Robert King on becoming a Black Panther and coping with prison

This is the entire interview I did with Black Panther Robert King for Dazed & Confused when I spoke to him about joining the Black Panthers and his ordeal in prison. I was bowled over with utter disbelief with his story of how he was falsely imprisoned on trumped-up charges and kept in solitary confinement for 30 years. The details of his trial are detailed in the film In The Land Of The Free, narrated by Samuel L Jackson.

Robert King was finally released in 2003, but is two cell mates – together thy make up the Angola 3 – are still in prison. If you’d like more information on how to help, visit: http://www.angola3.org

Robert King

My original interview appeared in the Human Rights issue of Dazed & Confused magazine

When did you get your tattoos?

Long before prison. I had tattoos when they weren’t fashionable, way back in 1959, most of these tattoos go back to 1960 – the last one was on the back of my leg. The first one was from 1959, somewhere up on my arm. At one time I thought it was relevant, but this day and time I wish I could erase them, I don’t even see them as being relevant anymore. It was just something I did as a kid, at the time it was juvenile thinking. I guess it was my way of rebelling because it wasn’t fashionable among a lot of people in society, we just did it because it was fashionable for me; something different. A lot of people think tattoos are associated with gangs, it was never that way for us, it’s stereotypical type thinking.

In what way were you rebelling?

When I say rebelling I just mean the generational differences, because I was taught to respect my elders. So when I say rebel against the system, I mean people who had a tradition that tattoos were something bad. It wasn’t so much me being juvenile and rebelling against the system, because I really was taught about my grandparents, who raised me, to fear God: thou shall not steal, thou shall not kill, these things were instilled in me. So it wasn’t a sense of abandonment on my part as a kid. This is the reason I decided to write my own book because people were saying things about me that weren’t true, writing an epitaph, a story about me that weren’t true.

What were they saying?

Well, they were saying that if you go to juvenile detention centre then you were rebelling against the system, they had the stereotypical thought that you were disobedient, that you stole, that you ran parts in gangs. That was a period in my life, when I was 11 or 12, I got with a group that we considered a gang, but we weren’t a gang that went around robbing people or went around attacking people or anything like that. It was just a bunch of guys that liked to get together and hang out on the street corner. And sometimes there were fights, but it wasn’t the type of gang fight where people are claiming a terrain and saying don’t come to this territory. And then they use those types of areas for gang types activity that you might see depicted in Hollywood or somewhere on the movies.

The guys at that time realised they couldn’t control anything. When I went to reformatory, there were what you’d call gang fights and there were areas where people became territorial in the sense that if I was from New Orleans, which is southern and they’re from North Louisiana. But this was just juvenile, and on final analysis, they control everybody. We may have felt we needed to be territorial, but gang fights really weren’t allowed and when there was a gang fight they would pull us sometimes a whole line, and when I say pull a line, they still had corporal punishment at that time and they would smack you and beat you. So in essence, although the kids may have felt there was territory they were claiming, in final analysis they weren’t controlling nothing.

Were you getting blamed for crimes at that young age by the state?

No, I didn’t get blamed for nothing that was happening at that time, not at that time. I didn’t enter the system until I was 14 or 15 years old. I was about 15 when I first came to contact with burglary at like an establishment not to far from where I lived. It was a burglary, I got caught in a place and I ended up going to the juvenile detention centre and from their they called my mum and my grandmother and they paroled me to her. That was the first time. I had to make sure I didn’t do anything. It wasn’t until a year or so later when I ended up going to Scotland. I was with a guy who allegedly had pulled off a robbery at a filling station and they got another guy who police had approached. And they asked him if he knew anybody who might do a robbery and he said we had asked him did we know a place to rob. But the guy who actually robbed the place, he claimed guilty to it, but he was older than I was so he went to a young man’s facility, he did about two years or something like that, and I went to Scotland, they sent me juvenile detention centre – that was a place we call Scotland in the States. I was about 15-16 when I went to Scotland.

