Solitary

by Albert Woodfox

  Chapter 23

  Gary Tyler

  Around that time, between 1974 and 1975, after our constant protests, CCR prisoners were given yard. Some CCR prisoners hadn’t been outside in decades. They built six long rectangular pens out of chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The pens extended out from one gated entrance. From the sky it looked like a hand with six fingers. We got yard for one hour—in place of our hour on the tier—three times a week, weather permitting. It was a huge relief to be outside. Some days when I hit the yard I ran laps and didn’t stop the whole hour.

  The recreation department put a weight pile at one end of each yard and gave us small plastic footballs out there to play catch with. We threw the ball to one another over the fences, but when the balls got caught in the barbed wire they easily tore and became useless. Herman came up with the idea to make a ball out of old socks. He put rags in a sock and folded it a certain way and put it in another sock and that launched the sock ball phenomenon. Everybody started making sock balls; we called them “big thumpers.” Soon we were all running behind them when we were out on the yard. I could throw one over three pens. We always threw them to the opposite part of the pen from where the prisoner was standing so he’d have to chase after it. If you missed a catch or dropped the ball you had to do 20 push-ups or bench presses. For the most part, the freemen didn’t bother us on the yard. We were loud, trash-talking each other, playing catch. Sometimes in the summer I went out there, unbuttoned the top of my jumpsuit, rolled up my pants legs, and lay down on the grass for the whole hour.

  One time in winter when I got out to the yard it was freezing cold and the grass was covered in a light layer of frost. The freeman made some comment to me like, “Too bad you’re going to miss yard today.” I didn’t like his condescending tone so I bent down and took off my shoes and ran laps in the frost with no shoes on. Many of us did this. We did it to give the impression that we were unbreakable, that we were determined, that there was no backing down within us, that the value of our struggle was more important than our own safety, our own comfort, our own lives, and our own freedom. Eventually they laid a concrete walk on each yard so we could go out even if the yard flooded with rain. It was great to feel the space of outside and breathe the fresh air. But none of that relieved the pressure of knowing we were going back into the cell.

  On October 7, 1975, Herman, King, and I heard on the radio that a 17-year-old black student named Gary Tyler had been convicted of shooting and killing a white 13-year-old boy. He was sentenced to death and would be the youngest prisoner in America on death row. They were bringing him to Angola. We heard through the prison grapevine that when Gary arrived at Angola some of the freeman were going to put him in the hole with a “rape artist”—a prisoner who “specialized” in raping young prisoners. We weren’t going to let that happen.

  The day they brought Gary to Angola all three of us checked into the dungeon. The CCR dungeon wasn’t as crowded as the main prison dungeon, usually no more than two or three to a cell. They put Gary in the cell next to us with two other guys. I don’t remember all that was said but we made it known to those men that Gary was under our protection. One of the prisoners checked out that night. We introduced ourselves to Gary and told him who we were: members of the Black Panther Party. He could contact us, and whatever he needed we were there for him. I think we spent two or three days down there with him. We told him he now lived in a world of violent struggle, one we called “armed struggle,” because that’s what it was. They had blackjacks, bats, and gas guns. We tried to prepare him to survive. We told him he had to arm himself with knowledge and stay focused on what’s going on in society and not the bullshit that happens inside prison. He told us his story, how he was framed for killing a white boy.

  Gary was one of dozens of black children put on buses and sent to white schools in Louisiana to integrate them in 1974. One day more than 100 white students and adults at Gary’s school, Destrehan High School, stopped the bus carrying the black students, throwing bottles and rocks and yelling racial slurs. During the riot a white 13-year-old student in the crowd, Timothy Weber, was shot and killed. The driver said the shot had come from outside the bus. The bus and students were thoroughly searched and no gun was found. The black students were brought to the police station and interrogated. Gary was charged with disturbing the peace when he resisted being bullied at the precinct, and then he was charged with murder. He was badly beaten. Later, a gun was “found” in the seat where Gary Tyler had been sitting. Years later that gun was identified by officers of the parish sheriff’s department as having come from a firing range frequented by police. Eventually, the witnesses who testified against Gary recanted, saying they gave false statements because they were threatened and intimidated by police.

  With grace and strength, Gary endured the unimaginable torture of being sentenced to death and locked up on death row for a crime he didn’t commit, at age 17. When his sentence was changed to “life without parole,” he endured more than seven years of solitary confinement at CCR, then he spent more than 30 years in the prisoner population at Angola as a mentor, leader, and teacher. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a sentence of life without parole for juvenile offenders was unconstitutional, and four years later the Court ruled that the decision could be applied retroactively. Tyler was released from prison in April 2016. I’m continually inspired by Gary Tyler. Upon release, he immediately started working to help people in his community.

  Chapter 24

  Food Slots

  One of the most degrading practices at CCR was being served our meals on the floor. There were no slots in our cell doors that a tray would fit through, so the orderlies put our food trays on the floor outside our cells and we had to slide them under our cell doors. Sometime in the midseventies it got to us. The tier was dirtier than usual. It hadn’t been cleaned in a week. King was in the cell next to me. He and I started talking back and forth. “Man, I can’t believe this shit. They’re sliding the food across the dirt to us like we’re dogs.”

