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

Chapter 26
Strip Search Battle
By September 1977 I’d learned enough about chattel slavery to see a
connection between the unnecessary strip searches for CCR prisoners and
how African American men and women were treated as slaves. Forced to
strip down on the auction block before they were bought and sold, black men
and women had their bodies, mouths, and genitals inspected for disease as if
they were livestock. It’s one of the most humiliating experiences a human
being can endure. We were strip-searched every time we left the tier, before
and after, even though we were in full restraints wherever we went and we
were always in the presence of one or two guards who were watching our
every move. The strip search always entailed a visual cavity search. After
removing our clothes, we had to open our mouths, raise our scrotum, lift our
feet to show the bottoms, turn around, bend over, and spread our buttocks.
Prisoners in CCR are among the most isolated and restricted men at Angola.
The chances of a fully clothed man being able to hide contraband in his anus
while handcuffed in the front to his waist were zero. Under these
circumstances strip searches were merely another unnecessary cruelty.
In addition, the strip search at Angola always happened with several
security people present. Some of the freemen made derogatory, crude, and
humiliating remarks during strip searches, commenting about your anus and
the size and shape of your genitalia. It was a punishment I could not endure
anymore. King and Herman felt the same way. We held meetings with the
prisoners on our tiers. The men lined up at their bars and we asked them if
they would stand with us to stop the dehumanizing strip searches that we
were forced to go through on a daily basis. We wrote up a petition, asking
prison officials to change the strip search policy because the current system
was degrading and served no legitimate security purpose. We also asked that
when strip searches did have to be conducted, they be done in a more humane

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way. Herman got all the prisoners on A tier to sign it. King and I got
everyone on our tier to sign. Sympathetic orderlies passed the petition to
other tiers. Almost everyone in CCR signed the petition. We asked the
warden to get back to us in within two weeks’ time.
While we waited for a response King and I did some legal research and
found cases where courts had ruled strip searches were unconstitutional,
although they were allowed in prisons under some circumstances: after the
prisoner had a contact visit with attorneys or family members, for example,
or when he returned to prison after leaving prison grounds. The warden never
got back to us. We exchanged phone numbers of our families with one
another so we could call them if anyone was taken off the tier. Because now
it would get physical.
Date of Disciplinary Report: 9/24/77
Albert Woodfox #72148
During routine strip search procedure, inmate Albert Woodfox refused to bend over and spread his
buttocks. Lieutenant Horace Isaac and myself ordered inmate Woodfox to bend over and spread
his buttocks and he refused to do so. Inmate Woodfox had to be physically restrained over a desk
with his buttocks spread open by Lieutenant Horace Isaac. Inmate Woodfox charged into
Lieutenant Horace Isaac as if to do Lieutenant Isaac physical harm. In the CCR isolation hallway
inmate Woodfox punched Officer John R. Christen in the mouth, busting his lips, and loosening
Officer Christen’s two front teeth. Officer Christen was relieved and treated in the Feliciana
Hospital. Inmate Albert Woodfox punched Officer Harry Bereas in his left jaw. Inmate Woodfox
kicked Officer Emus in his left leg. An incident report has been submitted concerning this
incident.
Verdict: Guilty
Punishment: 10 days in isolation
Date of Disciplinary Report: 10/5/77
Albert Woodfox #72148
Prior to entering CCR isolation, this inmate was asked by Captain Travis Jones if he would submit
to a complete shakedown. Inmate’s exact reply was quote you’re not looking up my ass, you ain’t
quote. Woodfox was bent over the A.U. desk [clerk’s desk] by the officers, and his cheeks were
searched for contraband. In the process of bending this inmate over the desk, he resisted us and
tried to escape from the office. He also kicked my right shin with one of his feet while we were
searching him. The only force used was [what] was needed to restrain inmate Woodfox.
Verdict: Guilty
Punishment: 10 days in isolation
We didn’t ask anyone on the tier to physically resist the strip searches. I
told the prisoners they had to make their own decision about whether they
would allow themselves to be humiliated and degraded. Those who resisted
paid a price. All of the prisoners who resisted the strip searches were badly
beaten. Some prisoners had to be taken to the hospital. When freemen came

