{"id":1934,"date":"2022-01-25T12:47:55","date_gmt":"2022-01-25T17:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/revolution1313\/?p=1934"},"modified":"2022-01-25T17:49:04","modified_gmt":"2022-01-25T22:49:04","slug":"bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-revolution-7-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/revolution1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-revolution-7-13\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernard E. Harcourt | Introduction to Revolution 7\/13"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

I turned my cell into a university, a hall of debate, a law school.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reading was my salvation\u2026. I first gravitated to books and authors that dealt with politics and race\u2014George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Steve Biko, Eldridge Cleaver\u2019s Soul on Ice<\/em>, J.A. Rogers\u2019s From \u201cSuperman\u201d to Man<\/em>. We read anything we could find on slavery, communism, socialism, Marxism, anti-imperialism, the African independence movements, and independence movements from around the world\u2026. Leaning against my wall in the cell, sitting on the floor, on my bed, or at my table, I read.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Albert Woodfox, Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement <\/em>(2019)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do you know (of course you do) the secret police (CIA, etc.) go to great lengths to murder and consequently silence every effective black person the moment he attempts to explain to the ghetto that our problems are historically and strategically tied to the problems of all colonial people.<\/p>\n

\u2014 George Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters<\/em> (1970)<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Albert Woodfox became a Black Panther at Angola\u2014the infamous plantation-prison in Louisiana\u2014and founded, along with another revolutionary, Herman Wallace, the very first official chapter of the Panthers behind bars. Reading the works of revolutionary thinkers moved Woodfox to political action and helped him survive four decades of the most torturous conditions of solitary confinement known to humanity. \u201cI could lose myself in a book. Reading was a bright spot for me,\u201d Woodfox writes in his remarkable memoir, Solitary<\/em>. \u201cLibraries and universities and schools from all over Louisiana donated books to Angola and for once, the willful ignorance of the prison administration paid off for us, because there were a lot of radical books in the prison library: Books we wouldn\u2019t have been allowed to get through the mail. Books we never could have afforded to buy. Books we have never heard of.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Woodfox recounts the authors and books he read at Angola: George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, Mao, Eldridge Cleaver, Malcolm X, Marx and Engels, Fidel, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, Marcus Garvey, Steve Biko.[2]<\/a> His list reads like the bibliography for Revolution 13\/13<\/a>. Reading those works, Woodfox tells us, made him the person he is today. It also condemned him to four decades in solitary confinement\u2014or rather, the racist state condemned him to four decades of solitary for reading those books. \u201cI paid a heavy price,\u201d Woodfox acknowledges.[3]<\/a> But he would not have had it any other way. When asked, as he often is, whether, looking back, he would have done anything different, Woodfox is adamant: \u201cNot one thing.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Reading, sharing, studying, discussing these prison writings and revolutionary books was formative as well for the members of the Short Corridor Collective<\/a> at the SHU at Pelican Bay State Prison \u2014both in terms of personal transformation and political action. Reading George Jackson and Eldridge Cleaver, Assata Shakur, but also Michel Foucault and Howard Zinn, transformed the men in the SHU\u2014Sitawa Jamaa, Todd Ashker, Arturo Castellanos, Antonio Guillen, who formed the Collective and were joined by Paul Redd<\/a> and other men\u2014leading to prison hunger strikes and legal actions that sought to abolish solitary confinement. They also generated new prison writings, like the \u201cAgreement to End Hostilities<\/a>\u201d released by a group of militant hunger strikers in the Short Corridor of Pelican Bay, an agreement that sought to formalize solidarity between racial groups engaged in the hunger strike in opposition to the state\u2019s attempts to fracture the movement. Paul Redd, one of the original signatories of that document, has spoken extensively about those political actions, especially the hunger strikes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Prison writing\u2014works produced by authors while they themselves are incarcerated in jail or prison\u2014have a special role and influence on readers, but perhaps especially on persons who are imprisoned. Professor Joy James<\/a>, one of the world\u2019s leading scholars and thinkers on prison writing, describes poignantly how contemporary insurrectionist prison writings \u201ccan question the very premises of rehabilitation, indicting the state and society, contextualizing or dismissing individual acts of criminality by nonelites, the poor and racialized, to emphasize state criminality or the crimes of elites.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