  “They’re treating us like we’re animals in the zoo.”

  “I’m not a goddamn animal, I’m a man.”

  “This is degrading and dehumanizing.”

  “When are we going to demand to be treated like men?”

  We reached out to Herman and he said, Let’s go. We filed a petition of grievance with the warden complaining about being fed off the floor like animals. We asked that food slots be cut into our cell doors so that we could be fed like human beings. We asked him to get back to us within two weeks. We spent the following days talking to the other prisoners on our tiers, building a consensus. We never heard back from the warden and decided to go on a hunger strike. We circulated a letter to all the CCR tiers asking prisoners for their support. Everyone on all the tiers signed on to participate.

  They still delivered our meals. Three times a day. When they put the trays on the floor outside our cells we left them there. We only drank water from the sinks in our cells. After a week or so of not eating I didn’t have a lot of energy to do anything. After two weeks, I stopped going out on the yard. We sat on the floor by the bars and talked a lot. It sounds crazy but we talked about food. We described our favorite dishes in detail to one another, meals our mothers made, our women made, our favorite foods. Someone would say, “Man, nobody can fry a pork chop like my mom, with meat falling off the bone” or “My mom made the best red beans in the world.” We talked about what would be the first meal we ate when we got out of prison. Occasionally an orderly came to our cells to tell on a guy down the tier who took a bite of food off his tray. We overlooked that. We didn’t want to call anyone out and then have men turn on one another. It’s very difficult to resist food sitting in front of you when you’re starving. Even harder because the quality of the food was mysteriously improved during those weeks. They served fried chicken, sausage, and fried fish—not the normal meals. At least once a day one of the ranking officers would come onto
the tier, saying something like, “You ready to eat now? You gonna eat?” Some prisoners would just say no, some would mouth off and say, “Man, what’s it look like? Why you asking me stupid shit like that? No I ain’t going to eat.” Then the officer would say something like, “Man, I’m just doing my job,” and leave.

  After a few weeks, two of the tiers on CCR started eating again. D tier, where King and I were, and A tier, where Herman was, stayed on the hunger strike. It was extremely painful, sometimes excruciating. When the body doesn’t get nourishment, it starts to feed on itself, at least that’s what it felt like. After about 40 days King, Herman, and I wrote back and forth asking one another how long we were going to do this. Everybody’s cheekbones and collarbones were jutting out from weight loss.

  Just when we were discussing other strategies to get the prison to cut food slots, the administration sent a prisoner from A tier to talk to me and King. He said security officials wanted to know what it would take to call off the hunger strike. We told him we wanted slots cut in the doors. King added that while we waited for the slots to be cut, we wanted to be able to hold our trays through the bars while eating, rather than drag our food under the filthy cell doors. The next day, camp supervisors came onto the tier and announced that they were going to cut the food slots and that we could stand and eat through the bars if we wanted to. We agreed, having no idea that we would eat standing at our bars for the next year and a half. Our hunger strike lasted 45 days. The first meal served after we went off the hunger strike was breakfast. We stood at our cell doors as they were passing out the trays and I was about to reach my hand through the bars for my tray until I saw it was oatmeal. I hated oatmeal. After waiting for so long I could go a couple of hours more for lunch.

  At first, we held our trays through the bars with one hand and fed ourselves with the other hand, then King had the idea to make slings from strips of T-shirt or other fabric that we could hang from our bars and rest our trays on while we ate. Someone put cardboard in his sling to make a little shelf and then we all did that. Some guys elaborately decorated their cardboard. It took us weeks to get our strength back. Over 18 months prison officials cut slots in the bars in almost every cellblock in the prison before they got to CCR. They hoped to break us during that time so we would give in and eat food passed under the cell door off the floor again. They didn’t succeed. When they started cutting slots at CCR they cut all the slots on A, B, and C tiers before they got to D tier, where King and I were housed. When they finally got to our tier they cut all the slots in the cell doors except for four. They said they ran out of materials. Those of us on D tier—even the prisoners who had slots cut—continued to eat standing. Weeks later we threatened another hunger strike if they didn’t finish cutting the slots on our tier. Later that day we saw the truck bringing in welding equipment out the window. They finished the job. Prison officials had hoped to break the unity on our tier that had held us together for 18 months. They couldn’t.

  A year later King was sent to a punishment program called Camp J for resisting strip searches. At Camp J they were still pushing trays under the cell doors at mealtimes. King had to start all over again, educating the other prisoners about their rights. He refused to touch food from a tray that had been on the floor. Prison officials wouldn’t let him hang a sling on his door and eat at his bars at Camp J. So he talked to the orderlies who brought the food individually, and most allowed him to take the tray from them with his outstretched hand through the bars, and with his other hand he removed the paper plates of food, folding them to bring them through his bars into his cell. He ate like that for two years. They cut the food slots at Camp J after King was moved back to CCR.

