A3N: Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox's 40 years in solitary began after they organized a chapter of the Black Panther Party at Angola Prison. Shorty after acclaimed prison author George Jackson started a BPP chapter at San Quentin Prison in California, he was assassinated, and his closest known comrades were prosecuted as the San Quentin Six. The last of the Six behind bars is Hugo Pinell, now in solitary confinement for over 42 years--currently held at the notorious Pelican Bay supermax prison.
We know that Angola warden Burl Cain has justified Albert Woodfox's continued placement in solitary by citing his practice and belief in "Black Pantherism." What do you think it is about the Panthers and their legacy today that prison authorities find so threatening?
AB: The media very effectively taught the world that the Black Panthers were nothing more than a gun toting militia group. Schools have omitted meaningful lessons about the Black Panthers from their curriculum. The Government, through its COINTELPRO program, criminalized the Panthers and led a campaign to discredit them.
With all these competing forces, the average citizen is left to his or her own devices to investigate and reach a conclusion about the Panthers. I don't think we are there yet as a society. And I especially don't think most Louisiana, politically-appointed, prison administrators shape their viewpoints of those in their custody after engaging in a balanced study of issues concerning racial history and social change organizations.
Your question asks about "prison authorities." I offer a more limited response because, in my view, the Louisiana prison experience, and certainly the Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola) prison structure, warrants a particularized response. This is said because the 13th Amendment, legalizing slavery in prison, means something very different in a former slave state than it does where slavery was not practiced. The 13th Amendment also takes on a different form on plantation land, which is what Angola is. In a former slave state, like Louisiana, free labor has always been a commodity in high demand. When there are opportunities to get free labor or to be compensated for housing human cargo, some act aggressively to capture the prey. In those cases, it's the prey that is being hunted and not the politics that is being challenged.
In other cases, there is sheer ignorance about the fact that the Black Panthers wanted much of what mainstream America wants. They wanted to see men be providers and leaders in their homes and communities and they wanted to see their communities be functional and not dysfunctional. They wanted to see children respect authority and aspire for academic excellence. The Panthers strongly believed in self-reliance and community empowerment as opposed to government dependence. The Panthers did so many positive things for the community, like escorting the elderly to the bank, protecting their neighborhoods, educating the ignorant and the lost, and feeding the hungry.
Many prison administrators, like the general public, do not know this history. What is etched in their minds is the image of the guns that that media shows in the same way the media showed the images of African Americans "looting" or "taking" (and not "finding" or "needing") after Hurricane Katrina. With this limited understanding, one can see the basis for the perceived threat.
I will share one final perspective about the reaction of some prison officials to the Panthers. To some administrators, an African American man today is what the law named him yesterday: a piece of property. When such a person is confronted with a Panther, a non-pacifist type of African American, their innate and subconscious reaction is to do what is done to property that is misplaced. The inclination is to put it back in its proper place. Thus, many of the Panthers are being put in their places (solitary confinement) because what they represent as African American men is incomprehensible, intolerable and out of place. What is threatening about them is not the Panther affiliation necessarily, but the Panther mind and ideals. Some administrators are at their best without the fear of the consciousness that could be raised by such a person. As they see it, their regime would run more effectively with property because property doesn't move or speak back.
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