By Jordan Flaherty, Left Turn, 1 June 2008
At the heart of Louisiana’s prison system sits the Louisiana State Prison at Angola, a former slave plantation where little has changed in the last several-hundred years. Angola has been made notorious from books and films such as Dead Man Walking and The Farm: Life at Angola, as well as its legendary bi-annual prison rodeo and The Angolite, a prisoner-written magazine published within its walls. Visitors are often overwhelmed by its size – 18,000 acres that include a golf course (for use by prison staff and some guests), a radio station, and a massive farming operation that ranges from staples like soybeans and wheat to traditional Southern plantation crops like cotton.
Recent congressional attention has again brought Angola into the media limelight. The focus this time is on the prison’s practice of keeping some inmates in solitary confinement for decades, especially two of Angola’s most well-known residents – Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox. Woodfox and Wallace are the remaining members of the Angola Three, political activists widely seen as having been interned in solitary confinement as punishment for their political activism.