Thursdays were “fresh fish” day at Angola, when new inmates joined the general inmate population. I boarded an old school bus behind the Reception Center to be transported to the Main Prison, where half of Angola’s four thousand inmates lived. The other half lived in four out-camps widely scattered among fields of corn, cotton, and soybeans that stretched as far as the eye could see on the eighteen-thousand-acre prison grounds. The Reception Center housed death row, protective custody, and Closed Custody Restriction (CCR), where inmates were locked up for disciplinary reasons or because they were deemed a threat to security. Perhaps because of my slight build, the Initial Classification Board, which determined housing and job assignments, had offered me the physical safety of a cell in protective custody rather than the brutal, predatory life in Angola’s general population. “It’s a jungle down there,” they told me, “and it can get pretty dangerous.” But after twelve years of solitary confinement, I opted for the jungle.
I was dropped off behind the laundry building with my bag of personal belongings, along with the other newcomers. Then we set out on the Walk, an elevated, twelve-foot-wide concrete thoroughfare for foot traffic that ran throughout the sprawling Main Prison complex connecting cellblocks, thirty-two dormitories, the dining hall, the laundry, the education building, and various offices. Convicts lined it, leaning on the railing and studying the fresh fish. Some were merely curious; others looked for friends or enemies among the new faces; and the predators were there searching out the weak to enslave.
Slavery was commonplace at Angola, with perhaps a quarter of the population in bondage. Slaves met many needs in an all-male world shaped by deprivation. They served, of course, as sexual outlets and servants. But as capital stock, they had value and produced income. A slave also conveyed status and symbolized his owner’s power. Whites, especially gangs, would enslave inmates in protection rackets, a nonsexual form of bondage in which the slave—called a “prisoner”—regularly paid money or worked for his owner in moneymaking activities. But most owners had only one slave, referred to as a “galboy,” “whore,” “old lady,” or “wife.” While most prisoners did not own slaves, many used the sexual services of slaves.
The enslavement process was called “turning out,” the brutal rape symbolically stripping the inmate of his manhood and redefining his role as female. A prisoner targeted for turn-out had to defeat his assailant; otherwise, the rape forever branded him as property. In a violent world that respected only strength, the victimized inmate had to satisfy his master’s every whim, as a displeased owner could brutalize or prostitute the slave. It was a role the victim played for the duration of his imprisonment. As property, slaves were often sold, traded, used as collateral, gambled off, or given away. They were even used as mules to transport contraband for their owners. They had no recourse. Everything in Angola reinforced the slave trade, including the security force, which benefited enormously from the oppression of one segment of the inmate population by another and the junglelike atmosphere that kept inmates paranoid and divided. These relationships were generally regarded as “marriages,” and a complaining slave was more often than not returned to his old man and “counseled” by guards to be a better wife. The slave’s only way out was to commit suicide, escape, or kill his master, the latter two actions drawing additional punishment.
That’s what happened to James Dunn.
Dunn arrived at Angola in March 1960 at age nineteen with a three-year sentence for burglary. He was beaten and raped in the prison library by two inmates, one of whom wanted him for a wife. Since he wasn’t doing much time and looked forward to making parole, he decided to make the best of it. He became a good wife, doing his old man’s laundry, keeping his bunk area clean, preparing his meals, popping pimples on his face, giving him massages, and taking care of his sexual needs. He paroled out but returned to Angola at age twenty-one with a five-year sentence for burglary. His former owner was still there. “[He] let me know in no uncertain terms that things hadn’t changed, that I still belonged to him, and that I was still his old lady,” he told me. Eligible for parole again in two years and not wanting to ruin his chance of making it, he became an obedient wife once more. All went smoothly until his master became eligible for release. If his master was released, Dunn wanted out of enslavement. He shared his feelings with his owner, who, instead of selling or giving Dunn to a friend upon his release, gave him his freedom. In an attempt to reduce his attractiveness to others, he stopped showering and cultivated a filthiness that earned him the nickname Stinky Dunn. But it wasn’t enough. He fought off a number of attempts by others to claim him, finally killing Coyle Bell, a rapist. Dunn was punished with an eighteen-month stay in a cell by himself and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison.
While other inmates facing the prospect of going to Angola often fought and raped each other in jails to build a reputation for dangerousness that might protect them when they got to the feared prison, I was less anxious entering general population than I had been when I first stepped into the inmate bullpen in the Baton Rouge jail in 1964. Twelve years spent contemplating the prospect of being executed had brought me to terms with dying; prison had taught me not to be intimidated. I knew that I’d probably be tested and I’d probably have to fight, but I was determined to stand my ground or die on it. My eyes scanned the Walk for a familiar face, someone from whom I might be able to obtain a weapon. If I knew nothing else, I knew I would need a weapon.
In 1973 in Angola, everyone needed a weapon. Not only was the prison in the throes of major systemic change precipitated by the civil rights movement, it was also seriously overcrowded and underfunded. C. Murray Henderson, a progressive penal expert and former head of prisons in Iowa and Tennessee, was the warden. Elayn Hunt, an attorney and reformist, was the new director of corrections. “I’m hoping I’m just overreacting,” she told the state’s largest newspaper, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “but my concerns now are food and clothing; I don’t even know what rehabilitation is anymore.” Shortages of basic needs guaranteed violence, as convicts sought to redistribute existing goods and resources by whatever means possible. The prison was seventy guards short that summer. Sixty-seven inmates were stabbed, and five died. The clanging of steel was a familiar sound emanating from behind dormitories as men fought like gladiators with handmade shields and swords, pieces of wood, or mail-order catalogues strapped to their chests. Even in maximum-security cellblocks, men tied their doors shut for an extra measure of safety. Survival of the fittest was the only law, and fear was the supreme ruler of all.
As I stepped onto the Walk, the first familiar face I spotted was Ora Lee’s. It was hard to miss his big, muscular, six-foot-seven-inch frame as he waved his arms to get my attention. I was enormously relieved. Near him I saw several death row alumni, all friends. They were waiting for me, “just to make sure you didn’t have problems with any of these old bitch-ass niggers,” Daryl Evans said loudly for all to hear. The slender, gregarious youth was my best friend after Ora Lee. He and Bernard “Outlaw” Butler had been sent to death row for killing a man during a New Orleans robbery. Like all the others except me, they had gotten off death row the year before and had established themselves in general population. Outlaw had earned the distinction of being a fearless fighter. Daryl, a loud but responsible-minded individual, was a popular leader and athlete.
They assured me that I had little to fear.
“These dog-breath motherfuckers not crazy,” Daryl said. “They ain’t challenging nobody coming off death row, not with the kind of charge you’re carrying. They know who you are, and they ain’t gonna fuck with you—not unless you get to messing with galboys or dope, or you let these fools think you’re weak. But you not gonna do any of that. You got what you prayed for—a second chance. You don’t want to blow it by getting caught up in all the dumb shit going on around here.”
