How has Albert Woodfox survived 40 years in solitary confinement? | Amnesty International

7.12.15

How has Albert Woodfox survived 40 years in solitary confinement? | Amnesty International: Robert Hillary King is describing Louisiana State Penitentiary, a massive former slave plantation known as Angola in the southern US state, where he spent 29 years alone in a cell.

Today, Robert is an energetic 72-year-old, dapper in a blue silk shirt, preparing to give a lecture about the US justice system at the University of Dundee, Scotland. Around his neck hangs a gold medallion from the West African country of Benin, decorated with three figurines. They might symbolize the Angola Three, of which Robert is one member.

He and two other young black men, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, became known under this name after they rebelled against the prison’s vicious, racist regime in the early 1970s, and ended up spending a record total of over 100 years in solitary confinement.