Giap, Wallace, and the Never-Ending Battle for Freedom

by Ramzy Baroud October 10, 2013

Nothing is more precious than freedom, is quoted as being attributed to Vo Nguyen Giap, a Vietnamese General that led his country through two liberation wars. The first was against French colonialists, the second against the Americans. And despite heavy and painful losses, Vietnam prevailed, defeating the first colonial quest at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu (1954) and the second at Ho Ch Minh Campaign (1975).

General Giap, the son of a peasant scholar, stood tall in both wars, only bowing down to the resolve of his people. Any forces that would impose their will on other nations will most certainly face defeat, he once said. His words will always be true.

He died on Friday, October 4, at the age of 102.

On the same day, the former black panther Herman Wallace, who had spent 41-years of his life in solitary confinement in Louisiana State Penitentiary, died from incurable liver cancer at the age of 71. Just a few days before his death, Judge Brian Jackson had overturned a charge that robbed Herman of much of his life. According to Jackson, Hermans 1974 conviction of killing a prison guard was unconstitutional.

Despite the lack of material evidence, discredited witnesses and a sham trial, Wallace, who was a poet and lover of literature, and two other prisoners known as the Angola Three, were locked up to spend a life of untold hardship for a crime they didnt commit.

Now that Wallace is dead, two remain. One, Robert King, 70, was freed in 2001, and the other, Albert Woodfox, 66, is still in solitary confinement and undergoes daily cavity searches, reported the UK Independent newspaper.

When his conviction was overturned it cleared the slate - he could die a man not convicted of a crime he was innocent of, King said of the release of Wallace, who died few days later.

One of the last photos released while on his hospital bed, showed Wallace raising his clinched right fist, perpetuating the legendary defiance of a whole generation of African Americans and civil rights leaders. While some fought for civil rights in the streets of American cities, Wallace fought for the rights of prisoners. The four decades of solitary confinement were meant to break him. Instead, it made it him stronger.

"If death is the realm of freedom, then through death I escape to freedom" Wallace quoted Frantz Fanon in the introduction to a poem he wrote from prison in 2012.

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Giap, Wallace, and the Never-Ending Battle for Freedom