TH RO UGH T H E CA N E B RA K E
st o r ie s fo r a p ost-pr i son Loui si a na vol .1
Leah A. Kahler
A BOU T THE ANG OLA THR EE Rober t Woodfox , Herman Wal la nc e , a nd R o b e rt K i ng a re thre e Bl a ck activists formerly inca rc e rate d at A ng o l a a nd know n c ol l ectively as the Angola Th re e . Wa l l a c e a nd Wo o d fox b oth s er ve d more than 40 years in Ango l a’s Ca m p J, the l o ng e st p e ri o d of s ol itary confinement in Ameri c a n hi sto ry. The t hre e wo rke d in c on junction w ith the Black Pa nte r Pa rty to p rote st the c rue l c on d itions of sol itary confinement a nd to e nd m a ss i nc a rc e rati o n i n the U ni te d St ate s. Herman Wal lace was relea se d fro m A ng o l a i n 2013 a nd t ra g ic a l ly passed away le ss than a we e k af te r hi s re l ea se fro m c ompl ications due to a cancer unt reate d a nd ne g l e c te d by t he A ng o l a m e d i c a l st af f. Al bert Woodfox was relea se d af te r 43 yea rs i n so l i t a ry c on f inement in 2016 and has p ub l i she d a b e st- se l l i ng m e m o i r e nt i t l e d S ol i ta ry. Robe r t King was released in 200 1 a nd c o nt i nue s to se rve a s a n outspoken a d vo c ate fo r c ri m i na l j ust i c e .
T H ROU G H THE CANEB RAK E “OK, Woodfox, that’s enough! You know what time it is!” yelled the guard from inside the barracks. Like he had done for the past thirty-six years, Albert Woodfox, a member of The Angola Three started his walk back towards his 6 by 9-foot cell in Angola’s Camp J. The sun had just started to set, and Woodfox noticed a long shadow across the prison yard’s lawn that was not from the usual aluminum and barbed wire fence post or the guardtowers looming over the yard in perpetual anonymity. Instead, the shadow’s source was a short, slender bamboo sapling peeking through the sod. Glancing up to see how impatient the guard looked today, Woodfox stole the last few moments of his hour allotted outside of his cell to reach down and investigate this trespasser. He could swear the shoot had appeared just overnight. As soon as Woodfox’s fingers made contact with the cane sapling, the world around him began to dissolve piece by piece. First, the chain link
and barbed wire fence shimmered, sparkled, and then disappeared, then the dogs that patrolled beyond it, and finally the prison camp itself was gone. Terrified that he was once again falling ill and dreading the thought of returning to Angola’s overcrowded and neglectful infirmary, he blinked and rubbed his eyes. This attempt to restore his body to a normal perceptual state was met with a new vision even more incomprehensible to Woodfox. “Rob? Herman?” The two other members of the Angola 3, the Black Panther Party affiliated cadre of incarcerated men, stood right before his eyes. The three activists hadn’t been in each other’s physical presence in over 30 years, not since 1972 when they were framed for the murder of one of Angola’s guards and placed in indeterminate solitary confinement. Herman Wallace and Robert King looked nearly as bewildered as Woodfox felt, but the three men didn’t have time to ask about their arrival before they were struck by the sight of a roaring fire not fifty yards away from
where they stood. The three started walking towards the blaze in a sort of trance. Robert was the first to muster the strength to speak the suspicion all three held in their minds. “Y’all, we know this place. This is Angola. But it’s different.” To an outsider, it was hard to tell how they could be so sure. The place didn’t smell, sound, or look like the prison they had been confined to for a cumulative 115 years. The air seemed fresher, no longer stale from the confined spaces and men hard at work at The Farm. Where the endless and unholy repetition of cropland once stood — open and vast— the same plant that had transported the three men to this strange Angola blanketed the landscape. It grew tall and strong, even twenty feet in the air, forming a dense, nearly impenetrable wall of cane. They could just make out the derelict prison camp to which they were confined for twenty three hours a day. “Look… There’s a bunch of people over
there…” muttered Herman, pointing to a group of people of all ages holding garden clippers, blowers, and torches, hanging around Gators full of the long, flat cane. A little boy, no more than nine years hold, ran past the three and asked joyfully “What are y’all doing just standing there! The cane fire’s going to transition Camp J!” Herman, Robert, and Albert never got the change to ask the boy more about this “transition” the cane, or the fire before the shimmer started happening again. This time, they found themselves, in a landscape they knew wasn’t Angola. The edge of the Tunica Hills was gone, and the three could feel they were farther inland from the Mississippi River waters than they’d been since before they were sent to the prison. This time, they were standing outside of a beautiful circular building made of the same cane they’d just left burning in the fields of Angola. In front of the building’s doorway, they could see a group of women, young and old, sitting together and stripping the cane down to thin strands with
sharp handheld knives. By this point, the three friends’ fear and confusion had subsided, and they were more curious about this string of visions than anything else. Robert had his mind set that one of the weavers could give them clues to at least what the bamboo they were working with was called, since it seemed to be the only throughline between the visions so far. But as soon as he stepped across the cane threshold towards the weaving women inside, he, Herman, and Albert were once again sent through the shimmer. On the other side of the threshold was a watery landscape unlike anything they had ever seen at Angola’s leveed river. The riverbank where they stood was muddy and soft, and the throngs of people around them held fibrous rootwads in their hands. They were placing them along the slope. “Maybe if we stay put and just do what everyone else’s doin’, we can stay long enough to figure out what the hell’s goin’ on,” whispered Albert. The other two
nodded and made themselves busy placing the substantial plugs in the dark pudding beneath their feet. They could hear the other people working around them chatting cheerfully with the occasional interrupting of grunts from behind a shovel. After a while of seemingly stable ground, Albert worked up the courage to retrieve more of the cane to transplant. The sticker in the read “Arundinaria gigantea, var. Tunica - Giant River Cane” and the zip code listed was the same as the one to which his family members had addressed his letters at Angola for the better part of three decades. The digits and letters on the sticker brought a wash of clarity to Albert’s mind. During his work at the library before getting placed in solitary, he had discovered a book about the pre-settler ecology of the Delta. This was the same giant river cane that had once covered The Farm at Angola, that had thwarted settlers who wished to pass quickly and with great views as they surveyed the Delta frontier. He realized the series
of scene he, Robert, and Wallace had born witness to were freedom visions of the cane, an alternative dreamscape the three had been crafting alongside the plant for so many years working to fight against the brutality of the prison’s surveillance regime and the confinement to coerced agricultural labor. He whispered to Robert and Herman to that they should pay attention to everything around them, saying that he would explain when they were back. Robert looked at him with great disappointment. “Back?” he asked with grief that could only come from the realization that this was not a permanent break into solid state freedom. “Yes, back. We’ll be back in Camp J soon enough,” said Albert, trying to comfort his friends as they realize they would soon return to their 23+1 cellblock rhythm. “There’s work to finish. At least now, though we have remembered how to dream.”
L E ARN MORE AB O UT TH E F IG H T FOR A POST- P RI SON LOUISIA NA
VOT E (Voices of the Exp erienced) vot e n o l a . o rg D ecarcerate Louisiana d e c a rc e rat e l a . o rg Orle ans Parish Prison Refo rm Co a l i t i o n o p p rc . o rg Louisianians for Prison Alternat i ves p r i so n refo rm l a . o rg