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Chapter 14
Angola, 1971
Prison is designed to break one’s spirit and destroy one’s resolve. To do this, the authorities
attempt to exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality—all
with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are.
Our survival depended on understanding what the authorities were attempting to do to us, and
sharing that understanding with each other.
—Nelson Mandela
Nothing had changed at Angola. Sexual slavery was still a part of prison
culture. Violence was still a constant threat. Armed inmate guards were still
in use, on cellblocks, in guard towers, on horseback in the fields. Stabbings
and beatings happened every day. Angola was the same. But I was different. I
came with orders to start a chapter of the Black Panther Party. I was told to
resist, educate, agitate. When I joined the party, I dedicated my life to social
struggle. I gave my word that I would live my life by the principles of the
party. I was prepared to sacrifice my life to keep my word.
The prison was still segregated. I was put in a black dorm at the
Reception Center. I’d only been there for about a week when I saw a prisoner
named Joseph Richey follow a boy who was 17 into the bathroom. In prison,
you learn the signs of what’s going on before it happens. I borrowed a knife
from a prisoner in the dorm and put it under my shirt and went into the
bathroom. Richey had the boy in the shower, threatening him, trying to make
him take his clothes off. “What the fuck is going on in here?” I said.
“This ain’t your business,” Richey said. “You ain’t got nothing to do with
this.”
I said, “I’m making it my business.” I walked toward them. “You’re not
raping that kid.” I looked at the boy. “Come on out,” I said, “ain’t nothing
going to happen here.” The boy didn’t move at first, then slowly inched his
way toward me against the wall. He walked by me and left through the door.
I pulled the knife out from under my shirt. Richey pulled his weapon out,
and I said, “Let’s do this.” I made a lunge for him and he backed up and
dropped his knife. I told him as long as I’m in the dormitory he’s not raping
that kid or anybody else. When I walked out of the bathroom I stood on a
table in the day room and announced to the room, “All you motherfuckers in
here who rape people, you are on notice. You’re not raping anybody while
I’m in this dorm.” I can proudly say that after I stopped Joseph Richey from
raping that kid not one prisoner was raped in the RC dorm I was living in.
After 30 days, I was brought before the classification board and assigned a
job in the scullery, washing pots and pans used in the dining hall and kitchen.
This time I wasn’t on the trustee side; I would be in the main prison. The
walk was long and covered to keep the rain off. Railings ran down either
side. There were four units down the walk, each composed of four one-story
rectangular cinder-block dormitories. Each dorm held about 60 prisoners.
Two dorms in each unit faced each other across the walk. The front door of
each dorm opened onto the walk. The sides had huge windows from waist
level to ceiling, and there were narrow walkways on either side of the dorm
that led to the back. Between two of the dorms in each unit on the left side of
the walk—dorms 1 and 2—there was a guard booth. The walk and all the
buildings were elevated, about three or four feet off the ground. Four or five
steps went down to the yard between units. Officially, prisoners weren’t
allowed to congregate on the walk but sometimes they did or they stood in
groups off the walk in the grass between the units. Each guard booth had
room for two officers to sit. One of the guards from each unit was often on
the walk, keeping it clear and sometimes shaking down prisoners searching
pockets, jacket linings, and shoes for contraband as they walked by, while the
other sat in the booth.
Each unit was named after a species of tree. White prisoners lived in the
Oak dorms, the first unit on the walk. Next came the all-black units: Pine,
Walnut, and Hickory. The whole area, including a huge treeless yard and a
clothing room, just inside the security gate, was surrounded by a 12-foot
chain-link fence topped by barbed wire. Freemen and inmate guards manned
the towers overlooking the walk and the yard. There was a baseball field in
the yard and another area up a small hill where we played football. The
dining hall and control center were on the other side of the security gate,
which we called the “snitcher gate,” at one end of the walk.
I talked about the Black Panther Party to prisoners in my dorm and on the
walk. I talked about the 10-Point Program. “We want freedom; we want the
power to determine our own destiny,” I told them. I carried the
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