Solitary is the unforgettable life story of a man who served
more than four decades in solitary confinement—in a 6-foot by
9-foot cell, 23 hours a day, in notorious Angola prison in
Louisiana—all for a crime he did not commit. That Albert Woodfox
survived was, in itself, a feat of extraordinary endurance against
the violence and deprivation he faced daily. That he was able to
emerge whole from his odyssey within America’s prison and judicial
systems is a triumph of the human spirit, and makes his book a
clarion call to reform the inhumanity of solitary confinement in the
U.S. and around the world.
Arrested often as a
teenager in New Orleans, inspired behind bars in his early twenties
to join the Black Panther Party because of its social commitment and
code of living, Albert was serving a 50-year sentence in Angola for
armed robbery when on April 17, 1972, a white guard was killed.
Albert and another member of the Panthers were accused of the crime
and immediately put in solitary confinement by the warden. Without a
shred of actual evidence against them, their trial was a sham of
justice that gave them life sentences in solitary. Decades passed
before Albert gained a lawyer of consequence; even so, sixteen more
years and multiple appeals were needed before he was finally released
in February 2016.
Remarkably
self-aware that anger or bitterness would have destroyed him in
solitary confinement, sustained by the shared solidarity of two
fellow Panthers, Albert turned his anger into activism and
resistance. The Angola 3, as they became known, resolved never to be
broken by the grinding inhumanity and corruption that effectively
held them for decades as political prisoners. He survived to give us
Solitary, a chronicle of rare power and humanity that proves
the better spirits of our nature can thrive against any odds.