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

Q.
Are you contending Warden Cain is a racist?
A.
I don’t know enough about Warden Cain to say he’s a racist.
Q.
Are you contending that he’s keeping you in lockdown because you’re
black?
A.
Based upon his statements, yes.
In December, an art exhibit called 
The House That Herman Built
opened
at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans. The artist Jackie Sumell
had written to Herman years before, asking him what his dream house would
look like. Over several letters, sketches, phone calls, and visits, he answered
her. She created an art exhibit around his vision that included blueprints,
architectural drawings, models, and a computerized virtual tour of the house
Herman wanted to build. She incorporated his drawings, excerpts of his
letters, and the paper flowers he used to make. She also built a walk-in
wooden replica of a six-by-nine-foot prison cell. The installation would travel
throughout the United States to cities including Philadelphia, San Francisco,
and Augusta, Georgia, and around the world, to Poland, the United Kingdom,
Germany, and France. It helped raise awareness about the horrors and abuses
of solitary confinement among many who never would have been exposed to

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the issue. Visitors to art galleries and museums who walked into that wooden
cell had a chance to imagine life in solitary confinement. A filmmaker,
Angad Singh Bhalla, made a documentary about Herman’s collaboration with
Jackie, called 
Herman’s House
.
Herman had a garden filled with roses and delphiniums in the front yard
of his dream house. He had a wraparound porch and a greenhouse on the
grounds so that, as he explained to Jackie, he was “never far from growing
things.” There were six microwave ovens in his huge kitchen to
accommodate all his guests. Portraits of John Brown, Harriet Tubman, and
other abolitionists hung in the living room. The picture window was
bulletproof. The swimming pool had a huge black panther painted across the
bottom. Herman’s bedroom had an escape hatch that led to a survivalist
bunker. The house, he told Jackie, would be made of wood so in case of
attack it could be burned to the ground.

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