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

Times-
Picayune 
about our civil lawsuit against 30 years of solitary confinement,
told the reporter we were “crybabies.” He said Herman and I “chose a life of
crime” and should “look in the mirror and quit looking out. It’s about time for
them to look at themselves,” he said.
Anita wrote to us and asked us to contribute essays for her book 
A
Revolution in Kindness
. Herman, who was sneaking food to prisoners in four-
point restraints at Camp J, wrote an essay for her about teaching chess to
prisoners. “I received a letter from Anita Roddick thanking me for my
contribution to 
A Revolution in Kindness
,” Herman wrote to a friend from his
Camp J cell. “I’m the one who should be thanking her, a billion times, but I
don’t want to bore her.” (After the book was published Anita tried to send it
to us but it was banned from Angola for potentially “inciting violence.”)
Herman and I both knew he was being targeted because of our lawsuit.
Prison officials were experts at using the disciplinary court at Camp J to

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torture and abuse prisoners. They’d build a case against a prisoner, write him
up, take him to disciplinary court, sentence him to more time—and the cycle
continues. He’d never get out of the program. This was their way to legally
inflict pain and suffering. Herman never complained in our notes back and
forth. I knew he was suffering though. I also knew they would never break
him. He released a poem he wrote in Camp J to our supporters:
They removed my whisper from general population
To maximum security
I gained a voice
They removed my voice from maximum security
To administrative segregation
My voice gave hope
They removed my voice from administrative segregation
To solitary confinement
My voice became vibration for unity
They removed my voice from solitary confinement
To the Supermax of Camp J
And now they wish to destroy me
The louder my voice the deeper they bury me
I SAID, THE LOUDER MY VOICE THE DEEPER THEY BURY ME!
Power to the People!
Free all political prisoners, prisoners of war, prisoners of conscience!
On December 7, 2002, to mark the fourth anniversary of my retrial, King,
along with several members of the Coalition to Support the A3, and other
prison activists held a demonstration at Angola’s front gate, this time to
protest the inhumane conditions at Camp J and the false allegations that were
being used to keep Herman locked up there. Dozens of Angola security
officers and armed sheriff’s deputies from West Feliciana Parish surrounded
the protesters. Plainclothes state troopers photographed them. King told
reporters who had gathered, “Camp J is a torture camp. Numerous suicides
result from inmates being held there.”
The protesters stayed for 90 minutes. On their way back to New Orleans
they drove in a convoy, fearful of law enforcement in that area after being
surrounded by armed officers during their peaceful demonstration. Our
supporters wrote to Herman, worried that their protests made things worse for
him. They asked him if they should stop protesting. “Never,” he wrote back.
“Protest more.”
I was writing a letter later that month when it started to rain. The skies

