{"id":13078,"date":"2016-02-22T00:11:27","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T00:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=13078"},"modified":"2016-02-22T00:11:27","modified_gmt":"2016-02-22T00:11:27","slug":"forty-five-years-in-isolation-then-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=13078","title":{"rendered":"Forty-five years in isolation … then freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"Igne-BianchiMiddle1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The strongest example of intestinal fortitude in America just might belong to a 69-year-old Louisiana man who today is free.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Read the NY Times story here.<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Then this man is told he can walk out and rejoin his family, or what’s left of it?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

That is some dubious distinction, don’t you think?<\/p>\n

Wow! I truly wish this man well as he attempts to build a life. If only he had a life worth rebuilding. <\/em>No sir. This fellow is starting from scratch.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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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 … Continue reading Forty-five years in isolation … then freedom<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[5980,659,5981,5982],"class_list":["post-13078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-albert-woodfox","tag-black-panthers","tag-lousiana-state-prison","tag-solitary-confinement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13078"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13081,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13078\/revisions\/13081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}