The strongest example of intestinal fortitude in America just might belong to a 69-year-old Louisiana man who today is free.
His name is Albert Woodfox. I read about him this morning in the Sunday New York Times and was astounded by what I learned about how he has spent the past 45 years.
Woodfox was an inmate in the Louisiana state prison in Angola. He had been accused of killing a prison guard in his home state. Woodfox had been a troubled young man. He lived a tough life in his native New Orleans. He joined the Black Panthers and became quite angry.
Then an incident occurred while he was in custody in 1971 for another crime. The guard who died, by the way, was a young white man. Woodfox was convicted of the crime and essentially tossed into solitary confinement for the next four-and-a-half decades.
I won’t go into the merits of the case. I don’t know enough about the circumstances, other than what I read in the Times.
Woodfox had maintained his innocence all along. Eventually, he pleaded no contest to manslaughter in the case — and then this past Friday he walked out a free man.
The most astonishing aspect of this story is how a human being can be kept in a 50-square-foot cell for nearly all his entire adult life and then find himself able to walk among the rest of society — free, unencumbered, unshackled, untethered.
Woodfox read a lot while he was in prison. Newspapers, books, law journals. He said he kept his faith and insists he never thought he’d “die in prison.”
Most of us go through trials that test our souls, not to mention our will to live. I can think of nothing more punishing than to be locked up in a room, with virtually no human contact.
Then this man is told he can walk out and rejoin his family, or what’s left of it?
Albert Woodfox’s incarceration is believed to be the longest involving solitary confinement — they call it “administrative segregation” these days — in U.S. corrections history.
That is some dubious distinction, don’t you think?
Wow! I truly wish this man well as he attempts to build a life. If only he had a life worth rebuilding. No sir. This fellow is starting from scratch.