sense of self worth, a sense of purpose and direction; try to help them, stop them just being institutionalized, and we just hopefully inspired hope in a lot of people around us.
Noelle Hanrahan: Tell me, what is your average day like inside Angola?
Albert Woodfox: My days are repetitious. You know, part of being in prison, you eat at a certain time. But what I try to do is change my routine occasionally, but basically comes down to I get up about between 4:30 and five o’clock and I work out. Staying healthy is very important to surviving, especially if you are locked in a cell 23 hours a day. Depending on what they serve for breakfast I eat. I try to watch at least hour or two of news, mostly CNN, and try to familiarize myself with what’s going on in the world. I try to get at least two hours of reading in the day, minimum. Throughout the day, mostly I’m reading books and responding to mail I get. Both Herman and I get a lot of mail, so we spend a lot of time writing. I think it’s an obligation to respond to anyone who take the time and show enough compassion to write us some words of encouragement and support.
I may listen at some radio. I may listen at some tapes. Insignificant things I don’t have a specific pattern to them. As I say, trying to change day to day things up and keep from just getting depressed by doing the same thing and same time every day. The showers start on a different cell each day so, depending on whether or not they have yours by what time you come out the shower — could be early in the morning, and sometimes it can be real late at night or a.m. or morning. That’s pretty much my day, you know. It’s not a lot you can do in a cell, you know, 23 hours a day;, a lot of time to reflect on things I’ve heard or seen or did throughout the day. That’s just about what my day consists of. I try to stay away from negative conversations.
Noelle Hanrahan: What is the yard like?
Albert Woodfox: We have six yards, each one fenced in, where one individual is in each one of the yard. I imagine the situation is like if you would open a fan and you would put your hand out on a flat surface and open all your fingers, and each finger will constitute a yard. That’s pretty much how the yards are built. Each yard is topped with razor wire. At the back end of each yard, there’s a basketball goal, and for about a year now, we have a weight bar attached to the back of the basketball goal. They have a concrete walkway that runs along side of each yard, in case it rains and the yards get pretty, you know, muddy and flooded. If you don’t want to walk into that, you can walk up and down the concrete walk. We usually work out. Some of them may shoot balls, some of them may jog, which is part of my routine. We have these homemade balls, and we throw the one nut and run up and down the yard. It’s anything we can do to just get exercise and make the hours pass as pleasant as possible for ourselves.
Noelle Hanrahan: Are you able to see the sun and the moon and the stars at all?
Albert Woodfox: Yeah well, we have that right now. We have windows in the back of the cells. When CCR was housed in Camp ROC, which is first building at the entrance to Angola, the windows were located across the cell, rather across from the cells in the hallway. But these cells here, you know, we can pretty much stand right at the window and look out.
Noelle Hanrahan: Have these conditions changed in the 60s and 70s, and now?
Albert Woodfox: I guess the biggest change is the brutality. Physical force was pretty much used to resolve any dispute between prisoners and security. We have food slots we get our food through now because we had gone on a hunger strike for 45 days for that, and it still took 18 months before they cut food slots in the bars.
Noelle Hanrahan: What was the difference? And what were you trying to advocate for?
Albert Woodfox: Well, prior to that time, they used to set our food on the floor in front of the cell and you had to slide it under the door. And a lot of times, dust would get in the food, and kind of debris from the bottom of the cell door would get in your food. And at that time, they may clean the tiers once a week, but at some point in time, we just got tired of dragging our food under the door. So, we petitioned the warden about coming and cutting some food slots in the bars, and after about two weeks, we didn’t get any response. So, we discussed it, and eventually we went on a hunger strike that lasted about 45 days. We came to this agreement with the administration that if we wanted to, we could hold our trays in our hands and eat through the bars. Eventually, someone made a little sling on their bars, and that went from a sling to a little tray out of cardboard, and that’s how we ate, for about 18 months. We ate through the bars, and our trays would be set on these little cardboard shelves we had situated on the doors of each cell. Eventually, they came around and cut food slots, though.
Noelle Hanrahan: Tell me about closed cell restriction. What’s the size of your cell? What are the conditions and how are you treated?
Albert Woodfox: Well, it varies. The cells up on Camp ROC, I think they were something like ten by nine. And for about three years we were housed at a unit in Camp J, which is the infamous punishment camp. CCR and death row, those cells are much smaller. I really couldn’t give you a measurement, maybe eight by nine, or eight by eight. CCR is housed right now in what’s called Camp TU, which stands for Transitional Unit. CCR, we on the upper floor. The lower floor is used to house mentally disturbed prisoners.
Noelle Hanrahan: Closed cell restriction, there’s no way for you to get out of that, and it’s different than being on the yard or being in population. True?
