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

Chapter 13
Hostages
My actions in the New York City jail uprisings became part of my permanent
record. I was labeled a militant. When I arrived at Orleans Parish Prison they
put me on C-1, which they now called the “Panther tier.” The last time I was
on this tier I cut myself to get off. This time it was radically different. Less
than half the tier was full. It only housed members of the Black Panther
Party. I was nervous at first because I was unfamiliar with everyone. But I
also knew these men weren’t ordinary prisoners. It was still suffocating, hot,
filthy, and dark. The windows were still sealed shut, covered from the outside
with steel plates. The Panthers were all from the New Orleans chapter of the
party and were in prison awaiting trial for defending themselves against a
police attack on their headquarters, located in the Desire housing projects,
months before. As the days passed I watched the men conduct themselves the
way Panthers in New York had, with poise and purpose, focused on self-
education and self-discipline. Among the Panthers I met there were Ronald
Ailsworth (Faruq) and Donald Guyton (Malik Rahim), both cofounders of the
New Orleans chapter of the party. It didn’t take long for us to accept one
another. At the daily meetings Malik tore books into sections to give each of
us a part to read so we could then report back to the others what we had
learned. We had debates and talked about society and the world. They got
their friends—local Panthers from the New Orleans chapter—to visit me. The
New Orleans Panthers attended our court hearings. We had copies of the
Black Panther Party newspaper smuggled onto the tier. I became more
outspoken than I was in New York.
One day I suggested we clean up the tier. Orleans Parish Prison had
always been a filthy, rat-infested pigsty with broken toilets, rotten food, and
overcrowded cells. All of us kept our own cells spotless and we cleaned the
day room, but the rest of the tier hadn’t been cleaned for months. At our

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meetings we practiced collective criticism, so if someone had a beef or
wanted to bring up something going on, it was brought in front of everybody.
I brought up that our tier was a disgrace. “How can we live on a tier that’s
filthy and dirty like this?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we have more pride?”
Everybody agreed and in the following days we cleaned out the empty cells.
On any given weekday prisoners were summoned to court and transferred
from their tiers to a holding pen on the second floor of the prison, where they
sat until it was time to be led through a series of corridors to the courthouse.
There, they were taken to smaller bullpens located in the back of each
courtroom. On an average day there could be 20 to 30 prisoners sitting in the
bullpen at the prison. On court days we had a chance to talk to prisoners who
weren’t on our tier, and we used that time to talk about the party. One time in
the bullpen Faruq broke into a Black Panther Party song called “Power to the
People.” All the prisoners joined in.
Power, power, all power to the people.
We’re going to pick up the gun and put the pigs on the run.
There just ain’t enough pigs to stop the Black Panther Party.
Some of the prisoners were clapping, others were keeping rhythm
drumming on the metal benches we were sitting on. The guards ordered us to
stop. We kept singing. They came back with tear gas, spraying all of us. My
eyes were still swollen shut and tears were streaming down my burning face
when it was my turn to go to court. There was so much gas on me that the
deputy who put restraints on me got sick walking me through the corridor.
When deputies brought me into the courtroom I didn’t walk to the table
where I was supposed to sit. I walked to the middle of the courtroom, in front
of the spectators—some of them Panthers—and raised my handcuffed hands
as fists to my chest, as high as I could in restraints, and yelled, “Look what
these racist pigs have done.” Two deputies were on me in seconds, dragging
me out as I heard the judge holler, “Get him out of here.” The Panthers in the
audience stood and were yelling after me, “Leave that man alone.” In the
back deputies punched and kicked me. I couldn’t defend myself because my
hands were cuffed to my waist, but I was cursing them, calling them names.
The judge came in and told the deputies to stop beating me and get the gas
off me. They brought me wet paper towels to wipe my body and hair and
gave me a new jumpsuit. Before he went back into the courtroom the judge
told me to stop acting up.

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We believed that being in prison we were at the forefront of social
struggle and it was our responsibility to respond to the issues. Our list of
grievances was long and similar to what had been happening in the Tombs.
Men in the parish prison were held for months without being arraigned; they
weren’t given bail, or their bail was set too high; they had no access to law
books; they were forced to sleep on the floor, three or more to a cell. The
prison was infested with roaches, lice, and rats. The food was disgusting. We
talked among ourselves about how to get these stories outside prison walls. I
knew from my experiences in New York that we had to do more than get the
prison administration’s attention: we had to speak directly to the media;
otherwise they would only report on one side, the side of prison authorities.
We decided to take a hostage and not release him until we could talk to the
press. We would also demand to speak to the first African American woman
to be elected to and serve in the Louisiana House of Representatives, Rep.
Dorothy Mae Taylor, who was working for prison reform in those days.
We passed a note outlining our plans to another tier through an orderly
and they wrote back saying they would take a hostage the same day. We’d
put two guards under house arrest at the same time, one guard from each tier.
On Monday morning, July 26, 1971, a young black prison guard brought
some Panthers going to trial out on the bridge where their personal clothing
was being held, and we confronted him. We didn’t hurt him. We told him,
“Look, man, we need to put you under house arrest. Don’t resist. We’re going
to put you in a cell in the back for your own safety. If you come with us, it
won’t get physical.” He handed us his keys. We opened the lockbox that
contained the controls for the cell doors and opened them. We walked the
guard back to a cell. We asked him if he wanted anything. Then we closed
and locked the cell door.
I pressed the intercom button and told the security people working in the
processing area at the front of the prison that we’d taken a guard hostage and
we wanted to see the media and Dorothy Mae Taylor to talk about prison
conditions. They said, “Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt the guard.” I said the only
way we’d hurt him is if they came on the tier. News reporters and cameras
were allowed on the exercise yard. Representative Taylor arrived. We
knocked the metal plate off one of the windows so we could talk through the
window. She asked to see the guard we were holding hostage, so we brought
him to the window. She asked him if he had been harmed in any way. When
he said no, she agreed to talk to us. We read out our list of grievances to her.

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After we released the guard, Representative Taylor read our demands aloud
to the press.
Soon after this I was told by prison officials that I was being sent back to
Angola. On the tier we discussed whether or not we should resist, but as a
group we decided I should go and recruit Panthers for the New Orleans
chapter. Later, Malik got word to me from Oakland that we should start a
separate chapter of the party—a prison chapter—at Angola.
Before I left Orleans Parish Prison, I took an oath on C-1 to become a
member of the Black Panther Party. On my last day there, one of the Panthers
gave me a copy of the
 Little Red Book
, a collection of quotations from Mao
Tse-tung.
 
The Panthers told me, “Don’t forget the party. Don’t forget what
the party stands for. Don’t forget the 10-Point Program and the principles of
the party. Educate. Agitate. Be strong. Stay strong.”

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