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

Sunday Advocate
, taking credit for the burning of guard
Mike Gunnells that day. (A letter assistant warden Hoyle apparently had no
knowledge of.) Warden Henderson said in that letter Angola officials were
found “guilty” of “extreme racism” at a “people’s court” allegedly held the
same day the guard was burned. The letter supposedly went on to say that the
public was as guilty as “the racist pigs who hold us captive,” and said “more
will come.” It was signed, “The Vanguard Army, Long Live the Angola
Prison Involvement.”
I’d never heard of the Vanguard Army and don’t believe the letter, if it
existed, was written by a prisoner. No black prisoner could get access to a
typewriter in 1972. There were no typewriters in the black dorms, none in the
dining hall or kitchen where I worked, none in the tag plant where Herman

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worked, certainly none in the yard or in the fields. The only prisoners who
may have had access to a typewriter were inmate clerks, and they were white.
Prison authorities had a way to identify prisoners by their handwriting; they
had samples on file for every prisoner in Angola. Similarly they had access to
every typewriter at the prison and could have tested each to see where the
letter was typed. If a letter giving authorities a motive for Miller’s killing had
been intercepted on Sunday, wouldn’t the deputy warden have known about
it on Monday when he spoke to reporters? The letter was never produced at
any trial related to Brent Miller’s murder.
In the account Warden Henderson gave the 
State-Times
that was
published the day after Miller’s killing, on April 18, Henderson also said he
believed the “sit-down strike of inmate workers” in the dining hall that took
place the morning of Miller’s murder was staged as a “diversionary tactic” to
draw guards away from the walk. Guards were
 
not called away from the walk
that day. There were always only two guards per unit on the walk. Standard
protocol was that during meals, one of those guards accompanied prisoners to
the dining hall and the other was left on the walk. The morning of the strike
that didn’t change. One guard who was on the walk that morning would later
say that he didn’t even know there was a kitchen workers’ strike.
Contradicting himself, at the end of the 
State-Times
article Henderson
admitted as much, saying, “The man [Brent Miller] was supervising four
dormitories by himself in an area where the original plans called for it to be
manned by five. We’ve had a chronic problem in leaving a man by himself in
an area like that. We’ve constantly asked for more money for more
supervision but we haven’t been able to get it.” Henderson’s claim that
“militants” killed Miller, insinuating it was because he was white, would
stick. The day after the 
State-Times
article the Associated Press headlined an
article about the killing “Militants Said Cause of Death, ‘Black Power’
Backers Blamed at Angola.”
The freemen came onto our tier and cut everybody’s Afro, saying there
was a new rule that everybody’s hair had to be short. Eventually they brought
each of us a mattress, a blanket, and some of our possessions. I started getting
notes on my food tray saying things like, “You’re going to die,” “Eat this
food and you eat my dick,” or “This food will kill you,” all signed by “the
KKK.” I threw out the food. I received many letters threatening me. I could
tell they came from inside the prison because there were no stamps on the
envelopes. I searched the food on my tray for ground glass for the next year,

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even when there wasn’t a note.
We were locked down 23 hours a day. At first, I ignored the pressure of
the cell. There was so much going on. And I never for one moment thought
I’d be confined to such a small area for more than a few weeks or months at
the most. Once a day, usually in the morning, all 16 of our cell doors opened
at the same time and we were let out onto the tier for an hour. During that
time we could shower and walk up and down the hall on the tier. Sometimes I
looked out the window across from my cell. There was no outside exercise
yard for CCR prisoners. There were prisoners in CCR who hadn’t been
outside in years. We couldn’t make or receive phone calls. We weren’t
allowed books, magazines, newspapers, or radios. There were no fans on the
tier; there was no access to ice, no hot water in the sinks in our cells. There
was no hot plate to heat water on the tier. Needless to say, we were not
allowed educational, social, vocational, or religious programs; we weren’t
allowed to do hobby crafts (leatherwork, painting, woodwork). Rats came up
the shower drain at the end of the hall and would run down the tier. We threw
things at them to keep them from coming into our cells. Mice came out at
night. When the red ants invaded they were everywhere all at once, in
clothes, sheets, mail, toiletries, food.
Our meals were put on the floor outside our cell doors. We stuck our
hands through the bars to pull the trays underneath the door into our cell.
Anytime we were taken off the tier, even if we were moving just outside the
door to the bridge, we were forced to strip, bend over, and spread our
buttocks for a “visual cavity search,” then after we got dressed we were put in
full restraints. When we got back to the cell we were strip-searched again
when the restraints came off. If we were taken outside the prison—to a
hospital or to court—a black box was put over our cuffed hands. That was
very painful because you couldn’t move your hands at all with the black box
on.
If there is one word to describe the next years of my life it would be
“defiance.” White inmate guards virtually ran CCR at the time, overseen by
freemen who would come and go throughout the day. These inmate guards
were brutal in their treatment of prisoners housed in CCR. They liked to
threaten and taunt us, but they made sure to do it only if they were outside
our cells or when we were in restraints. They weren’t stupid enough to put
their hands on us if we weren’t restrained. They hated me and Herman

