Authors, scholars to highlight the cause of the Angola 3

Orissa Arend, Contributing Writer
Posted: Monday, May 18, 2009 2:31 pm

Showdown in Desire: The Black Panthers Take a Stand in New Orleans by Orissa Arend began as a series of columns in The Louisiana Weekly in 2002.
  
It was the creamy, sweet praline-like confection that Robert King learned to concoct in solitary confinement at Angola State Penitentiary that lured me to the Black Panther story and its corollary, three Panthers incarcerated in 1970 now known as the Angola 3. That and the righteousness of their cause. King had plenty of time to perfect the candy recipe with Coke cans and toilet paper rigged as a stove and smuggled ingredients, because they locked him down in the maximum way for 29 years, reasoning that the Black Panther philosophy of King and his comrades Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace threatened the social order at Angola.
 
Here’s how that philosophy worked: According to Herman Wallace, the Party’s revolutionary principles turned thugs and muggers, the “scum of the earth,” into protectors. “We created meaningful programs to save lives as opposed to destroying lives,” Wallace writes from prison recently. He advises challenging the cycle of violence today in exactly the way the Panthers confronted it 40 years ago, by “going among the ‘gangsters’ and ‘gang bangers’ and arming them with Methods of Thinking.” Wallace believes that the real leadership required in our current emergency situation with young brothers who are lost is to see it as our duty to go out and find them, arm them with principles instead of implements of destruction. “Without principles,” writes Wallace, “you are already doomed.”
 
Angola’s warden Burl Cain understands the power of principles. “I will never release these men from lockdown until they change their political beliefs,” he has stated. Woodfox and Wallace have been held in solitary confinement for a crime they did not commit since 1972, a full 37 years. The third member of the Angola 3, Robert King, was released in February of 2001 and works tirelessly to help free his comrades and bring attention to the plight of political prisoners in the United States and abroad. Albert’s conviction was overturned by a federal judge in 2008; yet he remains in solitary. A federal magistrate recommended a new hearing for Herman Wallace in 2006; yet he also remains in solitary confinement as the state of Louisiana continues to challenge their release.
 
In November of 2005, 72 days after Hurricane Katrina, the heavenly aroma of cooking sugar infused the mostly deserted neighborhood around my uptown New Orleans home on Lowerline Street. King was stirring a huge pot over a burner in the back yard in anticipation of that exact moment when the sugary goo begins to thicken and morph into candy. It has to do with heat, humidity, the motion of molecules, and an exquisite sense of timing. No point in watching. Only King can make it happen. He was setting up shop in Austin but using my house as his New Orleans base. Both of us were working on books and reinventing our lives in the face of post-Katrina realities.
 
We surveyed the ruins of our city, tried to figure out where friends were, and negotiated the occasional misunderstanding that arose from coexisting under stressful circumstances in a limited space with lots of other homeless friends. It would have been hard to imagine us both on tour now, our books published, our houses established, our goals once more visible and beckoning beyond the chaos. Actually, King probably never lost sight of any of that. That’s how he is. It was probably just me who couldn’t see much beyond my next meal. (Did I mention that all of my house guests were wonderful cooks?)
 
Anyway, now that we are back on track, we are holding a free public forum at Ashé Cultural Arts Center on Wednesday May 20, at 7:00p.m. called “Free the Angola 3 and All Political Prisoners: Strategies, Insight and Wisdom.” Panelists will include Robert King himself, former Black Panther and Green Party congressional candidate Malik Rahim, co-founder of Common Ground Collective and founding member of the Coalition to Free the Angola 3; former Black Panther Althea Francois, a lead organizer with Safe Streets/Strong Communities who coordinated the New Orleans chapter of the National Coalition to Free the Angola 3; and Jackie Sumell, an artist and co-creator with Herman Wallace of “The House that Herman Built,” an imaginary house described by Herman and displayed at the Contemporary Arts Center as a part of Prospect 1. Lance Hill, PhD, Carolyn Kolb, PhD, and Lawrence Powell, PhD will provide the historical context. Ted Quant, director of  Loyola’s Twomey Center for Peace through Justice, will moderate.
 
The original plan was to have Herman and Albert there too. Albert came so close to being released last Christmas that we were setting up places for him to work and live. On December 18, 2008 National Public Radio did a story about the overturned conviction and the judge who granted Woodfox bail. But Attorney General James Buddy Caldwell stepped in to handle the case himself with an emergency appeal (which was granted) to stop his release. Who knows why. In a 2008 deposition, Angola warden Burl Cain had this to say when asked to explain how Woodfox could be kept in solitary confinement for 36 years: “I still know he has the Black Pantherism.”
 
And indeed he does. It is what has kept him alive and sane. Writes Woodfox: “...the Panther Party no longer exists as an organized unit. But I would hope that as long as I, or any other comrade who once pledged to uphold the principles of the Black Panther Party, still lives, that ‘Power to the People’ is an eternity, a reality and an achievable goal, but only if we never give up in our struggles to serve and protect the people, as long as we keep the Panther Party alive in our hearts and memory.”
 
Herman Wallace’s case is at the State Supreme Court following a recommendation that his case also be overturned due to the failure to disclose the favors given to prison snitches who testified against him. In 2001 he said this about his conscious decision to become a social revolutionary: “It is not that we have been held captive for over 34 years in prison or that that is important; what is important is that we continue to hold high the principles of the Black Panther Party.”
 
“Time has changed our bodies, but not our resolve; nor has it taken our strength,” he continued. “Gray hairs adorn our head, but each grain is buried and cultivated by wisdom born of life’s experiences. Our souls are battered and bruised, but we remain defiant. We have lost family members, friends and comrades, but our spirits still soar!”

This article was originally published in the May 18, 2009 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper