Solitary

by Albert Woodfox

  The first time I was called a nigger by a white person I was around 12. I was waiting with dozens of other kids at the end of the Mardi Gras parade behind the Municipal Auditorium where the people on the floats, who were all white in those days, gave away whatever beads and trinkets they had left. On one of the floats the man tossing the trinkets was holding a real beautiful strand of pearl-colored beads. I thought they’d make a nice gift for my mom on her birthday. I called out to him, “Hey mister, hey mister,” and reached out my hand. He pointed to me as he held the beads above his head and tossed them toward me. As the beads came close to me I reached up and a white girl standing next to me put her hand up and caught them at the same time I did. I didn’t let go. I gestured to the man on the float and told her, “Hey, he was throwing the beads to me.” I told her I wanted to give them to my mom. She looked at the man on the float, who was still pointing at me, then she ripped the beads apart and called me nigger. The pain I felt from that young white girl calling me nigger will be with me forever.

  Most of the policemen were white in those days. They came through our neighborhood picking up black men for standing on the corner, charging them with loitering or vagrancy, looking to meet their quota of arrests. Once in custody, who knows what charges would be put on those men. My friends and I knew it would be whatever the police wanted. We always knew the police picked up the men in our neighborhood because they were black and for no other reason. We never talked about it though. We couldn’t have articulated racism if we tried. We didn’t understand the depths of it, the sophistication of it. We only absorbed the misery of it.

  In sixth grade I attended a social studies class that taught me my place in the world. We had an African American teacher for a classroom of black children who lived in the same all-black neighborhood, using a textbook that only depicted what was happening in white America. The pictures and stories in the textbook had nothing to do with our reality. It wasn’t the first time I became aware that that white people had it better. But it was the first time it began to dawn on me that everybody knew white people had it better. It was the first time I understood that something was terribly wrong in the world, and nobody was talking about it.

  In that same social studies class I was taught that women like my mom, who worked in bars, were considered a disgrace to society. I had always detested the men my mom brought home but until I took this class I never judged her, it was just a way of life. I began to look down on her. I didn’t realize at that time that my mom didn’t have choices, that she worked in bars to take care of me and my brothers, and I was unforgiving. Deep down I never stopped loving my mom. But I hated her too. One of the greatest regrets of my life is that I allowed myself to believe that the strongest, most beautiful, and most powerful woman in my life didn’t matter.

  Around this age I also started to hear stories about men in the Ku Klux Klan lynching black people. Like all blacks, I was scared to death of the Klan. I didn’t venture much into the white community. For the most part, my friends and I stayed in the black neighborhoods of New Orleans. It was where we felt safe. Eventually it was where we committed our crimes. For a while I went on to excel at school, in the classroom, and in sports. I was small for my age but I was on the football team and the volleyball team. We didn’t have a basketball team at my school but we often played basketball in the park. Playing sports was the only time in my life I knew what to do at any given moment. But the lessons of that sixth-grade class had weakened me in a way I can’t describe. I stayed in school for three more years, but somewhere inside me I was done with school. I turned my attention to the street. There, I quickly learned everyone had one choice: to be a rabbit or a wolf. I chose to be a wolf.

  1960s

  Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

  —Frederick Douglass

  Chapter 2

  The High Steppers

  I started to hang with other boys in the Treme when I was around 12. I had a little job in the grocery store making snowballs, cups of shaved ice covered with flavored sugarcane syrup. When the owner wasn’t looking I handed out snowballs to my friends through the back window. At night, we stood under a streetlight on the corner of Dumaine and Robertson and talked shit for hours, boasting about things we never did, describing girls we never knew. Everyone called me Fox.