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darkened outside and it got hard to read. I called down to the tier officer,
“Yo, man, turn the light on in cell 14.” He ignored me. I called out again,
thinking he hadn’t heard me. No light. I asked him at least five different
times to turn my cell light on. He didn’t. I called down to him to get the
supervisor. He said, “You ain’t running nothing, I’ll turn the light on when I
want.” Usually, I never lost control of my emotions. A guard could be
trashing my cell in front of me, throwing my clothes on the floor, turning my
mattress upside down, reading my personal mail and I might tell him to take
his hands off my legal mail if he touched it, but I wouldn’t show any
emotion. That day my emotions got the better of me. I started shaking the
bars. I shook the bars and yelled and screamed and didn’t stop until the guard
appeared at my cell door. He told me to step back. I complied. He told me I
was spending the night in the dungeon and handed me a jumpsuit to put on.
As the door closed on my cell in the dungeon I sat on the bare mattress. I
thought of my sister. The first time Violetta had breast cancer she got better. I
knew the cancer might come back but I was unprepared when she got sick
again. Violetta was a child when she started visiting me in prison. On the
street, I protected her. Ten, twenty, thirty years later she still looked at me as
if I kept her safe. Her loving acceptance never wavered. When former
Panthers and activists came to support me at my 1998 trial my sister thanked
them for coming and hugged them. She wasn’t intimidated or afraid of TV
news crews outside the courthouse. “We want him to come home,” she said
simply. “It’s time for him to come home.”
At her five-year checkup, toward the end of 2001, Violetta found out that
the cancer had returned. She told me on a visit that the cancer had spread to
her lungs. On August 10, 2002, Violetta died. She was 50 years old. The only
request my sister ever made of me in more than 30 years was to be at her
funeral. On her last visit to the prison she begged me to be there. She was
weak and pale and so thin. I knew she was in pain. I told her I would, to
comfort her. After her death, I wrote to prison authorities asking if I could
attend my sister’s funeral. My request was denied. I received photographs of
Vi’s funeral service. Her husband, my childhood friend Michael Augustine,
visited me afterward. My brother Michael came twice that month. I talked to
Vi’s daughters and son on the phone. A3 supporters who went to her funeral
came to see me.
I thought of us as children, picking strawberries behind our grandparents’
farm. My sister’s beauty was so natural, so effortless. Her devotion to me had

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always grounded me. I felt the pain of losing her in my soul.
In April 2003, King welcomed activists to the Critical Resistance South
Regional Conference in New Orleans by reading a statement from the Angola
3, in which we emphasized the importance of organizing against solitary
confinement and a racist prison and judicial system. Later that month, on
April 17, he and our supporters were back at the front gates at Angola,
marking 31 years since Herman and I had first been locked down, celebrating
our resistance and protesting our wrongful convictions for the murder of
Brent Miller. This anniversary gathering would become an annual event.
The following month, at an approved contact visit of Anita Roddick,
Robert King, and several of our supporters with me, Zulu, and an inmate
friend of ours named Roy, high-ranking prison officials came into the visiting
room and terminated the visit within 20 minutes of everyone’s arrival. They
escorted King and our other visitors from the premises, telling them they had
to leave and remove their cars from the prison parking lots within minutes.
Anita, in the backseat of one of the cars, was on the phone to warden Burl
Cain’s office before they were out of sight of the prison. Later, prison
officials said the visit was interrupted because King was a “security risk.”
They put Roy in the dungeon, accusing him of lying on his visiting form. The
prison accused King, who was known as Robert King Wilkerson in prison, of
lying about his name when in reality, after King was released from Angola
and for the first time in his life got his birth certificate, he learned that his
name and birth date were not what he thought they were. On his birth
certificate he was Robert Hilary King, which was the name that he would use
thereafter on his driver’s license and every other legal document. The prison
sentenced Roy to Camp J and moved him there. After our attorneys got
involved and proved Roy didn’t violate any prison rules, he was moved back
to CCR.
Later that month, a federal appeals court ruled that King, Herman, and I
had the right to sue Warden Cain and Richard Stalder, secretary of the
Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, alleging we suffered
cruel and unusual punishment in CCR. After that news, the persecution of
Herman continued. He was held at Camp J for nine more months. During that
time, Marina Drummer was writing newsletters to our supporters and
expanded our email list, taking actions to align with other groups to enlarge
our base of support. I got to know people on our support committee who

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visited me in prison, and many of them became friends. They told me about
their political beliefs and actions; I was always moved by these visits.
In August 2003, King and artist Rigo 23 flew to South Africa as guests of
Nelson Mandela’s Institute for Global Dialogue, and there they met with
African National Congress leaders. King spent the following month speaking
in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, and Cape Town, and on
Robben Island. At Angola, Herman and I stayed in touch as best we could
through letters passed by trustees. A new year came. When they finally
brought Herman back to CCR, in February 2004, I could see the skeleton
underneath his skin. He had lost more than 30 pounds at Camp J. The
fighting spirit in his eyes was unchanged.

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