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

participate and to stay strong. Without our knowledge one of the orderlies
who had been passing the notes for Herman and King was showing them to
prison officials. No names were mentioned in the notes but it was easy for
security to identify handwriting. Approximately 60 prisoners went on the
hunger strike. King and Herman were called out of their cells for what they
were told would be a meeting with the warden. They were gassed, beaten,
and put in the dungeon at Camp J. They stayed on the hunger strike in the
dungeon while we stayed on it at CCR.
They couldn’t put me in a punishment cell because they didn’t have my
name or handwriting on any of the notes about organizing the hunger strike.
The day they put King and Herman in the dungeon I tried to keep the
prisoners on other tiers going while I was out on the yard. “Stay strong. Don’t
give up. Don’t let them intimidate you,” I yelled. I hollered up to the
prisoners on the other tiers. “We’re not at Camp J, they can’t treat us like we
are.”
The next day, after yard, instead of being taken back to my cell I was
taken to Macho Man’s office. He asked me why there was a hunger strike. I
said, “Why are you asking me?” He said, “I heard you are a ringleader; you
have a lot of influence with other prisoners. If you tell them not to eat they
aren’t going to eat.” I said, “I ain’t no ringleader. You have no proof.” He
told me he had proof and I said, “Then why are we having this conversation?
I should be at Camp J with Hooks and King.” He asked me again why we
were doing it. I told him, “The reason we’re on a hunger strike is that you say
one thing out of one side of your mouth and another thing out the other side.
People don’t trust you. We want the warden to come and see for himself this
mess you created.” He looked at the guard who brought me into the room and
said, “Lock him up.”
They put me in the CCR dungeon. I had a mattress, a sheet, and one
blanket. I wore a jumpsuit. No radio, no TV, no possessions. I could get legal
books but no other books. We were out of our cells only 15 minutes a day for
a shower. Most of the men in the dungeon were mentally ill; some had
already been gassed and beaten before being moved to the dungeon. They
screamed or banged on their walls for hours, trying to handle the pressure
however they could. I had to turn off my emotions. As usual, I forced myself

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to have an intellectual response to everything going on around me.
Sometimes it was the only way to stay sane. I stayed on the hunger strike in
the dungeon. I was never written up for it though. In all the years I was at
Angola, I’d been on so many hunger strikes I can’t count them, yet I was
never written up for one. They wrote me up for “defiance” or “disobedience”
or “aggravated disobedience.” They didn’t want a record of our protests.
I was kept in the CCR dungeon for 30 days. Herman, King, and I stayed
on the hunger strike all that time. Once a week I was brought before the
disciplinary court and told that I was being investigated for planning a second
hunger strike and I was told the investigation was still ongoing. At the end of
30 days the investigative report cleared me. The major on the disciplinary
board asked me if we could go off the record. “I’m caught between rock and
a hard place,” he told me. “There is no evidence for me to find you guilty but
I got word from the very top to send you to Camp J.” I said, “Do your job
then.” He found me guilty of something and they sent me to Camp J. I didn’t
mind. I wanted to be with my comrades. Years later I would read the write-up
he created:
[Woodfox] then became very belligerent, and said, “You just as soon put me in Camp J because
that’s what it’s going to come to because this shit isn’t over with yet.” He also stated “as far as he
was concerned, it wouldn’t be over as long as Wallace, King, and the other inmates put at Camp J
for organizing the hunger strike remained locked up.” He said they only organized the peaceful
demonstration, and there wasn’t anything wrong with that. He said again, “Just go ahead and lock
me up at Camp J now, because that’s what you’re going to have to do anyway.”
At Camp J, they put me on Herman’s tier at Gator Unit the first night and
then moved me to Shark Unit. King was in Gar Unit.
Camp J was referred to as a “punishment program,” but the way it was
executed at Angola it was flat-out torture. King used to say the “program”
was to receive prisoners and in six months return patients. There were three
levels of deprivation in the program. Most prisoners entered at Level 2, at
which we were in our cells 23 hours and 45 minutes a day; we got 15-minute
showers once a day. We got no dessert on our trays, no salt or pepper. We
couldn’t buy anything at the store except for hygiene products. We couldn’t
have any of our own clothing, so we wore jumpsuits. We could have six
books, including a Bible if we wanted one, and writing materials. We had an
hour out on the yard three times a week.
Camp J officers had no training; many of them were undisciplined and
unethical, which led to brutal beatings and gassing of prisoners, especially