  After school, we’d meet up and figure out ways to get things we didn’t have. We shoplifted bread from the boxes outside stores, snuck into the theater to watch movies. For money, we sang and danced in the French Quarter or stole flowers from the graveyard and sold them to tourists on Bourbon Street. To eat we met at the bakery on Orleans Avenue before dawn and stole rolls and pastries from delivery trucks parked behind a tall barbed wire fence. It was nothing for us to climb over that fence if we had a pillowcase or cloth to protect our hands. We’d take a tray of baked goods from the back of one of those trucks, dump them into a bag, then run across the tracks to Brown’s Velvet Dairy to steal milk or ice cream from their trucks. We carried everything to the park and ate until we couldn’t eat anymore.

  When we heard about a concert playing at the Municipal Auditorium we climbed up the back wall to an open second-floor window, ran down the back stairs, and charged kids admission at the back door. When the Ringling Bros. Circus came to town we signed up for day jobs to feed and water the animals. We piled hay in front of the elephants and horses and shoveled shit from behind them and hauled water to the tigers in cages. When nobody was looking we’d leave our rakes and shovels in the straw, sneak off, and find an unguarded back door where we charged for entrance, letting our friends in for free.

  We never thought we were committing crimes. We thought we were outsmarting the world. But we watched out for police. Sometimes they’d come after us if they saw a group of black kids, no matter what we were doing. We had to especially be on the lookout in the French Quarter, where we “beat the box” on Bourbon Street, drumming on cardboard boxes. If the police grabbed us in those years they’d take our money and beat us until we ran away as fast as we could.

  My mom saw into the future and tried to protect me from going to jail. “If I catch you stealing or doing anything wrong I’m going to whip your ass,” she’d say. “I don’t want you out there stealing and being a petty-ass criminal.” If she saw me on the street with a kid she thought was trouble she would come up to us and tell me to go home. At home she’d yell at me and I’d yell back. I didn’t think she had any right to tell me what to do. I didn’t want her controlling me. We still had affectionate times some days, when I would sit close to her and we’d talk with her arm around me. She loved my hair. By age 13, though, I wasn’t obedient to my mom anymore. She would tell me to be home at a certain time and I wouldn’t be home at that time. My friends and I were hustling to survive, and we loved being good at it. I call this period of my life the guilt of innocence. We didn’t know any better.

  Around this time, we started to think of ourselves as a gang and started calling ourselves the 6th Ward High Steppers, a name we thought made us sound like winners. Being in a gang, defending your turf becomes necessary. I had to learn to fight. I wasn’t a natural-born fighter so I held back at first. Fighting actually made me physically ill. When I saw boys my age fighting older, bigger kids, I thought they had something I didn’t have. I wondered if I was a coward.

  My friend Frank had been pushing me to fight this dude my age named Lawrence, who was constantly humiliating me. If I was eating a sandwich, when he saw me he’d take it and eat it. Once he took my belt. Mostly he demanded I give him any money I had on me. I was terrified of Lawrence, who was bigger than me.

  “You can’t let him do that to you, Fox,” Frank said. “When are you going to stand up for yourself ?”

  The next time I saw Lawrence it was on Orleans Avenue neutral ground.
I was scared but this time when Lawrence pushed me I swung my arm and hit him in the head. That’s when I learned that courage doesn’t mean you aren’t afraid. Courage means you master that fear and act in spite of being afraid. Lawrence and I fought and didn’t stop until I got up and he didn’t. For a while Lawrence and I fought every time we saw each other. Then he gave up. I never let fear stop me from doing anything again.

  We never wanted to get caught on anybody else’s turf but if there was a house party outside the Sixth Ward, we risked it. If confronted by another gang we stayed and fought or hauled ass. When gang members from other wards came on our turf we beat them up or chased them out. No one had guns at that time. We only fought with fists. Gang members never attacked the family members of other gang members. If there was a feud between gangs it stayed within the gangs. It was understood that family was off-limits. Everybody honored that. After every fight, I still felt ill and went off to be by myself but I didn’t tell anyone. By the time I was in my midteens I had a reputation for being very tough. Only I knew differently.

