“Going to prison is like
dying with your eyes open.” Bernard Kerik
In West
Feliciana Parish in Louisiana sits the 1,800-acre Angola State Penitentiary,
one of the most notorious prisons in the United States. “The Farm”, as it is
also known, is a complex that houses over 5,300 inmates, more than 80% African
American, in what is the oldest and only maximum-security prison in Louisiana
and the largest in the nation. It is estimated that 85% of the inmates who
enter will never leave. Angola’s 28-sq. miles, bordered on three sides by the
Mississippi River, was once extremely remote but is now accessible via Highway
66 and is open for tours by both individuals and groups.
www.stfrancisville.us
Angola’s
story really begins after emancipation. Prior to the end of the 18th-century
the vast majority of crimes were punished by fines or torture. In the 1800s incarceration
was basically used as a way to hold the ordinary prisoner until trial after
which, if found guilty, they were sent to workhouses. In 1817 New York State
constructed Auburn, a model prison that set a standard and became
internationally famous and was rivalled only by Philadelphia’s Eastern State.
www.easternstate.org
Men and
women were incarcerated, as they are now, prior to the end of the Civil War.
Children born in prison to enslaved mothers were taken from them and sold at
auction and the money was added to the prison’s finances. After the Civil War
the crime rate soared because of the war’s effects and an influx of immigrants.
In 1865 the 13th Amendment changed the game for African Americans by
declaring the total abolition of slavery except
in the case of an individual convicted of a crime. This led to
incarceration in the South as a counter to Reconstruction and black empowerment
efforts and became an almost effortless way to attain and maintain a work force
that closely approximated the slavery experience. Blacks were arrested based on
Black Codes supporting specious charges such as walking at night, vagrancy,
loitering, adultery and lascivious speech. www.constitution.findlaw.com/amendment13
Isaac
Franklin, founder of the largest slave trading firm in the United States, owned
7 plantations, at least 4 trading sites and 6 ships used to take slaves “down
river” to the South. One of these plantations was the 8,000-acre Angola, so
named because many of its slaves traced their origins to that country. In 1839
he married Adelicia, 27-years his junior. Upon his death in 1846 she inherited 7
plantations and 659 slaves in Louisiana alone.
Three-years
later Colonel Joseph Acklen signed a pre-nuptial agreement, allowing Adelicia
to maintain ownership of her property and they wed. Joseph tripled her
inheritance and died in 1863. Adelicia promptly took over running the
plantation and in 1865 she traveled to England to collect more than $950,000
($26,880,000) in gold that she made by selling her cotton in London to the
Rothchilds. She married for the final time, after another pre-nuptial
agreement, in 1867. She died in New York City in 1887 while on a shopping trip.
Convict leasing, a
form of privatization, had been a reality in Louisiana since 1844 but
Confederate Major Samuel Lawrence James purchased Angola plantation In 1880,
began warehousing prisoners and set the bar for cruelty and inhumane treatment.
He leased state prisoners who worked his fields and had no vested interest
maintaining their health. Early prisoners were actually housed in former slave
cabins and farmed the same crops the enslaved once did. They worked from “dark
to dark” on both poor and limited rations. Many prisoners died and he is believed
to have said, ”One dies, get another”.
The system’s cruelty
did not go unnoticed and in 1901 the Louisiana
Department of Public Safety & Corrections purchased 8,000-acres
of Angola for $200,000 ($5,760,000) and it became a working farm and penitentiary
continuing to use the original slave quarters for housing. Prisoners lived in scattered
camps near their work locations with the first being Camp A and were given no
linens, blankets or undergarments. Inmates worked up to 19 hours a day on
$.28-cents worth of food. In the 1930s convict leasing was abolished and was
replaced by chain gangs. Five men were chained together, toiled under the lash
and at gunpoint. Solitary confinement was and continues to be a means a
punishment and protection for prisoners.
In the early 1900s Louisiana reduced expenditures by having a very
limited number of guards and replacing them with the “Trustee System”. Trustees
were convicts who were armed and tasked with enforcing prison rules and getting
the maximum amount of work out of the prisoners under their control. The system
was used until the state made it illegal to arm prisoners.