  In 1977 prison authorities finally released the “stipulation and consent decree,” signed by state and federal officials, outlining the changes that would be made to decentralize state prisons, reduce overcrowding, and improve conditions at Angola. The federal government would govern Louisiana state prisons for decades to come.

  A new warden, Ross Maggio, was appointed and he was credited with breaking up much of the power held by the families who had worked at Angola for generations. Violence was still prevalent in the main prison and out-camps, but over time it became less bloody, once the prison started using metal detectors to search prisoners. Guards used these on the men before they entered the dorms, and on the grounds, turning up knives and other weapons hidden there. In the following years—for decades—Angola would continually be in court for violating the consent decree, not following through on improvements or policies the state had agreed to. Twenty years after the judge’s ruling, the prison was still under federal control because the administration never completely fulfilled its obligations to meet the goals and standards in the agreement. Not until 1998, when Republicans passed a law in Congress that allowed any elected official to file in federal court to dissolve a consent decree if “most” of the conditions of the consent decree had been met, did Angola get out from under the Hayes Williams consent decree. When the consent decree was newly released we requested a copy of it. We didn’t know at the time that we were deliberately given an edited version that had CCR privileges redacted.

  Chapter 25

  My Greatest Achievement

  After years in prison and solitary confinement, I’d experienced all the emotions the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections wanted from me—anger, bitterness, the thirst to see someone suffer the way I was suffering, the revenge factor, all that. But I also became something they didn’t want or expect—self-educated. I could lose myself in a book. Reading was a bright spot for me. Reading was my salvation. Libraries and universities and schools from all over Louisiana donated books to Angola and for once, the willful ignorance of the prison administration paid off for us, because there were a lot of radical books in the prison library: Books we wouldn’t have been allowed to get through the mail. Books we never could have afforded to buy. Books we had never heard of. Herman, King, and I first gravitated to books and authors that dealt with politics and race—George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Steve Biko, Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, J. A. Rogers’s From “Superman” to Man. We read anything we could find on slavery, communism, socialism, Marxism, anti-imperialism, the African independence movements, and independence movements from around the world. I would check off these books on the library order form and never expect to get them until they came. Leaning against my wall in the cell, sitting on the floor, on my bed, or at my table, I read.

  The inmate librarians took care of these books. Years later I dropped a lawsuit because one of the prisoners who worked in the library asked me to. I was suing the prison for censoring a book about COINTELPRO they wouldn’t let me get through the mail. The prisoner librarian came to the tier to talk to me. He said he was worried that if the lawsuit went through the administration would do an inventory of the prison library and we’d lose a lot of books. He told me he’d make sure I got a copy of the book I wanted, and he did.

  As I started to read more I began to learn about world and American history: the 1791 slave rebellion in Haiti led by Toussaint Louverture, the coal miners’ strikes and labor and union movements across the United States, President Andrew Jackson’s massacre of Native Americans while they were being removed from their ancestral lands. I did a lot of soul-searching while reading. The words of the Vietnamese revolutionary communist leader Ho Chi Minh resonated with me when I read that he told the invading French army something like, “We are willing to die ten to one, are you?” That got me at my core, that willingness to sacrifice.

  When I read George Jackson’s Soledad Brother, I saw how even though he was fucked around by the system he never used that as an excuse not to step up. I was on D tier when I read that book in my cell. “The nature of life,” he wrote, “struggle, permanent revolution; that is the situation we were born into. There are other peoples on this earth. In denying their existence and turning inward in our misery and accepting an
y form of racism we are taking on the characteristic of our enemy. We are resigning ourselves to defeat. . . . History sweeps on, we must not let it escape our influence this time!!!!”

  Malcolm X taught me how to think of the big picture, to connect the dots.

  I requested biographies and autobiographies of women and men even if I didn’t agree with their politics or principles. Studying them helped me develop my own values and my own code of conduct. King was also a big reader; we read a lot of the same books and discussed them. He also loved fiction and literature and read Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and all J. R. R. Tolkien’s books many times over. We both read everything written by Louis L’Amour. I loved philosophy, geography, economics, biology, and other sciences. I could always find something valuable in whatever I read. I even appreciated books by religious writers like Mother Teresa, though I was not religious. She wrote that to be real, a sacrifice must hurt, and empty us. I could relate to that. She wrote that more than our own weaknesses, we must believe in love.

  My proudest achievement in all my years in solitary was teaching a man how to read. His name was Charles. We called him Goldy because his mouth was full of gold teeth. He was a few cells down from me on D tier. I could tell he couldn’t read but was trying to hide it. I knew the signs because my mom did the same things to hide the fact she couldn’t read. One day I told him about my mom, about her accomplishments. I told him she couldn’t read or write and asked him if he could. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” I said. He told me he never learned to read because he didn’t go to school. “When I was coming up we didn’t have nothing,” he said. “We had to go and get it.”