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The Angolite
for years,
wrote to one of my lawyers that one of the reasons he believed Herman and I
were innocent was “the character” of Gilbert Montegut and Chester Jackson.
He described them as “petty criminal hoodlums, incapable of forming a
single, solitary political thought, much less possessing a political ideology.”
Sinclair continued, “To conclude that either Hooks or Woodfox would have
joined in any kind of criminal conspiracy to kill a prison guard with these two
individuals is mind-boggling.”
It didn’t take long for me and Herman to realize that most of the so-called
“militants” they put on our tier in CCR—the men released from CCR with
Gilbert Montegut before Miller was killed—were full of shit. They may have
been running around the yard calling themselves revolutionaries, but they
weren’t. A lot of these guys were still in the game. They argued standing at
the bars, which we called “bar fighting.” They gambled. Every 23 hours
when all the doors on the tier would open, fights broke out. One of the men
might sneak into the cell of another prisoner who was in the shower and fish
his box, stealing from him.
Herman and I talked about this hypocrisy and knew the men acting out
were deeply flawed. We talked about the Panthers we had met in prison. I
remembered how they were able to change everything around them by their
own conduct. Herman and I started holding 15-minute meetings on the tier
when we were all out on our hour. One or two prisoners came. We talked to
them about how to make conditions better. We asked the men what they
needed. Gradually more men came to the meetings. We asked the men what
kind of tier they wanted, what kind of conduct they would like to see from
one another. Based on that we created a list of rules to live by.
Hooks and I were lucky enough to have family members who visited
regularly. At CCR prisoners weren’t allowed to sit at a table with our visitors.
We could only have noncontact visits. Each prisoner sat in a booth and there
was a diamond-cut aluminum screen between him and his visitor. We were
kept in full restraints throughout the visit. The first thing my mom asked me
when she visited was if they hit me or if they threatened me. She was afraid
they’d hurt me. I lied and said everything was all right. I didn’t want her to
deal with what I was going through. At the end of the visits she left what
money she could in my account. Sometimes she could afford $15 or $20,
sometimes more. (When my brother and sister got into their teens and started
making money from jobs they would leave what they could too.) At the end
of our visits my mom stood and kissed me through the screen.
A couple of other men on the tier also had regular visitors who put money
into their accounts. Herman and I asked them to pool their money with ours
for the benefit of the tier. They agreed. Next time we were out of our cells we
announced to the tier that if everyone followed the rules we had created
together, then everybody would be able to buy one item out of the store each
week. The tier pool would pay for it. Every week we passed a piece of paper
down the tier and every man wrote what he wanted; a candy bar, shower
slippers, underwear, tobacco, chips, a mirror, whatever it was. On canteen
day, we’d order everything on the list and each prisoner would get his item. If
anyone violated the rules of the tier, he wouldn’t be able to get an item that
week. That’s how we stopped guys from stealing from each other.
We practiced martial arts together on the tier. We read aloud. We held
math classes, spelling classes. Every Friday we passed out a spelling or math
test. We talked about what was going on in the world. We encouraged
debates and conversation. We told each man he had a say. “Stand up for
yourself,” we told them, “for your own self-esteem, for your own dignity.”
Even the roughest, most hardened person usually responds when you see the
dignity and humanity in him and ask him to see it for himself. “The guards
will retaliate,” we said, “but we will always face that together.”
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