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Details
Fullname: Robert Hilary King
aka: Robert King, Bob King
Born: 30 May 1942
Reference: Black Panther Member, jailed & spent 29 years out of 32 years in solitary confinement and released for wrongful arrest (released 2001).
Background
| “[I’m wearing the Celtic top as it represents] oppressed people like me” Robert King (2015) |
Celtic’s culture and ethos to those who have ever had the good fortune to experience it can be touched by its nature. There are though cases of people who are attracted to the Celtic support, of whom we can only be in awe. One of these people is the incredible Robert King.
Robert King was one of the feted ‘Angola Three‘.
The Angola Three are three prison inmates – Robert Hillary King (born Robert King Wilkerson), Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace – who were put in solitary confinement in Louisiana State Penitentiary, a.k.a. Angola Prison, in April 1972 after the killing of a prison guard.
Robert King spent 29 years in solitary confinement before his conviction was overturned and he was released. We can only imagine what the impact on him was. Yet despite that, it didn’t break his spirit, and he won an appeal to quash his conviction in 2001, and was released to the joy of many.
This summary is too short to give full justice to the life and times of Robert King. What he endured is frightening, a black-mark on the US justice system. He made his mistakes in life but that doesn’t give the authorities any right to serve an unacceptable level of abuse & oppression against him or anyone.
In 2015, to the amazement of the support, Robert King carried out an interview on CNN wearing a Celtic top. Questioned why he was wearing it, he replied that he wore it as it represented: “oppressed people like me”.
Apparently he is a known Celtic fan, and has reportedly travelled to Scotland to attend matches in the past. If only we knew he was present.
Not known exactly how he came to be a Celtic fan, but the legendary Gil-Scott Heron (son of ex-Celt Gil Heron) recorded a song called Angola about injustice in that prison. That is a possible source of the relationship.
A fascinating gentleman, of whom we are humbled to have in our support.
Links
- YouTube Interview: https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2015/06/11/intv-amanpour-robert-king.cnn (2015)
Articles
Angola Three: Robert King dons Celtic shirt on CNN
Robert King wears a Celtic shirt during an appearance on US news network CNN. Picture: Contributed published 12:34 Friday 12 June 2015
A MEMBER of the Black Panthers who spent nearly 30 years in solitary confinement appeared on CNN last night – wearing a Celtic shirt.
Robert King, one of two surviving members of the Angola Three, spent the majority of his prison sentence in solitary confinement for the killing of a prison guard at Louisiana State Penitentiary, in 1972, and the murder of a fellow inmate the following year.
He, along with Aklbert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, were convicted in 1971 of armed robbery. King was released in 2001 after his conviction for the murder of an inmate was overturned.
He appeared on the US news channel wearing a Celtic shirt, saying that it represented “oppressed people like me”. He is known to be a Celtic fan, and has reportedly travelled to Scotland to attend matches in the past.
Woodfox, the other surviving member of the Angola Three – Wallace died days after his release in October 2013 – remains in prison. A judge ordered his immediate release earlier this week and barred the state from trying him a third time for the death of prison guard Brent Miller, but the attorney general has appealed that ruling.
Teenie Rogers, the widow of Miller, has pleaded with US authorities to exonerate Woodfox. She said the state should “stop acting like there is any evidence that Albert Woodfox killed Brent”. King, Woodfox and Wallace were active in hunger strikes and work stoppages that spurred improvements to prison conditions, and all three suffered harsh treatment afterwards as prison authorities kept them isolated at Angola to prevent more disruption.
Angola Three’s Robert King looks back on 30 years of solitary confinement
‘We were caged up,’ says King, who was released in 2001 after a court reversed his conviction, as he closely watches the fate of the last of the three still in prison: Albert Woodfox
Angola Three
The ‘Angola Three’: Herman Wallace, Robert King and Albert Woodfox. Photograph: angola3.com
Associated Press in New Orleans
Wednesday 10 June 2015 23.33 BST
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/10/angola-three-robert-king-solitary-confinement
Robert King says he watched nearly three decades of his life fade away in solitary confinement inside Louisiana’s Angola prison, sometimes glimpsing the world through a small window and longing for the few hours a week he might feel the sun on his face.
“We were caged up,” said King, who was released in 2001 after a court reversed his conviction in the death of a fellow inmate in 1973. “I don’t think a person can go through that and come up unscathed.”
King is one of three men known as the “Angola Three,” who supporters say spent decades in solitary confinement at the Louisiana state penitentiary, often referred to simply as Angola, the town in which it’s located.
Another man, Herman Wallace, was released in October 2013 when a judge granted him a new trial and died days later, after the state at first fought his release.
Now, King is closely watching the fate of the last of the three, Albert Woodfox, after a judge this week ordered his immediate release and barred the state from trying him a third time in the killing of a prison guard in 1972.
The attorney general is fighting that ruling and has said repeatedly that the evidence shows he is a killer. State officials say Woodfox has been in a form of protective custody called closed cell restriction, but not solitary confinement. They say he’s allowed to watch television through the bars of his cell, talk to other inmates in his tier, read books, talk to visiting chaplains and leave his cell every day for an hour.
“The perception of ‘solitary confinement’ is a far cry from the reality,” said Aaron Sadler, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office.
For now, Woodfox is being held in a jail where he’s awaited his new trial since February. His supporters estimate he’s spent a total of more than four decades in isolation, with some breaks in the 1990s and in 2008.
It’s a situation King knows well. He spoke to the Associated Press by telephone from Austin, Texas, where he now lives.
King said he was shackled at the hands and feet anytime he left his cell. He said he could see and converse with a handful of other inmates in the immediate vicinity, but they all had to be careful not to talk too loud, or too much, or they would be written up.
The conditions changed over time. At first there was no window or time outside, but eventually he was allowed outside for short periods a few times a week and given a cell with a window.
“If it was raining, too hot, too cold, they wouldn’t let us go outside, and they wouldn’t give us makeup time,” he said.
Many experts say such conditions, whatever the name, can have detrimental effects on inmates. Some have reported anxiety, paranoia, depression and hallucinations, said Dr Sharon Shalev, a research associate from the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford who runs the website www.solitaryconfinement.org.
Shalev said she’s had prisoners tell her they harmed themselves just to reaffirm they were still alive.
There are no precise figures on the number of inmates held in isolation, the Vera Institute of Justice said in a May report. However, the report said estimates range from 25,000 – which includes only those held in so-called supermax facilities – to 80,000, which includes those held in some type of segregated housing across all state and federal prisons.
The report also said inmates in isolation are more likely to kill or hurt themselves than those held in the general population.
What has made the case of the Angola Three and Woodfox in particular such a lightning rod for international attention has been the length of time they were in isolation. Tory Pegram of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3 said Woodfox was first put in solitary in April 1972, the same day the guard he was eventually accused of killing died.
Louisiana corrections officials have said he was in closed cell restriction for many years but declined to elaborate because litigation is pending.
Meanwhile, King is eagerly awaiting his friend’s release. He started driving from his home in Austin on Tuesday to meet Woodfox when he was released but turned around when that release was delayed. But he plans to be there if and when Woodfox walks out of the jail.
In the years since his release, King has written a book and often gives talks on his experiences. When asked how he didn’t go crazy, he replied, laughing, “I didn’t say I wasn’t crazy.”
“It was bitter,” he said. “But there are some things that you can make out of lemons. I just tried every day to make lemonade.”