Many of the revolutionary authors who Woodfox and the Collective read wrote, themselves, from prison. Indeed, many of the worldly philosophers on our bibliography wrote from prison. Some, we have already discussed: Antonio Gramsci<\/a> and his Prison Notebooks<\/em>. Martin Luther King<\/a> writing from the Birmingham city jail. Angela Davis<\/a>\u2019s letter from Marin County jail. Gandhi<\/a>\u2019s writings on Satyagraha. Other writers, we would like to read: Nawal El Saadawi\u2019s Memoirs from the Women\u2019s Prison<\/em>. Nelson Mandela and his writings from prison, Conversations with Myself<\/em>. R\u00e9gis Debray, who became an associate of Che Guevara and Fidel, and his Prison Writings. <\/em>Wole Soyinka\u2019s The Man Died: The Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka<\/em>, and others as well, such as Nehru. And there are many more to add to our bibliography\u2014from contemporary prison writers going back in time: Mumia Abu-Jamal, Live from Death Row<\/em>. Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sundance<\/em>. Oscar Wilde, De Profundis<\/em>. Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers<\/em>. Peter Kropotkin, In Russian and French Prisons. <\/em>Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago. <\/em>Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from a Dead House<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Those prison writings and readings continue to shape the way we think and view the world today\u2014and the way we act. The writer Darryl Robertson, who himself has produced remarkable writings behind bars, traces how these writings and experiences continue to influence contemporary artists and thinkers<\/a> like Tupac Shakur and Nas. They guide us in our praxis and our ambitions. They change who we are. They also shed light on what happens in the darkest corners of our society\u2014 the places where oppression and torture are most easily hidden. Paul Redd\u2019s\u00a0essay from Pelican Bay State Prison\u2019s SHU Windowless Cell Dungeon<\/a>\u00a0exemplifies this, as he gives a first-hand account of the torturous conditions in the solitary confinement unit to counter the state\u2019s distortions and advocate for change. \u00a0As Joy James observes, \u201cwhen they emanate from the site of the noncitizen, from men and women in cages, regardless of their outlaw and disreputable status, they illuminate past, present, and future possibilities for the reinvention of democracy.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Prison writing. Prison reading. These are the focus of our seminar Revolution 7\/13. They raise a set of questions: How do these revolutionary books, written from prison, work, motivate, and speak to us? What is the difference with other classical critical texts, insofar as these works emanate from behind bars? What is the experience like to read prison writings in particular? And what is the experience of reading in prison, in solitary, or in the collectivity of detention? What is it like to encounter, intellectually and politically, an author like George Jackson in the prison?\u00a0These are some of the questions we will address at Revolution 7\/13.<\/p>\n

A History of Revolutionary Readings<\/h1>\n

A book. An imprint. There is, in Albert Woodfox\u2019s Solitary<\/em>, a history of the books he encountered\u2014of the books that left an imprint on him. It is a remarkable journey.<\/p>\n

A Different Drummer<\/em><\/h2>\n

The first book he recalls was A Different Drummer <\/em>by William Melvin Kelley, given to him by a Panther when they were both incarcerated in the Tombs in New York City in 1971. \u201cIt opened my mind,\u201d Woodfox writes.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

A Different Drummer <\/em>was a story of rebellion\u2014rebellion against the legacies of slavery in the South and the way in which those histories clung onto the protagonist, who ultimately burns down his house in the South, kills his livestock, covers his land with salt, and moves up North\u2014triggering a mass migration of Blacks who leave the state.<\/p>\n

Woodfox was inspired by how the protagonist took action and had an effect on others. \u201cNow I wanted to go as far as my humanity would allow me to go,\u201d Woodfox writes. After reading A Different Drummer<\/em> I started to believe, for the first time in my life, that one man could make a difference.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

At the time, Alfred Woodfox was in the Tombs, encountering, meeting, learning from members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense incarcerated by his side\u2014including members of the Panther 21. Woodfox had first encountered Panthers on the streets of Harlem when he\u2019d escaped from jail in New Orleans. What immediately attracted Woodfox to the Panthers was their confidence, their pride, the fact that they weren\u2019t afraid. They weren\u2019t intimidated.[9]<\/a> The next time he encountered the Panthers was in that jail in New York. \u201cThe same fearlessness, but there was also kindness.\u201d[10]<\/a><\/p>\n