“Dumb shit” hardly covered what was going on at Angola, which was in turmoil on every front. In an effort to stave off a federal court order after prisoners murdered security officer Brent Miller in 1972, corrections officials and inmate representatives negotiated changes in policies and procedures, in sessions mediated by the U.S. Department of Justice, to improve conditions at Angola. The Department of Corrections agreed to improve medical care and to allow inmates to marry their outside girlfriends and wear long hair and beards. They also implemented a host of other quality-of-life changes, many opposed by security: They agreed to remove restrictions on inmates’ correspondence, magazines, and literature; to install unmonitored “collect” phones for inmates to use; and to allow full media access to the prison, its inmates, and its employees. Mail between prisoners and the media was granted confidential status, the same as legal mail—meaning the inmate could seal the envelope himself and authorities could not read its contents—which was, to my knowledge, unprecedented in any American prison. Most significantly, the disciplinary system—the foundation upon which prison security, order, and stability rests—was changed. Whereas historically inmates had been locked up and punished at the whim of authorities, with no appeal, under the new system, rules would govern lockdown, the disciplinary process, and punishment, and inmates were given meaningful appeals.
Corrections director Hunt ordered an end to the racial segregation of inmates in housing, jobs, visiting, and rehabilitative programs. She banned the word “nigger” from the everyday language of prison management and decreed that blacks had to be permitted to join the prison workforce. That was apparently too much for security warden Hayden Dees, who resigned.
Workers who lived with their families in a residential section of Angola called B-Line—so named because it was built adjacent to Camp B, now defunct—formed the backbone of the security force and power structure that for generations had ruled the prison; they regarded the changes as a repudiation of them and a diminution of their authority vis-à-vis the prisoners. As if that weren’t bad enough, Warden Henderson had succeeded in getting money from the state to hire three hundred new guards to replace the army of gun-toting inmate khaki-backs, which introduced a new element into the struggle for power and control of the prison. Many of the old guard, alienated and feeling threatened by the changes, abandoned the personal responsibility they had formerly taken for prison affairs, opting to “let the prison go to hell” and just collect their paychecks. They were certain the prison situation would get so bad that the governor would ultimately oust Hunt and restore power to the old guard. The new guards, who got on-the-job training and, if lucky, guidance from responsible inmates, had no stake in the old ways of doing things and were mostly open to change. The personnel, like the inmates, formed factions vying for power. Angola was a prison at war.
Daryl, despite the assurance he gave me that I would not need a weapon, owned one himself. So I followed suit, ordering a custom-made knife from an inmate who worked in the tag plant, where they turned out license plates, street signs, and other items made of metal. My knife was the length of my forearm, and I fashioned a sheath to strap it on under my sleeve, which allowed me to appear to be unarmed, unlike many inmates who wore long coats to conceal (and thereby announce) their weapons even in the summer heat. Like others, I armed myself only when there was the prospect of danger, but followed the Angola inmates’ credo: I’d rather be caught by security with a weapon than by my enemy without one.
Ora Lee, Daryl, and Outlaw accompanied me down the Walk to the Main Prison control center, where I checked in, and then to Walnut 4, a dormitory for “big stripers”—as opposed to trusties—that had not yet been racially integrated. After helping me stow my belongings in a footlocker beside my assigned bunk, Ora Lee and Daryl walked me along the fence of the Big Yard, giving me a quick education about the place, the inmates there, and what would be required of me.
Unlike the silence and solitude of death row, noisiness and bustle marked life in general population, which ran according to piercing whistles. At 5:00 a.m. a whistle woke us up; fifteen minutes later, another whistle told us to sit on the end of our bunks to be counted, although some guys just rolled over and slept through it. Inmates were counted simultaneously all over the prison—at the Main Prison, the out-camps, the hospital, administrative lockdown—and the count had to “clear” before any inmate could move. The process took about forty-five minutes when there were no problems; it could take hours if the numbers didn’t add up.
After the morning count, men walked single file to the dining hall as their dormitories were called. Breakfast, like all our meals, was served cafeteria-style. We got bacon about twice a week and were limited to one ration, but we could have as much as we wanted of whatever else they were serving—grits, oatmeal, biscuits, French toast, cereal, and eggs. Men went straight from breakfast to their jobs, where they were required to check in by 7:00 on pain of being written up for a disciplinary infraction, “late to work,” and given weekend duty in the field, even if they weren’t ordinarily assigned to fieldwork. Fieldworkers gathered at a spot near the back gate of the Main Prison called the Sally Port at 7:00 and were marched out to the farm lines or the fields by rifle-ready guards on horseback. Fieldworkers, who labored under hot sun and in bitter cold, always hoped the count got screwed up, as it meant less time in the field for them.
The 10:30 a.m. whistle signaled everyone to get back to their dorms. About half an hour later, another whistle told us to sit on the end of our bunks to be counted again. After the count cleared, we filed to the dining hall for lunch. We had to return to our jobs by 1:00 p.m. A whistle at 3:30 marked the end of the workday. Another put us on our bunks for the four o’clock count, after which we filed out for supper. The evening was ours, and men were free to stay out in the yard exercising or just hanging around until the next whistle, half an hour before nightfall, when everyone was required to be indoors. In the dorms, men showered, read, played Ping-Pong, gambled, argued, or listened to personal radios or the television over the constant sound of loud voices and toilets flushing. With sixty men using five toilets in each dorm, the commodes stayed busy.
Some men belonged to one or more of the thirty or so inmate clubs and religious groups at Angola and would attend church services or club meetings in the evening. There they could learn public speaking, practice dramatic performances, or work on staying sober, among other things. Many attended to socialize with friends from other dorms or out-camps. Those inmates fortunate enough to have a designated space and a locker in the hobby shop would pass their evenings handcrafting belts, purses, paintings, wooden wall art, rocking chairs, and chests, which were sold in the visiting room and at the annual inmate rodeo—a spectacle open to the paying public that featured unskilled and largely urban inmate “cowboys,” desperate for money and attention, in daredevil events prohibited in regular rodeos, such as snatching a silver dollar from between a charging bull’s horns—which drew thousands of outsiders to the prison. Once a week, hundreds of inmates poured out of the dorms for movie night in the dining hall.
As long as a prisoner was previously approved to be on a “call-out” outside his dorm, he could be wherever the meeting or activity was taking place, from church to the gym to the education building to the visiting room. Angola was an ant pile of nonstop movement and activity, even after dark. The 7:00 p.m. whistle marked the last major count of the day, and men were counted wherever they were without having to return to the dorm until 10:00, which was followed by lights-out half an hour later.
“Are the guards going to hassle me about my charge?” I asked Ora Lee, referring to the interracial nature of my crime.
“Play safe and stay in population, where there’s protection. The guards won’t do anything to you in front of witnesses,” Ora Lee said.
“As for the white convicts, they may be racists, but they criminals first. Problem is, they’ll do a favor for your DA, the cops, or an enemy in return for help in getting out of here. Except for those on the row with us, I wouldn’t go anyplace alone with white boys, not until you get to know them better. Stay around blacks, especially the Baton Rouge dudes: You got a reputation among them from the jail.”
Before falling asleep that night, I thought of the armed inmates in the dark, overcrowded dorm with me and hoped Daryl was right that guys getting off death row generally weren’t being messed with. I recalled Thomas “Black Jack” Goins telling me a decade earlier: “You’re lucky them white folks sent you to death row, ’cause your little ass wouldn’t survive this prison.” I didn’t understand then, but I did now. At arrest, I was just a kid, emotionally stunted, scared of my own shadow, saddled with an inferiority complex as wide as a Parisian boulevard, and sorely lacking in life skills. I was booked into the jail at five feet, seven inches tall, 115 pounds—two and a half inches shorter and considerably lighter than now. Had I been placed in Angola in 1961 with a life sentence, the prison world would have devoured me. In supreme irony, my death sentences had been blessings, protecting me long enough for me to learn and grow, literally.