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mentally ill prisoners or prisoners who broke under the pressure of being
confined to a cell more than 23 hours a day. Camp J was the most dreaded
assignment for corrections officers at Angola. Guards were put there to be
punished by administrative and security personnel with the authority to
reassign them. The guards spent their days putting restraints on prisoners and
taking them off. We were restrained on the way to the shower, unrestrained in
the shower, and restrained for the short walk back to our cells. Multiply that
by 15 prisoners on a tier. In the yard, they removed the leg shackles but we
couldn’t really exercise because they kept our hands restrained to our waists,
which made it difficult to run; if you fall you can’t brace yourself with your
hands. Some guards who were too lazy to do their jobs would bribe prisoners
with cigarettes—which were banned—to skip yard.
If a prisoner survived Level 2 for three months without a write-up he was
supposed to advance to Level 3, with new privileges, such as being able to
have a radio, buy snacks at the canteen, have an hour a day in the hall, and
wear his own clothes. After three months at Level 3 without a write-up he
was supposed to be released back to his normal housing. At any time, though,
and at the whim of almost any security officer and for any reason, he could
get a write-up and be sent back to Level 2, or worse, Level 1, and have to
start over. Level 1 was the harshest level and lasted 30 days. Meals consisted
of a “loaf” of food made from whatever was being served to other prisoners,
mixed together. Prisoners on Level 1 had no yard time and fewer possessions.
Men on Level 1 had to wear paper gowns so they couldn’t hang themselves.
The insecurity of anyone’s situation at any time in Camp J amounted to
severe psychological torture. There were tiers where guards enforced total
silence. A prisoner could be moved back a level for talking or for sharing
food. From any level, a prisoner can be put in the dungeon at Camp J for 10
to 30 days. In the dungeon the clock stops. Those days don’t count toward
time in the program. The worst cell at Camp J was called “the booth” and
was situated inside its own individual room. It was total and complete
isolation.
Anyone who “acted out” at Level 1 or in the dungeon was put in four-
point restraints, handcuffed to a bed at the ankles and wrists, which forced a
prisoner to lie in his own urine and feces. Anyone who struggled and banged
his head had a football helmet put on him by a security officer. I was never
put in four-point restraints but I saw it in the dungeon when I walked by the
other cells on my way to the shower.

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With “good behavior” prisoners were supposed to be able to work their
way out of Camp J in about six months. But as with all prisons, what’s
written down on paper is not what happens. A guard could have a bad day
and take it out on a prisoner, or just be cruel; some of the officers regularly
messed with prisoners to get them to react so they had an excuse to move the
prisoner back a level, or they’d accuse someone of doing something they
knew he didn’t do to fuck with his head. Prisoners were exposed to
harassment, mind games, provocation, beatings, and the constant threat of
being put back a level. The threat of never being allowed to leave the
program, of always losing ground, amounted to severe psychological torture.
The overwhelming majority of prisoners left Camp J broken men.
When I got to Camp J after spending 30 days in the dungeon I was put on
Level 2. By then we heard the CCR administration had restored all the
privileges that had been taken away before our hunger strike. They waited to
do it until we were off the tier so it wouldn’t look as if the hunger strike was
effective. I forced myself to adjust quickly to being in a smaller cell and not
having my possessions. In October, the weather got colder and since we
didn’t have our own clothes when we went outside for yard we were handed
unlaundered sweatshirts to wear. After being forced to wear a filthy
sweatshirt a few times I filed an ARP on that and eventually won the case in
court. The prison’s defense was they didn’t have enough sweatshirts to wash
them between prisoner use. The judge ruled they had to get more sweatshirts
so prisoners had clean ones to wear.
When I made it to Level 3 I requested my radio out of storage. A guard
came back and told me I couldn’t have it because it had a cassette player
attached. Cassette tapes weren’t allowed at Camp J. I wasn’t asking for
cassettes, I told him. “I don’t want to use the cassette player. I just want to
use my own radio so I don’t have to buy one out of the canteen,” I said. Logic
failed to convince him. I filed an ARP and was overruled. I had to buy what
they called a “Camp J radio” out of the canteen, a tiny transistor made of see-
through plastic that had terrible reception. Sometimes King and I were
outside in our yard pen at the same time and we could call out to each other.
For me that was a good yard day.
Years later I was touched to receive a copy of a letter written by a man
who had been in a cell next to me at Camp J for a while. Someone who heard
about our case and lived in Baton Rouge wrote to him, asking him if he’d

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ever heard of me. He sent her an unsigned letter about meeting me. When I
received a copy of his letter I remembered him from his time at Camp J, but
not his name. He wrote that when I was put in the cell next to his he was a
“very depressed and troubled” man. He wrote,
The harshness, the evil and cruelty of prison life had begun to take its toll upon me. I became to
trust no one as I seen everyone as my enemy. I found myself . . . with only two friends and their
names were loneliness and pain. . . . One day a new prisoner was put in the cell next to me. I
suddenly heard this voice saying “My name is Woodfox.” So I say to myself “Man, don’t I have
enough problems already. Now I have a nut in the cell next to me.” Again I hear this voice saying
to me, “My name is Woodfox and I am introducing myself to you.” This time I see [a] hand
reaching out of the bars, in an effort to shake hands. . . . I was very skeptical about sticking my
hand outside of those bars because I have seen guys whose hands hang outside the bars end up
being sliced from a razor blade and some become stabbed from a homemade knife but for some
unknown reason I found myself standing there, shaking Mr. Woodfox hand and the following day,
he again spoke to me. And he also asked me, would I like something to read. . . . After closely
observing this man, I began to see a man who has been confined to a cell for over 27 years. I also
seen a man who has been condemned to die here in Angola. But yet I seen no hate within him. Nor
did I see fear. But he did show that he was a man who were determined to become a better person.
While realizing that he was living in a world where being better sometimes meant nothing. He
showed that he was a man whose wisdom may very well be unlimited and whose strive for
knowledge has become his faith. Seeing all of this and more, in Mr. Woodfox, is what inspired me
to become a better person within myself. Through Mr. Woodfox I was reminded that a man who
chooses not to seek knowledge is the same as a boy who choose not to become a man. I now
realize that knowledge can be the key for that what sometimes seem impossible in life.
Kathy Flynn Simino, an attorney who worked for a center in New Orleans
that did appeals for indigent defendants, wrote the direct appeal for my
conviction on the grounds that the state withheld exculpatory evidence—that
Hezekiah Brown had been paid—which was called “Brady material,” after
the 1963 Supreme Court ruling in