  On hot summer nights when the mosquitos were tearing our asses up we broke into the pool next to the park and filled it with water. We turned on the lights by bending back the cover of the switchbox to reach the switch. Then we started the water pump and let the water run until the pool was full. People came from the nearby projects to swim. Sometimes park officials would come around and turn everything off and tell everyone to go home. If the cops came everybody broke out running. A child who got caught would be sent to juvenile hall. A grown-up would be charged with trespassing. Most of the time the police didn’t come. When we finished swimming, we drained the pool and turned the lights off.

  For the most part, we knew how to avoid cops. Police cruisers circled the neighborhood at the same time every day like clockwork and we wouldn’t be out at those times. If police showed up unexpectedly we’d go inside or slip down an alley to avoid them. Or we’d scatter and run. We ran, and were chased, even when we weren’t doing anything wrong. I got really good at jumping fences while being chased by police. If they caught us for any real or imagined crime they beat us with their fists and nightsticks or blackjacks, which we called flapjacks because they made a flapping sound when they hit us. They searched us looking for any money we had, pocketing what they found. For a while they let us go; when we got older they dragged us to juvenile hall. It never occurred to us to tell anyone they beat or robbed us. It was accepted. That was just the way life was at that time.

  When I was 14 my mom asked me if I wanted to meet my real father, Leroy Woodfox. I was surprised because I didn’t know they were in touch. My first thought was, no. All I knew about by biological dad was that he abandoned my mom when she was pregnant with me.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “He said he’d like to meet you,” she said. She gave me the address of his dry cleaning business, which was nearby. I wasn’t really curious about him, but I thought he might give me some money so I went. When I walked in I saw him right away. I looked just like him. I can’t remember what we talked about, but we didn’t say too much. He offered to clean some clothes for me. A few days later I took him some trousers and he tossed them onto a pile of clothes in the corner, telling me to come back in a couple of days. When I went back to pick up the pants I saw right away they were still on the pile in the corner. I turned and walked out the door, leaving the pants behind. I never saw him again.

  One of my hustles was working the shrimp boats in St. Bernard Parish, carrying huge bags of shrimp and oysters to a warehouse. Inside the warehouse, women stood around a table shucking oysters into gallon-size cans, juice and all, one after another. They could get through a bag of oysters faster than anything I’d ever seen. Some of my pay was in oysters and shrimp, which I’d take home. I think that warehouse is where I heard that Hurricane Carla was coming and that when it touched down it would be the “storm of the century.” I always liked to stand in our backyard during a storm and listen to the rain and wondered what a hurricane would feel like. The hurricane slammed into Texas on September 11, 1961, and spawned tornadoes that reached Louisiana. The morning of the storm I made my way to Lake Pontchartrain, to the seawall steps where I’d played when I was younger. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. My mom would have kicked my ass if she knew. At low tide, nine or ten stone steps were visible coming up from the water’s edge to the shore; when the tide was in, the steps were covered with water. By the time I got there it was raining hard and the tide had come in. I looked for a place to stand. I figured the water wouldn’t get over the wall, but to be sure I crossed the lake road and stood against a sturdy tree, tying a rope around my waist to the tree so I wouldn’t be blown away.

  I was already completely soaked from the rain. The wind hit me now, mostly from the side. Usually Lake Pontchartrain is as flat as glass. I watched giant waves develop out on the lake for a long time. By the time I noticed the water had come up over the wall it was already past the grass and almost to the road that runs along the side of the lake. I was surprised watching it creep across the road toward me. When the water covered my feet. I put my hands on the rope, ready to untie it. When it got to my knees I untied myself and waded against the wind to higher ground, then made my way home.