When I met the Initial Classification Board, I told them I wanted to write and asked for a job on the prison paper, The Angolite. It was a brash request, because the paper had always been produced by an all-white inmate staff. The officials exchanged meaningful looks, then told me there were no vacancies on the paper. Security Colonel Robert Bryan observed that the prison could use my writing ability—but in a different job. The next morning, I went to the industrial compound, adjacent to the back of the Big Yard, with Daryl and Ora Lee and reported for work at the prison cannery, where food from the farming operations was processed.
I approached the foreman. “Colonel Bryan sent me to serve as your clerk.”
“My clerk?” The stringy white supervisor spit a stream of tobacco juice in the dirt and stared hostilely at me. “No, you ain’t gonna be my clerk. Ain’t never had a nigger clerk and ain’t gonna start now. Tell you what—you go back up there to the colonel and tell him I say that if he wants you to have a clerk’s job, he can make you his own clerk in the security office.” He angrily returned to his office, where several white inmates had watched from the windows.
Black inmate workers had also seen what transpired. They believed Bryan was using me to taunt the cannery supervisor, with whom he was feuding. The foreman knew that the only clerks allowed to work in the security office were gay white inmates, so relaying the foreman’s message would have been merely passing along the taunt. Yet, if it was learned that I wasn’t working at the cannery, I would probably get sent to the field to clear land, dig ditches, pick cotton, or harvest beans—the hardest work assignments. To avoid that prospect and to give myself time to find another job, I reported to work at the cannery every day as a manual laborer, joining the other blacks in cutting okra, making syrup, canning vegetables, sweeping floors, and performing menial tasks. I ignored the derisive laughter of the foreman and his white clerks each day when I checked in and out of the cannery, taking comfort in a rebellious determination forming within me: I refused to remain powerless in a jungle where only power mattered. I would somehow acquire some control over my life. I was determined to become a writer and to make the prison recognize me as one.
I turned for help to Sister Benedict Shannon and Clover Swann, a New York book editor who had coached me on writing through a pen-pal correspondence when I was on death row. When they learned about my present job situation, their complaints and inquiries to officials initiated a quick response.
Returning from the cannery one afternoon, I was picked up by prison security guards, who drove me to the administration building. Sweaty and dirty, I was shown into the warden’s office, where Henderson, Deputy Warden Lloyd Hoyle, and the prison’s business manager, Jack Donnelly, were waiting for me. Henderson, a tall, lanky man, introduced me to the others, offered me coffee, and politely inquired about my transition to the general population.
“My adjustment?” I said. “I’ve had no problems with the inmates. My only problems come from having to deal with a white administration that has no respect for blacks. I’ve been jerked around because of my color. Apparently you’ve heard about it, if my guess is right.”
Those were dangerous words to toss at all-powerful white prison officials, but I wanted them to understand that I was not the “good nigger” they were used to dealing with. Henderson surprised me by apologizing for what had happened, telling me he didn’t condone racism.
“I’m glad to hear that,” I said. “Does that mean you’re going to move me out of the cannery and put me on The Angolite?”
“We’d like to,” Hoyle said, “but we can’t do it right now. The Angolite already has a full staff. But we can do something even better, and it would allow you the time and freedom to do all the writing you want to—work on a book or something.* If you’d like, we can put you at Camp H. It’s about a mile away from the Main Prison—real quiet place, the kind of environment writers like.” Camp H, which held both medium-security prisoners and trusties, was popularly perceived to be a dumping ground for homosexuals, the mentally ill, and the weak.
Interpreting this as an attempt to isolate me from the Main Prison population, I declined. But I accepted Donnelly’s offer of a clerical job in the Main Prison’s canteen. Canteen jobs were much sought after for access to the store’s inventory and the opportunity to steal. Of more value to me was the ability to retreat to the seclusion of an office with a typewriter whenever the store was closed.
I hadn’t been working at the canteen long when I read in a newspaper that one of the wardens said there were no blacks on the staff of The Angolite because it was difficult to find black prisoners who could write. Considering my conversations with Henderson, Hoyle, and Donnelly, I was peeved. I took up an offer from the all-black Angola Lifers’ Association, one of the prison’s biggest inmate self-help organizations, to produce a newsletter for them. I put together an all-black staff and produced not a newsletter but a newsmagazine, twice the size of The Angolite. I introduced it to the membership as The Lifer magazine, “a publication by and for black prisoners,” deliberately tapping into black resentment. Blacks made up 85 percent of the inmate population and, having been historically shut out of the all-white Angolite, they embraced the idea of having their own magazine and competing with it. Surreptitiously printed on the classification department’s copy machine, The Lifer was distributed free in the prison and sent out to a network of outside supporters who sold it in churches and meetings in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Revenue from the sales financed the next edition. The New Orleans chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union served as legal counsel and held our funds in a local bank account. We succeeded in making our point that black prisoners could write and produce a publication. It did not mean the prison administration had to assign blacks to The Angolite, but it did give the lie to its claim of a lack of black writing talent.
The competition between The Lifer and The Angolite divided the to publishers. Nothing had come of it. inmate population along racial lines and catapulted me to instant prominence in Angola, especially among the black prisoners, as they regarded me as being unafraid to take on the white administration. For the first time in my life I was popular. I began writing press releases for black prison organizations, and as leaders of the prison’s numerous self-help organizations saw positive articles about the black clubs’ activities in mainstream newspapers, they asked me to do public relations for their organizations as well.
In 1973, as I was establishing The Lifer, I decided to apply to the Louisiana pardon board for executive clemency. By the standards of the day, I was overdue for release from my life sentence, as Louisiana’s practice, since 1926, had been to release lifers who had a record of good behavior after ten years and six months, upon the virtually automatic recommendation of the warden and pro forma approval by the governor. As Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Sanders had declared in 1971, “No true life sentence exists in Louisiana law.” My Master Prison Record reflected a long-passed “10–6” discharge date of August 16, 1971. Other lifers, including those once condemned to death, were flowing out of the penitentiary in a steady stream.
Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court voided all death sentences in 1972, Freeman Lavergne, a lifelong friend of my mother and one of the most powerful black leaders in Lake Charles, came to see me one day in the Calcasieu Parish jail. The first black business manager for Labor Local 207, who eventually became vice president of the local AFL-CIO chapter, Lavergne was a close ally of district attorney Frank Salter, who was part owner of a construction business that hired union labor. Lavergne was the first person from the local community, besides my mother and Sister Benedict, to visit me in the eleven years since my arrest. Because of his standing in the community, I was brought to a private office for the visit.
“I have a message for you, son, and I think you’ll see it as good news,” the stocky Lavergne said, leaning back in his chair. “Your case has been dragging on in the courts through three trials and for more than a decade. Frank Salter wants it to die a quiet death. He doesn’t need another reversal of your conviction by the federal court. So here’s the deal. You don’t appeal your conviction. You take the life sentence the Supreme Court’s going to give you, lie low for a couple of years, apply for a ten-six time cut, and Salter won’t oppose executive clemency for you.”
It sounded like business as usual. It was the way the back end of the criminal justice system worked. You got your time, kept your nose clean, and got your “gold seal”—the commutation of sentence. A first offender with a sterling prison record, I had no reason to think the gold seal wouldn’t come to me as it did to everyone else. But I was relieved to know the district attorney would not oppose my release via executive clemency, the only exit for lifers.