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because we didn’t put up with their racist comments. If they talked trash to us
we talked trash back just as bad. Nothing that came out of their mouths could
hurt us. They couldn’t match us with words and they couldn’t stop us. We
talked back to them. We talked down to them. We resisted orders. If they
were jumping a prisoner we shook the bars and yelled. Any act of resistance
ended the same way: four or five of them would come into the cell and jump
us. It’s a hell of a feeling to stand when you know you’re going to be beaten;
you know there will be pain but your moral principles won’t let you back
down. I was always scared shitless. Sometimes my knees would shake and
almost buckle. I forced myself to learn how not to give in to fear. That was
one of my greatest achievements in those years. I didn’t let fear rule me. I’d
say, “Fuck you, come in here. One of you motherfuckers ain’t leaving.” You
don’t fight to win, you fight so that when you look in the mirror the next time
you don’t drop your eyes in shame. They never came in alone. We were
always outnumbered. I was scared, but I was mentally strong.
After a couple of weeks Warden Henderson called me out of the cell to
talk to me. He didn’t ask me where I was the morning Brent Miller was killed
or what I was doing or who I was with. He didn’t ask me about the letter that
was supposedly “intercepted” the night before Miller’s murder, signed by
“the Vanguard Army.” He asked me why I killed Brent Miller. I told him I
didn’t kill Brent Miller. He asked me why I hated white people. I told him I
didn’t hate white people. By the time I got back to my cell I knew for sure
Herman and I would be framed.
On May 5, 1972, Herman and I were indicted along with Chester Jackson,
age 31; and a prisoner named Gilbert Montegut, age 21. Herman was 29. I
was 25. Herman and I knew why we were being charged—prison authorities
wanted to wipe out the Black Panther Party at Angola. We could only guess
that Chester Jackson was being charged because prison officials believed he
was with the party. Neither of us knew Gilbert Montegut. It turned out he was
charged because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Montegut had
been locked up in CCR by Hayden Dees for supposedly being a “militant,”
along with several other prisoners, weeks before Miller was killed. Dees was
forced to release him and several other prisoners from CCR a week before
Miller was killed because he refused to do the proper paperwork on them.
Under pressure from the federal government leaning on state officials,
Henderson and Hoyle had been asking Dees for months to create paperwork
behind prisoners who were locked up. Dees refused, even after Hoyle gave

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him an ultimatum—do the paperwork or the prisoners would be released back
into the general population. Within a week of the prisoners’ release Miller
was killed. Dees immediately blamed Hoyle, saying one of Miller’s killers
must have come from the group Hoyle released from CCR. When Dees told
the freemen that Miller died because Hoyle released all the “militants” from
CCR, the guards were enraged, calling for Hoyle to be fired. One of the
Miller brothers attacked Hoyle, pushing him through a plate glass door.
Hoyle had to be hospitalized in Baton Rouge for his injuries.
Montegut was selected from that group to be charged with and indicted
for the murder of Brent Miller because Hayden Dees said so. (Later we
learned some inmates gave statements claiming Montegut was with the
prisoners who threw gasoline and fire at the guard who was burned in his
booth. He was never formerly charged or indicted for that. Rory Mason was
the only prisoner convicted for that crime.) When Montegut was put back in
CCR he was on my tier and I got to know him. He was no militant.
Almost 30 years later, a former prisoner named Billy Sinclair, who had
been an editor of Angola’s award-winning magazine