Louisiana State Penitentiary

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For similarly named locales, see Angola (disambiguation).

Angola is the Louisiana State Penitentiary and is estimated to be the largest prison in the U.S. with 5,000 inmates and over 1,000 staff. Located on an 18,000 acre (73 km²) plantation close to the Mississippi border, it is surrounded on three sides by the Mississippi River, making flooding a constant menace.

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. 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, a system which led to a great deal of abuse.

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.) Conditions improved—only to worsen again in the 1960s as the corrections budget was cut.

In 1972, a reforming director of corrections was appointed by Governor Edwin Edwards, and the U.S. courts ordered Louisiana to clean up Angola once and for all. 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. Films such as Dead Man Walking and Monster's Ball were partly filmed in Angola.

Indeed, Angola is still run as a working farm, and 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."

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 free to publish whatever it chooses. There is also 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.

1 Books about Angola
2 Musical references
3 External links
4 Geography

[edit] Books about Angola

Cain's Redemption by Dennis Shere
Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean
God of the Rodeo - Daniel Bergner
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.

[edit] 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 New Orleans classic 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

You been a long time coming but you're welcome home, Angola bound

And go to Louisiana get your burdens on, Angola bound

Oh Captain, oh Captain don't you be so cruel, Angola bound

Oh you work me harder than you work that mule, Angola bound

Folklorist Frederick Oster recorded Anglola 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-songwriter Myshkin recorded Angola in 1998 for her album Blue Gold. The song suggests strongly at 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

Parchman Farm, a Mississippi prison farm has a similar legacy.

James Booker, New Orleans pianist, in his cover of Goodnight, Irene mentions Angola prison; he was a resident there for heroin possession at the same time as famous Blues singer Lead Belly, as he describes in the song:

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