Finding Life in Prison
This story is a testament to the human soul and the mind’s capacity for resilience and creativity. Truly amazing.
Survivor, Thriver
King spent 29 years in solitary confinement in a six-by-nine-foot cell at Angola Louisiana State Penitentiary.
King was convicted of robbery in 1969 despite the testimony of the main witness who admitted he picked King out of a lineup after being tortured.
King escaped from the Orleans Parish Prison and joined the Black Panther Party in New Orleans—five years after the federal government passed the Civil Rights Act.
He was recaptured within weeks of his escape and sent to Angola, then considered the bloodiest prison in America, in the spring of 1972 where he met Black Panthers Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace in solitary confinement.
They became informally known as the “Angola 3.” Woodfox and Wallace remain in solitary confinement, while King was released on time served in February 2011.
King learned the power of creative, physical activity while he was in Closed Cell Restriction (CCR), also known as extended lockdown, at Angola.
Unlike the other living spaces on Angola’s 18,000-acre prison grounds, the CCR cells did not have a slot for passing food to inmates. King had to eat from his plate through the bars while the plate was on the floor or while he balanced the plate in mid-air.
As a solution, King built a cardboard food tray and hung it from strings outside his cell. “All the guys began to do it. Some guys got creative about it. They drew pictures on their trays. They covered them in table clothes. We had fun with it,” King says.
They also made chess boards out of tissue paper. They fastened sixty-four tissue squares to their concrete floors with toothpaste to make chessboards. They made expertly sculpted tissue paper rooks and kings.