After about a year of being addicted to heroin I didn’t want to be loaded anymore. My girlfriend at the time was named Slim. I asked her to help me kick dope. We bought some groceries and went to our apartment. I warned her that I was going to get sick, throw up, and shit myself, but that no matter how sick I got, no matter what I said to her, no matter what I did, she was not to let me out of the apartment. I said, “I mean it, Slim, no matter what I say, no matter what I do, don’t let me leave. Do whatever you have to do to keep me from leaving.” She promised.
Within several hours I was sweating, stinking, sick. Of course, I changed my mind. I tried to leave. I told her to let me go. But Slim was true to her word. We tussled and fought for the next week, falling on the floor, the bed, all over the apartment. She held her ground. When I was too weak to fight I ran a guilt trip on her like the pitiful disgusting piece of shit I was. I told her if she loved me she wouldn’t let me suffer. I said anything I could think of to make her feel sorry for me. She didn’t waver. Eventually, I started to get an appetite. Slim fed me warm milk and chicken soup. I threw everything up. My stomach was too raw and tender to let me eat. My bones ached. In about two more weeks I gradually started to feel better. After that, I never touched drugs again.
Writing about this time in my life is very difficult. I robbed people, scared them, threatened them, intimidated them. I stole from people who had almost nothing. My people. Black people. I broke into their homes and took possessions they worked hard for; took their wallets out of their pockets. I beat people up. I was a chauvinist pig. I took advantage of people, manipulated people. I never thought about the pain I caused. I never felt the fear or despair people had around me. When I look back on that time I see that the only real human connection I had in those years came from my visits with my mom and those hours I spent at her house and around my family, but at the time I didn’t think of it like that. Her house was nothing more than a rest stop for me. I only thought of myself. In the year and a half after being released from Angola the second time, from August 1967 to February 1969, I was in and out of jail. For city charges, like shoplifting or traffic tickets, I’d be taken to the House of Detention, which we called the House of D. For charges of robbery and assault I’d be taken to Orleans Parish Prison.
Each time I went to the parish prison was worse than the last. It was extremely overcrowded, filthy dirty, and dangerous. I wasn’t a bully but I never backed down, so I was in a lot of fights. Once, to punish me and “put me in my place,” prison officials put me on C-1, a tier that housed gay prisoners, snitches, and other prisoners who’d asked to be checked off their tiers out of fear. The officials were trying to tarnish my “bad boy” reputation, to give the impression that I was a rat or that somebody punked me out. The windows were sealed shut from the outside with metal plates because the tier was on the first floor. There were four bunks in each cell, 15 cells on each side of the hall. During the day, the cell doors were open and we could go to a pen at the end of the hall called a day room or stay in the cell. At night, we were locked down in our cells. The tier was stifling hot and unsanitary, never cleaned. When someone came to clean the tier after a few weeks, he did nothing more than push the filth around with a mop and a pail of dirty water. The food was inedible. The air was so bad it could get difficult to breathe.
Even worse, I believed the longer I was on that tier, the more it could hurt my reputation. Some people might start to think I was a coward. A prisoner’s reputation and his word were all he had. As a form of protest, and to escape the heat and filth, some of the prisoners started to talk about cutting themselves. I didn’t want to join them, but I decided to do it. It might get me off the tier. Maybe with more than a few prisoners at the hospital at the same time someone would do something to help us. I wrote a note on a piece of paper to my mom, telling her I was in the hospital, and I put her phone number on it. I folded two nickels in the paper and stuck it in my waistband.
About a dozen of us cut ourselves. I sliced my upper right arm and my left wrist with a razor blade. In those days, there were no disposable razors, so razors with blades were passed out, used by prisoners, then passed back to security. The razors were always checked for blades when they were returned but one way or another razor blades could be acquired on the black market inside the prison. About eight or ten of us cut ourselves. A prisoner yelled for the tier guards and they came in, swearing, giving us towels to wrap around our wounds. Before they shackled us, I put the note in my hand, and when we got to the hospital I flipped it over to some black guys standing by the admittance desk; one of them picked up my note and called my mom.
Since she lived within walking distance of Charity Hospital she was there in about 15 minutes with my brothers and my sister. I tried to talk to her and tell her about the terrible conditions on C-1 but the prison guards who brought us told her to stand back. I told her over one guard’s shoulders to call the prison the next day and report what was going on. It didn’t do any good. After the hospital staff stitched our wounds and bandaged us they sent us back to the parish prison and we were put on the same tier, C-1. Cutting myself was a worthless act. Nothing changed. I was housed there another few months awaiting disposition on a burglary charge when I was released to make room for other prisoners. It was a common practice then—and is to this day—for the DA’s office to keep prisoners with weak, or even nonexistent, cases in prison to “sweat” the prisoner, hoping he’d plead guilty. If they needed space during that time for new prisoners, though, they’d go back through those cases and let out everyone they didn’t think they could convict. I remember being so relieved when I beat that charge and got back to the street. I thought I was free.
