By any Means Necessary

Abstract

Perhaps one of the most egregious cases of unmitigated injustice in the United States is the prosecution of the Angola 3: Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace, and Robert. King Wilkerson. Although King was released from the Louisiana State Penitentiary in 2001. his comrades continue to serve life sentences in solitary confinement for the alleged 1972 murder of a prison guard. This conviction is largely recognized as wrongful and designed to silence the three Black Panther activists, who had struggled for prison reform, to end prison rape, and to improve the inhumane conditions that prevail in places like the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Formerly an antebellum slave plantation, today the prison complex is a 180,000-acre work camp, where three quarters of the inmates are African American.' As the largest employer in the region, the Louisiana State Penitentiary pays prisoners anywhere between four and twenty cents per hour for their forced labor. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Brooklyn-born activist artist Jackie Sumell (2) was moved by a lecture given by Robert King in California in 2001 and began a correspondence with Herman Wallace, who has been living in a 6 x 9 foot cell for more than thirty-nine years, a situation Sumell refers to as a psychological mind fuck. (3) Wallace is forced to remain in this cell twenty-three hours per day, seven days per week. In a 2003 letter, Sumell asked Wallace, What kind of house does a man who has lived in a 6 x 9 foot box for over thirty years dream of? Wallace's response became the basis of The House That Herman Built (2003-present), an ongoing collaborative video project between Sumell and Wallace. As part of this extensive collaboration, Sumell produced a video featuring a CAD architectural drawing based on Wallace's written description of his ideal home, as narrated by King. The video opens with an exterior view of the house, surrounded by gardens and flowers. From a two-car garage, the viewer passes a storage space with a pantry for dry goods. In his review of the project, Wallace noticed that among the items represented in the pantry, Sumell had forgotten the Tabasco sauce. The fact that Wallace noticed such a tiny omission shows the extent to which the project allows him to imagine himself in a wholly different place, freed from confinement. Among the many splendid aspects of the house, most striking is Wallace's commitment to revolutionary politics, as evidenced in the dining and conference room with its wall of revolutionary fame displaying framed pictures of prominent abolitionists John Brown, Gabriel Prosser, Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, and Denmark Vessey. The bottom of the swimming pool in the yard contains the Black Panther Party emblem. Wallace's experiences of militant struggle are reflected in the design of the house, which allows for a quick escape. A fireplace in the second-floor master bedroom leads to an underground bunker thirty-five feet away from the house, equipped with military essentials, foodstuffs, and first aid supplies. Wallace's description vacillates between details concerning construction materials, the size of rooms and their furnishings, and uncanny reminders of life in prison and yearnings for a just society. wonder, Wallace concludes, how psychologists would evaluate me as a person. The House That Herman Built has been exhibited widely in North America and Europe, and with the encouragement and donations of architects, designers, builders, artists, an urbanist, and a documentary filmmaker, plans to build Herman's House are underway. I interviewed Jackie Sumell in person and by email in February and March of 2010 and subsequently corresponded with Herman Wallace. In both cases, I inquired about the relationship between the activist organizing of the present and the revolutionary goals and aims of the Black Panther Party. Before I relate these two interactions, I wish first to provide some analysis of the theoretical and philosophical concerns that brought me to this work. …