What were you accused of the first time you went to prison?

A robbery was committed by two individuals and they got four people to plead guilty to it. Two people had committed a robbery, but at that time you have to understand racism in the country and the history of America and how they dealt with minorities at the time. The stuff that happened to me at that time, being black was a disadvantage to me at that time. The things that I say probably won’t make sense, so you probably have to read the book.

There was a robbery that had been committed by two people. Five people got picked up in a car that night and during that time the police had a thing against especially if you were African American, the idea was to get you off the street by any means necessary, but you away into a detention centre and make sure you become a criminal, make sure you’re not incorporated into the system so you wouldn’t be a disadvantage to them.

Was this quite common at the time?

This is what the philosophy, at that time it was pervasive, it’s not as pervasive now. It didn’t make any difference. A lot of guys pleaded guilty to crimes when they were picked up for them. They used to call it ‘cleaning the book’. All the police wanted to do was solve the crime. Even if a black person didn’t commit a crime, all they got to do is say a black person committed a crime and the police would pick someone up and beat the until they did plead guilty to it. So that’s what it was. The Angola State prison was full of people who had been beaten by police causing them to sign a confession saying that they had committed a crime. Some people they threaten with a whole lot of time, like in our case they picked up five and they charged four. I had a previous record and so it was obvious that I was a target.

So when they say OK plea guilty to this crime we’ll give you ten years, or we’ll give you 30 years. Not knowing anything about law, they’d tell you that even though two people committed this crime, you was in the car, they don’t point you towards a lawyer and tell you that you have a right to fight this, even if you had the money to fight it, they didn’t even tell you that you had the right to fight it, of course most of the time we didn’t even have the money, so they didn’t tell us we had the right to fight this, so not knowing the outcome, looking at 30 years of your life in prison, then looking at ten years, even though you weren’t there, you know people who was in the same predicament that you were and elected to go to trial and found guilty and sent away and never seen again in the street. So what do you do? The obvious is to plead guilty, even though you didn’t commit the crime, and that was prevalent at that time in society in the whole of America.

Any time a crime was committed, it was the second time, they violated me not on anything I did, but when I got the 10 years I was paroled and after four years I went out, married, had my career, trying to do my thing at work. I got arrested with another guy who had a previous record. as a result of being picked up with him I was violated. They violated me not because I had committed a crime, but because I was with someone who had a previous record, and just about everybody I knew in my neighbourhood had a record, all the guys I grew up with had records. The point is that being on probation I wasn’t allowed to associate, they violated me based on that I was arrested with this other guy who had a record and was being charged with a crime. And they returned me to prison.

The second time I went to prison was early January, a crime had been committed and I was suspected automatically because I had a previous record. This is their mode of operation. If a robbery is committed in a community, 10,000 people could have records of committing a crime, but what they would do, they would look at the most recent people released from prison after having been convicted of a crime. Now, despite the fact that the so called perpetrators don’t resemble you, the idea is it wouldn’t make a difference, you are still a suspect. And so this is what happened the last time I went to prison. It was narrowed down to about 150 people who had committed robberies in the last 5 years and kind of looked like me, but in this case the perpetrator didn’t remotely resemble me, didn’t even look like me, it just so happened that I had a previous record. So I elected to go to trial, but despite the fact the perpetrator didn’t resemble me, I was found guilty.

It was around that time that things in my life began to change, I began to look at the system totally different. I became more politicised about what was going on without realising. I could not define what was going on but I had began to see that there was something really wrong with this. And so I began to question it, I saw the discrepancies. I didn’t know what racism was, I couldn’t define racism, I couldn’t define discrimination at that time, but I begin to question it, I begin to see things that were on that side of town okay, but this side of town something was wrong with it.

Was there one incident in particular that triggered a revolutionary zeal?

I think it was a combination of things, I don’t think it was one incident, if it was one incident it was the lat incident that was really the straw that broke the camel’s back, but what I understand is that in community, things had started to happen, and when things continue to happen I had in retrospect begun to see that there was something wrong.

