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Our Stories. At Last.
Our Stories. At Last.
BY MARIE P. GRADY
Robert Hillary King has the letters “L-O-V-E” etched into the skin on his fingers. He has a soft N’Orleans drawl and a caramel, freckled face under his black knit cap that reminds you up close a little of the actor Morgan Freeman.
Those hands make candy these days - “Freelines” he calls them - a recipe he mastered in a place that was as about as far from the sweet taste of liberty as they come.
King was born 100 years after slavery officially ended in this country, but he came of age in a prison that stood on the grounds of a former plantation in the backwoods of Louisiana. At the prison named Angola, men in bondage - most of them black - shucked cotton for 2 ˝ cents an hour under the watch of white guards on horseback.
“Slavery exists in this country.”
King says this matter of factly, without a trace of anger, as he looks out at a classroom full of students at Western New England College School of Law in Springfield recently. By now, many of us have learned about crime and punishment. We know that a poor person in this country is entitled to effective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment to the Bill of Rights. We know that you have a constitutional right against unlawful search and seizure.
This, after all, is the land of liberty and justice for all.
King, 67, might have thought that too, at one time. But that was before he spent 29 years in solitary confinement in a 6-by-9-foot cell at Angola State Prison. His crime? Officially it was stabbing another prisoner to death. But the trumped up charges were really punishment for King’s being a founding member of a chapter of the Black Panther Party in prison. King was the only member of the so-called Angola 3 who ever got out.
By the time he was convicted of the stabbing, he might have expected to be on the losing end of the law. King’s journey began in Louisiana, where he grew up with a hard-working grandmother he called “Mama” and where the flood waters of the river and life were never far from his front door. His own mother was too young when she had him and died too young at 41 of alcoholism. He didn’t lay eyes on his father until he was 13.
In the Louisiana of King’s youth it was routine for young men to be arrested if they could not provide check stubs proving they were working. The United States Supreme Court later struck down such vagrancy laws as unconstitutionally vague, but not before King and countless others spent their tender years behind bars. In his book, “From the Bottom of the Heap,” King recalls lawyers who urged their young charges to cop to pleas for crimes they didn’t commit. They knew they would be found guilty whether they were or not; at least this way they’d spend less time in jail.
At 28, King, who admits to some petty thievery as a teen-ager, ended up locked up in Angola. Incredibly, a jury found him guilty of being the 40-year-old armed robbery accomplice of a defendant who testified in court he was not the man. He was finally released last year after two inmates admitted they had been coerced by guards into accusing him of the prison stabbing. Once again, he had to cop to a lesser charge for a crime he didn’t commit.
Today, he travels the country and the world championing the cause of the two other Angola 3 members. Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace were in solitary confinement for 36 years before they were finally released into the general population last year. But they are still in prison for a crime that King says they did not commit.
In the beginning of his book, King shares a word with his readers.
“I was born in the U.S.A. Born black, born poor. Is it any wonder that I have spent most of my life in prison?”
His is a story of loss and a fierce determination not to lose himself. As a young man he would marry a woman named Clara, his mother’s name, and learn in prison that the 5-year-old son they had together had died of illness.
He easily could have spent the entire book talking about his experience at Angola, a prison that still presents the surreal image of a slave plantation. Yet, he doesn’t get to the raw images of a place where rats battled inmates for food and where brutality was a way of life until nearly the end of the book. The Panther chapter began as a way to end dehumanizing conditions at the jail, including the routine sexual exploitation of young, vulnerable inmates, King said.
It was in this dark and dangerous place that King learned how to make pralines while working with another inmate in the kitchen. Later, he would cook the butter and sugar packets inmates saved for him, along with smuggled pecans, on a stove of stacked cans in the cell where he spent 23 hours a day. Today, he sells the candy to make money for his mission to free the other two members of the Angola 3.
His speech to this class of law students comes at a time when one in every 100 people in America are in prison, the highest concentration in the world, according to a 2008 study by the non-partisan Pew Center on the States. One out of nine black men from age 20-34 are behind bars.
Among the reasons for the disproportionate numbers of black men in prison are mandatory sentencing laws that target the scourge of crack cocaine in inner cities. Recently President Barack Obama announced plans to end disparities in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine that resulted in prison terms for crack many times longer than those for powder cocaine.
