Wallace and Woodfox Injustice at Louisiana’s Angola Prison

March 31st, 2008

This is a letter from Color of Change about the latest injustice at the Louisiana State Prison at Angola; once a plantation and still is.

Dear Friend,

After a week of intense public pressure, officials at Angola prison moved Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox out of solitary confinement for the first time in 35 years. But they’re still locked up, for a crime everyone knows they didn’t commit.

ColorOfChange.org members have helped turn things around by making it a political liability for the authorities at Angola to keep Wallace and Woodfox in solitary confinement. I’ve joined them to keep the pressure on by forcing federal and state authorities to intervene and release these innocent men who have been punished for challenging the violence and segregation at Angola.

Will you join me?

www.colorofchange.org/angola3/?id=1456-138198

Prisoners picking cotton at Angola in 1999
Cotton Picking at Angola Penitentary courtesy of National Geographic

When ColorOfChange.org spoke up about the Jena 6, it was about more than helping six Black youth in a small town called Jena. It was about standing up against a system of unequal justice that deals an uneven hand based on the color of one’s skin. That broken system is at work again and ColorOfChange.org is joining The Innocence Project and Amnesty International to challenge it in the case of the Angola 3.

“Angola”, sits on 18,000 acres of former plantation land in Louisiana and is estimated to be one of the largest prisons in the United States. Angola’s history is telling: once considered one of the most violent, racially segregated prison in America, almost a prisoner a day was stabbed, shot or raped. Prisoners were often put in inhumane extreme punishment camps for small infractions. The Angola 3 - Herman, Albert and Robert - organized hunger and work strikes within the prison in the 70’s to protest continued segregation, corruption and horrific abuse facing the largely Black prisoner population.

Shortly after they spoke out, the Angola 3 were convicted of murdering a prison guard by an all-white jury. It is now clear that these men were framed to silence their peaceful revolt against inhumane treatment. Since then, they have spent every day for 35 years in 6×9 foot cells for a crime they didn’t commit.

Herman and Albert are not saints. They are the first to admit they’ve committed crimes. But, everyone agrees that their debts to society for various robbery convictions were paid long ago.

NBC News/Dateline just aired a piece this week about the plight of the Angola 3. And it’s time to finally get some justice for Herman and Albert. For far too long, court officials have stalled and refused to review their cases. Evidence of prosecutorial misconduct and constitutional violations have not swayed them.

It’s now time for the Governor of Louisiana and the United States Congress, which provides the funding for federal prisons like Angola, to step in and say enough is enough. Please join us in calling for Governor Bobby Jindal and your Congressperson to initiate an immediate and full investigation into the case of the Angola 3.

www.colorofchange.org/angola3/?id=1456-138198

Thanks.

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2 Responses to “Wallace and Woodfox Injustice at Louisiana’s Angola Prison”

  1. rawdawgbuffalo on March 31st, 2008 4:12 pm | link

    Man u should go to the prisons with me and see the info i get. dont suprise me none

  2. D. Yobachi Boswell on March 31st, 2008 5:55 pm | link

    You live near there Rawdawg?

    One of my “play cousins” (if you will) oldest brother is in there for life. If I get to spend some time in Louisiana this summer, I might go with her to visit him.

    My family reunion is in Texas this year, instead of Mississippi like normal; so I don’t know if I’ll be able to make to Louisiana or not, because during the reunion is normally when I would go.

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  • D. Yobachi Boswell

  • Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.

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