Solitary

Albert Woodfox (1947-) is an American activist and the author of Solitary, his memoir. In the book, he draws on his experiences spending more than four decades in solitary confinement—much of that for a crime he did not commit—to paint a picture of the corruption and inhumanity of the prison system, as well as how his commitment to principles helped him survive.

Woodfox was born in New Orleans and describes becoming aware of racism at an early age, in instances such as when his mother hid him from a passing police car and when a white girl grabbed the beads he’d been tossed from a passing Mardi Gras float and called him the n-word. Other manifestations of discrimination were more diffuse, such as the poverty in of the 6th Ward, the Black neighborhood where he grew up. He also realized his sixth-grade textbooks depicted life through a white lens, ignoring the Black experience that he knew. Throughout his life, Woodfox would encounter racism again and again via the police who beat him for evading arrest, the white guards who terrorized mostly Black prisoners at Angola, and the officials who framed him and kept him in solitary confinement because of his affiliation with the Black Panther Party.

Woodfox repeatedly interrogates the notion of what it means to be a criminal. As a child, he notes that the stealing he did was motivated by a need to obtain what he was denied by the poverty in which he lived. As an adult, he says his encounter with members of the Black Panther Party changed his perspective, encouraging him to see how in the segregated United States he had grown up in, to be Black in certain contexts was to break the law; “it was illegal for us to go to places where white people went” (66). After Woodfox was framed for the murder of Brent Miller, on the basis of the prison authority’s hatred and fear of him as member of the Black Panther Party, Woodfox came to consider himself not a criminal, but a political prisoner.

Woodfox’s involvement with the Black Panther Party was significant in another way, in that it brought him friendship with Herman Wallace and Robert King, the other members of the Angola 3, who would all end up unjustly incarcerated in solitary confinement and would draw on one another’s support to survive. These relationships were significant in Woodfox’s life because in the violent and unstable environment of the prison, they were rare examples of trust and kindness. They also shared many of the same principles Woodfox did, and together they protested for better conditions in the prison, protected other prisoners from poor treatment (sexual assault in particular), and, in Woodfox and King’s case, continued to advocate for an end to solitary confinement after release.

Woodfox’s describes the claustrophobia and monotony of life in solitary confinement throughout the book, and his own experience is a testament to the long-lasting effects of living in such conditions; in the book’s epilogue, he describes how he continues to only be able to sleep in short stretches, has ongoing episodes of claustrophobia, and is still speaking out against solitary confinement and institutional racism, for the sake of his great-grandchildren and for all people.