The Monks of Angola
by GMYJanuary 4th, 2009 at 8:12 PM
Filed under: History, Other Discursive Dialogue
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Small town America Nestled in a horseshoe of the Great Mississippi River is a small town in rural Louisiana. This is a pastoral landscape of corn, cotton, and soybean fields that are faithfully cultivated year round by the residents. Some attend services every Sunday in the centrally located church whose proud steeple is the highest point in town. This is a testament to the potent faith of the inhabitants that will overwhelmingly call no other place home. This is not the archetype of the romantic conceit some treasure in the myths of provincial America. This is a place of myth of a much more profound and disquieting reality that can’t easily be distilled from the non-linear histories that have shaped its present incarnation. The town is Angola, a name derived from the country whose slaves tilled its fields almost two centuries ago. At slightly over 5,000 people it is presently distinguished as being the largest penitentiary in the United States. A corollary of this is the fact that this Manhattan sized plantation turned penal colony has its own zip code and is so insular as to have its correctional staff live inside prison grounds. “Small town America, that’s exactly what you have,” says a resident as quoted by Laura Sullivan of NPR when she visited the facility in October of 2008. Mrs. Sullivan goes on to describe how “All day long, men in white uniforms are cutting grass, painting houses, planting gardens, free of cost to the prison staff.” The less privileged inmates can be found in crews tending the rest of the 18,000 acres where the weather can reach over 90 degrees during the hottest part of the year. Bill Haber of the associated press visited the prison in 2001 and took a photo of an all black work crew overseen by a lone white guard on horseback. It takes no stretch to imagine the implicit historical legacy. The Farm is a world of gentile tradition. The correctional officers are referred to as “Freemen”. In like fashion, it is common for the inmates to reply to orders with the equally colloquial “yassuh”. Most of the guards hold no high school diploma. It is unnecessary in a place where generations upon generations have worked at the penitentiary. Some may even have a pedigree going back to the turn of the 20th century, when the convict worked plantation was organically folded into the creation of the modern penal system. Today Angola is a model prison. The inmates feed themselves on the food they grow, fossil fuels are conserved with the use of horse drawn plows, violence is low. “This is a very serious hardcore prison, but it’s a very moral prison,” says Warden Burl Cain, brother of former Louisiana Senator James David Cain. Since taking over the prison in 1995 Warden Cain has transformed the establishment through the construction of new chapels, an inmate run Christian radio station, even a Baptist seminary where inmates can earn theological degrees. In a video produced by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association from which Warden Cain was quoted above, he goes on to explain this transformation, “I don’t want to claim credit for it cause’ it’s a God thing and this is us being submissive to Him and the inmates just change.” Twice a year the gates of Angola are open to the general public according to a tradition going back to the 1960s. “The rodeo is our chance to bring the public in to see what we do,” Warden Cain says enthusiastically. “We tell people that we have a gated community cause’ we have over 600 people living inside the farm in a subdivision here.” Community is an appropriate noun for a prison whose incarcerated and free population lives in such proximity. Some of Angola’s prisoners are allowed to cook and clean for Burl Cain and the other deputy wardens in their homes. This distinguished caste of inmates is guilelessly known as the “House Boys”. One of the 600 residents is Dora Rabalais. In an interview with Ms. Sullivan she was quoted as saying “It’s a family – a family of people that work together, play together, pray together and even have their own little family fights just like any other family would have.” It should go without saying that this motley family has had its fair share of squabbles in its rich history. More often than not it does go without saying, as there are simply things that need not be uttered amongst polite company, or at all if it can be helped. Warden Cain is more than happy to indulge in discussion about farming, or Jesus Christ, or the moral rehabilitation of his flock. Ask him about the Brent Miller case, as Laura Sullivan did this past October, and you will have entreated beyond his threshold of benevolence. “We don’t talk about those, just can’t do it.” Cain is not open for discussion on such arcane topics. Though every 90 days for the past 13 years he has faithfully stamped the papers keeping two men in solitary confinement. This is another tradition held by the various wardens of Angola going back to 1972.  