News

Albert Woodfox of the ‘Angola 3’ Freed from Prison After Nearly 44 Years in Solitary

Published

11 years ago

February 26, 2016

By Ed Pilkington, The Guardian

Albert Woodfox, the longest-standing solitary confinement prisoner in the US, held in isolation in a six-by-nine-foot cell almost continuously for 43 years, has been released from a Louisiana jail.

Woodfox, who was kept in solitary following the 1972 murder of a prison guard for which he has always professed his innocence, marked his 69th birthday on Friday by being released from West Feliciana parish detention center.

It was a bittersweet birthday present: the prisoner finally escaped a form of captivity that has widely been denounced as torture, and that has deprived him of all meaningful human contact for more than four decades.

For the duration of that time, Woodfox was held in the cell for 23 hours a day. In the single remaining hour, he was allowed out of the cell to go to the “exercise yard” – a small area of fenced concrete – but was shackled and kept alone there as well.

Woodfox was one of the so-called “Angola 3”: three prisoners initially held in Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison, and who subscribed to the Black Panther movement and campaigned against segregation within the institution in the 1970s. His supporters contend that he was framed for the 1972 killing of the prison guard Brent Miller as revenge for his political activities.

Last November James Dennis, a judge with the federal fifth circuit appeals court, described the conditions of Woodfox’s confinement. “For the vast majority of his life, Woodfox has spent nearly every waking hour in a cramped cell in crushing solitude without a valid conviction,” he said.

In a statement released by his lawyers, Woodfox said that he would use his newfound liberty to campaign against the scourge of solitary confinement that at any one moment sees 80,000 American prisoners being held in isolation. “I can now direct all my efforts to ending the barbarous use of solitary confinement and will continue my work on that issue here in the free world.”

The prisoner’s release came after the state of Louisiana agreed to drop its threat to subject him to a third trial for the 1972 killing. Woodfox in turn pleaded no contest to lesser charges of manslaughter and aggravated burglary.

The “no contest” plea is not an admission of guilt, and Woodfox continues to be not guilty of the main murder charge. He said that “although I was looking forward to proving my innocence at a new trial, concerns about my health and my age have caused me to resolve this case now and obtain my release with this no-contest plea to lesser charges.”

His murder conviction was twice overturned – once in 1992 on grounds that he had received ineffective defense representation, and again in 2008 because of racial discrimination in setting up the grand jury that indicted him.

Last year, Louisiana announced it would put him through a third trial despite the fact that all the key witnesses to the killing have since died. Woodfox’s lawyers argued the lack of witnesses would render such a retrial a legal mockery.

His two fellow Angola 3 allies were already freed. Robert King was released in 2001 after having his separate conviction overturned, and Herman Wallace, who spent almost 30 years in solitary confinement, was allowed out of prison two days before he died in 2013.

“There was no logical reason that Louisiana kept him in solitary for so many years, for a crime in which all the evidence was undermined,” King told the Guardian.

“They did it as a war against the ideology of the Black Panthers and because they didn’t want to be seen to have been wrong all this time.”

Scientists have long warned about the dire effects caused by solitary confinement on prisoners even after a few days of such treatment, and several international bodies including the UN have called for it to be banned as a form of torture.

The supreme court justice Anthony Kennedy has also spoken out about the practice, remarking that the side-effects of prolonged isolation include anxiety, panic, withdrawal, hallucinations, self-mutilation and suicidal thoughts and behavior.

George Kendall, Woodfox’s attorney, said his client’s decades-long isolation was indefensible. “Albert survived the extreme and cruel punishment of 40-plus years in solitary confinement only because of his extraordinary strength and character. These inhumane practices must stop. We hope the Louisiana department of corrections will reform and greatly limit its use of solitary confinement as have an increasing number of jurisdictions around the country.”

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Oakland Post: Week of October 7 – 13, 2026

Published

5 days ago

October 13, 2026

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Black History

Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Publishes Global Circle’s Vatican Reparations Call in Special Edition Alongside Heads of State

GLOBAL CIRCLE FOR REPARATIONS AND HEALING — Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has published the Global Circle for Reparations and Healing’s submission, “From Accra to the Vatican,” in a special edition of The Ghanaian Envoy. This marks the first time a sovereign state has incorporated the Reparations Presentment to the Holy See into its official record. The 175-page edition, titled “Creating A New World,” also documents Ghana’s campaign that led to UN Resolution A/RES/80/250, which recognized the trafficking and enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity.