By this time, Albert Woodfox had spent several years incarcerated in the South\u2014about two years at Angola, the plantation prison of Louisiana, and in and out of jail in New Orleans\u2014and was now incarcerated in the North.[11]<\/a> Reading A Different Drummer<\/em> was a transformative experience for Albert Woodfox. \u201cIt was as if a light went on in a room inside me that I hadn\u2019t known existed.\u201d[12]<\/a><\/p>\n

Mao\u2019s Little Red Book<\/em><\/h2>\n

The second book Woodfox refers to is Mao\u2019s Little Red Book<\/em>. He gets a copy of that at the Orleans Parish Prison in 1971, also from a Panther\u2014on his return to Louisiana, extradited from New York City after a not guilty verdict.[13]<\/a> He\u2019d been put on the Panther tier. There, he met the cofounders of the New Orleans chapter of the Black Panthers and had access to copies of the Panther newspaper. Mao\u2019s book, he received shortly after he\u2019d taken an oath to be a member of the Black Panther Party, still at the Parish Prison.[14]<\/a><\/p>\n

George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, Ho Chi Minh, Malcolm X<\/h2>\n

Back at Angola, he kept Mao with him at all times. \u201cI carried the Little Red Book<\/em> with me wherever I went.\u201d[15]<\/a> It\u2019s also there that he read George Jackson, Frantz Fanon, Ho Chi Minh, and other revolutionary thinkers, and met Herman Wallace\u2014who, like him, would become one of the Angola 3. Wallace had learned about the Panthers while incarcerated at the Orleans Parish Prison. His encounters too, with radical writers, were transformative. Woodfox recounts:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn prison I met Chairman Mao, Marx and Engels, Chou En-lai, Fidel, Che, George Jackson, Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, and especially Frantz Fanon,\u201d Herman once wrote. \u201cI learned a whole new mode of thinking.\u201d[16]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Together, Woodfox and Wallace set out to create a chapter of the Black Panther Party at Angola.[17]<\/a> The Panthers emphasized reading, two hours of reading a day\u2014Woodfox got that from George Jackson. It was something Woodfox and Wallace spoke about all the time, and a practice that they inculcated. Woodfox made that part of his daily routine. Two hours of reading a day. It is, he writes, what helped save him in prison. \u201cReading was my salvation,\u201d Woodfox says.[18]<\/a><\/p>\n

George Jackson, both the person and his writings, were transformative for Albert Woodfox. He returns to them throughout Solitary<\/em>. They marked him:<\/p>\n

When I read George Jackson\u2019s Soledad Brother<\/em>, I saw how even though he was fucked around by the system he never used that as an excuse not to step up. I was on D tier when I read that book in my cell. \u201cThe nature of life,\u201d he wrote, \u201cstruggle, permanent revolution; that is the situation we were born into. There are other peoples on this earth. In denying their existence and turning inward in our misery and accepting any form of racism we are taking on the characteristic of our enemy. We are resigning ourselves to defeat\u2026. History sweeps on, we must not let it escape our influence this time<\/em>!!!!\u201d 162<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Woodfox opens the section of the book on the 1970s with a George Jackson quote:<\/p>\n

Understanding that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will die or live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution\u2026. Join us, give up your life for the people.[19]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Woodfox opens the section of the book on the 1980s with a reference to George Jackson\u2014as well as Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X\u2014and what they taught him: \u201cGeorge Jackson taught me that if you\u2019re not willing to die for what you believe in, you don\u2019t believe in anything.\u201d[20]<\/a><\/p>\n

Woodfox recalls the day that George Jackson was killed. It was the day he was released from the Red Hat (one isolation area), back to CRC. \u201cAfter being locked in the stinking coffin of the Red Hat for three days I didn\u2019t think my resolve to uphold the principles of the Black Panther Party could get any stronger,\u201d Woodfox notes. He adds: \u201cWhen I learned of George\u2019s murder, my commitment only grew.\u201d[21]<\/a><\/p>\n

Frantz Fanon, Ho Chi Minh, Malcolm X, and others were also particularly important to Woodfox. Fanon appears throughout the book Solitary. <\/em>\u201cThe oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves, Frantz Fanon wrote, and we found that to be true,\u201d Woodfox writes.[22]<\/a> About Fanon, Woodfox remarks:<\/p>\n

I did a lot of soul-searching while reading. The words of the Vietnamese revolutionary communist leader Ho Chi Minh resonated with me when I read that he told the invading French army something like, \u201cWe are willing to die ten to one, are you?\u201d That got me at my core, that willingness to sacrifice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

