Solitary

Albert Woodfox (1947-) is an American activist and the author of Solitary, his memoir. In the book, he draws on his experiences spending more than four decades in solitary confinement—much of that for a crime he did not commit—to paint a picture of the corruption and inhumanity of the prison system, as well as how his commitment to principles helped him survive.

Woodfox was born in New Orleans and describes becoming aware of racism at an early age, in instances such as when his mother hid him from a passing police car and when a white girl grabbed the beads he’d been tossed from a passing Mardi Gras float and called him the n-word. Other manifestations of discrimination were more diffuse, such as the poverty in of the 6th Ward, the Black neighborhood where he grew up. He also realized his sixth-grade textbooks depicted life through a white lens, ignoring the Black experience that he knew. Throughout his life, Woodfox would encounter racism again and again via the police who beat him for evading arrest, the white guards who terrorized mostly Black prisoners at Angola, and the officials who framed him and kept him in solitary confinement because of his affiliation with the Black Panther Party.