However, rather than lie low and wait a couple of years, as Lavergne advised, I sought clemency in 1973. In January 1974, the pardon board denied my application, which was not unusual. They often turned an inmate down on his first request, to see how he would respond to adversity: Would he become angry, develop discipline problems, give up trying after suffering a setback? The hearing was a low-key assessment by the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, and the sentencing judge. It didn’t make the newspapers. Salter made no attempt to appear before the board to oppose my request. I took the board’s rejection in stride and figured that with one denial under my belt, I’d wait a couple of years and try again.
When the canteen replaced its inmate workers with female employees to end the chronic problem of inmate theft, Donnelly arranged for me to be assigned to the classification department, where I enjoyed the support of the officers in my varied prison endeavors and freelance writing.
The popularity of The Lifer outside prison made me realize there was an audience for my writing. The 1971 Attica uprising and massacre followed by the San Quentin bloodbath that claimed the lives of militant convict George Jackson and five others hung over the nation’s penal system and generated serious interest in what was going on behind prison walls. Questions about justice and equality were being raised everywhere. Angola was a place everyone had heard of but few knew much about. And the more I learned, the more I felt the public needed to know.
Like almost everyone else, before I found out firsthand what prison was like, I thought it was just a purgatory where criminals were warehoused and punished before being returned to society. I was surprised to learn that it was a world unto itself, with its own peculiar culture, belief system, lifestyle, power structure, economy, and currency. It had its own heroes, like Leadbelly, who sang his way out of Angola and into international stardom; and Charlie Frazier, whose cell in the notorious “Red Hat” disciplinary building was welded shut for seven years after he shot his way out of the prison in a bloody escape. It was a world divided into “them” and “us” by a deep abyss of ignorance, prejudice, and misunderstanding. It was a world in which the forces of good and evil struggled daily with no guarantee as to which would triumph. It was a world that placed a high premium on exercising extreme care—in word, deed, and appearance—and upon keeping one’s word, whether it was to help someone or to hurt them. It was a world where inmates punished unacceptable behavior even more severely than authorities did. It was a world fraught with cruelty and danger but alive with hope, aspiration, and wide-ranging activity. There was certainly human wreckage—tortured souls and destroyed lives. But people also labored and fought to create meaningful lives in an abnormal place, and to find purpose and a measure of satisfaction in a human wasteland. Prison was more than just Hell’s storehouse.
There was a huge discrepancy between popular perception and the reality of what was happening behind bars. With America wracked by civil disobedience over the Vietnam War, violent revolutionary groups, black militancy, and ghetto riots, some of the nation’s inmates embraced militant antiauthoritarian rhetoric. Outside supporters of political militants publicly promoted romanticized notions of Angola prisoners united in resistance to official authority; in fact, genuine militants could not get a foothold in Angola, because gangsters, inmate leaders, slaveowners, and even run-of-the-mill criminal hustlers regarded militants as a threat to their own interests. They readily identified so-called militants to security guards in exchange for favors, often naming personal rivals or enemies as “revolutionaries.” While Angola was the most violent prison in the nation, the bloodletting—with a few notable exceptions—was not due to political militancy. The violence was essentially about disrespect, vengeance, sex, turf, property, criminality, money, drugs, domestic disputes, and the inability of individuals to get along peaceably in a jungle atmosphere. Although I kept a weapon handy at all times—first, the knife; later, an iron handle of a mop wringer innocently sitting in the corner of my office—I never needed to use it. Occasionally, violence was invoked as a matter of principle, to prevent a third party from being victimized. But the reality was a far cry from the militancy that many believed kept the prison bloody. As I came to understand how Angola functioned, I continued to regard educating the public about Angola as both an opportunity and a mission.
After the third issue of The Lifer, prison officials shut us down, saying our funds were beyond their ability to audit and regulate, held as they were in a bank by the ACLU; the move only increased my support from black inmates. In the autumn of 1974, I queried Gulf South Publishing Corporation, which owned and operated a chain of black newspapers in Louisiana and Mississippi, about writing a weekly column on prison life for them, and they agreed. I intended “The Jungle,” which is what I called the column, to be different from the usual wail of personal pain or the bitter bar-rattling rage at the system that had historically come out of prisons. I wanted it to be reportorial and, to the extent possible, nonjudgmental. I strove to convey a wider perspective on prison issues than was usually expressed by either prisoners or officials. One of my earliest columns was an insider’s analysis of the internal prison economy and the correlation between the degree of material deprivation suffered by inmates and the degree of violence within the prison, an observation I first made in the Baton Rouge jail, which was reinforced when I entered the general population in Angola. It was a piece that could not have been done by an outside journalist. It reinforced my belief that I could make a significant contribution.
In preparing the columns, I found facts and statistics to expose racial and class inequities in the criminal justice system—from the staffing of prisons to disparities in sentences, clemencies, and executions. I wrote about the problems of being black in a white-ruled prison. The administration was sometimes embarrassed by things I reported—lack of soap in a prison that produced it, little old ladies delivering cases of toilet tissue to the prison gate in response to my reported shortage of it—and why prison officials stood for it as long as they did, I don’t know. It was probably because it had never been done before, so they had no policy on it, and because few Angola officials read black weeklies.
In November 1974, however, Deputy Warden Hoyle and Assistant Warden William Kerr learned I had written a column criticizing the annual prison rodeo as exploiting the inmates for the amusement of outsiders, likening it to the gladiatorial games of ancient Rome that used slaves for the entertainment of the masses. Hoyle and Kerr ordered that I be removed from general population and locked up in a solitary disciplinary cell known as the Dungeon. (Warden Henderson was out of state.) A dumbfounded Major Richard Wall, the leader of the “new guard,” appeared at my office door expressing disbelief at what he had been ordered to do. I had been charged with being a threat to the security of the institution, specifically for “stirring racial animosities and instigating insurrection.” The newspaper chain that carried my column immediately published a front-page demand that corrections officials explain why their “correspondent” was in disciplinary lockdown. Black politicians and civil rights groups from Baton Rouge and New Orleans also protested. Prison officials responded that I had been locked up to protect me from inmates who didn’t like my criticism of the rodeo. Eight hundred Main Prison inmates then responded with a petition guaranteeing my safety, resulting in my release from the Dungeon.
