Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement

by Albert Woodfox

Back in my cell, I was feeling out of balance. It was December. Most years run into the next when you are locked down 23 hours a day. A few years stand out for being worse than others. The year my mom died. The year I lost my sister. That year, 2013, was one of those years. Herman was gone. The degrading strip searches continued. I was being slandered in the press by the attorney general’s office—again. The state of Louisiana, which had already spent millions of dollars to defend my wrongful conviction and to keep me in prison, was now expending considerable resources to fight to restore my conviction—again. I was reminded of a valuable lesson I’d learned, and relearned, many times before. Whenever you don’t think you can take another step, the human spirit keeps going, even when you don’t want to.