That’s all my life Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace have spent the past 36 years living in 6 by 9 foot cells. These men have spent more time in isolation than 2/3 of the world’s population has even been alive. For one hour each day they are allowed to leave their cells for their private exercise yard. With no one for company except for their guards, it makes one rethink the paradigm of the famous Sun-tzu proverb “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Mr. Wallace and Mr. Woodfox live in a world of ascetic austerity. They present a discomforting pebble in the quilt of the American fable. A place where it is now the norm to drive down a four lane interstate in an air-conditioned Asian car fueled by Saudi and Canadian oil while listening to satellite radio playing British rock and roll, drinking Ethiopian coffee grown in South America and wrangling with a customer service rep for an American bank that lives in Bangalore, India. Their 54 square foot world is innocent of such progress, with the exception of the television that’s piped in 24/7. Yet the Angola 2, as they are now known are not innocent men. They have been convicted and retried multiple times in a court of law, each time being found guilty. The case in question was the murder of 23 year-old Brent Miller, a prison guard who was found stabbed to death in one of the dormitories one fateful morning in 1972. The murder weapon was a lawnmower blade and a later autopsy revealed that Miller had been stabbed no less than 38 times. Brent Miller’s murder occurred in the midst of a racially and politically charged era in the American penal system. Less than a year prior a strike had erupted in Folsom prison, still the longest in American history. According to Howard Zinn, “The strike was broken with a combination of force and deception, and four of the prisoners were sent on a fourteen hour ride to another prison, shackled and naked on the floor of a van.” Dr. Zinn goes on to explain some of the biases that may have led to such volatile situations. In 1969 white-collar crimes (tax fraud) that averaged $190,000 led to only 20% of those being convicted to serve jail time for an average of 7 months. Crimes of the poor (burglary) that averaged $321 led to 60% of those serving jail time for an average of 33 months. Blacks and other minorities overwhelmingly participated in petty crimes. Dr. Zinn elaborates, “The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted…Somehow the jails ended up full of poor black people.” Simply put, to be black meant being handed a fixed deck. The war in Vietnam and the black civil rights movements also came to factor into the pressure-pot of the American prison system. From the same source quoted above, the renowned A People’s History of the United States Dr. Zinn describes a study conducted by psychiatrist Willard Gaylin in which seventeen Jehova’s witnesses refused to register for the draft and were each given a two-year sentence. A black man who had refused due to conscientious objector status received a five-year sentence. There is an interaction between Dr. Gaylin and this man that bears repeating here. “How was your hair then?” “Afro.” “And what were you wearing?” “A dashiki.” “Don’t you think that might have affected your sentence?” “Of course.” “Was it worth a year or two of your life?” “That’s all my life. Man, you don’t know! That’s what it’s all about! Am I free to have my style, am I free to have my hair, am I free to have my skin?” Dr. Gaylin’s case is representative of a trend and not an isolated event. In 1969 there were 33,960 draft dodgers, up from 3,305 the previous year. In 1970 the war protest climaxed with President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. In 1971 the largest mass arrest in US history was conducted as 14,000 protesters were taken into custody in the streets of Washington DC. The prison culture was dynamically affected by these turns of events. Inside of a construct of embedded racial biases and class distinctions was infused a young intellectual political and social dynamism. This was a place where one would be as apt to run into an idealist as a serial rapist. “There had always been political prisoners,” explains Dr. Zinn. “People sent to jail for belonging to radical movements, for opposing war. But now a new kind of political prisoner appeared – the man, or woman, convicted of an ordinary crime, who, in prison, became awakened politically.” This political awakening shifted prisoners from individual rebellion to collective action and tipped in 1971 with the murder of George Jackson. George Jackson was an African American male who had spent over a decade in prison for a $70 robbery. During the course of his tenure he went from being a petty criminal to a revolutionary, writing the book Soledad Brother that became a beacon for black militancy. George Jackson was shot in the back by prison guards in San Quentin, allegedly trying to escape. His martyrdom catalyzed inmate populations all across the country to riot. The most notorious of these was the uprising in Attica that lasted for 5 days and culminated with 31 dead inmates and 9 dead guards. Prison authorities reported to the press that the revolting inmates had slit the guards throats. Upon