Albert Woodfox

Details of event with Albert Woodfox and panelists

6X9: A Conversation on Solitary Confinement

Wednesday, February 23, 2022 at 5:00 pm Pacific Time. 

A member of the Angola 3, activist Albert Woodfox is widely believed to have served the longest time in solitary confinement of any person in the U.S. He spent over 40 years in solitary confinement—in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell, 23 hours a day, in notorious Angola prison in Louisiana—all for a crime he did not commit. The Innocence Project's Alicia Maule writes that "despite the grave injustice of his wrongful conviction and the horrors of sustained solitary confinement, Mr. Woodfox emerged an activist whose spirit remained unbroken." In 2019 he released his biography Solitary, a powerful account that went on to be named a 2019 non-fiction National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. We are honored to welcome Mr. Albert Woodfox to Stanford for a panel conversation centered around solitary confinement, racial injustice, and resilience of the human spirit.

Panelists include:

  • Albert Woodfox: Author of Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement. My Story of Transformation and Hope, an autobiography which recounts more than four decades in solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit. Woodfox was born in 1947 in New Orleans. A committed activist while in prison, he remains so today, speaking to a wide array of audiences, including the Innocence Project, Harvard, Yale, and other universities, the National Lawyers Guild, as well as at Amnesty International events in London, Paris, Denmark, Sweden, and Belgium. He lives in New Orleans.

  • Homer Venters, MD: Adjunct faculty at NYU College of Global Public Health, physician, epidemiologist, and nationally recognized leader in health and human rights. Former Chief Medical Officer of the NYC Correctional Health Services

  • Andrea Armstrong: professor at Loyola University, New Orleans, and leading national expert on prison and jail conditions — certified by the U.S. Department of Justice as a Prison Rape Elimination Act auditor.  Professor Armstrong founded IncarcerationTransparency.org, a database/website designed by Prof. Judson Mitchell, that provides facility-level deaths behind bars data and analysis for Louisiana and memorializes lives lost behind bars.

Moderated by Knight-Hennessy Scholars Eli Cahan,  2019 Cohort alumnus, and Amanda Leavell,  2020 Cohort.

This panel is organized by graduate students and alumni from the Knight-Hennessy Scholars program for the Stanford Community.