Chapter 8
Tony’s Green Room
After robbing people on the streets and jacking dope pushers I eventually started robbing bars and grocery stores while they were open. I walked into a bar, pointed the gun at the bartender or somebody sitting at the bar, and yelled, “Nobody move, motherfucker. I’ll kill you.” I yelled to everyone to put wallets and watches in a paper bag or pillowcase. I ordered everybody to lie on the floor, then I ran out. It became like a job to me; it was my hustle, a way to support myself and fit in and maintain my reputation.
I gave my mom some money that I stole but spent most of it on bullshit. I was never into jewelry but I used to dress nice. One year I traded a van full of cigarettes I got in a robbery for a red-and-white 1963 Thunderbird and some cash from one of my fences who owned a used car lot. I liked my Thunderbird but I loved Corvettes. A woman who lived next to me happened to have a 1963 Corvette and she loved Thunderbirds. We sometimes traded cars.
I’ve never raped anyone but I was charged with rape twice. The first time was because I was messing with a married woman. Her husband found out about us and, to get back at me, he forced her to lie to the police and say that I raped her. Because there was no evidence and the woman changed her story so many times, the DA’s office reduced that rape charge to aggravated battery. I pleaded guilty to aggravated battery to avoid staying in Orleans Parish Prison for two to three years waiting for trial. I was sentenced to 18 months in the parish prison, but I’d already been there for nine months so I was released under the two-for-one program.
The second time I was charged with rape it was a case of the police “cleaning the books.” I was arrested for one charge—armed robbery—but when the police arrested me they charged me with every unsolved robbery, theft, and rape charge they had. We called that cleaning the books. It was a common practice by the police then and is now. Everybody knew about it. To the police it didn’t matter if the DA was able to prosecute the charge or not. The police just wanted to wipe their books clean. The DA’s office didn’t mind; they could use the additional charges to intimidate guys and pressure them to take plea deals instead of going to trial. Innocent men took plea deals all the time and went to prison versus lying around in the parish jail for two or more years waiting for a trial.
The nig
ht they cleaned the books on me I had been picked up for an armed robbery. On February 13, 1969, Frank, a friend of ours named James, and I walked from Frank’s apartment around the corner to Tony’s Green Room to rob it. Someone outside saw us walk in holding guns and called the police. Midway through the robbery the police came in and started shooting. I heard Frank scream. He was shot in the face. In all the commotion, I hid my gun and pretended I was a customer. When the police told everyone to leave I walked out the door and went home.
Frank’s girlfriend, not knowing I had been with Frank, called me, distraught, asking me to go to the hospital with her. She told me Frank had been shot. I ran to her house on foot because I’d left my Thunderbird in front of the apartment building that Frank lived in. On the way, I formulated a plan to go with her to the hospital, find out where Frank was, and go back later to break him out. I went inside the apartment to get her. We walked outside and to the car. When I opened the car door police rushed out from behind parked cars and out of the alleyway with their guns drawn. James had given the police my name and the description of my car. After the police arrested me, they took me and Frank’s girlfriend back into her apartment. They put me in the bedroom and her in the kitchen. While some of them were beating me and kicking me in the bedroom I could hear the others in the kitchen threatening to take her children, asking her what she knew about the robbery. She was crying and telling them she didn’t know anything about it.
The police took me to central lockup. Upstairs they put me in a room and questioned me about the robbery. I denied knowing anything about it and told them a story about how I was just there to help Frank’s girlfriend get to the hospital. There were four or five detectives in the room. First one of them hit me in the head with a big leather book. After I’d been hit on my head several times while continuing to deny anything about armed robbery, one of the detectives came up behind me and put a plastic bag over my head, twisting it at the end so no air could get inside. When I was about to pass out they took the bag off. After doing this over and over they gathered around me and picked me up in the air and beat me around my body and in between my legs. Although I was in great pain I still denied knowing anything about the armed robbery. The next day I was transferred to the parish prison and that’s when I found out I had been charged with armed robbery and other charges, including theft and several rapes.
The DA dropped all the charges against me for lack of evidence except the armed robbery at Tony’s Green Room. All those other fake charges stayed on my record though. As years passed I thought about having them expunged but I kept putting it off. That decision would haunt me decades later. I was offered a plea deal for the robbery at Tony’s Green Room. If I pleaded guilty I’d get 15 years but would only have to serve half that—seven and a half years. I didn’t take it. I knew that if I held out for a trial I was taking a risk. Judges were known to add extra time in sentencing men who were found guilty, to discourage other men from going to trial. But I didn’t want to go back to Angola for one year, much less seven and a half. If there was a chance I didn’t have to go, I wanted to take it. I met the public defender who was representing me once before my trial. I was found guilty.
Afterward the DA’s office charged me as a habitual felon, which meant they could enhance my sentence. The state of Louisiana passed one of the first “three strikes, you’re out” laws in the country, except in the city of New Orleans it was more like “one strike, you’re out” under the habitual felon law. If you had even one felony conviction in New Orleans and got a new charge, your sentence could be increased if you were found guilty, up to life in prison, even for nonviolent crimes. I knew when I was sentenced I’d be thrown away. That’s what we called it.