further investigation it was revealed that these guards had been shot in the confusion that ensued when the prison was stormed by authorities. The inmates had no guns. To further emphasize the schism in thought between these two ideological forces, here is what Tom Wicker of the New York Times had to say when he visited the prison during the siege, “The racial harmony that prevailed amongst the prisoners – it was absolutely astonishing…That prison was the first place I had ever seen where there was no racism.” When one factors in the racial, generational, class, and ideological divides that polarized this era it would seem inevitable that a white young inexperienced prison guard should be found stabbed 38 times. It shouldn’t. JC Pennies Catalogs It is a mistake to assume that the outbreak of prison riots in the early 1970s was motivated by violence. It wasn’t. It was motivated by ideas, the prisoners were not fighting the guards themselves so much as the unethical institutions they represented. Most of these revolutionaries did not perceive themselves as anarchists and agents of violence but as disenfranchised citizens looking for equal and humane treatment. When Brent Miller was found dead on the dormitory floor in Angola, this was a much more sadistic act. Surely the current events played a role in the timing of the murder. Just the day before an inmate had firebombed a guard shack. These facts do not help in explaining the nature of the murder. This had to do with the context inside Angola. Lloyd Hoyle, who was deputy warden at the time was quoted by Laura Sullivan, “I almost shed tears because of the conditions of that prison you would not believe it.” Mrs. Sullivan goes on to describe, “Hoyle says there were 200 armed convict guards, who abused and tortured the inmates. Many of the paid guards were illiterate. There was a prisoner slave trade and rampant rape; inmates slept with JC Pennies catalogs tied to their waists for protection.” These 200 armed convict guards were known as “trustees” and were often much crueler than the paid guards. To some this may seem counter-intuitive, a prisoner turned guard should have more empathy toward their fellow prisoner, whom they more closely resemble. For people experienced in such matters nothing could be further from the truth. In the book Man’s Search for Meaning neurologist and psychologist Victor Frankl wrote about his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps. One of the subjects he described was, “Capos – prisoners who acted as trustees, having special privileges.” Dr. Frankl continues, “While these ordinary prisoners had little or nothing to eat, the Capos were never hungry; in fact many of the Capos fared better in the camp than they had in their entire lives. Often they were harder on the prisoners than the guards, and beat them more cruelly than the SS men did. These Capos, of course, were chosen only from those prisoners whose character promised to make them suitable for such procedures, and if they did not comply with what was expected of them, they were immediately demoted.” This was the natural order of things in the world that Brent Miller was born into. His father had worked at Angola, and most likely his father before him. Trustees performed the duties the paid guards were not staffed or inclined to do. This climate of inmate upon inmate abuse must also have reinforced the idea that these people were degenerate and incorrigible by nature. In fact just 20 years prior to the Brent Miller murder 31 inmates had cut their Achilles tendons in protest of their brutal treatment. Later called “The Heel String Gang” they allude to a culture of torture and abuse that defined life on the farm. As Miguel Bustillo of the LA Times wrote in May of 2008, “When Miller began working there two decades later, the guards were all white and the prisoners segregated. Wardens looked the other way when stronger inmates sold weaker ones as sex servants.” It is easy to draw the conclusion then that this was a place inhabited by inherently fiendish people. Dr. Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University may have another explanation. In 1971 just a few months prior to the murder of Brent Miller he conducted the now famous Stanford Prison Experiment. The experiment’s aim was to find out the psychological effects of being a prisoner and prison guard. He took 24 students with no medical disabilities, psychological issues, or criminal history. The participants were randomly chosen to perform the roles of guard and prisoner. For the prisoners this was done by stripping them of all possessions, wearing nothing but ill-fitting clothes, and reducing their identities to numbers. The guards were equipped with military uniforms, sunglasses that prevented eye contact, and wooden batons. The experiment was conducted in the Stanford Psychology Department basement turned makeshift prison. It was supposed to go for two weeks, it lasted only six days. In that small time span both parties had adapted to their roles so well that at one point some prisoners were forced to go nude as a matter of degradation, including sexual humiliation. Best selling author Malcolm Gladwell