About Malcolm X: He \u201ctaught me how to think of the big picture, to connect the dots.[23]<\/a><\/p>\n

Richard Wright<\/h2>\n

Another important book was Richard Wright\u2019s Native Son<\/em>, a book that Albert Woodfox gave Kenny Whitmore when he arrived on the tier\u2014it was the D tier at the CCR (solitary) at Angola. There was a sign on the door to the tier: \u201cPANTHER TIER: DANGER.\u201d Soon after Kenny Whitmore got there, at first scared, he would tell Albert Woodfox \u201cMan, you\u2019re more like a professor than anything dangerous.\u201d[24]<\/a><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

These readings and prison writings were formative for Albert Woodfox, for the members of the Short Corridor Collective, and for so many other men and women around the world. They shape how we think. They move us to action. They are tools and weapons to survive, and to change the world.<\/p>\n

We turn to prison writings and prison reading at our next seminar, joined by Albert Woodfox, Paul Redd, Professor Joy James, and the writer Darryl Robertson.<\/p>\n

Welcome to Revolution 7\/13<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Notes<\/h1>\n

[1]<\/a> Albert Woodfox, Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement <\/em>(New York: Grove Press, 2019), 91, 161.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 91, 161.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 413.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 413.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Joy James,\u00a0The New Abolitionists: (Neo)slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings<\/em>\u00a0(New York: SUNY Press, 2005), xxxii.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> James,\u00a0The New Abolitionists<\/em>, xxxii.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 64.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 65.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 58.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 63.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Woodfox had originally been sentenced in 1965 to serve two years in Angola for joyriding in a stolen car and then escaping arrest. He was given two years\u2019 time, but released on parole after having served a third of his sentence in February 1966. He gets violated from parole and sent back to Angola to serve out eight months, discharged in August 1967. From August 1967 to February 1968, he\u2019s in and out of jail in New Orleans. He\u2019s arrested for robbery at a bar, tried in New Orleans, held at the Orleans Parish prison, and on sentencing day, on October 9, 1969, escapes in an armed incident and heads to New York City. It\u2019s in Harlem that he meets Black Panther members on the street first\u2014and is deeply impressed. He gets arrested\u2014for an alleged robbery he did not commit\u2014and uses an alias, Charles Harris. That\u2019s when he is detained at the Manhattan house of detention, the Tombs, and encounters Black Panther members\u2014he\u2019s placed on the floor where the Black Panthers are organized. These were members of the Panther 21. Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 63.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 66.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> There were prison riots in the Tombs in August 1971. Woodfox was moved to the jail in Queens, then back to the Tombs. During all this time, he still operating under the false name of Charles Harris and is in New York custody, but fearing that he would get discovered and extradited back to Angola. He was found not guilty of the robbery, but then extradited back to New Orleans. It was on the plane back that he vowed to never be a criminal again. Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 79.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> \u201cOn my last day there, one of the Panthers gave me a copy of the Little Red Book<\/em>, a collection of quotations from Mao Tse-tung.\u201d Woodfox, Solitary,<\/em>83.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 86.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 91.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> \u201cWe formed the first official chapter of the Black Panther Party behind bars\u2026 We couldn\u2019t require the men to read two hours a day, as the Panthers did on the street.\u201d Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 95. But they did everything to talk about the principles and ideals.<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> Shortly thereafter, in May 1972, Woodfox and Wallace (and two others) were indicted for the murder of a prison guard, Brent Miller. That was the beginning of the end\u2014and what would become the \u201cAngola 3.\u201d He was placed in solitary and would remain there for 4 decades. He was 25 years old at the time. He knew why he was being charged: \u201cprison authorities wanted to wipe out the Black Panther Party at Angola.\u201d Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 109.<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 61.<\/p>\n

[20]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 173.<\/p>\n

[21]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 89.<\/p>\n

[22]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 93.<\/p>\n

[23]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 162.<\/p>\n

[24]<\/a> Woodfox, Solitary<\/em>, 170.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt   I turned my cell into a university, a hall of debate, a law school.   Reading was my salvation\u2026. I first gravitated to books and authors that dealt with politics and race\u2014George Jackson, Frantz Fanon,… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2332,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38972],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts-7-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/revolution1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/revolution1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/revolution1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/revolution1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2332"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/revolution1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/revolution1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1934\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/revolution1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/revolution1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/revolution1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}