This last conviction when I went to trial and obviously the evidence showed that I was innocent, nevertheless they decided to bring me t trial because I didn’t take the ten years that they offered me and they ended up giving me 35 years, and I thought that may have been the straw that broke the camels back.

There had been succeeding incidents since that time, because even in prison after becoming a member of the Black Panther Party, the system exceeded my expectation of being able to devise diabolical means to keep a person in prison. Since being in prison I had been charged with another crime but only because I had become a member of the Black Panther Party.

Why had you not thought like this before?

I always thought there was something wrong, I just couldn’t articulate it, I just couldn’t identify, it was these things that happened incrementally. As time went on and in retrospect I saw what I could not define at that time, I felt and I was able to define it and so I would put it in words, but I also was made to see it was a result of becoming politically aware and coming into contact with the Black Panther Party whose philosophy I embraced after hearing it and reading it, it articulated the things that I couldn’t articulate at that time, but only felt.

I went to prison for the first time in 1961, so the Black Panther Party was some years later. This second time I got arrested in 1970, the Black Panther Party had been on the scene about 4 years, but I wasn’t familiar with them. I had heard – I heard about them like I heard about Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. I heard about them like they were part of the scenery but it wasn’t anything that I was paying attention to, it wasn’t till I got rearrested in 1970 that I began to learn about other prisoners and come into contact with other people and writings, this is when I learnt about the Black Panther Party, that they had moved to New Orleans. While I was being held in New Orleans prison, there was a shoot out between the Black Panthers and New Orleans – they cal it a shoot out, it was more like a shoot in by the police. They were arrested, 12 people were arrested, 9 males and three females. And we came into contact with them, a couple of them came to the flat where I was and this is when I really learnt about the Black Panthers.

As people as well as philosophy?

It wasn’t any different, it was that they were trying to live out a proclamation that the American government say that there were rights each citizen and each individual had, for instance the first one said we had the power to determine our destiny. Okay, the African American at that time didn’t have that right event though it was written in the constitution that they had that right. When they say we want to end police brutality in black community. I mean, they patrolled the black community but they protected other communities. It was like an advancing army, an occupying army in a black community. They would kill, brutalise and maim and do what they wanted and so this was something in our constitutional rights that other people took for granted but that we could not get. So of course I embraced that. We said we want land, bread, houses, education, clothing, justice and peace. I mean this was something that in the constitution everyone should have. And the means of having economic survival.

The Black Panther Party, the impact the had on the world and still have on the world, exceeded all expectations. The Black Panther Party as an organisation, it lasted maybe a ten year period, no one was trying to persuade anyone to become a Black Panther. The best teacher is the system itself. If there’s a system of repression, you don’t need someone to say what’s wrong. The Black Panther Party is an organisation that came about as a result of a succession of organisations like NAACP, the NUL, Marcus Garvey movement and the Black Panther Party was just a succession of other equal rights movements that came on the set and culminated in the type of action that it did. It took a different approach, a more radical approach at dealing with the problem of black, and not just blacks but poor whites as well. It did a good deed in identifying what was wrong with the system and et not just back people know what’s wrong with it, but whites as well. It was having a big influence on whites as well, especially young whites, and this is the reason the government decided it was the biggest internal threat in the nation because it was influencing young whites who were beginning to see the capitalist system as something that was oppressive to all. And so it just had to be that the Black Panther Party was targeted by the FBI, the CIA, the SIA and every other ally organisation, nit just in America, but throughout the world where America had allies.

Were you targeted for being a Black Panther?

