Louisiana State Penitentiary
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Louisiana_State_Penitentiary".

For similarly named locales, see Angola (disambiguation).
Louisiana Department of Corrections patch with Angola Tab
Louisiana Department of Corrections patch with Angola Tab

Angola (also known as "The Farm") is the Louisiana State Penitentiary and is estimated to be one of the largest prisons in the U.S. with 5,000 inmates and 1,800 staff members. Located on an 18,000 acre (73 km²) plantation in unincorporated West Feliciana Parish close to the Mississippi border, it is surrounded on three sides by the Mississippi River, making flooding a constant menace.

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History

The land that has become Angola Penitentiary was purchased by Isaac Franklin from Francis Routh during the 1830s with the profits from his slave trading firm, Armfield and Franklin, of Alexandria, Virginia and Natchez, Mississippi as four contiguous plantations. These plantations, Panola, Belle View, Killarney and Angola, were joined during their sale by Franklin's widow, Adelicia Hayes, to Samuel Lawrence James in 1880. The plantation, named after the area in Africa where the former slaves came from, contained a building called the Old Slave Quarters. [1] Samuel James ran the plantation using convicts leased from the State of Louisiana. The State of Louisiana only assumed full control in 1901. In 1916 to save money, all the guards were fired, and selected inmates were used as trustees (similar to Mississippi's Trusty system), a system which led to a great deal of abuse. [2]

By the 1950s, Angola had degenerated to become one of the very worst prisons in the U.S. In 1952, 31 inmates cut their Achilles' tendons in protest of the hard work and brutality (referred to as the Heel String Gang.) [3] In 1972, a reforming director of corrections was appointed by Governor Edwin Edwards, and the U.S. courts in Gates v. Collier ordered Louisiana to clean up Angola once and for all, ending the Trusty system.[4] Successive wardens have continued the improvements, and Angola is now regarded as a showcase among U.S. penal establishments. Current Warden Burl Cain maintains an open-door policy with the media, which led to the production of the award winning documentary The Farm. [5] Films such as Dead Man Walking [6] and Monster's Ball [7] were partly filmed in Angola.

The film The Green Mile was based on life on death row at Angola in the 1920s.

Today

Angola is still run as a working farm; Warden Cain once said that the key to running a peaceful maximum security prison was that "you've got to keep the inmates working all day so they're tired at night."citation needed

The prison hosts a rodeo every April and October, and its inmates produce the award-winning magazine The Angolite, available to the general public and relatively uncensored [8] There is a museum which features among its exhibits Louisiana's old electric chair, "Gruesome Gertie", last used for the execution of Andrew Lee Jones on 22 July 1991. Angola Prison is also home to the country's only inmate-operated radio station. [9]

While Angola was once known as "the bloodiest prison in America", it has made a tremendous turnaround, much of which has been attributed to the influence of faith-based programming. Warden Cain allowed the introduction of Bible studies--most notably Experiencing God--and a significant network of prison churches and mosques. In the 1990s, Angola partnered with the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary to offer prisoners the chance to earn accredited bachelor's degrees in ministry. Dr. Bruce M Sabin wrote his doctoral dissertation evaluating moral development among those college students. [10]

Angola 3

Angola is also the place of confinement of the Angola 3. Robert King Wilkerson was freed in 2001 after 30 years in solitary confinement and Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox remain in solitary confinement after the last 35 years, a form of punishment which is considered cruel and unconstitutional.[11][12]

Musical references

The prison has held many musicians and been the subject of a number of songs. Blues singer Leadbelly and Tex-Mex artist Freddy Fender were both pardoned from there.

The song "Grown So Ugly" by American blues musician and ex-convict Robert Pete Williams references Angola. The song's lyrics have some basis in fact, as Williams was imprisoned there and was officially pardoned (from a murder charge) in 1964, the year the song says that he left the prison.

