Woodfox died of complications from COVID, his family said.
Carine Williams, one of Woodfox’s longtime attorneys, said Woodfox had contracted the coronavirus in early July but rebounded. Then about a week ago, he started experiencing shortness of breath and was admitted to a New Orleans hospital. Doctors were initially optimistic he would make it, Williams said. When his condition worsened, he was intubated and never regained consciousness.
Officials said they were kept in solitary confinement because their Black Panther Party activism would otherwise rile up inmates at the maximum-security prison farm, about 50 miles northwest of Baton Rouge. “Whenever I experienced pain of any origin I always made a promise to myself never to do anything that would cause someone else to suffer the pain I was feeling at that moment. I still had moments of bitterness and anger. But by then I had the wisdom to know that bitterness and anger are destructive,” he wrote. “I was dedicated to building things, not tearing them down.
Albert Woodfox mixes with the audience at the Ashe Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans, on Feb. 19, 2016. Earlier in the day, Woodfox, the last of three high-profile Louisiana prisoners known as the"Angola Three," was released from Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La.After his release, Woodfox initially moved to Houston and then about a year later returned to New Orleans where he had grown up in the city’s Treme neighborhood, said his brother Michael Mable.