In mid-May 1971, I heard on the radio that all 13 of the Panthers of the Panther 21 who had been on trial, including the Panthers I had met on the eighth floor, had been exonerated on all counts. It took the jury foreman, James I. Fox, 20 minutes to read the verdict, “Not guilty,” 156 times. The Panthers had told me to agitate. To educate. I started thinking about how to talk to prisoners about the conditions we were living in.
I was quickly found not guilty at my trial for aggravated robbery because while I was in jail the Harlem bookie and butcher who set me up had been arrested for strong-arming and setting up other people the way they did me, which came out during my trial. I fought extradition back to New Orleans and lost. In June 1971, I was put on a plane back to New Orleans. On the outside, nothing had changed from the day I had escaped the courthouse 20 months earlier. I was a black man with a long prison sentence ahead of me. Inside, however, everything had changed. I had morals, principles, and values I never had before. Looking out the window of the plane, I saw into the window of my soul. In the past, I had done wrong. Now I would do right. I would never be a criminal again.
Chapter 13
Hostages
My actions in the New York City jail uprisings became part of my permanent record. I was labeled a militant. When I arrived at Orleans Parish Prison they put me on C-1, which they now called the “Panther tier.” The last time I was on this tier I cut myself to get off. This time it was radically different. Less than half the tier was full. It only housed members of the Black Panther Party. I was nervous at first because I was unfamiliar with everyone. But I also knew these men weren’t ordinary prisoners. It was still suffocating, hot, filthy, and dark. The windows were still sealed shut, covered from the outside with steel plates. The Panthers were all from the New Orleans chapter of the party and were in prison awaiting trial for defending themselves against a police attack on their headquarters, located in the Desire housing projects, months before. As the days passed I watched the men conduct themselves the way Panthers in New York had, with poise and purpose, focused on self-education and self-discipline. Among the Panthers I met there were Ronald Ailsworth (Faruq) and Donald Guyton (Malik Rahim), both cofounders of the New Orleans chapter of the party. It didn’t take long for us to accept one another. At the daily meetings Malik tore books into sections to give each of us a part to read so we could then report back to the others what we had learned. We had debates and talked about society and the world. They got their friends—local Panthers from the New Orleans chapter—to visit me. The New Orleans Panthers attended our court hearings. We had copies of the Black Panther Party newspaper smuggled onto the tier. I became more outspoken than I was in New York.
One day I suggested we clean up the tier. Orleans Parish Prison had always been a filthy, rat-infested pigsty with broken toilets, rotten food, and overcrowded cells. All of us kept our own cells spotless and we cleaned the day room, but the rest of the tier hadn’t been cleaned for months. At our meetings we practiced collective criticism, so if someone had a beef or wanted to bring up something going on, it was brought in front of everybody. I brought up that our tier was a disgrace. “How can we live on a tier that’s filthy and dirty like this?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we have more pride?” Everybody agreed and in the following days we cleaned out the empty cells.
On any given weekday prisoners were summoned to court and transferred from their tiers to a holding pen on the second floor of the prison, where they sat until it was time to be led through a series of corridors to the courthouse. There, they were taken to smaller bullpens located in the back of each courtroom. On an average day there could be 20 to 30 prisoners sitting in the bullpen at the prison. On court days we had a chance to talk to prisoners who weren’t on our tier, and we used that time to talk about the party. One time in the bullpen Faruq broke into a Black Panther Party song called “Power to the People.” All the prisoners joined in.
Power, power, all power to the people.
We’re going to pick up the gun and put the pigs on the run.
There just ain’t enough pigs to stop the Black Panther Party.
Some of the prisoners were clapping, others were keeping rhythm drumming on the metal benches we were sitting on. The guards ordered us to stop. We kept singing. They came back with tear gas, spraying all of us. My eyes were still swollen shut and tears were streaming down my burning face when it was my turn to go to court. There was so much gas on me that the deputy who put restraints on me got sick walking me through the corridor.