Of course, as well as my two comrades. I was charged with participating in the death of another inmate, when all the evidence showed that I wasn’t, I was doing a life sentence. Herman and Albert were charged with participating in the death of a correction officer when all the evidence shows that they were innocent. And so, even though the Black Panther Party as an organisation, ceased to exist after 1976-77, the members who were in prison after that time were still targeted. People who were former members of the Black Panther Party are still in prison now on trumped up charges simply because they were members of the Black Panther Party. San Francisco 8 , there were 8 people who were charged for a crime that allegedly took place in 1971, one of them is still in prison, still trying to fight this. You’ve got Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, I mean you could just go across the border, the Cuban 5. All these people are targeted as being a potential threat to the system.

I was held in the New Orleans Parish prison, that is sort of like a detention centre before you go to trial. Then you sty there until you’re sent to Angola prison to start doing your time. Now you get credit for having been arrested, but your time doesn’t start in prison until you get to Angola State prison, so I was being held in a jail before being sent to Angola.

I’d been sent to Angola the first time I went to prison. I was discharged in November 1969 and January 1970 I was arrested on this other charge for participating in a robbery of a store.

I got married around 1965, my wife got the divorce when I was in prison 6 or 7 years later. We had a son but he died prematurely as a result of a brain tumour after he had a fall.

When and why did you enter solitary confinement?

I was a member of the Black Panther Party so they confined me to CCR, which is Closed Cell Restricted. And I was there from 1972 to when I was discharged in 2001, but that was their reasoning for pacing me there. They didn’t need a reason, I didn’t have to do anything in Angola, all they got to do is say I was a threat to security, and they saw me being a threat to security being labelled a militant and Black Panther, they saw that as being a threat and that was enough.

Could you communicate with the other prisoners?

America has a different type of solitary confinement. I don’t know if this was solitary confinement, but it was invented by the Quakers. When you speak of SC people think of the type of SC in which the Quakers invented years ago and they of dungeon that you had in England years ago. The Quakers invented the word penitent, coming from the word penitentiary. If someone committed a crime they would put them in those type of conditions, I mean really isolated from anyone else except the keepers. And the penitence for them would be that they would have enough soul-searching that they would never commit another crime, but people went crazy so this kind of SC was outlawed. But America took it and put its own spin on it. They said we’re not going to do it exactly like that because the court isn’t going to accept this, no this type if SC. So what we’ll do is invent a new form of SC so they invented the cell – they still have that in America, but it’s hidden, it’s not legal – isolated from the prison and you keep people in the prison 23 or 24 hours a day, 6 by 9 by 12, everywhere they go they’re handcuffed and shackled, you discourage verbal communication.

The court won’t allow you to prevent this totally, but you do your best. For example when I went to Camp G, I was still in CCR, even though they could not prevent us from talking, if I stood at the bars and tried to talk across to the next cell, I was written up and I was taken that place and taken to the dungeon. So even though it wasn’t a law that allowed them to isolate people like this, they could put you in a solitary like condition and keep you separated from each other and could actually keep you from communicating if they wanted to because they could fabricate write ups saying that you were creating a disturbance with the person next door. They could hear you, and that was enough for them to say you were creating a disturbance.

So they keep you in these kind of conditions, everywhere you go they keep you shackled and handcuffed, but I think the psychological impact of solitary confinement is much greater than the physical aspect because they get people to believe that they can’t live together unless they’re handcuffed and shackled.

How did you avoid psychological constriction?

I never allowed them to… I never saw myself as a criminal, I never saw myself as the individual they portrayed me as, and the fact that I was in prison, I didn’t allows prison to be in me. In other words I changed my mindset about what prison was. Even though I was confined to a cell, but my mind was much beyond where I was. So there was a real psychological readjustment involved in my being able to weather the storm the way I did. but everybody don’t take the same approach, the same method that worked for me probably would never work for anyone else, but it worked for me.

Divide and conquer. If they think you’re a militant, they think you’re less contained in a dormitory. But if the isolate you, they could deal with you individually, they could go in there and kill you and nobody would know anything about it. They could beat you up and do anything they want.

Did you have any rituals to avoid going a deteriorating sanity?

