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Solitary summary

Name: Solitary
Rating: 4.6 (22 reviews)
Author: Albert Woodfox

Albert Woodfox

Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement. My Story of Transformation and Hope

4.6 (22 ratings)

31 mins

Brief summary

Solitary by Albert Woodfox is a memoir about his four decades in solitary confinement, the longest solitary confinement in US history. He writes about his struggle for justice, his activism, and his friendship with fellow political prisoners.

Topics

Race Memoirs

Table of Contents

Solitary
Summary of 10 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 10

What’s in it for me? Hear about one man’s harrowing story of racial injustice and inhumane treatment in a Louisiana prison.

It’s hard to comprehend the painful reality of solitary confinement. To be locked in a six by nine foot cell, with just one hour’s release a day, is unimaginable for most of us. Albert Woodfox lived like this for over 40 years.

Woodfox’s story is a grueling tale of racial injustice. He was framed for the murder of a prison guard. There was no forensic evidence against him. Witness statements were contradictory. But that didn’t stop an all-white jury from reaching a guilty verdict.

Woodfox’s resistance to abuse, and agitation for change, ensured he was a target for prison guards. But somehow, Woodfox found the inner strength not just to survive, but to educate himself, and to improve the lives of the prisoners around him.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

the depths to which the criminal justice system will sink to keep a black activist in prison;
how tear gas attacks and sexual slavery were accepted parts of prison life in Louisiana; and
how racial injustice is still widespread in the criminal justice system today.

Woodfox grew up surrounded by poverty and racism, and led a chaotic early life.

In 1947, Albert Woodfox was born in the “Negro” ward of Charity Hospital in New Orleans. His mother, Ruby Edwards, was 17 years old. His father was long gone.

He was one of five children and grew up in intense poverty. His mother was illiterate, but worked hard to provide for the family. Sometimes she did odd jobs, sometimes she worked as a barmaid. Other times she sold her body for money. She did what she had to, to give her children a better life. But times were tough, and sometimes in order to eat, Woodfox needed to steal bread or go fishing in the Bayou St. John.

The key message here is: Woodfox grew up surrounded by poverty and racism, and led a chaotic early life.

In New Orleans in the fifties and sixties, racism was ever-present and segregation was a legal reality. Woodfox could go to the movies, but was only allowed to sit in the balcony. As Woodfox grew up, he noticed the impact of racism more and more. He saw how white people called black adults ‘girl,’ or ‘boy,’ and realized how disrespectful it was.

Woodfox’s young life was mostly lived on the street. At age 12, he and his friends got involved in petty crimes, like stealing flowers from graveyards and selling them to tourists, or stealing bread from delivery trucks. Woodfox got better and better at leaping fences while running from the police. But when he got caught, the policemen – almost always white at the time – would search his pockets for cash to steal, before beating him.

Over time, Woodfox’s young pranks turned into more serious crimes. After getting mixed up in a car theft, Woodfox was sentenced to two years at a local jail named Thibodaux, where he was put on trash pickup duty along a nearby highway. He ran away after a few weeks, without any particular plan in mind. While escaping, he came across and stole a cement mixer, and drove it at 10 miles an hour back to New Orleans. He was almost home when cops spotted him and gave chase.

The police caught Woodfox and beat him badly, before charging him with escape, theft, and multiple other charges. This time, Woodfox wouldn’t be returning to the low security Thibodaux jail. He was going to the notorious Angola prison.

Louisiana’s Angola prison was a hellish environment where racism, corruption, rape, and violence reigned.

Angola had once been a slave plantation. When Woodfox arrived there in 1965, it didn’t look or feel much different to one. African American prisoners worked the fields of the 18,000 acre site, while white prison guards holding shotguns yelled racist slurs at them.

After arriving, Woodfox and other new prisoners spent 30 days in a reception center. Then they were released into the prison itself. This was known as ‘fresh fish day.’ It was the day when the prison’s sexual predators identified their targets.

Woodfox escaped from custody and wound up in a New York prison, where the Black Panthers changed his life.

Back in New Orleans, Woodfox’s criminal behavior escalated to the point he was running armed robberies in stores and bars.

One crime Woodfox never committed was rape. But he was charged with it. The police arrested Woodfox for an armed robbery he’d committed, but also charged him with all the unsolved thefts, robberies, and rapes on their books. Cleaning the books like this was a common tactic at the time. The result was that innocent black men would often take a plea bargain, choosing a prison sentence for a crime they didn’t commit, rather than languishing in jail for several years just waiting for a trial.

