A speaking tour of the UK is being planned for Robert King Wilkerson, in May 2002. Whilst he will be speaking out about the US prison system and for the release of Woodfox and Wallace we hope his visit will also help to highlight cases here with visits being made to framed prisoners. The tour is being organized to raise solidarity with those in the US who are suffering the same injustice under a far more brutal and reactionary regime.

Prison activist and former Black Panther, Robert King Wilkerson, one of the prisoners known as "The Angola 3" will be speaking in Bristol (Easton Community Centre) on Wednesday 15th May at 8pm.

Robert King Wilkerson, one of the prisoners known as "the Angola 3," was released from the Louisiana State Penitentiary on Feb. 8, 2001, after spending 29 years in solitary confinement for a murder he did not commit.

Now that he is free, Wilkerson plans to travel and speak out against the imprisonment of the two other Angola 3: Woodfox and Wallace and the continuing growth of the American prison-industrial complex. And so hell be touring the UK.

All three men entered prison on unrelated robbery charges and quickly joined the prisoners' rights movement that was sweeping the country in the late 1960s. In the ensuing years, the men continued their activism from within solitary confinement by organizing hunger strikes, educating other prisoners, and by becoming highly-skilled jailhouse lawyers.

    Background: Angola

Known as "The Farm," the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is the largest prison in the United States. Around three-quarters of its inmates are African-American. According to the Academy-Award-nominated documentary The Farm, 85 % of the inmates who are sent to Angola will die there. Angola is an 18,000-acre complex of antebellum plantations that the state of Louisiana purchased and converted into a prison around the turn of the century. The penitentiary is called Angola because most of its former slaves came from the African country of the same name. Angola still operates on the plantation model. Prisoners perform back-breaking labor, harvesting cotton, sugar cane, and other crops from dawn to dusk. In the early 1970s, Angola was known as the most brutal prison in the United States, with stabbings an almost-daily occurrence. Armed "Inmate guards" patrolled the prison, and they frequently used their state-issued rifles to settle scores with other inmates, sometimes at the behest of Angola officials. On one occasion, a prisoner died after five men were locked together in a sweltering isolation cell, without food or water, during the hottest days of summer. Dozens of bodies are rumored to be buried in the swampland where Angola borders the Mississippi River.

Among the men who have been marooned at Angola are Albert Woodfox, Hertnan Wallace, and Robert King Wilkerson. Of the world's political prisoners, few have been held in solitary confinement for as long as they have: 28 years. All three men initially arrived at Angola with sentences for robbery and a dedication to political activism. Their activism led them to found a chapter of the Black Panther Party at Angola, but it also made them targets of the all-white prison administration. In 1972 and 1973, in an effort to put a stop to their organizing, prison officials concocted murder charges against Woodfox, Wallace, and Wilkerson, and placed all of them on permanent lockdown. Relying on the testimony of prison snatches and arguing their cases to all-white juries, Angola officials won convictions against the three men, all of whom received sentences of life without parole.

    Formation of the Black Panther Party at Angola

In 1971, Woodfox and Wallace organized the Black Panther Party at Angola. Woodfox had joined the Party in New York, where he had fled after a daring 1969 escape from the courthouse in New Orleans. After spending time imprisoned under an assumed name in New York, where he helped organize several rebellions in the New York City correctional system, Woodfox, along with his newfound politics, was extradited back to Louisiana. Wallace became a Panther while he was incarcerated at the New Orleans Parish Prison with the political prisoners known as the "New Orleans Paither 12. " When they were shipped off to Angola, Woodfox and Wallace took the Black Panther Party with them.

The Angola Panthers not only challenged the 'son administration, but they also organized to end aspects of the inmate social order that hindered prisoner unity and played into the hands of the guards. The Panthers risked their lives to protect younger and weaker inmates from the rape, prostitution, and sex slavery that pervaded prison life. As Woodfox puts it, "It wasn't much help to go to the, security because most of the security people were condoning that type of activity. They would benefit from it because they would get money or favors for allowing rapes to happen. Some of the guards themselves would be involved in the rapes."

The Panthers worked to mend the schism between black and white prisoners that the prison officials manipulated to their advantage, a difficult feat considering that the prisoner housing, dining halls, and worksites were still racially segregated, with privileged living arrangements and work assignments going to white prisoners. The BPP also exposed the widespread corruption of the people who ran Angola, many of whom came from families that had lived on state land and had worked at the prison for several generations. Guards often diverted food, grown by the prisoners for their own consumption, to their own families and friends or sold it in town.

The administration of the prison responded to the rise of the Panthers by filling its isolation units with activist prisoners. The associate warden of the 'son, Hayden Dees, testified in court proceedings to the need to keep "a certain type of militant or revolutionary irunate, maybe even a Communist type," on permanent lockdown.

Indeed, Woodfox and Wallace believe they were targeted for prosecution and long-term lockdown because of their organizing. "I think the fact that they were never able to break my spirit or Herman Wallace's spirit, the fact that they could not shake our political beliefs or convictions, contributed to the reason why we were held in CCR [Closed Cell Restricted, or solitary confinement]," Woodfox says.

    Robert King Wilkerson, profile

Wilkerson, 58, was convicted of the 1973 murder of a fellow Angola prisoner despite the fact that another man confessed and was convicted of the murder. After two prisoners who testified against Wilkerson - the only evidence ever presented against him - retracted their testimony and revealed that it had been coerced by prison officials, the United States Court of Appeals in December issued a ruling that almost certainly would have led to his release.

In response, in what his supporters characterized as a face-saving move, the state offered Wilkerson a plea bargain, which he accepted. Six hours later, to the cheers of a throng of family and supporters, Wilkerson walked out of Angola a free man.

He has pledged to dedicate his life to winning freedom for Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, the other two members of the Angola 3, and for all of the other innocent men with whom he was incarcerated for the past three decades. "I may be free of Angola, but Angola will never be free of me," Wilkerson said.

Woodfox and Wallace have also been held in solitary confinement for 29 years. They were convicted of the 1972 murder of an Angola prison guard - a murder that they have unwaveringly claimed they did not commit. In recent years, new evidence of their innocence has surfaced. Even though the new evidence was suppressed at the time of their trials, they have thus far been unable to win Justice from the courts.

Wilkerson, Woodfox, and Wallace have always believed that they were framed by prison officials because they organized the Angola chapter of the Black Panther Party. Prior to being placed in solitary confinement, the men led campaigns to end prisoner rape, improve race relations, and ameliorate conditions at the slave plantation-tumed- prison. The American Civil Liberties Union is currently pursing a federal lawsuit alleging that the merf s 29-year stay in solitary confinement amounts to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.

   Black Panthers

The US government carried out a dirty war against the Panthers in the 70s called COINTELLPRO. As a result many Panther members were imprisoned or murdered, Leading members were regularly framed and sentenced to life - 30 years - natural life in order to break there resistance to racism and oppression in the states. Many including Mumia Abu Jamal are still facing death or natural life in prison for their political beliefs. Many are systematically abused during their captivity.