I did a lot of exercise, I did a lot of reading, I did a lot of studying. I exercised for hours on a daily basis, I read thousands and thousands of books, all sorts of books. I used to love to think and I used to love to write. As a matter of fact I started to write while I was in prison. At one point we was allowed to have type writers, they took those from us and I began to write with my hand. You become isolated to a degree, but you go beyond that, you have to become bigger than the cell.

Even communicating with people in the outside world, having that environment, many people couldn’t cope with it.

Herman Wallace, Robert King, Albert Woodfox - collectively the Angola 3

I read in your biography that you created games with other prisoners as well.

We learned a way to call the chess pieces out, played by notation. You make the chess board, that’s easy, you figure out a way to do 64 squares and we used to make the pieces out of toilet paper or carve them out of soap if we had soap, or use cardboard.

Are you still working with the other two imprisoned Black Panthers?

We have this support group and people round the world who have heard about the case. And they know what I’m doing out here. Every now and again I get a call from them, I can’t go visit them, they won’t allow me to visit them, but I get a call from them every now and again and I get a chance to talk to them. The idea is to get them out of prison, not to make them comfortable in it, or anything like that.

It’s looking pretty promising, we still have the legal case, we have the civil case, we have the criminal case. Albert was recently granted that his case would be reheard after having his case reversed and then re-reversed by an appeal court, now he’s having another hearing to determine whether his case will be reversed again. We’re hoping that this will happen and if his case is reversed he will walk out of prison some time this year hopefully.

Do you still consider yourself a Black Panther?

I consider myself a member of the struggle because we join an organisation that ceased to exist, I joined a struggle, even though I joined the Black Panther Party, I joined the struggle; I’m a member of the struggle and I think the struggle goes on and on and on. And those people that consider themselves a member of the Black Panther Party, I guess that’s what they are, but I consider myself more a member of the struggle.

When did you meet the other two, Herman and Albert, of the Angola 3?

I met Herman later than I met Albert, I met Albert at around 1965. I was getting ready to be let out of prison for the first time and Albert was on his way there. He was younger that I was. Herman, I didn’t meet him till 1966 when he was sent to the same prison I was for a bank robbery. I saw him again I think in 1970 – they were sent to Angola the year before I was, him and Albert. They got CCR sometime in 1972.

Did you join the Black Panther Party at the same time?

I think Albert mentioned it when he escaped in 1969 out of New Orleans Parish prison and he went to New York and met the Black Panthers. So at that time he was in New York, I was at home, I didn’t get arrested until sometime in 1970.

Was Albert very different the next time you saw him?

He was a very different person the next time I saw him. He was more mature, when I first met him he was 17-18 years old, then the next time he was 22-23, so he was much older and politically aware than I had seen him and he had joined the Black Panther Party while he was in New York.

Lets say it like this, I thought it was great that he had become aware, not that he had joined the Black Panther Party, he was totally different and striking in that sense.

Did you feel a great deal of resentment when you left prison?

Resentment is not the word, I felt the system at the time, once I became politically aware, of course I resented the system and the way it operated, I think it was a legitimate resentment, so I can say that I resented the system back them and I resent the system now.

I think the system still needs changing, there are still a lot of things that need to be done to the system, so my attitude hasn’t changed. The fact is that Obama isn’t going to change my mind. Obama is an American, he might be an African American, but he is still an American, he represents America so I don’t see a great change in policy. There might be an attempt to change policy, it might eventually happen, but I’m not depending on it.

What do you mean Obama is an American?

If Obama was an Irish American, he’d still be an American, so I don’t expect anything different from him. He may speak about change, but I expect him to be American.

What’s an American?

What America is to England. What George Bush was to England, Obama is the same thing to England, it aint going to be no different. Obama may be a person who recognises that black people have been oppressed, but he’s an American first. He went to school on America, his philosophy is American, he’s not going to be any different. I would like America to be a paradise for everybody, but it’s heaven for some and Hell for others.

From everything that I said about America and the system so far, that’s what America is for me.

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