Louisiana State Penitentiary

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The Louisiana State Penitentiary (also known as Angola and "The Farm") is a prison in Louisiana operated by the Louisiana Department of Corrections. The prison is the largest maximum security prison in the United States with 5,000 inmates and 1,800 staff members. It is located on an 18,000 acre (73 km²) property that was previously the Angola and other plantations owned by Isaac Franklin in unincorporated West Feliciana Parish, close to the Mississippi border. The prison is located at the terminus of Louisiana Highway 66, and the prison is about 22 miles (35 km) northwest of St. Francisville.^[1] Angola is surrounded on three sides by the Mississippi River.

Contents 1 History 2 Today 3 Angola 3 4 Radio 5 Musical references 6 See also 7 References and footnotes 8 Books about Angola 9 Articles about Angola 10 External links

[edit] 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, Franklin and Armfield, 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 Cheatham, 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.^[2] Samuel James ran the plantation using convicts leased from them which led to a great deal of abuse.^[3]

A former Angola prisoner, William Sadler (also called "Wooden Ear" because of hearing loss he suffered after a prison attack), wrote a series of articles about Angola entitled "Hell on Angola" in the 1940s which helped cause prison reform.^[4]

In 1952, 31 inmates cut their Achilles' tendons in protest of the hard work and brutality (referred to as the Heel String Gang.)^[5] In 1972, Elayne Hunt, 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.^[6] Current Warden Burl Cain maintains an open-door policy with the media, which led to the production of the award winning documentary The Farm.^[2] Films such as Dead Man Walking^[7] and Monster's Ball^[8] were partly filmed in Angola.

In Stephen King's book The Green Mile (novel) and the adapted movie The Green Mile (film), the fictional setting of the Louisiana Cold Mountain Penitentiary was loosely based on life on death row at Angola in the 1930s.^{[citation needed]}

On August 31, 2008, New Orleans, LA Mayor Ray Nagin stated in a press conference that any New Orleans residents found looting during the evacuation of the city due to Hurricane Gustav would be arrested and immediately transported to Angola prison.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Today

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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]}

Many prisoners in Angola are serving sentences which are so long that there is no realistic prospect of parole e.g. 60 years or more. Inmates who develop terminal illnesses are treated at a secure hospice within the grounds of the prison, and subsequently buried in the prison cemetery if their family cannot afford to claim and bury the body.^{[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.^[9] There is a museum which features among its exhibits Louisiana's old electric chair, "Old Sparky", 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.^[10]

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.^[11]

[edit] Angola 3

Angola also housed Robert King Wilkerson, Albert Woodfox, and Herman Wallace who are now known as the Angola 3. Wilkerson was freed in 2001 after 29 years in solitary confinement. Woodfox and Wallace served 36 years in solitary confinement - the longest time in solitary confinement in United States history.^[12] They were finally released on March 27, 2008 after a congressional delegation headed by Congressman John Conyers planned to visit Angola.^[12] They are currently housed in the prison's maximum security wing.^[13][14]

[edit] Radio

Angola is the only penitentiary in the U.S. to be issued an FCC license to operate a radio station. KLSP (Louisiana State Penitentiary) is a 100-watt radio station that operates at 91.7 on the FM dial from inside the prison to approximately 6,000 potential listeners including inmates and penitentiary staff. The station is operated by inmates and carries some satellite programming. Inside the walls of Angola, KLSP is called the "Incarceration Station" and "The Station that Kicks Behind the Bricks."

In 2002, the station left the airways because of old, dilapidated equipment. A fund-raiser was broadcast from inside the prison to radio stations in North and South Carolina (WLFJ, WRTP and The His Radio Network), Georgia (WVFJ, WLFS and WAFJ), Missouri (WIND) and Florida (WJIS and The Joy FM Network) that raised $120,000 to rebuild KLSP. His Radio Operations Manager Ken Mayfield led the team and the rebuild of the station.

The station's website is www.corrections.state.la.us/lsp/KLSP.htm.^[15]

[edit] Musical references

The prison has held many musicians and been the subject of a number of songs. Folk singer Leadbelly served over four years of his attempted murder sentence and was released early from Angola for good behavior. Tex-Mex artist Freddy Fender was 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 imprisonment 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.

In the music video for 100 Million, a Birdman single featuring several other rappers, Birdman faces a parole hearing at Angola at the beginning and end of the video.

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

New Orleans rapper, B.G. referenced the prison many times in the song "He Used 2 Be A Man" from the album "Checkmate".

San Francisco Bay Area saxophonist/composer Howard Wiley (http://www.howardwiley.com) and ethnomusicologist Daniel Atkinson have collaborated on The Angola Project, based on Atkinson's dissertation research at the prison. There is another release pending that was recorded in August 2008.

[edit] See also

• List of law enforcement agencies in Louisiana
• List of United States state correction agencies
• Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections
• Louisiana Department of Corrections
• Prison
• Trusty system
• Ellen Bryan Moore

[edit] References and footnotes

[edit] Books about Angola

• Cain's Redemption by Dennis Shere
• Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean
• God of the Rodeo - Daniel Bergner
• A Life in the Balance: The Billy Wayne Sinclair Story by Billy Wayne Sinclair.
• The prison is referred to in A Confederacy of Dunces by Jones when describing the racial inequality in the New Orleans judicial system.
• The main character of Poppy Z. Brite's novel The Lazarus Heart is sent to Angola for the murder of his lover.
• The House That Herman Built by Herman Wallace of the Angola 3, co-written with Artist Jackie Sumell.

[edit] Articles about Angola

• America's Plantation Prisons, by Maya Schenwar, Global Research, August 30, 2008

[edit] External links

• Louisiana State Penitentiary
• Paste: Inside Angola's Incarceration Station
• Stein, Joel. "Angola, La.: The Lessons of Cain." TIME. Monday July 10, 2000. Retrieved on January 1, 2010.
• United States District Court Middle District of Louisiana Magistrates Report & Recommendation- regarding complaints of "cruel and unusual punishment" at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola

Coordinates: 30°57′18″N 91°35′42″W / 30.955107°N 91.594927°W / 30.955107; -91.594927