Published

2 weeks ago

October 7, 2026

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International responses to Ghana-led UN resolutions declaring the transatlantic enslavemen the gravest crime against humanity

“From Accra to the Vatican” appears in The Ghanaian Envoy Special Edition on UN Resolution A/RES/80/250 — the first time a sovereign state has carried the Reparations Presentment to the Holy See into its official record

ACCRA, Ghana / CHICAGO, Illinois — October 7, 2026 — The Global Circle for Reparations and Healing today announced that its submission to Ghana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “From Accra to the Vatican: A Call for a Global Plan of Action on Catholic Church Redress”, has been published in the Special Edition of The Ghanaian Envoy, the official newsletter of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Ghana. The 175-page edition, titled “Creating A New World,” documents the Ghana-led campaign that culminated on March 25, 2026, in United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/80/250, which declared the trafficking of enslaved Africans and the racialized chattel enslavement of Africans the gravest crime against humanity.

The Global Circle’s submission, authored by Co-Convener Kamm Howard, appears in Part V of the edition, “What Repair Must Now Mean,” at page 161. It shares the volume with statements by President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana, President Joseph Nyuma Boakai Sr. of Liberia, President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah of Namibia, President Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye of Senegal, President Carlos Manuel Vila Nova of São Tomé and Príncipe, President Emmanuel Macron of France, Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley of Barbados, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, African Union Commissioner Amma Twum-Amoah, CARICOM Reparations Commission Chair Sir Hilary Beckles, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Dr. Julius Garvey, and Congressional Black Caucus Executive Director Vincent Evans, among others.

The submission traces the Global Circle’s delivery of the Reparations Presentment to the Holy See in Vatican City on July 18, 2022, the document’s subsequent use by the former Vice President of Costa Rica and the Vice President of Colombia in their engagements with Pope Francis, and the partial response contained in Pope Leo XIV’s May 2026 encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. It argues that while three of the Presentment’s seven demands have entered the Church’s official language in diluted form, four remain wholly unmet: rescission of the papal bulls that authorized African enslavement, the Church’s call upon other offending Western nations to make redress, the establishment of a joint Vatican–African Diaspora–African Papal Commission on Reparations and Healing, and a substantial financial commitment to repair. The submission asks Ghana to adopt the Presentment as the reference instrument for a Vatican track within the Accra Next Steps Commitments and to convene a first meeting of Global African reparationists toward a collective response.

“For four years the Presentment has been a civil society document carried by civil society hands,” said Kamm Howard, Co-Convener of the Global Circle and Commissioner of the National African American Reparations Commission. “Ghana has now placed it in the official record of a sovereign state, in a volume that opens with a President’s address to the General Assembly and closes by asking what repair must mean. That is not a courtesy. It is a signal to every government, every reparations commission, and every African Catholic that the claim against the Holy See belongs on the state agenda, and that the state which broke the deadlock at the United Nations is prepared to see it there.”

The significance of the publication extends beyond the Vatican file. The Presentment was created as a legal claims instrument by Howard in 2014 and first delivered to corporations and institutions in the United States, where it secured significant concessions. Its appearance in a foreign ministry’s official publication, translated and distributed in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian, establishes the reparations presentment as a recognized instrument of international reparatory diplomacy, one that other states and descendant communities can adopt without drafting a new framework of their own. The Global Circle has described this catalytic potential as the “N’namba Effect,” after the Evanston, Illinois, reparations initiative – led by N’nanba Robin Rue Simmons – that gave municipalities across the United States the model, permission, and courage to act.

“The Vatican told us in 2022 that it moves in fifteen-year increments,” Howard added. “Ghana has just demonstrated at the United Nations that a determined state can compress that timeline to a single vote. We are asking Ghana to do for the Church what it did for the General Assembly, and we are asking Global Africa to organize behind that ask with one document, one voice, and one set of demands.”

The Global Circle has written to President Mahama and Foreign Minister Ablakwa to express its gratitude and to propose that its Vatican and Interreligious Actors Working Group lead the first meeting on a collective Vatican response under the auspices of the Government of Ghana. The Global Circle has also formally advised the Congressional Black Caucus of the publication in connection with its pending request that the Caucus recognize the Presentment as the foundational document for reparations engagement with the Roman Catholic Church and join the Government of Ghana in this global call to action.

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About the Global Circle for Reparations and Healing

The Global Circle for Reparations and Healing was convened in 2022 to help build united global reparations front across Africa and its worldwide diaspora. In July 2022 the Global Circle delivered the Reparations Presentment to the Holy See in Vatican City. It co-organized Accra Summit I in August 2022 with the Government of Ghana and the Africa Transitional Justice Legacy Fund, and led the organization of Accra Summit II: Centering Healing Across Global Africa in March 2025 in partnership with the African Union. The Reparations Presentment to the Holy See is available in English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish at gcrh.org.

Media Contact

Global Circle for Reparations and Healing

Kamm Howard, Co-Convenor

Kammh369@gmail.com 773 520 0369

gcrh.org