King’s speech, part of the college’s “Color of Law” series, is among several in the past few years featuring former inmates who spent the better part of their lives locked up before a determined lawyer helped to set them free. In King’s case it was Attorney Charles A. Shropshire, whose impassioned letter to a prosecutor asking the state to drop the charges appears near the end of King’s book.
In the words of lawyer Robert Meeropol, who introduced King, there are many political prisoners enslaved in a justice system that turns a blind eye to injustice. Meeropol knows something about the subject. He spent his adult life trying to clear the name of his parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed by the U.S. government in 1953 after being convicted of espionage. Meeropol’s adoptive father, Abel Meeropol, wrote the words to “Strange Fruit,” the song about lynching which would become a Billie Holiday classic
Looking out at a class of students whose greatest worries probably center on paying back school loans and getting jobs, King shares something he states near the end of his book.
“At one point I mistakenly believed that legality and morality were synonymous, that everything judged legal was also wholly and morally correct. Through hard experience, I learned that is not true.”
He urges the class to remember this, whether they become defense lawyers or prosecutors.
As he speaks to this group of law students, King recalls dropping out of school in ninth grade even though he was a good student who later became an avid reader. I ask him later if he thinks that high school dropout rates of 50 percent or more in cities like Springfield are perpetuating a cycle of imprisonment and poverty. He says education can only help young people.
Later, I realize the question seems superficial. He was not locked in a cell for 23 hours a day for 29 years because he was a dropout. He was locked in his cell because he had the audacity to become educated about how to foment change in a system that was weighed against him.
In his book, he speaks of how the rallying cry for education became a simplistic answer that masked questions into whether the American justice system was really just.
As King’s speech is nearing an end, a student asks how he can possibly seem so together after spending half a lifetime in a tiny cell. King recalls bristling at a similar question from a reporter when he was finally released. “I was a dreamer and a reader. I dreamed. I day dreamed. I dreamed at night.”
He was in that cell, but only physically. It is possible, it seems, to be free even when you are in bondage.
“I was in prison but prison was never in me.”
To learn more about Robert Hillary King and the “Freelines” candy he makes and sells visit his web site at www.KingsFreeLines.com
Robert Hillary King has the letters “L-O-V-E” etched into the skin on his fingers. He has a soft N’Orleans drawl and a caramel, freckled face under his black knit cap that reminds you up close a little of the actor Morgan Freeman.
Those hands make candy these days - “Freelines” he calls them - a recipe he mastered in a place that was as about as far from the sweet taste of liberty as they come.
King was born 100 years after slavery officially ended in this country, but he came of age in a prison that stood on the grounds of a former plantation in the backwoods of Louisiana. At the prison named Angola, men in bondage - most of them black - shucked cotton for 2 ˝ cents an hour under the watch of white guards on horseback.
“Slavery exists in this country.”
King says this matter of factly, without a trace of anger, as he looks out at a classroom full of students at Western New England College School of Law in Springfield recently. By now, many of us have learned about crime and punishment. We know that a poor person in this country is entitled to effective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment to the Bill of Rights. We know that you have a constitutional right against unlawful search and seizure.
This, after all, is the land of liberty and justice for all.
King, 67, might have thought that too, at one time. But that was before he spent 29 years in solitary confinement in a 6-by-9-foot cell at Angola State Prison. His crime? Officially it was stabbing another prisoner to death. But the trumped up charges were really punishment for King’s being a founding member of a chapter of the Black Panther Party in prison. King was the only member of the so-called Angola 3 who ever got out.
By the time he was convicted of the stabbing, he might have expected to be on the losing end of the law. King’s journey began in Louisiana, where he grew up with a hard-working grandmother he called “Mama” and where the flood waters of the river and life were never far from his front door. His own mother was too young when she had him and died too young at 41 of alcoholism. He didn’t lay eyes on his father until he was 13.
In the Louisiana of King’s youth it was routine for young men to be arrested if they could not provide check stubs proving they were working. The United States Supreme Court later struck down such vagrancy laws as unconstitutionally vague, but not before King and countless others spent their tender years behind bars. In his book, “From the Bottom of the Heap,” King recalls lawyers who urged their young charges to cop to pleas for crimes they didn’t commit. They knew they would be found guilty whether they were or not; at least this way they’d spend less time in jail.