When deputies brought me into the courtroom I didn’t walk to the table where I was supposed to sit. I walked to the middle of the courtroom, in front of the spectators—some of them Panthers—and raised my handcuffed hands as fists to my chest, as high as I could in restraints, and yelled, “Look what these racist pigs have done.” Two deputies were on me in seconds, dragging me out as I heard the judge holler, “Get him out of here.” The Panthers in the audience stood and were yelling after me, “Leave that man alone.” In the back deputies punched and kicked me. I couldn’t defend myself because my hands were cuffed to my waist, but I was cursing them, calling them names. The judge came in and told the deputies to stop beating me and get the gas off me. They brought me wet paper towels to wipe my body and hair and gave me a new jumpsuit. Before he went back into the courtroom the judge told me to stop acting up.
We believed that being in prison we were at the forefront of social struggle and it was our responsibility to respond to the issues. Our list of grievances was long and similar to what had been happening in the Tombs. Men in the parish prison were held for months without being arraigned; they weren’t given bail, or their bail was set too high; they had no access to law books; they were forced to sleep on the floor, three or more to a cell. The prison was infested with roaches, lice, and rats. The food was disgusting. We talked among ourselves about how to get these stories outside prison walls. I knew from my experiences in New York that we had to do more than get the prison administration’s attention: we had to speak directly to the media; otherwise they would only report on one side, the side of prison authorities. We decided to take a hostage and not release him until we could talk to the press. We would also demand to speak to the first African American woman to be elected to and serve in the Louisiana House of Representatives, Rep. Dorothy Mae Taylor, who was working for prison reform in those days.
We passed a note outlining our plans to another tier through an orderly and they wrote back saying they would take a hostage the same day. We’d put two guards under house arrest at the same time, one guard from each tier.
On Monday morning, July 26, 1971, a young black prison guard brought some Panthers going to trial out on the bridge where their personal clothing was being held, and we confronted him. We didn’t hurt him. We told him, “Look, man, we need to put you under house arrest. Don’t resist. We’re going to put you in a cell in the back for your own safety. If you come with us, it won’t get physical.” He handed us his keys. We opened the lockbox that contained the controls for the cell doors and opened them. We walked the guard back to a cell. We asked him if he wanted anything. Then we closed and locked the cell door.
I pressed the intercom button and told the security people working in the processing area at the front of the prison that we’d taken a guard hostage and we wanted to see the media and Dorothy Mae Taylor to talk about prison conditions. They said, “Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt the guard.” I said the only way we’d hurt him is if they came on the tier. News reporters and cameras were allowed on the exercise yard. Representative Taylor arrived. We knocked the metal plate off one of the windows so we could talk through the window. She asked to see the guard we were holding hostage, so we brought him to the window. She asked him if he had been harmed in any way. When he said no, she agreed to talk to us. We read out our list of grievances to her. After we released the guard, Representative Taylor read our demands aloud to the press.
Soon after this I was told by pris
on officials that I was being sent back to Angola. On the tier we discussed whether or not we should resist, but as a group we decided I should go and recruit Panthers for the New Orleans chapter. Later, Malik got word to me from Oakland that we should start a separate chapter of the party—a prison chapter—at Angola.
Before I left Orleans Parish Prison, I took an oath on C-1 to become a member of the Black Panther Party. On my last day there, one of the Panthers gave me a copy of the Little Red Book, a collection of quotations from Mao Tse-tung. The Panthers told me, “Don’t forget the party. Don’t forget what the party stands for. Don’t forget the 10-Point Program and the principles of the party. Educate. Agitate. Be strong. Stay strong.”
Chapter 14
Angola, 1971
Prison is designed to break one’s spirit and destroy one’s resolve. To do this, the authorities attempt to exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality—all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are. Our survival depended on understanding what the authorities were attempting to do to us, and sharing that understanding with each other.