also sites this study in The Tipping Point. He makes the case that people, “…are powerfully shaped by their external environment, that the features of our immediate social and physical world – the streets we walk down, the people we encounter – play a huge role in shaping who we are and how we act.” Applied to Angola in the 1970s this simply means that the trustees, guards, and prisoners were not necessarily evil people. They were simply people reacting normally to an abnormal environment. If you put rats in a cage and deny them food, it is simply a matter of time before they start to eat each other. If this seems extreme then one may consult the Piers Read book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, which chronicles a less academic exposition of this reality. To say that the people of Angola, both prisoner and guard alike are immoral people would not satisfy Gladwell. Nor would it be accurate. According to Gladwell, “Character, then, isn’t what we think it is or, rather, what we want it to be. It isn’t a stable, easily identifiable set of closely related traits…Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context. In Herman Wallace’s own words in a phone interview conducted by Brooke Shelby Biggs in July 2008, “I believe that they were holding a lot of these guys in these cells because they didn't have other places in order, anywhere else to put them. These guys are not bad. But you put them in a situation where they can't maneuver, then yeah, they're going to respond in the manner that you treat them.” A fingerprint can come from anywhere. Brent Miller’s case could be framed as a nexus of social forces internal and external, historical and contemporary. This does not change the fact of his death or the fate of Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, human time capsules who have been punished for the better part of half a century. The death of Brent Miller left Leontine Verrett a widow before she could vote. After the murder she left town and understandably did not go to the trials that quickly convicted Wallace and Woodfox. Miguel Bustillo of the LA Times quoted her, “That was a lot to deal with at 17 years old. I trusted [the authorities] to do the right thing.” Later in the same article, Mrs. Verrett goes on to say, “If I were on that jury, I don’t think I would have convicted them.” This statement is a result of developments that have cast doubts on the guilt of Woodfox and Wallace, or at least brought their plight to more popular attention. In the most recent turn of events, Woodfox was within days of being released on bail. In her follow-up on December 17th 2008, Laura Sullivan writes, “Earlier this year a federal judge overturned Woodfox's conviction, finding that he had ineffective lawyers. He ordered the state to retry Woodfox. Three weeks ago, the judge then granted Woodfox bail. That's when Caldwell stepped in with an emergency appeal to stop his release.” The Caldwell Mrs. Sullivan refers to is James “Buddy” Caldwell, Attorney General for the state of Louisiana. Buddy is a distinguished looking man in his early sixties, who would have been 26 at the time of Miller’s death. Buddy has smooth silver hair and talks with an accent that bespeaks a bit of his heritage. Harkening back to these values, his campaign slogan reads “Integrity and Credibility”. The state attorney general website reads “Deeply committed to preserving and protecting the health, safety, welfare and legal interests of all of the citizens of Louisiana.” On December 19th at Ardillo’s restaurant Buddy graciously gave his time to be interviewed by Action17 News anchor Ken Benitez. When asked about his job Buddy went on to say, “This first year of my office it’s been rare that I get home from work before 8:30 to 10:30 at night. So we’ve been awfully busy and the nature of the job affects everything we do. I mean contractor fraud, the storms, all these unfair trade practices…You know it’s possible that I’ll be back in the A meet area trying a big case that happened in 1972. I hope that I don’t have to and that the courts uphold it but if not I’ll be here myself.” The “A meet” area Buddy is referring to is the 5th circuit court of appeals. It is clear that Caldwell has taken a personal interest in deciding Woodfox’s fate. Laura Sullivan describes how, “Woodfox had been expected to be released to the custody of his niece who lives in a gated community outside New Orleans. That hope ended last month when Caldwell's prosecutor sent an e-mail from a private account to the community association warning that Woodfox was dangerous.” In Caldwell’s own words, “This is the most dangerous person on the planet.” The position of the Attorney General is not swayed in light of a bloody fingerprint not evidenced in the previous trials. The print does not match Woodfox or Wallace. The print does not match the guards or the inmates who moved the body. Caldwell’s position is again stoically firm, “A fingerprint can come from anywhere. We’re not going to be fooled by that.” This despite the fact that, as Mrs. Sullivan writes, “Deep in a drawer in an office at Angola there are identification cards bearing the fingerprints of every