It has been my experience that because of institutional and individual racism

Chapter 15
Herman Wallace
I first heard Herman Wallace’s name when I was in Orleans Parish Prison.
Like me, he came from New Orleans, was incarcerated for armed robbery,
and had his world changed after meeting members of the Black Panther Party
in prison. While I was learning from Panthers up in New York in the Tombs,
he was learning about the party from Panthers in the parish prison. “In prison
I met Chairman Mao, Marx and Engels, Chou En-lai, Fidel, Che, George
Jackson, Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, and especially Frantz Fanon,”
Herman once wrote. “I learned a whole new mode of thinking.” He vowed to
follow the Black Panther Party principles of Huey Newton and Bobby Seale,
as I had. I never knew him on the street but got to know him by sight in the
parish prison. We were on separate tiers but passed one another from time to
time on the way to or from court or on a lawyer call-out. Everybody called
him Hooks because of his bowlegged walk. I was known as Fox, but he
always called me Albert. We’d raise our handcuffed fists at our waists in
solidarity when we saw each other. “Power to the People,” we called out.
When I got back to Angola Herman was there, but he was at Camp A,
unreachable from the main prison where I was housed. One day I heard the
health department had condemned Camp A and Herman was among the
prisoners moved to the main prison. I went to look for him on the walk and
found him in the Pine 1 dorm. When he saw me he smiled and we hugged.
Herman had one of those smiles that light up a person’s whole face. He was
unguarded and open to me, which made me trust him. In temperament, we
were opposites. Hooks was an in-your-face extrovert, aggressive and bold,
and I was more reserved and diplomatic, an introvert. But we had the same
goals and the same morals and principles. He told me about organizing
prisoners at Camp A. I told him what I’d been doing. We both knew nobody
wanted us to do what we were doing—not the freemen, not the powerful

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prisoner kingpins who made money off prostituting other prisoners, not the
drug-dealing prisoners or anyone who made a profit off the corruption that
was rampant at Angola. We both knew there would be retaliation, that we
would have to make sacrifices. I could see he was willing to accept that and
he saw the same in me. Together we set out to create a chapter of the Black
Panther Party at Angola. To this day I don’t understand how or why, but we
believed we were invincible.
We held party meetings on the yard where we played football. As the
men tossed the ball to one another on the football field in the evenings
Herman and I talked to them. “In order to be liberated you must first liberate
yourselves,” Herman told the men. “You don’t deserve to be treated like
chattel slaves,” I said. “You are not property, you are men,” we said. “You
have to find the dignity and pride within yourself,” I told them. “I am proof
that it’s possible.”
We explained the concept of institutionalized racism and how it
contributed to them being locked up—how police departments and
courthouses discriminated against blacks. “I used to think I kept getting
arrested because I had bad luck,” I told them. “It wasn’t bad luck. I was
targeted because I am black, that’s why I kept getting arrested.” We told them
we needed to come together as a group against the administration because it
was the only way to make change; we had no power when we were only
looking out for ourselves. We went over and over the principles of the Black
Panther Party. Number 1: “We want freedom, we want the power to
determine the destiny of our black community.” Number 4: “We want decent
housing, fit for shelter of human beings.” Number 7: “We want an immediate
end to police brutality and murder of black people.” Number 9, “We want all
black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer
group or people from their black communities.” Herman and I realized that a
lot of these men had never before been told that they were anything good.
The oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves, Frantz Fanon
wrote, and we found that to be true.
We were very aware of the sex slave market that existed in Angola but at first
we were so busy trying to organize prisoners we didn’t focus on that. Then
one day I was sitting on my bed when a kid who was raped by another
prisoner sat down across from me. When I looked at his face I realized, for
the first time in my life, the brutal consequences of rape. I was seeing the face

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of a person who had his dignity taken, his spirit broken, and his pride
destroyed. It was one of the most heartbreaking moments of my newfound
awareness. In his face, I saw a human being who was completely destroyed.
Before, I had thought of rape as physical violence and I felt it was my duty,
as a Black Panther, to try to prevent it. Now, I saw that rape went way
beyond a physical act. Rape brought about the complete destruction of
another human being.
I felt a new awareness in my core that harming another human being—in
any way—was morally wrong and completely unacceptable, and with that
came a lot of shame, because I was flooded by memories of fighting and
physically hurting people. I had been violent and cruel to survive the street.
With the recognition that I’d been wrong came a great deal of pain. And a
new moral principle was born within me: to do no harm. This was a profound
moment for me as a man, and as a human being. This was me evolving at my
center.
The next day I went to find Herman. I opened the door of his dorm and
hollered that I needed to talk to him. We stood on the walk by the railing and
I told him what happened and how angry and sad I was; how for the first time
I realized that I felt as if some of the things I’d done to other human beings in
my life were an attack on all humanity. He said he felt the same way and we
discussed what to do about it. Later that day we brought it up with the
prisoners who came to our meeting on the football field. As Panthers, we told
them, we had to take a stand against rape. Not just to say it was wrong, but
we had to do something to stop it. The prisoners agreed to help us. We would
start by trying to protect the new prisoners coming into Angola. Black
prisoners were bused to the main prison from the Reception Center on
Thursdays. On those days we would meet the new prisoners and escort them
to their dorms. (The unchecked rape happened in both white and black
prisoner populations on fresh fish days, but black and white prisoners were
sent down the walk on separate days.)
Herman and I called it an “antirape squad.” We set up guidelines for the
other prisoners who wanted to stand with us: Work in pairs; never alone. Use
violence only as a last resort. Every Thursday on fresh fish day we armed
ourselves and went down the walk, introduced ourselves to the new prisoners,
and told them they were now under the protection of the Black Panther Party.
We escorted them to whatever dormitory they were assigned to and we
explained the type of games that a prisoner played to sexually assault or rape

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another prisoner, or coerce him into becoming a sex slave. “Don’t borrow
anything,” we told them. “Don’t take anything that’s offered, don’t ask for
favors, don’t accept favors. If you do you are opening yourselves up to being
in debt to sexual predators.” We told them if they needed anything to come to
us. We’d help them find what they needed—whether soap, toothpaste,
deodorant, or “zuzus,” the term we used for snacks like potato chips and
candy. If we came upon anyone threatening another prisoner with rape we
stopped it. Sometimes all it took was to say something—“Brother, leave that,
go ahead on” or “This ain’t gonna happen”—and that would be enough.
Other times we had to fight. We put the word out that if you messed with
someone under our protection you had to deal with the Black Panther Party.
As the presence of the party grew on the walk we knew the prisoner “shot
callers”—those who had profitable gambling, drug, and prostitution
businesses within the prison—were watching us. I never had a direct
confrontation with any of them, but we always traveled in groups of two or
three. That wouldn’t protect us from being attacked but it made us feel better.
Wherever we were, in the dorm, at our jobs, on the chow line, on the
walk, Herman and I talked about the Black Panther Party. Some guys would
make remarks to me like, “Damn, man, that’s all you talk about, the
Panthers.” I didn’t deny it. For me it was always the Panthers. Our list of
enemies was long. It wasn’t just the prisoner pimps and drug dealers, both
white and black, who hated us. Snitches gravitated to us too, trying to get
information they could sell. Security officers overheard us. We knew we
were a threat to the status quo. I got scared of being killed sometimes. But I
believed what I was struggling for was more important than me. It never
occurred to me to stop what we were doing.
Herman and I had about six or seven months together in the main prison.
During this time we formed the first official chapter of the Black Panther