  Not long after that, my stepdad showed up at the house and dropped off my sister Violetta and my brother James. We hadn’t seen them in three years. After he dropped them off we never saw Daddy again. My mom gave Vi the top bunk and the boys shared the bottom bunk, until she got a foldout couch for Vi to sleep on. It was crowded but I wasn’t home much at night to sleep anyway. My brother Michael remembers me being around the house in those days, making sure that everybody got home after school and that everyone had dinner at night. My little brother Haywood says I was like a daddy to him. I hardly recall those times. I was consumed with what was going on outside. Soon, a new father figure came along for my brothers and sister. His name was Jethro Hamlin. Everybody called him Pop Skeeter. He loved my mother. The saying was if Ruby said, “Jump,” Pop Skeeter asked, “How high?” A master carpenter, he built cupboards and shelves in our two back rooms to make them more livable. Pop Skeeter brought stability to my family. Years later, my mom and Pop Skeeter married. He stayed with her the rest of her life, through thick and thin.

  The most money our gang ever made in those years was from illegally parking cars, an old hustle that was passed down from one generation to another. On weekend nights, my friends and I went to the French Quarter or around the Municipal Auditorium and waved down drivers looking for parking spots. In exchange for a dollar we’d show the drivers where to park, directing them to illegal spots in alleys, behind buildings, up hills, or even on neutral ground. We were always amazed that people parked their cars wherever we told them to. We always said, “Be sure to lock your car,” to gain their trust. We could make $50 parking cars on a good night. When the police were bored they’d come around with police dogs for something to do. They knew we’d be there and tried to sneak up on us. When somebody saw them, he’d yell, “Police!” and everybody would take off. Once when I was running away, a K-9 dog caught me. One of the “rewards” for a K-9 dog in those days was what was referred to as “Give ’em the bite,” when the officer stood by and let the dog bite the person he caught, usually while that person was lying on the ground. This policeman let his dog chew my thigh. Sometimes they let us go, other times they took us to juvenile hall. Once in a while the officers from juvenile hall raided our operation too. Some of the officers at juvenile hall were black. One of them was Mr. Green, a substitute gym teacher at my school. He knew all of us. “I see you, Woodfox,” he’d yell after me.

  There was no way he could catch me.

  “I’ll get your ass at school tomorrow,” he’d yell. “I’ll call your mama!”

  This was all part of the game. He and I both knew he wasn’t going to call my mom. He wasn’t going to get my ass at school the next day, or any day. It was like we were acting
out roles, set in motion before time, without knowing why. He was probably parking cars at my age. Threads like this ran throughout my childhood. History was always repeating itself. These threads held us together, and kept us apart.

  My first arrest was for parking cars. Juvenile hall was a house on St. Philip Street. Desks and chairs where the officers sat were set up in what would have been the living room. The bedrooms were converted into holding cells. The windows on the first floor had bars, but they didn’t think anyone would be crazy enough to jump from the second floor, so they didn’t put bars in the upstairs windows. Officially, you couldn’t get out of juvenile hall until a grown-up came and signed you out. Sometimes when one parent came they would sign out their child and all of his friends. I usually didn’t sit around and wait to see who would come because I didn’t want my mom to know I got arrested. I’d squeeze out a partially opened window from a second-floor holding room, hang from the window ledge, and drop to the ground. If my mom found out she would be angry. She’d fuss at me but there was nothing she could do. When I was younger there might be an ass-whipping with a switch or an ironing cord but after a certain age I wouldn’t accept that kind of punishment anymore.

  In 10th grade, I was suspended from school for hitting a girl. It happened at a school assembly. I was head of my 10th-grade homeroom so I was on the stage with the girl who was class president. She told me in front of all the students that she had a problem with my shirt because it was untucked, which was the style then. I told her to mind her own business and she slapped me in the face. I took my seat on the stage. The humiliation of being slapped in front of everyone played over and over in my mind during the assembly. When the meeting ended I picked up a folding chair from a stack and hit the girl who slapped me from behind, knocking her out. Thankfully, the girl was OK. The principal suspended me, though, and told me to show up at school the next day with my mother. When I got home I didn’t tell my mom what happened. I pretended to go to school every day for a year before she found out.