inmate housed at the prison in 1972.” “He saw what he saw.” James Caldwell is just the most recent character in a Sisyphean drama that has defined Woodfox and Wallace’s legal odyssey. During Woodfox’s retrial in the 90’s he was again found guilty. The juror forewoman was Anne Butler. As Richard Becker for Workers World reported in his 1998 article, “Butler had written a book, Dying to Tell, about Angola prison. The first chapter was on the death of guard Miller, based on the state's version that Woodfox and Wallace were guilty. Instead of calling witnesses, the assistant district attorney in charge of presenting the case to the grand jury requested that Butler "explain" the case. The new indictment was then handed up.” Dying to Tell was passed amongst jurors during the trial. Butler was also the wife of former Warden Murray Henderson, the lead investigator of the Brent Miller murder 26 years prior. Less than a year after the trial Mr. Henderson shot Butler 5 times on her front porch. According to Laura Sullivan the response of Warden Henderson was swift, “Prison officials rounded up more than 200 inmates, looking for radicals — Black Panthers like Wallace and Woodfox — and brought them to a makeshift interrogation center, one floor above death row.” Mrs. Sullivan continues, “Several inmates said it was a bad month to be black at Angola. According to court records, prison officials never questioned a single white inmate.” Billy Sinclair, a white death row inmate that is now free though not exonerated recalls, “You heard hollering and screaming and the bodies being slammed against the walls. Upstairs you could smell tear gas bombs. We heard the beatings that were going on for weeks after that." The investigation eventually led to a key witness in the form of Hezekiah Brown. Brown’s testimony is still the only evidence implicating Woodfox and Wallace in the murder of Brent Miller. Mrs. Sullivan writes, “Brown testified he saw Wallace, Woodfox and two others stab Miller to death with a lawn mower blade. He also testified he received no favors for implicating Wallace and Woodfox.” One of the two inmates, Chester Jackson, was offered a deal for cooperating. The other, Gilbert Montegut, was provided an Alibi by a guard. Billy Sinclair recalls, “I was on death row with Hezekiah Brown. Hezekiah Brown was a professional snitch. [Brown] forever did everything he could to ingratiate himself to white authority. All the other inmates knew that if you were going to do anything wrong, don't let Hezekiah Brown see you." Even the deputy warden, Hilton Butler, was recorded on tape during an interview with Anne Butler (no relation), “Hezekiah was one you could put words into his mouth.” Hezekiah Brown is now passed, but not before being set free in 1986. Though he testified to not receiving any favors, he spent his remaining days in Angola at the dog pen. The dog pen is where inmates care for the dogs that chase runaway prisoners and can live relatively autonomous lives. In the hierarchy of Angola, this is a place where some inmates spend decades trying to get to. According to Randolph Matthews, a current dog pen resident, “There's no fences, you live in a house, you have perks. If you didn't know it, you would never know you were even in prison." There’s more. In a letter to Governor Edwin Edwards, Warden Frank Blackburn writes, “As discussed with you I would like to have issued to the above named inmate one (1) carton of cigarettes per week. This, I feel, would partially fulfill commitments made to him in the past with respect to his testimony in the state’s behalf in the Brent Miller murder case.” Above the cited text is the name Hezekiah Brown. Cigarettes being a valued form of currency in the inmate economy notwithstanding, the “partially” alludes to other promises that may have been made to Hezekiah. In the same stunning research done by Laura Sullivan, she turned up no less than four letters written by Warden Murray Henderson to various authorities lobbying for Mr. Brown’s release. In a letter written two years after the murder, Warden Henderson writes, “On April 17, 1972 a white officer was killed by three black militants from the New Orleans area. Brown testified for the State and on the basis of his testimony these three individuals received a life sentence each.” Though Hezekiah died before Alfred Woodfox’s retrial in the 90’s his testimony found its voice in Anne Butler, who led the jury to uphold the indictment. Prior to her passing at the hands of Murray Henderson, Mrs. Butler was quoted, “Hezekiah Brown was a very good witness. And he saw what he saw.” Black Pantherism Laura Sullivan is a correspondent for NPR. As a journalism student at Northwestern University she and two other students distinguished themselves by helping to exonerate the “Ford Heights Four”. Arrested in 1978 for the murder and rape of a couple in East Chicago, these four innocent men lost nearly two decades of their adult lives due to a miscarriage of justice. David Protess, one of Mrs. Sullivan’s former professors heads a program at Northwestern called “The Medill Innocence Project”. Under this program, budding journalists can pursue academic achievement