Today Louisiana State Prison (LSP) is the size of Manhattan and is
almost entirely self-sufficient. Tours of the prison are offered and include a
museum, death row cells, historic artifacts, the prison gift shop and the
option of eating a meal in Angola’s Big House Café from 10 AM – 1 PM. Visitors
tour two structures, the museum and the “Behind the Gates” cellblock. The
museum was established in 1997 and has the distinction of being the sole museum
housed within a functioning prison. Tours are for 12 years and up and are
available Monday – Friday, 8 AM – 4 PM. www.angolamuseum.org
The LSP Museum is located immediately outside of the gates. The
galleries are generally chronological and begin with the origins of the
Louisiana prison system in the early 1800s and is filled with photographs and
artifacts illustrative of that history. Photo opportunities include an
outfitted prison cell with a cast of head and hands used by a prisoner to
replace him in his bed while he attempted to escaped. Highlights of the museum
include displays of weapons used by guards and those confiscated from prisoners.
@angolamuseum
There is information on the Red Hat Cellblock, listed on the National
Register of Historic Places in 2003, that was used to incarcerate incorrigible prisoners.
The name was derived from the straw hats they were required to wear in the
fields that were marked with red pain so they were readily identifiable. The
unit contained 6’ X 3’ cells with one 12-inch square window without glass or
screens offering no protection from weather or insects. Inmate Charles Frazier,
murderer of 2 guards, served his time in the unit welded into his cell for 7
years. The unit was constructed in the 1930s and functioned until 1973.
In 1995, while being lowered into his grave, a prisoner fell through
the bottom of the shoddy coffin. Based on that incident Angola began a handcrafted
coffin-making industry. Displayed is a replica of the treated plywood coffin
crafted for Rev. Billy Graham. Two wall-sized murals depict the penitentiary
cemetery and the carriage used to bear the body to the grave.
From the museum a brief walk along a concrete path
takes you to a locked gate that opens into a small corridor that leads to a
second locked gate. The area between the gates is patrolled at night by
specially trained wolves. Passing through both gates you continue along the
path to a second building and enter into the “Behind the Gates” experience
where original areas, admissions, cellblocks and death row, and equipment make
up the exhibits.
A model of Angola Penitentiary is displayed in the entrance allowing
visitors to understand the size and
scope of the complex. Galleries
radiate from the entry area the most interesting of which is dedicated to
Angola’s musical history and traditions. The most famous of the prison’s
musicians, Huddie William Ledbetter, is featured. Lead Belly, as he has come to
be known, made his first recording there at the behest of music folklorist John
Lomax. John and Alan Lomax were touring the Deep South to record ballads, work
and folk songs. His most recognized songs are “The Midnight Special” and
“Goodnight Irene”. www.leadbelly.org
Early executions in Louisiana were by hanging but
in 1940, effective in 1941, the state legislature deemed electrocution the
method of choice. The chair was portable and was taken to the designated parish
for the execution. The first one was carried out in Livingston Parish. Sixteen
years later an execution chamber was constructed at Angola and “Gruesome
Gertie” was given a permanent home for all state executions. The original chair,
used in 87 executions, is on display along with information on the most
infamous cases of capital punishment including that of Willie Francis.
Francis’ attempted electrocution took place on May
3, 1946. The chair did not function properly and Francis cried out for them to
remove the mask. The execution was halted and the case was unsuccessfully
appealed to the Supreme Court. His execution was carried out on May 9, 1947.
Andrew Lee Jones was Gertie’s final victim on July 22, 1991. The state
changed to lethal injection as the only method of execution in 1991.Women are
executed in the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women.
Angola has been featured in a number of films and
posters and movie memorabilia is exhibited. Gertie appears in “Monster’s Ball”
as the actual chair used in Puffy Combs’ electrocution. The prison is also in
scenes in “JFK”, “The Farm”, “A Lesson Before Dying” and “Dead Man Walking”. Stephen
King’s “The Green Mile” was based on Death Row conditions in the 1930s.
No prisoners have been executed since 2010 and the
state cites an inability to obtain the pharmaceuticals needed for lethal
injection and judicial challenges as the cause. A walk down an unused cellblock
is on the tour.
In 1965 the first Angola Rodeo took place. It is
now the longest running prison rodeo in the country. Spectators were admitted
in 1967 and it was so successful that an arena was constructed. In 1997 the
arena was expanded and upgraded. The rodeo is held every Sunday in October along
with Hobbycraft, an arts and crafts festival. Tickets sell out quickly.
www.angolarodeo.com
The Smithsonian National
Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) chose items from
Angola Penitentiary to feature in the “Power of Place” exhibit. A guard tower
and a cell stand as representative of a culture and system that has had a
profound effect on social dynamics for more than 100-years. www.nmaahc.si.edu
Make your next visit Louisiana! www.louisianatravel.com, #nolaplantations
