Tag Archives: Black Panthers

national news

Forty-five years in isolation … then freedom

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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.

Read the NY Times story here.

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.

 

national news

Klansman statement is soaked in irony

Time for a pop quiz, ladies and gentlemen.

You ready? Here goes: What comes into your mind — immediately — when you hear the term “Ku Klux Klan”?

Time’s up.

The answer should be: hatred, bigotry, violence, virulent and vicious racism and anti-Semitism.

It is with that context established that I must offer a brief comment on a statement offered this weekend at a clash between supporters of the KKK and the Black Panthers, who gathered in front of the South Carolina state capitol to protest the taking down of the Confederate flag. The flag came down as a response to the heinous murders of nine African-Americans at a church in Charleston, S.C., by a white gunman. A young man is accused of the crime.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/19/us/south-carolina-kkk-black-panther-rally/index.html

The KKK and the Panthers rallied today to express different points of view of the flag.

One comment stands out, at least to me. It came from a Klansman, who told CNN: “The Confederate flag does not represent hate. A lot of Americans died for that flag,”

Ah, yes. It “does not represent hate.”

Back to my question about the Klan: What words come to mind when you hear the term?

I’ve actually covered a couple of Klan rallies. Both were in Texas; one in Orange and one in Amarillo. They took place to protest government policies that helped African-Americans. What was the predominant symbol seen at both rallies? The Confederate battle flag.

Let’s recall — if we need reminding — that the Klan has a long and infamous history of violence toward blacks and Jews. Lynching? Shootings? Arson? Cross-burnings?

And they have performed these acts while standing next to or under the Confederate battle flag. They’ve wrapped themselves in that banner. They proclaimed proudly that they stand for what the flag stands for. And that would be … ?

The Klansman is right about one element of his statement. A “lot of Americans” did die for the flag. He didn’t say, apparently, that they fought on the side that sought to tear the country apart. Why was that? Because they fought that that euphemistic principle of “states’ rights,” which was to allow states to continue the practice of slavery.

So, let’s quit slinging the horse manure around on this issue.