alongside social justice. Protess himself has aided in the exoneration of 11 innocent men. In collaboration with this project is the Northwestern Law School, which houses the “Center for Wrongful Convictions”. There are listings of exonerated men convicted of capital crimes and were either sentenced to life or death. There are no less than 884 of them. That is enough to fill 14 school buses. There is also a list on the major causes of wrongful convictions. They are, Erroneous Eyewitness ID, False Confessions, Ineffective Assistance, Junk Science, Police Misconduct, Prosecutorial Misconduct, and Snitches. During Mrs. Sullivan’s research on the Woodfox case she turned up a man, Colonel Nyati Bolt. Bolt lives in a trailer off the grid, no phone, no PO Box. According to Sullivan, Albert Woodfox was with him at the time of the murder. At Woodfox’s original trial Bolt testified on his behalf. He spent the next 20 years in solitary up to his release in 1992. When asked by Sullivan he still maintains his version of events, “When I made my statement, I made it honest, I made it out of my heart. They can say whatever they want to say because that's the way it went. And I can't cut it any other way than that." In Malcolm Gladwell’s most recent book Outliers, he focuses on people of unusual achievement and attempts to make sense of their success. Gladwell makes the case that a person’s success can be defined by arbitrary events, such as what year or even what month they were born. He makes the case that how we are raised does matter, and that our cultural legacies going back generations still affect us. A true Outlier is simply someone who was born in the right time at the right place, and was prepared to take advantage of that opportunity. An antipodal argument can be phrased. Being at the wrong place at the wrong time and being unprepared for the misfortune. Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox were both African Americans born in New Orleans. This is a place that had a flourishing slave culture before many of the American founding fathers were even born. Wallace and Woodfox were born in the mid forties meaning they would have been in their early twenties during the climax of the black civil rights movement of the sixties. An African American committing petty crimes would statistically lead to longer sentences in a harsher environment, and it did. Had Herman and Albert been born in Connecticut a few years earlier or later they may have never ended up in Angola at all. Had they not instigated the formation of a Black Panther Chapter in a charged and segregated slave plantation converted to prison and they may have not been targeted. Burl Cain, James Caldwell, Hezekiah Brown, Murray Henderson, and Anne Butler are not iniquitous people. They are not villains, nor are they immoral. On the contrary, they are very much motivated by their systems of values and moral codes. Burl Cain has demonstrably given many of the inmates of Angola a constructive outlet. James Caldwell has no doubt done much good for the citizens of Louisiana. Geneticists have pointed out that there is more genetic variation in a single group of Chimpanzees than there is in the entire human species. Humans very much think the same, and we feel the same. Divisive arguments are simply not constructive or well founded. Dale Carnegie writes, “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.” Benjamin Franklin once said, “The great advantage of being a reasonable creature is that you can find the reason for whatever you want to do.” Cain and Woodfox are not that different. In a deposition in early December 2008 Cain explained why Woodfox was kept in solitary, “I know he still has that Black Pantherism.” Cain is right, he does. “Just to have a hug.” There is a picture of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace that is circulating on the Internet. If you knew nothing about the picture you might think it was taken at a middle school or community center. There is nothing to suggest these men have spent 36 years in solitary confinement; the longest in US history. Albert and Herman are in their sixties, wearing blue jeans and white long-sleeved shirts. They are both wearing thick-rimmed glasses and are smiling. Woodfox with graying hair looks like he could be a stuffy law professor. Wallace has the build of a boxer and the posture of a blues musician. Between them is an 11 year-old girl by the name of Poppy Richards. In 2007 Poppy flew from her home in Britain to the US and finally to Angola on the road that tethers it to the nearest town 30 miles away. The prison officials generously allowed her to visit with Woodfox and Wallace for an unprecedented 4 hours. Carrie Reichardt quoted her daughter, “When I first saw Herman and Albert I ran up to them and gave them a huge hug. It was weird to think that this is a rare treat for them, just to have a hug from another human being” The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” When interviewed by Brooke Biggs, Herman Wallace had this to say, “Our objective is that front gate. We're working our way towards that front gate, gradually.” |
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