Albert Woodfox: Yes, closed cell restriction means that anytime you leave off the tier, you’re in restraints. The only time we get to converse with other inmates is if somebody who’s on the hour in the hall, come by your cell and talk. When you are in the hall and you want to talk to somebody on the tier, you can go to their cell and talk. We pretty much restricted on what we can have in our cells, how much we can have in our cells. We subject to shakedown, when your cell is searched for contraband, much more than people in the main prison population. We’re allowed contact visits if we remain disciplinary report free for six months. If you get a disciplinary report and you’re found guilty, then you can lose your contact visit for six months. We the only part of the prison in Angola in which we can lose our contact visits for six months for a disciplinary report.
Noelle Hanrahan: How easy is it to get a disciplinary report?
Albert Woodfox: Well, you know, you virtually at the mercy of the tier officer. We have some correction officers who come here who half decent human beings, and they see this as a job, and not his entire life. And they come here to do they job. If something is not right and you sell or something like that, they will give you a chance to straighten it out. And then we have correctional officers come in who take great delight in harassing prisoners and being brutal and writing inmates up just for the purpose of taking their contact visits away. They use that as a threat all the time.
Noelle Hanrahan: You could have too many cups in your cell. You could have Black Panther Party literature.
Albert Woodfox: Your bed might not be made up the right way, or your boxes may be too far from underneath the bunk, or something like that. And some officers will tell you, you need to straighten your bed or give me that extra cup, where some will come through, and they won’t say anything. Next thing you know, they’re bringing a disciplinary report to your cell for you to sign it. It all depends on who’s working the chair you know.
Noelle Hanrahan: Why did you help form a chapter of the Black Panther Party inside of Angola?
Albert Woodfox: Basically, what we started doing is we just start going around talking to inmate population, inmates in our dormitories, or inmates when we used to have time on the walkway, and we would just start asking a lot of questions. “Well, how you feel about not having a raincoat when you have to go out in the field and work, when it’s raining? How you feel about not having boots? How you feel about eating the same food over and over, when we see them bring chicken and steaks and all type other food that’s meant for us, and it’s all going out to security people by the box load. How you feel about the racism that’s going on in the prison?”
After we formed a consensus on what was the paramount problem for most of the inmates, and we started talking about it and we explained why we joined the party, or why we asked to start a party chapter in Angola, what we wanted to do, how we wanted to go about it, and what the policy would be for membership. And eventually we just start building a membership in, you know, what’s called the ‘main prison population,’ or at the time, the term was used ‘new prison’ or ‘the walkway.’ And of course, we knew that a lot of people that was involved were spies for the administration, but we couldn’t let that stop us from doing what we felt in our hearts was right.
Noelle Hanrahan: Tell me about some of the actions you helped organize to fight for better conditions.
Albert Woodfox: I think the greatest thing we did, or the most deadliest thing we did, was we formed the anti-rape squad. At that time, you had a lot of young inmates coming in here, most of them just turned 18 or 19, and they were forced to be sexual slaves for a lot of the deviant sexual [inaudible] in here. Security at that time was aware this. Some of them profited from it. It was a tool which was used to control the inmates population. We tried to stop the racial animosity between white and Black inmates. We didn’t have a lot of white inmates in main prison at that time. We tried to organize against the dormitory. It had no screens on them, and the mosquito would eat you up during the summertime, or there was no heating systems, no cooling systems during the summertime.
Noelle Hanrahan: What were the results? And did you get punished?
Albert Woodfox: Well, up until Officer Miller was killed, there seemed to be a wait and see attitude about the administration. Oaks and I have talked — we were both surprised at how long we actually lasted before they put us in the CCR. We actually didn’t think we would last a week. No actions were actually taken against us until April 17, 1972, the day they found officer Miller dead in the Pine 1 dormitory. I was in my dormitory at the time. The officers working the dormitory, they had a whistle system. So many blows on the whistle meant certain things. So, they blew the whistle for everybody to come out on the walk. And once we came out, they locked all the dormitory then they made us form a line on the left side of the walkway, and they just told everybody to walk up toward the clothing room. They had a clothing room at the last end of the walkway, right before you went through a security gate, which was called a snitches gate at that time.
What had happened was spreading like wildfire. A lot of security officers lined up against the rail on the other side. Some of them had weapons, and they were, you know, making threats. They was going to find out who killed the security man. They call him ‘free man’ at that time. So they, you know, making threats of what they were going to do the n**rs when they found out who killed the free man in Pine 1, so we all knew what was happening. And it took me about an hour and something, maybe two hours, eventually I got up to the clothing room. As I entered into it, guns were place at my head and in my face. I was called all kind of n**rs and Black Panthers and troublemakers and all that. I was made to strip. All my clothes were taken and thrown in a pile. They were asking me questions about “Why did I kill the free man?” and stuff like it. Then I kept telling them “You know, I didn’t kill nobody. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Eventually, they gave me some more clothes to put on and told them to take me to isolation or the dungeon. Correction officer, about three of them, one of them had a machine gun, they marched me before the prison population, straight to the dungeon.
