Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

Woodfox and Wallace immediately began peacefully organising their
fellow inmates against the racial segregation, sexual slavery, rampant
violence and systematic brutality, which were rife inside a prison that was
soon to be under federal investigation for its abhorrent conditions. Their
protest methods included hunger strikes and escorting weaker inmates
through the prison yard as a means of protection.
6
Shortly after the pair’s arrival, a white prison guard was found stabbed to
death in one of the black inmate buildings. Woodfox and Wallace were
immediately identified as suspects despite no witnesses or any physical
evidence to link them to the crime. In 1972, the men were convicted of
the guard’s murder by all-white juries and sentenced to life in prison. The
Angola administration determined that they would spend the sentence in
solitude and it was more than four decades before their release, they are
the longest known survivors of solitary confinement in the history of the US.
In the years that have followed, a mountain of evidence has been turned
up to indicate that not only were Woodfox and Wallace not guilty, but they
were set up by Angols’s administration, probably because of their known
affiliation with the Black Panther Party. The party was founded in 1966
by Huey Newton and Bobbly Seale. It followed Malcolm X’s belief in the
international unity of the working classes across colour and gender.
The bloody fingerprints found at the scene of the crime failed to find a
match with either Woodfox or Wallace. The authorities, however, did not
run them against anyone else despite having the prints of every Angola
inmate and employee on file.
SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 17