I had won a stunning victory over censorship. I emerged from the Dungeon a hero, my image as a fighter reinforced by the administration’s retaliation. But I was in no mood for celebration. While I was in the Dungeon, word reached me that my old friend Ora Lee had died of a heart attack. I was crushed. I also felt guilty, because Ora Lee, from whom I’d gained so much, had asked only one thing of me—that I write a column about him to help in his struggle to regain his freedom—and I hadn’t done it. I had promised I would, but other things kept getting in the way. Distraught, I got an inmate to smuggle paper and pencil to me in the Dungeon, and I sat down to write the long-promised column, paying tribute to an unlikely teacher who, to the world at large, was nothing more than a criminal:
He taught me self-reliance by being self-reliant; strength, by being strong; courage, by being courageous; and to not complain or cry about the things I couldn’t change merely by embarrassing me with his own lack of tears and complaints. He was a poor man even by prison standards. He owned one pair of shoes, a change of clothes, and an old coat that was useless against the cold. Abandoned by the world, he had no source of income. He could have easily secured money if he really wanted to; he was intelligent and knew every trick to exploiting others, but he refused to utilize this knowledge because it conflicted with his religious beliefs…. There may have been times that he was scared, but I never knew it. And the knowledge that he was there, like the Rock of Gibraltar, somehow made the going a little easier, made me feel that there was no challenge that I couldn’t stand up to, no obstacles I couldn’t overcome, because he believed in me and I’d remember him saying, “A man can do anything he puts his mind to.” And I knew he was right. How many men are to be found who could lose half of their hand in a grinder as he did and not even cry out, just weep silently? And in a place full of danger, tragedies and bitterness, how many men could retain their sense of humor, greeting each new day with a smile? He permitted nothing to defeat him.*
When I was released from the Dungeon, I learned that my lockup had been followed by a security search of the office I shared with my friend Robert Jackson, which revealed photos of a female security guard and romantic letters she had sent him. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for such a relationship to take root in the fertile soil of love-starved males competing to make the female employees feel like the most desirable of women. And when staffers rubbed shoulders with convicts day in and day out, they often came to see the inmates’ humanity with fresh eyes. Still, in an us-against-them world, such relationships were viewed as traitorous by the other employees and were forbidden; a guard under the emotional sway of an inmate could aid him in an attempted escape or smuggle in contraband. Robert was locked up in a disciplinary cell, the female guard was forced to resign, and I lost my office.
Warden Henderson visited me shortly thereafter to tell me he wasn’t pleased with what Hoyle and Kerr had done. He assured me that it would not happen again, and told me that I was free to write for outside publications. Exhilarated, I began trying to freelance. A couple of small alternative newspapers published me, but the mainstream media still were not interested in reports about prison life, even though Angola was seen by many as the bloodiest prison in the country.
From 1972 to 1975, 67 prisoners were stabbed to death in Angola, and more than 350 others were seriously injured from knife wounds. The violence affected one of every ten prisoners, not counting those injured in fistfights or beatings with blunt objects. Another 42 died of “natural causes” in a world where the average age was twenty-three. With no doctor or nurse on staff, medical services were provided largely by a handful of employee and inmate hospital workers whose expertise had been acquired through on-the-job training. An inmate who had worked as a mortician was the most adept at suturing.
Upset by the Louisiana legislature’s refusal to address the problems at Angola, U.S. District Court Judge E. Gordon West halted the flow of inmates into Angola on June 10, 1975, placed the prison under the supervision of the court, and ordered Louisiana to make wholesale changes to end the violence and improve conditions there (Williams v. McKeithen). His ruling would have a significant impact on criminal justice in Louisiana because Angola was the heart of the state’s adult penal system.
In the wake of West’s order, The Shreveport Journal, one of that city’s two daily newspapers, devoted its entire July 2, 1975, issue to the problems of Louisiana’s criminal justice system. I was invited to be the newspaper’s “inside man” with three features: first, a historical overview of Angola and the state’s penal practices; second, an exposé of the problems faced by military veterans behind bars, including reporting on the nation’s first self-help group to aid them, which I helped establish at Angola; third, a depiction of life in prison. The special edition won the paper the American Bar Association’s highest award, the Silver Gavel, for outstanding public service.
My reporting in a newspaper that white officialdom read and respected had an impact: I was finally offered a job on The Angolite. But by then I enjoyed greater status and credibility as an outsider independent of the institution, so I declined the offer. Also, to leave my position as senior clerk in the classification department—whose officers approved visitors, escorted tours, and determined inmate housing and job assignments—meant a real loss of power. It was a position from which I had gradually engineered the placement of my friends and allies into key jobs. The control and influence of the Main Prison that resulted, combined with that accruing from our collective political and organizational activities among the prisoners, had quickly made me, to my own amazement, one of the most influential blacks in Angola.
One warm day in October 1975, Kelly Ward, the too-young, too-blond, freckled-faced director of classification, told me that Michael Beaubouef, his assistant director, would be taking me to Warden Henderson’s office after lunch.
I had been reclassified to minimum-security custody, which allowed me to work and travel outside the fenced-in Main Prison complex without an armed escort. As a trusty, I regularly accompanied classification officers when they conducted bus tours of the penitentiary for school, church, and civic groups. The “tourists” almost always asked for printed information about the prison, but there was nothing to give them. The authorities had never bothered to compile a history of Angola or information about prison operations. Sensing opportunity, I requested the warden’s permission to produce and sell a tour guide for my personal profit. I hoped that was the reason for the summons.
The drive to the administration building was short and uncomfortable. I was always ill at ease around Beaubouef. Though he had earned a college degree, as the son of a prison guard, he had been raised on B-Line in the peculiar prison culture that regarded convicts as just a step above work animals. He seemed friendly and understanding when I helped him with the monthly parole board hearings. After I was thrown in the Dungeon because of my rodeo article, however, he took me to his office for a private man-to-man talk in which he tried to persuade me to stop criticizing the rodeo and the prison. When I said I couldn’t do that, he angrily told me that he no longer wanted me working with him and that he was transferring me to the field. I went to Ward and suggested that Beaubouef’s threatened action would make the administration appear to be continuing a vendetta against me because of my writing. After talking with the warden, Ward assured me that nothing would happen to me. Beaubouef didn’t appreciate being overruled; he refused to speak to me for months.
Henderson offered me coffee and friendly small talk. A gracious host, he treated prisoners no differently than he did others, which made him quite popular among inmate leaders. He explained that one of the immediate effects of Judge West’s court order was that inmate workers in vital roles at the prison hospital were being replaced by female employees.
“There are going to be many such changes in the coming months,” he said. “Classification is next. Starting the first of the year, inmate clerks will be phased out.”
Female guards had always been restricted to working in the visiting room and the guard towers. “Security is not going to let women work in the middle of the Main Prison,” I said. “You know that as well as I do.”
“I expect there to be problems, but the male security force is going to have to accept the fact that women are going to work there—just as you have to accept it, if I’m to help you,” said Henderson. “I’m interested in what happens to you, as you know. At the moment you have a job you like. Before you lose it and end up in a position that you won’t like, I wanted to let you know what’s about to happen, so you’ll have a chance to try to get another job that you might like.”
“Thanks, Warden. I appreciate that.”
“You have anything in mind that you think you might like?”
I shook my head. “I’d have to take a look around.”
“Well, if you don’t already have something specific in mind, perhaps you could help me on something and help yourself in the process,” Henderson said. “You’ve made quite a name for yourself as a writer and, to be frank, it’s somewhat embarrassing not to have our best-known writer on the prison paper. Besides, The Angolite has always been white and, with eighty-five percent of the prisoners here being black, that’s not right. It’s never been right. But one of the ugly facts about prison is that you can’t always do what you want to do or what you know is right…” His voice trailed off, his eyes reflective.
“You’re right, Warden,” Beaubouef injected, speaking for the first time. “I’ve always felt that it was wrong for the paper to be all white when the majority of the inmates here are black. It’s not fair to the black population and it’s not fair to the administration because it gives the public the wrong impression about us, making it appear that we’re racist when we’re not.”
Beaubouef’s words rang false to me. Henderson’s, I believed. I had found him to be a compassionate man. I figured I was a continuing embarrassment for the administration. The New Orleans Times-Picayune had just published a story on October 5, 1975, “The Word-man of Angola,” comparing me and my writing to Robert Stroud, the legendary Birdman of Alcatraz who taught himself ornithology by studying the birds that flew into his cell. What neither man knew was that a feature about incarcerated veterans was scheduled for publication in the April 1976 edition of Penthouse magazine, my first national forum. I was paid a $1,000, the most money I ever legitimately possessed in my life. I took it as heady affirmation that I could write.