And I got inside the cell Block B, they immediately jumped on me and beat me down to the floor. They stomped me, kicked me and punched me and grabbed me, and they brought me up the stairs, half dragging and half carrying, and I was beaten all the way up. When I got upstairs, they opened a succession of doors. I was placed in the shower at that time. They opened the door to the shower and threw me in there against the wall and closed the shower back where I remained until the next day, and I was transferred to CCR, which was April 18, 1972. We have remained in CCR ever since.
Noelle Hanrahan: How does your Black Panther philosophy help you cope with these conditions?
Albert Woodfox: I first encountered the Black Panther Party at the time I was on an escape from the Orleans East Parish prison courthouse. Prior to that, you know, I was basically what you call a petty criminal. You know, I didn’t know anything. Firstly, three out of every four African American kids were petty criminals at that time. It’s hard for a lot of people to understand what it was like in the 60s, when racism was rampant. Now it’s more clandestine, but it was rampant then. It was right there for everybody to see. And opportunities were very limited. And this was my life. I had no knowledge of history of African people, their contribution to the civilization of the world or to America. I had no role models to inspire me to be a better person, to inspire me to learn things or better myself. I had no concept of what moral principles or code of conduct were or any things, and these are the things that the Panthers’ first inspired in me.
My first encounter is when I was on escape. I was in Harlem, New York, and I saw some Panthers moving around the neighborhood. Some of them were selling paper. Some of them were standing on corner having conversations with the people. Eventually, you know, I got involved. I got arrested for an armed robbery charge, which was a setup. Eventually, I went to trial for it and was found not guilty. But during the time, I was placed on the eighth floor, they had about three or four members of the Panther — New York 21 at that time, as they call them. And based on what I had seen of the Panthers in Harlem while I was on the run, you know, I went over and I started talking to them, and I started asking questions, and they began explaining what the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was; 10 point program, and what they were trying to do for African Americans and other poor minorities as well as working class people in this country. Eventually, I organized political classes on the tier. I guess you could say that’s where my first political education really actually started.
Noelle Hanrahan: Are you a political prisoner?
Albert Woodfox: You know, I don’t know, you know. I mean, I guess that’s as it always been. I consider myself to be a political prisoner. But right now you have this big debate going on in the activist community especially, and-
Noelle Hanrahan: You can just say what you really think about yourself.
Albert Woodfox: Yeah, I consider myself a political prisoner for no other reason I’m being held for a political crime, the death of a correction officer that has been blamed on me as a result of my membership to the Black Panther Party and the way I view the world.
Noelle Hanrahan: What can people on the outside do to help you and your cause?
Albert Woodfox: Basically, we need people to remember to help expose the injustice that has happened to Herman and myself, by the court system, by the political system of the state of Louisiana or the United States of America. We need donations especially for attorneys and private investigators. That is always the most important issue for any political prisoner. If you don’t have good attorneys, then you forced to take state attorneys, and state attorneys is not going to jeopardize their jobs or their positions for political prisoners or people who considered to be militants or terrorists or troublemakers, or any other adjective they can come up with.
Noelle Hanrahan: And on April 18, 1972 how much time were you facing before you got caught up in the murder investigation?
Albert Woodfox: We were facing the death penalty at that time. This was prior to the United States ruling — I think it was in 73′ — that outlawed the death penalty because of its application in America at that time. But we actually, had it not been for that, I think both Herman and myself would probably be a only existing in people memories and maybe in history books, you know, I think we would have been executed long time ago.
Noelle Hanrahan: And what were the charges that you were convicted of that carried a capital charge?
Albert Woodfox: We were charged with murder in the first degree.
Noelle Hanrahan: I meant before, before you got investigated for the officer’s death, what were you looking at doing? How much time?
Albert Woodfox: Oh, I had my 50 years for armed robbing.
Noelle Hanrahan: 50 years?!
Albert Woodfox: Yes, I discharged on that sentence, April 26, 1996, so I’m being held now on the life sentence without benefit of parole for the death of correctional officer Brent Miller.
Noelle Hanrahan: Hey, so I just want to thank you.
Albert Woodfox: I want to thank you.
Noelle Hanrahan: You know this, this line is really good now.
Albert Woodfox: Okay.
Noelle Hanrahan: Cool. And why isn’t Herman’s as good do you think? He’s crackling and popping all the time.
Albert Woodfox: Sometimes it’s the location of the tiers.
Noelle Hanrahan: Right
Albert Woodfox: Herman’s tier is located at a different area and a different angle, you know, and that’s gonna play a lot in it.
Noelle Hanrahan: I just want to thank you.
Albert Woodfox: Okay.
Facility announcement: 15 seconds on this call.
Albert Woodfox: Should I call again on this?
Noelle Hanrahan: I think we’re cool, but, but if you, if you need to, fine, but I think we’re all right. I think I got it all in this two sessions.
Albert Woodfox: Okay, thank you.
Noelle Hanrahan: All right. You take good care Albert.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