—Nelson Mandela
Nothing had changed at Angola. Sexual slavery was still a part of prison culture. Violence was still a constant threat. Armed inmate guards were still in use, on cellblocks, in guard towers, on horseback in the fields. Stabbings and beatings happened every day. Angola was the same. But I was different. I came with orders to start a chapter of the Black Panther Party. I was told to resist, educate, agitate. When I joined the party, I dedicated my life to social struggle. I gave my word that I would live my life by the principles of the party. I was prepared to sacrifice my life to keep my word.
The prison was still segregated. I was put in a black dorm at the Reception Center. I’d only been there for about a week when I saw a prisoner named Joseph Richey follow a boy who was 17 into the bathroom. In prison, you learn the signs of what’s going on before it happens. I borrowed a knife from a prisoner in the dorm and put it under my shirt and went into the bathroom. Richey had the boy in the shower, threatening him, trying to make him take his clothes off. “What the fuck is going on in here?” I said.
“This ain’t your business,” Richey said. “You ain’t got nothing to do with this.”
I said, “I’m making it my business.” I walked toward them. “You’re not raping that kid.” I looked at the boy. “Come on out,” I said, “ain’t nothing going to happen here.” The boy didn’t move at first, then slowly inched his way toward me against the wall. He walked by me and left through the door.
I pulled the knife out from under my shirt. Richey pulled his weapon out, and I said, “Let’s do this.” I made a lunge for him and he backed up and dropped his knife. I told him as long as I’m in the dormitory he’s not raping that kid or anybody else. When I walked out of the bathroom I stood on a table in the day room and announced to the room, “All you motherfuckers in here who rape people, you are on notice. You’re not raping anybody while I’m in this dorm.” I can proudly say that after I stopped Joseph Richey from raping that kid not one prisoner was raped in the RC dorm I was living in.
After 30 days, I was brought before the classification board and assigned a job in the scullery, washing pots and pans used in the dining hall and kitchen. This time I wasn’t on the trustee side; I would be in the main prison. The walk was long and covered to keep the rain off. Railings ran down either side. There were four units down the walk, each composed of four one-story rectangular cinder-block dormitories. Each dorm held about 60 prisoners. Two dorms in each unit faced each other across the walk. The front door of each dorm opened onto the walk. The sides had huge windows from waist level to ceiling, and there were narrow walkways on either side of the dorm that led to the back. Between two of the dorms in each unit on the left side of the walk—dorms 1 and 2—there was a guard booth. The walk and all the buildings were elevated, about three or four feet off the ground. Four or five steps went down to the yard between units. Officially, prisoners weren’t allowed to congregate on the walk but sometimes they did or they stood in groups off the walk in the grass between the units. Each guard booth had room for two officers to sit. One of the guards from each unit was often on the walk, keeping it clear and sometimes shaking down prisoners searching pockets, jacket linings, and shoes for contraband as they walked by, while the other sat in the booth.
Each unit was named after a species of tree. White prisoners lived in the Oak dorms, the first unit on the walk. Next came the all-black units: Pine, Walnut, and Hickory. The whole area, including a huge treeless yard and a clothing room, just inside the security gate, was surrounded by a 12-foot chain-link fence topped by barbed wire. Freemen and inmate guards manned the towers overlooking the walk and the yard. There was a baseball field in the yard and another area up a small hill where we played football. The dining hall and control center were on the other side of the security gate, which we called the “snitcher gate,” at one end of the walk.
I talked about the Black Panther Party to prisoners in my dorm and on the walk. I talked about the 10-Point Program. “We want freedom; we want the power to determine our own destiny,” I told them. I carried the Little Red Book with me wherever I went. “Do not steal,” I told the men, reading, “not even a needle or a piece of thread from the people.” Some of the guys who knew me from before watched me, thinking I was still in the game, trying to figure out what my game was. Other prisoners felt threatened and avoided me. I spoke to the men about what the Panthers taught me. “In prison,” I said, “first they reduce your value as a human being, then they break your will.” I told them they had to reeducate themselves, that we had to come together and work together. I told them they had to stop raping and stabbing each other. “They want you to fight among yourselves so you don’t resist,” I said. “You deserve better than what you’re getting.”
