From The Bottom Of The Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King

(Paperback, Expanded, Updated ed.)

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From the Bottom of the Heap is the revised autobiography of Robert Hillary King, the only freed member of the Angola 3. After being convicted of a crime he did not commit in 1970, King was sent to Angola State Penitentiary where he became a Black Panther and tirelessly worked to improve conditions for prisoners. After years of beatings, starvation and solitary confinement, he was declared innocent in 2001. Somehow he never lost his humanity. In this book, King strips bare society's worth injustices and remains a beacon of human strength and capacity to overcome.

Reviews

"For a person to go through 29 years in one of the most brutal prisons in America and still maintain his sanity and humanity, that's what makes people want to listen to Robert."
--Malik Rahim Cofounder of Common Ground Collective

"Friendships are forged in strange places. My friendship with Robert King and the other two Angola 3 men Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox is based on respect. These men, as Robert reveals in this stunning account of his life, have fought tirelessly to redress injustice, not only for themselves, but for others. This is a battle Robert is determined to win and we are determined to help him."
--Gordon Roddick, Co-founder of The Body Shop and activist

"When there is a train wreck, there is a public inquiry, to try to avoid it recurring. Robert King's conviction was a train wreck, and this book is perhaps the only way the world will get to understand why. There are more than 3,000 people serving life without the possibility of parole in Angola today, some as young as 14 when they were sent there, and many of them innocent but without the lawyer to prove it. We owe it to them, and others in a similar plight around the world, to read this book."
--Clive Stafford Smith, Director, Reprieve

"King uses his own history to show how the racial and economic hierarchies in mid-20th century Louisiana condemned most Black people to lives of insecurity and fear."
--Colorlines

"Told in a straightforward manner, this gripping tale has humor and all the innocence of a child's voice, a more mature young man's, evolving finally into the voice of an adult trying to plant his flag in ripe soil to claim a piece of the planet for himself and his kin. Unlike Ralph Ellison's protagonist, King doesn't evaporate or melt into the darkness. He fights, he yells, he refuses to take the beatings, whether ideologically or physically. He never gives up hope."
--San Francisco Bay View

"Three aspects of this book make it accessible and applicable: King's aptitude for storytelling--non-linear, conversational, straightforward, and insightful--his eventual explanation of the Black Panther Party's significance and power, and the details of his own legal battles fought from behind prison bars, specifically the appeal that led to his release in 2001 after 29 years of solitary confinement in Angola State Penitentiary, a/k/a 'The Last Slave Plantation.'"
--WIN Magazine

Author Bio

Robert Hillary King was part of a trio of American political prisoners collectively known as the Angola Three and a member of the Black Panther Party. He lives in New Orleans. Mumia Abu Jamal is a prisoner who is currently serving time for the alleged killing of a Philadelphia police officer in 1981. He is the author of Death Blossoms, Live from Death Row, and We Want Freedom. Dr. Terry Kupers, MD, MSP, is a professor at Wright Institute and a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He is the author of Prison Madness and Public Therapy. He lives in Oakland, California.