At 28, King, who admits to some petty thievery as a teen-ager, ended up locked up in Angola. Incredibly, a jury found him guilty of being the 40-year-old armed robbery accomplice of a defendant who testified in court he was not the man. He was finally released last year after two inmates admitted they had been coerced by guards into accusing him of the prison stabbing. Once again, he had to cop to a lesser charge for a crime he didn’t commit.
Today, he travels the country and the world championing the cause of the two other Angola 3 members. Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace were in solitary confinement for 36 years before they were finally released into the general population last year. But they are still in prison for a crime that King says they did not commit.
In the beginning of his book, King shares a word with his readers.
“I was born in the U.S.A. Born black, born poor. Is it any wonder that I have spent most of my life in prison?”
His is a story of loss and a fierce determination not to lose himself. As a young man he would marry a woman named Clara, his mother’s name, and learn in prison that the 5-year-old son they had together had died of illness.
He easily could have spent the entire book talking about his experience at Angola, a prison that still presents the surreal image of a slave plantation. Yet, he doesn’t get to the raw images of a place where rats battled inmates for food and where brutality was a way of life until nearly the end of the book. The Panther chapter began as a way to end dehumanizing conditions at the jail, including the routine sexual exploitation of young, vulnerable inmates, King said.
It was in this dark and dangerous place that King learned how to make pralines while working with another inmate in the kitchen. Later, he would cook the butter and sugar packets inmates saved for him, along with smuggled pecans, on a stove of stacked cans in the cell where he spent 23 hours a day. Today, he sells the candy to make money for his mission to free the other two members of the Angola 3.
His speech to this class of law students comes at a time when one in every 100 people in America are in prison, the highest concentration in the world, according to a 2008 study by the non-partisan Pew Center on the States. One out of nine black men from age 20-34 are behind bars.
Among the reasons for the disproportionate numbers of black men in prison are mandatory sentencing laws that target the scourge of crack cocaine in inner cities. Recently President Barack Obama announced plans to end disparities in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine that resulted in prison terms for crack many times longer than those for powder cocaine.
King’s speech, part of the college’s “Color of Law” series, is among several in the past few years featuring former inmates who spent the better part of their lives locked up before a determined lawyer helped to set them free. In King’s case it was Attorney Charles A. Shropshire, whose impassioned letter to a prosecutor asking the state to drop the charges appears near the end of King’s book.
In the words of lawyer Robert Meeropol, who introduced King, there are many political prisoners enslaved in a justice system that turns a blind eye to injustice. Meeropol knows something about the subject. He spent his adult life trying to clear the name of his parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed by the U.S. government in 1953 after being convicted of espionage. Meeropol’s adoptive father, Abel Meeropol, wrote the words to “Strange Fruit,” the song about lynching which would become a Billie Holiday classic
Looking out at a class of students whose greatest worries probably center on paying back school loans and getting jobs, King shares something he states near the end of his book.
“At one point I mistakenly believed that legality and morality were synonymous, that everything judged legal was also wholly and morally correct. Through hard experience, I learned that is not true.”
He urges the class to remember this, whether they become defense lawyers or prosecutors.
As he speaks to this group of law students, King recalls dropping out of school in ninth grade even though he was a good student who later became an avid reader. I ask him later if he thinks that high school dropout rates of 50 percent or more in cities like Springfield are perpetuating a cycle of imprisonment and poverty. He says education can only help young people.
Later, I realize the question seems superficial. He was not locked in a cell for 23 hours a day for 29 years because he was a dropout. He was locked in his cell because he had the audacity to become educated about how to foment change in a system that was weighed against him.
In his book, he speaks of how the rallying cry for education became a simplistic answer that masked questions into whether the American justice system was really just.
As King’s speech is nearing an end, a student asks how he can possibly seem so together after spending half a lifetime in a tiny cell. King recalls bristling at a similar question from a reporter when he was finally released. “I was a dreamer and a reader. I dreamed. I day dreamed. I dreamed at night.”
He was in that cell, but only physically. It is possible, it seems, to be free even when you are in bondage.
“I was in prison but prison was never in me.”
To learn more about Robert Hillary King and the “Freelines” candy he makes and sells visit his web site at www.KingsFreeLines.com
Of Human Bondage in the United States
of America
of America