“That office has got to be integrated; the black population must be represented in it, and you’re the logical person to do it,” Henderson said, his voice forceful.
“You want me to go to The Angolite,” I said flatly.
Henderson nodded. “You need a job, and you’d have the best one in the prison. You’d have a typewriter, privacy, and all the time you want to do whatever writing you desire. I can’t imagine a better job for you. And, as editor, you’d be your own boss.”
“Bill Brown is the editor,” I said.
“Not if you want the job,” Henderson said.
With my job in classification ending, becoming editor of The Angolite was the best move I could make. But replacing Brown, the prison’s most visible white inmate, with one of its most visible blacks, troubled me. For the past few years, blacks had been gradually taking over jobs, self-help organizations, rackets, and power previously held by whites. Black inmates outnumbered whites, but there was more unity among whites—and they were better armed, believed even to have guns. Most black leaders did not want a race war, especially when the security force was still almost all white and mostly racist, despite the hiring of seventy-five black guards during the past two years, many of whom had already quit. The total number of guards was only four hundred, divided into three shifts, to oversee two thousand inmates in the Main Prison and another two thousand spread among camps A, H, I, F, RC, death row, and the hospital.
Brown had support among white prisoners and employees. An abrupt changeover carried the potential to precipitate a larger racial conflict.
“I’ll take the job, but I don’t want you to move Bill Brown.”
“Well, it’d be best for you,” Beaubouef said. “You’d be able to pick your own staff and have a free hand to do what you want to do as editor.”
“The problem with that is, while I can write, I don’t know the mechanics involved in producing The Angolite,” I said, not revealing my real concerns. “Brown will have to show me. But I don’t expect him to be very cooperative once you’ve fired him.”
“That’s true,” said Henderson.
“I’d prefer that you simply assign me to The Angolite and leave him in his present position. That’ll allow me to learn the operation through working with him.”
“Mike, you see to it that he’s assigned,” Henderson said, turning to Beaubouef. “And, Rideau, when you’ve learned the operation, let Mr. Beaubouef know and he’ll move Brown out.” He looked at us, adding, “I don’t see any need for us to discuss any of this with anybody else.”
I returned to the classification department, where I told Ward about my going to The Angolite. He was pleased.
After work, I joined several friends for the walk to our dorm, listening as they related the news of the day. There had been a bloody fight with machetes in the field that morning. In a second-story toilet in the education department—where only about a hundred students attended basic academic classes in pursuit of a GED or the one college-level course, in drafting, offered there by Louisiana State University—a new inmate had been turned out and marked as a galboy. And at the industrial compound, where inmates fabricated mattresses, license plates, traffic signs, and dentures, a cache of weapons had been discovered by guards, fueling speculation that an armed confrontation was brewing.
I now lived with sixty other men in Cypress 3 dormitory on the Trusty Yard, which encompassed a recreation yard and half of the Main Prison’s thirty-two dormitories; the other half belonged to the Big Yard, where prisoners who had not attained the status of trusty lived and exercised. Each yard was a grassy rectangle that accommodated several baseball diamonds, football fields, basketball courts, volleyball courts, weight piles, and jogging areas. The Big Yard was defined by a barbed wire-topped cyclone fence; there was no fence around the Trusty Yard. The yards were the after-hours complement to full workdays in Angola’s effort to reduce violence by keeping inmates busy and physically spent.
One guard stationed outside in a booth supervised our dorm and three others—a total of 240 men. Under such circumstances, control and order in a dorm rested with the largest or dominant “family” living in it. The tone and quality of life in Cypress 3 was shaped by a coalition of settled lifers and the family of black clerks, artists, and prison politicians to which I belonged. Stealing, raping, fighting, and other forms of disruptive behavior were not tolerated. It was a rule our family had reinforced just the week before by throwing out a black thief who had burglarized a white inmate’s locker. Ours was the most peaceful dorm in the prison, which made it a preferred choice when security needed a safe spot to house an inmate. On occasion this forced us to exert our influence with administrators to avoid having undesirables placed among us. If all else failed, an unwanted inmate was met at the door and advised bluntly that entering Cypress 3 would prove hazardous to his health. He would relate that to security, who would find somewhere else to place him. No one ignored the warning.
Like inmates all over the prison, we were sitting at the end of our bunks waiting for security to conduct the four o’clock count so we could go to the dining hall. I told three of my closest friends about my meeting with the warden. Robert Jackson, like Daryl Evans, had been on death row with me. He’d raped a Baton Rouge college student he imagined liked him, to the point of telling her his name and how to contact him. The police did. Now serving a life sentence, he was leader of Vets Incarcerated, a self-help organization for the prison’s military veterans. Robert relished politics and was delighted at the prospect of acquiring more influence and power for our “family.” Daryl liked it, too, but immediately recognized, “Just ’cuz the warden says that’s the way it’s supposed to be, don’t mean it’s gonna go like that. Brown might not go for it and might do some instigating with the white boys or security. On the other hand, he don’t even have to say nothing, ’cuz there’s other people who’re not gonna like it. And the solution is real simple: If you suddenly get locked up or knocked off, the paper stays with Brown.”
“Security didn’t go for us putting out The Lifer,” said Tommy Mason, the youngest member of the family. “I can’t see where they’re going to be any happier about a nigger taking over The Angolite, the prison’s official paper.” After unintentionally killing a woman who refused to pay him for mowing her lawn, Tommy voluntarily turned himself in to authorities. At fifteen, he was sentenced to a life term in Angola. He became the first prisoner in the cellblocks—where men lived in cells rather than dormitories—to earn a GED, and when he was released from the cellblock in 1973, I offered him the associate editor post on The Lifer. He was a drafting student at Angola and president of Community Action for Corrections, a statewide prison reform organization.
I had decided to talk privately with Brown after the evening meal, to try to reach an understanding with him. If nothing else, I told my friends, I might get some insight into his thinking.
Supper was awful—unseasoned boiled spinach, tasteless boiled potatoes, and boiled wieners—so I freelanced (not everyone could afford to). Daryl and Tommy sold blood to the prison plasma company, so they could also make use of the ever-present black market. The most actively traded commodity in the thriving underground prison economy was contraband food, followed by sex, narcotics, pornography, lingerie, and weapons. While eggs, bacon, and pastries were usually available, fried chicken was the special that day.
Tommy, Robert, and I left Daryl to find a food connection for us, while we headed for the education building, walking behind a squadron of Black Muslims marching in military formation to the chant of their leader, Russell X. Wyman. They marched in pairs, in lockstep, behind the flag bearer, their backs straight and eyes fixed directly ahead of them, the Islamic flag snapping in the breeze. Even in the prison’s blue denim uniforms, they were a distinctive lot—neat, clean-shaven, with black fezzes, armbands, black bow ties, and spit-shined shoes. Both whites and blacks feared the Muslims and found Islam’s popularity among black convicts alarming. As their public image had been shaped by the fiery Malcolm X and much-publicized street clashes with police, many regarded all Muslims as racist, militant, and violent. I found them to be a generally reserved and peaceful group, functioning as a unit and adhering to an all-for-one principle. Some youths targeted for enslavement found instant sanctuary in joining the Muslims. Penal authorities, left to their own devices, would have crushed them. But the federal courts had recognized Islam as a religion protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Penal officials, at varying levels, maintained relations with virtually every inmate group, even criminal ones, except the Muslims. Russell wanted to change this, to improve their image. I tried explaining the Muslims in one of my early “Jungle” columns, but it had little discernible effect other than winning me their support. An opportunity had arisen the previous year while several of us were trying to broker a peace between two feuding black families, neither of whom trusted the other. I suggested to Russell that he use his group to guarantee a peace between them.