It took me a while to catch my stride and learn how to talk to the prisoners. Through trial and error, I learned that the best way to reach each man on the yard was at his own level of consciousness. I started to talk a lot about the food and how bad it was. I learned that asking questions was more effective than lecturing, so I asked a lot of questions. “How do you feel not having rain clothes when you have to work out in the field?” I asked. “How do you feel eating baloney over and over when we see trucks bringing in chicken and beef meant for us?” “How do you feel about being paid two cents an hour?”
At the same time, I was still integrating my newly learned code of conduct into my day-to-day life. I had the idealistic passion of a revolutionary but at age 24, after five years in and out of four different prisons, I had the emotional maturity of someone much younger. If a dude did something to me or threatened me I retaliated. But I was determined to keep going. I kept coming back to the principles of the party. Over time I realized that my own personal conduct—the way I behaved—was almost more important than anything I said. The Panthers taught me you don’t fight fire with fire, you fight fire with water. I came to understand that meant if a prisoner challenged or threatened me, I had to find the opposite within myself to deal with that individual and use the teachings and values of the Black Panther Party rather than resort to violence.
I worked in the dining hall, a huge building that held the kitchen, pantries, and freezers where food was stored; a bakery; a butcher shop where inmates got vocational training; an empty room in the back for workers to hang out between shifts; and, at the very back, the scullery. There was always one huge tub of water boiling in the scullery. We wore rubber boots that went to our knees, rubber aprons that fell from our necks to the tops of the boots, and insulated rubber gloves to work around the scalding water. We lowered the pots and pans to soak in the boiling water first, using broken-off broomstick handles, then lifted them out the same way, tossing them into a corner where we rinsed them with a power hose. After they were hosed down we set them on drying racks. Usually there we
re three of us working and we took turns at the tub of boiling water; sometimes there were only two of us. We had to work fast but I was careful; I never got burned.
In most of the prison, blacks and whites did not work together. But jobs in the dining hall were mixed. The white prisoners had the “better” jobs, cooking and working as clerks in the pantry; the blacks did the cleaning and serving at the steam table. (White prisoners had their own steam table and were served by white prisoners.) Most of us worked 16-hour days, every other day, and between meals we were allowed to sign out and go back to our dorms or to the yard, or we could stay in the back room. It was different for the black dining hall workers in the front, who served the food, wiped up the floor and tables while prisoners ate, and poured Kool-Aid and other drinks. They were forced to work 16-hour days six or seven days a week, and between meals they weren’t allowed to leave. After a couple of weeks working in the scullery I started to stay in the dining hall between my shifts to talk to the workers there. “What you’re doing is slave labor,” I told them. “There shouldn’t be different rules for you than the rest of us.” I suggested they put together a petition and send it to the warden.
In the back room of the kitchen I spoke to white prisoners as well. “You have a better job for being white and that benefits you individually, but as a group you still suffer,” I said. “We are all victims of the same corruption, the same brutality, the same beatings, the same sexual slavery that is allowed by the administration. We all experience the same degrading inhumane conditions in the dungeon. The same lack of medical care. All of us,” I told them, “white and black prisoners, suffer for the same reasons.” They listened to what I had to say. I felt I was making progress.
In August, I got into a beef with a freeman. I don’t remember what it was about but I was put in the Red Hat for a few days. Outside the temperature was in the 90s. Inside the three-by-six-foot cell in the Red Hat, it felt double that. I sat on the concrete bunk. I stood and sweat ran off me from thinking. Sometimes I felt cheated, knowing that being born black pretty much determined where I’d wind up. I thought it was sad that I had to come to prison to find out there were great African Americans in this country and in this world, and to find role models that I should have had available to me in school. What helped me was that I knew I wasn’t a criminal anymore. I considered myself to be a political prisoner. Not in the sense that I was incarcerated for a political crime, but because of a political system that had failed me terribly as an individual and a citizen in this country. This crystallized within me in the Red Hat.
Solitary Page 9