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to take King off our tier he resisted. I was afraid for his life and immediately
protested but I felt totally helpless: all I could do was shake the bars on my
cell and scream at the security people to stop attacking him. We were all
yelling and shaking our bars, cursing at the security guards, telling them to
leave him alone. They came back and gassed the whole tier. They entered
King’s cell and jumped him, beating him severely, and put him in the
dungeon. Afterward, they took him before the disciplinary board, where he
was sentenced to the Camp J punishment program. It was the harshest, most
punitive camp in Angola, a three-level “program” that had just opened. A
prisoner had to survive three levels of harsh deprivation without a
disciplinary report for six months before being allowed back in his normal
housing.
They put me and Herman in the CCR dungeon. I was sentenced to Camp
J at least five different times by the disciplinary board court, but somebody
blocked the transfer every time. We heard it was because one of the Miller
brothers worked at Camp J at that time. I actually wanted to go to Camp J,
because King was there and didn’t have support. He was still resisting strip
searches over there, while Herman and I were resisting in CCR.
At first, they gave me 30 days in the dungeon. Each time a prisoner is put
into the dungeon he is strip-searched first. So I was beaten on the tier for
refusing to be strip-searched before leaving the tier, and then I was beaten
when I refused to be strip-searched before they put me in the dungeon. At
that time, because of the consent decree, prison officials were required to let
prisoners out of the dungeon every 10 days for a 24-hour “break.” After the
24 hours the prisoners were put back into the dungeon to complete their time
or do the next 10 days. A lot of prisoners waived their right to the 24-hour
break because they just wanted to get through their time without delay and
didn’t want the hassle of being moved. When I tried to waive the 24-hour
break they wouldn’t let me. It gave them a chance to add to my time in the
dungeon because they knew I’d resist the strip search upon reentering the
dungeon. It also gave them a chance to beat me for resisting the strip
searches.
The dungeon had changed from when I was there in the sixties. Inmates
got three meals a day. There wasn’t much food in the Styrofoam containers,
and there was no dessert or salt and pepper, but it was better than two slices
of bread. Now we got one mattress in the cell at all times, so it was easier to
trade off using it among prisoners. They were now required by law to let us

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have our legal material. Because I was in CCR, and not the main prison, there
were fewer prisoners in the building, so there were fewer men in each cell.
In every other way, the dungeon was the same, designed to torture
prisoners, to mentally break them. They turned off the water in the sink for
days at a time, so I was forced to drink water from the toilet. This was one of
the most humiliating acts I ever endured while in solitary confinement. It
taught me how strong my desire to survive was. I got so I could sit in one
spot in the cell and feel the physical limitations of it yet know that my mind
and emotions were unlimited. I knew I was unlimited.
After not hearing back about our petition to the warden to stop the
unnecessary strip searches, I wrote to an organization called New Orleans
Legal Assistance (NOLA) asking for help in filing a lawsuit. Goldy agreed to
be one of the plaintiffs in the suit with me, even though it meant he would
face repercussions from the prison administration and security. NOLA filed
the lawsuit for us in the 19th Judicial District Court.
We went to trial and in six months the ruling came down. We won. The
judge didn’t stop strip searches completely, but he put limits on when the
guards could conduct strip searches and conditions on how visual cavity
searches could be carried out. The judge also ruled that any time I had
remaining in the dungeon as a result of our strip search protests, around 300
days, had to be removed from my record.
Unfortunately, the judge’s ruling didn’t wipe out King’s time at Camp J.
He was kept at Camp J from September 1977 to November 1979. In July
1979, he filed a lawsuit, handwritten in the sweltering heat of his Camp J cell,
citing the cruel and unusual treatment of being locked down 23 hours a day
for seven years, how the poor lighting in his Camp J cell damaged his
eyesight, and how the lack of exercise contributed to high blood pressure and
physical deterioration. He wrote that 23-hour lockdown “violates his civil and
human rights and is in direct contradiction to the laws of the United States
which safeguard all its inhabitants from Cruel and Unusual punishment.”
From CCR Herman also filed a habeas corpus writ in West Feliciana that
same year, challenging the legality of our long-term confinement in CCR.
Big John helped him file it. Both King’s and Herman’s cases were dismissed.
Our battles with freemen continued through the seventies. They looked for
reasons to put us in the hole. I made a screwdriver by sharpening the end of a
piece of my radio antenna so I could open the back of my radio when I
needed to. Every prisoner did this. They wrote me up saying it was a

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“trigger” for a zip gun. Another time a freeman was shaking down my cell
and I saw him take something out of his pocket. I asked him, “What you
taking out of your pocket?” He turned around and told me, “None of your
fucking business.” Later, they came to my cell and told me I was going to the
dungeon because they found gunpowder in my toothpaste. I got a write-up for
that as well.
At CCR they put a sign outside the doors to A and D tiers that read
PANTHER TIER
: 
DANGER
. In the late seventies, a young prisoner named Kenny
Whitmore was brought to D tier and when he saw that sign, he told me later,
he didn’t know what to expect. The first book I gave him was