“And how are we supposed to do that?” he asked.
“Simple,” I said. “Each side will understand that whoever breaks the peace will have to fight not only the other family but the Muslims as well. Not only would they be outnumbered, but who wants to fuck with you guys?” I knew word would get to the authorities that the Muslims prevented a conflict by guaranteeing a peace between the hostile sides; I figured that might cause authorities to reexamine their perception of the Muslims.
Russell liked my idea. Representatives of the combatants agreed to come to my office. Once Russell’s role was explained, both leaders readily agreed to a truce. Russell immediately grasped the potential of his group to prevent bloodshed and joined us on several other similar occasions. The Muslims’ image gradually improved as white administrators came to see them in a more positive light.
The education building was a two-story rectangle that housed the education department on the top floor and, on the bottom, numerous offices for security, classification, legal aid, the library, the chaplain, and a variety of inmate organizations. There were more than two dozen inmate clubs and religious organizations, and, on an alternating basis, they kept the classrooms occupied with meetings every night. Meetings attended by outside guests were held in the visiting room after hours. Inmate organizations had flourished under Henderson, who encouraged the formation and operation of self-help programs, permitting inmates to run food and photo concessions in the visiting room to fund their programs and allowing them to buy and keep property related to their organizations, such as food and food-preparation equipment, cameras, and office equipment, including typewriters. Every club had an office, vacated by prison employees when their workday was done, and its officers were permitted to work in them when not on their assigned prison jobs.
The building teemed with activity, not all of it business. The education building (like the visiting room) served as the watering hole for prisoner-politicians, their friends, inmates with offices who wanted privacy, and guys out with their “old ladies” for the night. Since only one, sometimes two guards were on hand to count and supervise the hundreds of inmates involved in an evening’s activities, there was ample opportunity for prettied-up gays and galboys to meet dates and for prostitutes to turn tricks wherever opportunity presented itself—in empty rooms, restrooms, mop closets, staircases, behind counters, desks, and any other nook available. Some inmates rented or loaned their offices to facilitate brief trysts between lovers who needed to keep their affairs secret. (Owners usually had sex with their slaves in more convenient locations, like their beds in the darkened dormitory or on their respective jobs.) Control and supervision of what went on in a specific location rested with the organization hosting the activity there.
We made our way through the crowded lobby to the security window to sign in for the night, then went about our business. I headed down the hall toward the Angolite office, which faced a restroom and the office for the Narcotics Anonymous Club. A classification office adjoined it on one side, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ office was on the other. The Angolite office was also used as an office for the United States Junior Chamber—or, as it is familiarly called, the Jaycees, a nationwide group that cultivates leadership among those younger than forty—since the paper’s staff controlled the Angola chapter of that organization.
The office was locked. I called to Tommy, who was walking out of the nearby classification office, to tell Kenneth Plaisance, another inmate, that I wanted to see him. I went into the blue-and-red-checkered room in the classification department that I was allowed to use as an after-hours office. It was my refuge from the jungle. A place in prison where you could be alone was priceless. I had just crossed my feet on my desk, lit a cigarette, and gotten comfortable when the door opened.
“Tommy said you needed to see me,” Plaisance said. He was a white, balding, and bespectacled typing instructor who was allowed to leave the prison as a Jaycee speaker. “I need to see you, too.” He perched on the edge of my desk and spoke with a kind of hurried breathlessness. “You’re jammed with some of the guys in Spruce?” Spruce was one of the tree-named dormitories at the Main Prison, along with Cypress, Ash, and Magnolia on the Trusty Yard, and Walnut, Hickory, Oak, and Pine on the Big Yard.
I nodded.
“Good,” he said, leaning forward, eager. “There’s this black kid. He’s not a whore or anything like that. He comes from a good family, and this is his first time in prison. One of the officers of the local Jaycees asked me to see what I could do to make sure that nobody turns the guy out or messes over him when he gets here. If you could talk to some of your friends in Spruce to kind of look out for him, it would make this guy owe me a favor, and that would help me in drawing their chapter into a project I’m working on.” He handed me a piece of paper with the inmate’s name and number scribbled on it.
Plaisance shunned prohibited behavior and worked hard at reinforcing his image as a model prisoner. A lifer, he was dedicated to regaining his freedom and joining the woman he loved. He had no real friends in prison, but he liked me. It was a fondness that began when I unsuccessfully pushed to get him on the staff of The Lifer. Plaisance was an asset, an ambitious, shrewd individual with immense knowledge of the prison and the politics governing it. He cultivated officials, community leaders, security personnel, assistants, secretaries, wives, sons, and daughters, knowing that the key to success for a prisoner—whether in job assignment, housing, earning privileges, or finding help in winning release—rested upon both knowledge and the ability to influence those who exercised power, or their intimates. My prison family had a wide network of friends and allies among both inmates and personnel, but we had not penetrated the inner sanctum of power— the administration. Plaisance knew that the inmate power structure was shifting racially as more blacks moved into jobs and organizations with clout, and he had decided to cast his lot with us. He gradually educated me about administrative personalities and factions, the strengths and weaknesses of management, and the art of maneuvering a minefield of egos and prejudices to get things done.
“No problem,” I told Plaisance, “unless he’s got an enemy in his past.” I paused. Now was the moment to mention what was on my mind. “Kenny—is Bill Brown in any kind of trouble with the administration?”
Plaisance became alert. He hated Brown. “What do you mean—in trouble?”
“Would the administration have any reason for wanting to move on him?”
Plaisance thought for a moment. “He’s in trouble with the parole board. I heard that the chairman and one of the board members were in Henderson’s office not too long ago, demanding he fire Bill. Henderson, according to my source, refused.”
That explained Beaubouef’s behavior in the warden’s office. He worked with the parole board and was apparently playing hatchet man for them, knowing that placing me as editor of The Angolite would push Brown out.
Plaisance left and I went to the Angolite office, which was now open. The neat room was outfitted with black-and-white décor. Brown sat behind one desk, and Joe Archer, a friend of his, sat at a facing desk. They both looked up at me, halting their conversation. Brown was a trim, well-built blondish man in his late thirties, though his Ivy League good looks made him appear much younger. Like Plaisance, he was allowed to travel outside the prison to give speeches for the Jaycees. He was rumored to be carrying on an affair with an attractive state official. My relationship with Brown was cordial but artificial, tainted by our past as competing editors, he of The Angolite, me of The Lifer.
“What can I do for you, my man?” he asked.
“I’d like to talk. Privately,” I said. “It’s important, and in your best interest to hear what I’ve got to say.” Brown asked Archer to leave, and I took his seat. I told Brown about my meeting with Henderson: “Apparently, the warden wants you out, but I don’t particularly like being used as the hatchet. And, if you’re suddenly ousted, people will assume you’ve done something wrong to warrant being fired. That’ll hurt your efforts to get out of here.”
Brown looked crestfallen. “It’s hard to believe Henderson would do that to me,” he said in a voice marked with disbelief. “It’s catching me at a helluva time. If everything goes right for me, man, I could be out of here in a matter of months.” He shook his head. “This will hurt. How do I explain it to people?”
