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Resistance In Racist Hellhole:
by Richard Becker, Amite LA Angola prison and the Black Panthers

The retrial of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace in the small town of Amite, LA, began the same week as events worldwide and in this country marking the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace were tried and convicted in 1973 for the killing of a guard, Brent Miller, in the Angola State Prison the previous year. Woodfox and Wallace, the Angola 2, were convicted on the bought testimony of 2 fellow prisoners, and condemned to life in prison. Woodfox served the next 20 years in solitary confinement, Wallace remains in solitary today. A quarter of a century in solitary confinement -isn't that a violation of human rights?

As cruel and inhuman as their sentences were, the conditions in Angola they were fighting against were even greater violations of people's most basic human rights. Woodfox and Wallace were organizers of the Black Panther Party inside Angola. Brent Miller was white, as were all the guards then. Angola labeled by many as the worst prison in the United States, was still a thoroughly segregated institution in 1972. The white prisoners all lived in their own complex, went to the dining hall first, and so on.

Angola is located on 16,000 acres of what used to be a cotton plantation, and is still run like a plantation. In 1972, prisoners made 3 cents an hour cutting sugar cane, picking cotton and growing food in the often stifling heat and humidity of Southern Louisiana. The prison administrators and guards shared in the benefits, according to their rank. 

There were only 300 "freemen," as the white guards and staff were called, for an overwhelmingly African American population of 4,500. To maintain control of their corrupt and racist system, the prison administration allowed prisoner "cliques" to select inmate guards. The administration armed them with rifles to use against other prisoners. Rape and enslavement, especially of young prisoners, was common practice, tolerated and encouraged by the administration. A pervasive network of snitches existed: prisoners who provided information in exchange for favors. 

The horrors of Angola prison began to become known nationally in the 1960’s. In one dramatic incident, a group of white prisoners cut their Achilles tendons to protest conditions. A Black prisoner died of heat stroke after being locked in a box without food and water for 5 days.

Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace and the Angola Chapter of the BPP fought to change these conditions. The Panther program called for uniting the prisoners, both Black and white and for ending violence and exploitation among inmates. They organized to improve working conditions through work stoppages and other job actions. The BPP helped illiterate prisoners learn to read and write. Prisoner organizers faced fascist like repression. But they were succeeding.

In the dormitories where the BPP became the leadership, violence among prisoners largely came to an end, replaced by a new sense of unity. The Panthers were threatening the old, corrupt system and this was what the administration feared the most. This is why they framed Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace. Both were railroaded after short trials in St Francisville, the town right outside the Angola prison walls.

In the 3 years that followed, more than 30 prisoners, many of them BPP supporters, were killed or disappeared. Some of their bodies were exhumed from the surrounding swamps decades later. But their struggle was not in vain. Like the rebellions in Attica San Q Quentin and many other prisons across the country, the resistance in Angola forced some limited concessions from the authorities. These struggles expose the reality that U.S. prisons are really racist concentration camps for poor people. Woodfox and Wallace, despite all they have been through, have never surrendered their convictions. Together with their comrade Robert Wilkerson, they have worked from within the maximum security unit to help dozens of prisoners win their freedom through legal briefs. Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace should be recognized as true people's heroes. They should, at long last, be set free!

For more information or to help , contact:
Angola 3 Support Committeee
P.O. Box 21100
Sacramento, CA

STOKLEY SPEAKS: Solidarity with Latin America

"Black children in North America grow up aspiring only to enter white society - not only because white society eats better, is housed and clothed better, and can make a better living, but also because they have been bombarded by the white-controlled communications media and educated by black teachers with white minds that white is better, white is beautiful. You need Anglo features, manner of speech, and aspirations, if you are to be successful, even within the black community. The white man hardly needs to police his colonies within this country, for he has plundered the culture and enslaved the minds of the people of color until their resistance is paralyzed by self-hate. An important fight in the Third World therefore is the fight for cultural integrity... One of our major battles is to root out corrupt Western values, and our resistance cannot prevail unless our cultural 
integrity is restored and maintained."

Eddie Conway: Imprisoned Baltimore Black Panther Fights For Justice

"I am a political prisoner in the State of Maryland. I did not receive a fair trial because of the political climate against the Black Panther Party in 1970. I have now served over 26 years in the Maryland Prison System. In 1970, as a member of the Black Panther Party, I was framed for the murder of a Baltimore City Policeman, and the shooting of two other city police. I am innocent. Over the past 26 years, a group of supporters have been working for my release. We have struggled through the court process, and not received justice. We have progressed through the parole process. I have met all the requirements necessary to receive parole, and then without warning, they change the rules. We have now reached an impasse that can only be overcome with mass support."

With inadequate legal defense, Marshall Eddie Conway was railroaded into prison. He was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 30 years. Eddie Conway contends his name was just one, on a long list of COINTELPRO victims. For his part, Eddie has remained strong, providing leadership in inmate councils and coordinating meaningful programs for other inmates. He actively conducts legal research to aid his and other prisoners’ legal defense.

The legal and political work around Conway's case continues. Funds are needed to help the committee's work to win freedom for Eddie Conway. Please send copies of letters addressed to Maryland Governor, Parris Glendening, (who has stated that he will deny parole for practically all prisoners serving life sentences) and to the Maryland Parole Board, supporting Eddie's petition for parole to:

THE MARSHALL EDDIE CONWAY SUPPORT COMMITTEE
Post Office Box 41144
Baltimore, Maryland 21203-6144
Telephone Number 410-276-7221

George Jackson: Soledad Brother

"I am an extremist. I call for extreme measure to solve extreme problems... International Capitalism cannot be destroyed without the extremes of struggle. The entire colonial world is watching the blacks inside the U.S., wondering and waiting for us to come to our senses. Their problems and struggles with the Amerikan monster are much more difficult than they would be if we actively aided them. We are on the inside. We are the only ones (besides the very small white minority left) who can get at the monster's heart without subjecting the world to nuclear fire. We have a momentous historical role to act out if we will. The whole world for all time in the future will love us and remember us as the righteous people who made it possible for the world to live on. If we fail through fear and lack of aggressive imagination, then the slaves of the future will curse us, as we sometimes curse those of yesterday. ..I want to leave a world that is liberated from trash, pollution, racism, poverty, nation-states, nation-state wars and armies, from pomp, bigotry, parochialism, a thousand different brands of untruth, and licentious usurious economics."