The Black Panthers were a positive force, and gave Woodfox identity, self-respect and hope.

Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were college students in Oakland, California, when they founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. The party grew out of attempts to stop police brutality in black neighborhoods.

Newton and Seale started a ‘copwatching’ program to monitor the police harassment, intimidation, beatings, shootings, and killings that were a fact of life in their neighborhood.

Woodfox set up a new branch of the Black Panthers in Angola, and was punished for it.

Back in Angola, Woodfox was determined to spread the positive approach of the Black Panthers, and to take action to improve life in prison.

Tackling rape was a priority. Along with Herman Wallace, another Black Panther among the prisoners, Woodfox set up an anti-rape group. On ‘fresh fish day,’ the group met new prisoners, told them that the Black Panther Party would protect them, and escorted them to their dorms.

Conditions in solitary confinement were bleak, but Woodfox tried to improve them.

In solitary confinement, Woodfox’s new cell was six by nine feet. He could take five steps up the cell, and five steps back. There was a bunk, a ceramic toilet and sink, and a metal table and bench. Across the hallway from Woodfox’s cell there was a window.

There was no outside exercise yard for prisoners in the CCR, so some prisoners hadn’t gone outside for years. Once a day, for an hour, the prisoners were allowed out of their cells, and could walk the hallway, or take a shower. There was no hot water, and no fans in summer. Rats and mice ran the halls at night.

Woodfox’s conviction for the murder of Brent Miller was a racist miscarriage of justice.

As trial for the murder of Miller approached, local Black Panthers set up a support committee to raise funds for Woodfox’s defense. Its members included a white activist couple, Harry and Jill Schafer, who both took leadership roles on the committee.

No funds ever arrived. Inside Angola, Woodfox assumed that people had just moved on. Later he learned that the Schafers were paid $16,000 a year by the FBI to disrupt local activist organizations. FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act showed that the Schafers had sabotaged efforts to get lawyers for Woodfox, and for Wallace, who was standing trial separately. The men were instead represented by a young, inexperienced lawyer.

Throughout Woodfox’s solitary confinement, conditions were cruel and inhumane.

As the generation of guards who had personally known Brent Miller moved on, new guards arrived. Many admitted that, during their training, they’d been told that Woodfox, Wallace and King were dangerous and militant prisoners. The new guards were surprised to discover that the Angola Three, as they’d come to be known, weren’t violent racist bullies, but polite prisoners with good records.

But there were always guards who relished their power and control. In just one of many incidents in the 1980s, a guard opened Woodfox’s cell door to allow another prisoner to beat Woodfox up. Woodfox defended himself. In an example of the system’s perversity, the state used a write-up of the incident as an example of Woodfox’s violence, and a justification for keeping him in solitary confinement.

Throughout his long battle, the criminal justice system worked against Woodfox.

Woodfox fought a long battle for his freedom. He and his lawyers filed many appeals, and appeared at many hearings over the course of a decade.

In one reindictment proceeding in 1993, he faced a grand jury that included amongst its members a woman called Anne Butler. Butler was the wife of C. Murray Henderson, the warden of Angola who had helped to frame Woodfox for the murder, 20 years before.

Woodfox secured his freedom, but his fight for racial justice goes on.

In 2016, after countless appeals and legal battles, Woodfox finally had the opportunity for a retrial. But his lawyers made a suggestion. Take a deal based on time served, they said.

Woodfox was never willing to accept guilt in return for freedom. But this time, he had the opportunity to make a no contest plea. His conviction would stand, but he could maintain his innocence. And he’d be free. The alternative of a retrial carried a chance of reconviction, and with it, the rest of his life behind bars.

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What is Solitary about?

Solitary (2019) is the punishing tale of an African American man’s brutal treatment at the hands of the criminal justice system in Louisiana. In and out of prison as a young man, Albert Woodfox was framed for a murder he didn’t commit, apparently due to his membership in the Black Panther movement. He spent over 40 years in solitary confinement in a six by nine foot cell, treated inhumanely by a system that, by his account, is institutionally racist and cruel.

Best quote from Solitary

Prison is designed to break ones spirit and destroy ones resolve.

—Albert Woodfox

Who should read Solitary?

People who care about justice
Anyone searching for a better understanding of entrenched racial inequality

About the Author

Albert Woodfox was born in 1947 into a poor Louisiana family, and grew up in New Orleans. After 44 years of solitary confinement, during which time he educated himself and others, Woodfox was finally released in 2016. He is now an activist.

Categories with Solitary

Society & Culture Biography & Memoir

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