Chapter 9
Escape
During my trial and after I was found guilty I was held at Orleans Parish Prison on a tier with an old friend who was about to get out. He helped me figure out an escape plan. The courtroom where I was due to be sentenced, called Section B, was a room they added to the top of the courthouse because of overcrowding. The elevator didn’t reach it; you had to walk up a flight of stairs to get to it. My friend had been in that courtroom before. He said he could dress up like a lawyer, get inside, and leave a gun in the bathroom for me. The bathroom was located in the back room of the courtroom, where the prisoners were held.
On sentencing day, October 9, 1969, I wrapped my right wrist in a bandage to make it look like I had an injury and asked the guard not to handcuff me on that “sore” wrist. He cuffed me by my left wrist and put me at the end of the line of prisoners who were cuffed together. My right hand was free. My friend got dressed up in a suit and tie that morning and, carrying a briefcase, he had no trouble getting into the courthouse and making his way to the third floor. I was sitting with the other prisoners when I saw him come in the back room and enter the bathroom. After I saw him leave I told the sheriff I had to use the toilet, so he uncuffed me from the line of prisoners and walked me to the bathroom. I was nervous but I’d had weeks to think of this moment. I knew it was do-or-die time. Inside the bathroom I opened the paper towel dispenser. My friend had left a goddamn German Luger in there. I was expecting to see a small gun that would be easy for me to hide. I slipped the Luger inside the waistband of my pants and opened the door. I thought the gun would slip down the front of my pants the whole time I walked back to my seat and was cuffed to my position in the prisoners’ line.
One by one the prisoners in my group were uncuffed to go before the judge, then brought back and cuffed together again. When it was my turn I stood before the judge with the gun hidden in my pants and listened with my hands at my side as he called me derogatory names. He said I was an animal and sentenced me to 50 years. Back at my seat I was again cuffed to the end of the line. We walked in a line down a short flight of stairs to the elevator, followed by a deputy.
When the elevator doors opened on the second floor we all stepped inside. An unarmed deputy was seated next to the control panel. As soon as the doors closed I pulled the gun from my pants with my free hand and held it to his head. I told him to keep the doors closed and take us to the basement or I would shoot him. I didn’t mean it but that’s what I said. I told the other deputy to unlock my handcuff and cuff himself and the elevator operator to the elevator railing. As he did that somebody in the basement was pressing the call button over and over. When we got to the basement the elevator doors opened and two armed cops were standing there. For less than a second we all froze. But their shock at seeing a prisoner in the elevator with a gun gave me a moment’s advantage and I took it. I told them to get inside the elevator and told the deputy to close the doors. I held the Luger on the two cops and told them to hand me their guns, which I dropped down the elevator shaft through a gap in the floor. Then I handcuffed the two cops to the railing. I turned to the other prisoners to ask if any of them wanted to go; one guy, a white dude, said yes, so I uncuffed him.
The next time the elevator doors opened the two of us left running. We had to make it through another set of doors to get to the street. Once outside I ran as fast as I could toward Tulane and Broad, where a childhood friend of mine told me he’d be parked. I jumped into the backseat of his car and covered myself with a blanket.
My friend drove me to an apartment where I stayed the night. From there I watched the search for me unfold on the television news. The prisoner who ran out with me had already been captured. For some reason, the police thought I was holed up in a block of old empty houses and they surrounded the area. They called my mom and she went down to the houses where they thought I was hiding. I watched her on the news crying; they said she was begging me to turn myself in. Years later my brother told me Mama ran to the abandoned houses not to help the police find me but to beg the police not to kill me. The next morning my friend drove me across the state line to Mississippi. I took a bus to Atlanta. After lying low for a few days I boarded a Greyhound bus for New York City.
Other than a phone number a
friend gave me of someone to call in Harlem when I got there, I didn’t have a plan. I was so out of my element it wasn’t funny. I went to a bar and restaurant to use the pay phone there. After I dialed the number two policemen walked in the front door. I hung up the phone and left. I never tried again. My friends had given me some money before I left New Orleans. I found a cheap room in a motel where women turned tricks.
Harlem had changed since the last time I had been there, to buy drugs. There seemed to be less prostitution and drug use visible on the street, less brutality. I watched as men and women my age wearing leather jackets and berets moved through the neighborhood, selling newspapers and talking to people. They escorted women on “check days” to get their groceries, protecting them from being robbed on the way to the store. I couldn’t have described it at the time, but they were unifying Harlem, bringing people together. I found out they were members of the Black Panther Party. I’d never seen black people proud and unafraid like that before. They were so confident, even around police. I was used to seeing a certain look in black people’s eyes, fear, especially when they were around police. These Panthers weren’t intimidated. Instead, it was the police who seemed scared. I wanted to meet the beautiful Panther sisters who wore their hair in African styles and their skirts above their knees. I went by the Panther office in Harlem and looked around, picked up a newspaper, and left.
Solitary Page 6