The classic New Orleans song "Junco Partner" includes the lines:

Six months ain't no sentence, and a year ain't no time
They got boys down in Angola doin' one year to ninety-nine

Aaron and Charles Neville wrote "Angola Bound":

I got lucky last summer when I got my time, Angola bound
Well my partner got a hundred, I got ninety-nine, Angola bound

Angola also features in the Neville Brothers song "Sons and Daughters" on the album Brother's Keeper.

Folklorist Frederick Oster recorded "Angola Prison Worksongs" for his Folklyric Records in 1959, now re-released on Arhoolie Records. According to Oster, between 1929 and 1940, 10,000 floggings were carried out in Angola.

Singer Gil Scott-Heron wrote and recorded the song "Angola, Louisiana" on his 1978 album with Brian Jackson, Secrets. The song deals with the inprisonment of inmate Gary Tyler.

Comprising the entire B-Side of his album Remedies, New Orleans musician Dr. John features an extended 17:35 song titled "Angola Anthem".

Singer-songwriter Myshkin recorded "Angola" in 1998 for her album Blue Gold. The song refers to the case of former Angola warden C. Murray Henderson, who was sentenced to 50 years in Angola prison for the attempted murder of his wife, writer Anne Butler:

Release me from this life I will seek my punishment
On the other side but the judge said
"Warden in cold blood you shot your poor poor wife
You're going back to Angola, there your hell to find"

New Orleans rap artist Juvenile has part of a verse in the Hot Boys song "Dirty World" that says:

They'll plant dope on ya, go to court on ya
Give ya 99 years and slam the door on ya
Angola, the free man bout it, he don't play
Nigga get outta line, ship 'em to Camp J

New Orleans pianist James Booker mentions Angola prison in his cover of "Goodnight, Irene" ; where he was sent for heroin possession:

Lead Belly and little Booker both, had the pleasure of partying,
on the pon de rosa, *laughs* you know what I mean, you dig?
Yeah, on the pon de rosa, you know, down in Angola
where they have boys doing from one year to ninety nine

(As Booker was less than 10 years old when Leadbelly died, the song should be understood as poetic license rather than that they were actually there at the same time.)

Baton Rouge rap group Bottom Posse recorded two songs entitled "Angola Bound" and "Going To The State Pen (Angola Bound Part 2)".

Ray Davies has recorded a song entitled "Angola (Wrong Side of the Law)", which was released as a bonus track on the expanded release of Working Man's Café in February 2008.

In a 2006 Freestyle, rapper C-Murder referenced Angola saying, "You ruthless and you reckless, but in Angola, all my soldiers call you precious," after a stint there.

The American folk singer David Dondero in the song "20 years" describes the experiences of a prisoner released from Angola prison:

All I got on me, is my Angola prison I.D.
Ain't a place in this whole damn city willing to hire me
It's been twenty years

See also

Louisiana portal
Law enforcement/Law enforcement topics portal

References and footnotes

  1. ^ www.corrections.state.la.us "HISTORY OF ANGOLA"
  2. ^ www.burkfoster.com "Major James and the Origins of Modern Corrections in Louisiana"
  3. ^ www.billygraham.org "Set Free in Angola Prison"
  4. ^ "History of Angola". Louisiana Department of Corrections. Retrieved on 2007-12-06.
  5. ^ www.corrections.state.la.us "HISTORY OF ANGOLA"
  6. ^ www.pbs.org "The Producer's Journey"
  7. ^ doaskdotell.com "DOASKDOTELL MOVIE REVIEWs of Monster's Ball"
  8. ^ www.angolarodeo.com "ANGOLA PRISON RODEO"
  9. ^ "Paste: Inside Angola's Incarceration Station" by Jenny Lee Rice
  10. ^ "A faith-based program evaluation: Moral development of seminary students at the Louisiana State Penitentiary" by Bruce M. Sabin, Ed.D.
  11. ^ "AlterNet marks the Angola Three's 35th anniversary in solitary". alternet.org. Retrieved on 2007-01-17.
  12. ^ "Angola 3: 35 Years' Solitary Confinement in America". prisonactivist.org. Retrieved on 2007-04-17.

Books about Angola

External links

Geography
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