“You don’t have to, Bill. If we cooperate and handle this thing right, the transition can be made to look natural. I’ll get assigned in here as associate editor, and we’ll simply pass it off as the prison complying with the federal court orders to integrate.”
“I don’t have much choice, do I?” He forced a slight but false laugh.
“You can fight it—but, if you ask me, that would be stupid since it’s inevitable. All our cooperating does is make sure that neither one of us gets fucked. You help ease my coming in, and I help ease your going out. You’ve got to trust me, much like I’ve trusted you in telling you this.”
Brown shook his head emphatically. “I wouldn’t jerk you around, not when you’ve laid your cards on the table. Believe me, I appreciate this, and your willingness to help with it. You can count on me—there won’t be any problems.”
I stepped across the hall to the office of Narcotics Anonymous. I knew that’s where I’d find Silky, whose family controlled all four Spruce dormitories. He was a suave young black who rarely got excited about anything and who silently conveyed strength. We were good friends. He was dictating a letter to Shaky, his favorite slave, who doubled as his personal secretary. They greeted me warmly. Rhythm and blues from a tape player filled the room.
“Get up, baby,” Silky instructed. “Let him have a seat.”
Shaky rose, smiling. He wore tight, light brown shorts that barely covered the cheeks of his ass, with panty hose underneath to accentuate his shaven café-au-lait legs. A scarf was wrapped around his head, hiding his hair, and he wore lipstick. He stepped slowly in high-heeled slip-ons, his ass rolling deliberately and provocatively. He had fully embraced his prison-imposed female role. Shaky moved around to stand behind his owner, his hand on Silky’s shoulder, throwing a teasing smile at me.
Silky laughed. He enjoyed Shaky’s taunting games with me. “Man, when you gonna come down from wherever you living at and join the real world?” He smiled. “You ought to try it—you might like it. They got whores in here that’ll make you forget women. And Shaky is the best—ain’t you, baby?” He pulled Shaky around, embracing him and kissing him behind his neck.
Shaky slid out of Silky’s arms, moved to me, and slipped his arm around my neck. “I can show you a lot better than him telling you,” he said in a soft voice, as I closed my hand around his arm and gently pushed the effeminate boy back to Silky.
“I’m sure you could, but it’s not my piece of cake. Look, I need you to take care of something for me—look out for a fish coming in.” I gave him the slip of paper with the name and number on it.
Silky studied it. “A friend of yours?”
“Don’t even know the dude. It’s business. An organization in the streets is interested in him and asked us to look out for him.”
Silky handed the note to Shaky, nodding okay to me.
I returned to my friends and told them I had talked with Brown, and that all appeared to be well. It wasn’t. The following night, a breathless Plaisance rushed into my office. “You didn’t tell me you’re taking over The Angolite from Bill Brown.” He relished the idea. “Bill was on the phone first thing this morning, calling people he’s tight with in the warden’s office, wanting to know if it’s true that he’s being moved out.” Plaisance had been listening in on an extension. “Damn, Wilbert, why didn’t you let me in on something this big?”
I told him everything, including my concerns. “You should never have tried to reason with him,” Plaisance said. “He’s a snake and he’ll lie in a minute.”
I cut the conversation short and headed for the Angolite office. I shoved the door open. Archer was typing at the far desk. Brown, seated at his own, looked up. “You lied to me, Bill Brown,” I said. “You’ve been discussing what I told you with every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the administration building.”
“You’re fucking right! You walk in here talking shit, and I’m just supposed to take your word—without checking? I’ve been around this place too long for that,” he said angrily, rising to his feet. “Everyone I talked to, including the warden’s office, says I’m not going anywhere. I don’t know what kind of play you’re trying to pull off, Rideau, but it’s not going to work.”
“I can’t account for what your people told you,” I said evenly, aware that I was unarmed, alone, and outnumbered. “Henderson made it clear to me that he wanted this done low-key. I asked you to keep quiet about it, but you apparently couldn’t.”
“You’re fucking right, buddy!” Brown repeated. “I’m not going to sit back and let you or no-fucking-body else try to fuck me around, not now, not—”
The exchange had gotten out of hand. “I’m not deaf,” I said, cutting him off. “Sorry to have bothered you. I won’t make that mistake again.” I walked out.
I was concerned. Henderson would not appreciate my not keeping the matter confidential, and Brown might instigate violence toward me.
The day I was to have been officially transferred to The Angolite arrived without my being reassigned. An employee forgetting to perform a direct order from the warden was inconceivable. Brown was sure to interpret it as proof that I had been intriguing against him. For the next few tense and watchful days, I did not stray from the ranks of friends. Then I received word that I had been assigned to The Angolite.
Again, I went to see Bill Brown—this time accompanied by several armed friends, who waited outside the door for sounds of trouble.
“Looks like you were right all along,” said Brown. Archer, at the other desk, eyed me with distrust.
“I assume this is my desk,” I said, pointing toward Archer.
“It’s yours, buddy,” Brown said.
Archer picked up a folder and walked out of the room. I sat in the warm chair, lit a cigarette, and looked long at Brown. “Things are changing, as you now know,” I said. “We can work together to make this easy for both of us, or we can make it difficult for each other. We’ve both got a lot to lose—you more than me because you’re hoping to make parole in a few months. The fact that I came to try to talk to you before tells you that I’m willing to cooperate. But that has to be a two-way street, or none at all.”
“There won’t be any problems.”
“Then you’re the editor,” I said. “I’m your associate, and that’s all anyone needs to know.”
Brown accommodated the transition. We developed a good rapport in the office, and he accompanied me to the dining hall, the yard, and various club meetings, introducing me to whites as his friend, allowing everyone to see the formerly competing editors working together. He taught me everything there was to know about The Angolite and gradually got rid of his staffers so I could pick my own. Then he lost all interest in the magazine, leaving the office pretty much to me while he attended cooking school in preparation for his parole or made Jaycee drug prevention speaking trips around the state.
In the past, The Angolite had been hastily thrown together and published whenever its staff got around to it, so I felt no pressure to produce a magazine as long as Brown was the editor. The Angolite was free to report on prison policies but not to be critical of them or to investigate the causes of violence or despair at Angola. I, on the other hand, was free from censorship, so I concentrated on proposing articles to national magazines.
Meanwhile, the violence at Angola continued to escalate. Stabbings rose from 52 in 1972 to 160 in 1974, killings from 8 to 17; 1975 was already the most violent year in modern history, and it wasn’t over yet. Blood stained the Walk virtually every day. Oddly, it wasn’t the violence itself that affected most prisoners, because with some exceptions—rape, extortion, strong-arming—it was targeted at a specific person for a specific reason. Most inmates did not engage in behavior that would put them at risk, so we did not feel personally threatened by it. What did affect us all, though, was the official response to violence: shakedowns, in which security searched an inmate’s body, housing, or work area for weapons or other contraband, or new policies that interfered with our mobility and daily life.
The rumor spread that Henderson would leave and federal penal experts would take over the prison as they had during the 1950s in response to the national scandal following the incident when thirty-one inmates slashed their Achilles tendons. Especially disturbing was the talk that a hard-nosed warden would be coming to wrest control of the prison from the inmates and give it back to the prison employees. The Louisiana legislature, which had consistently refused to appropriate a sufficient sum to operate the prison, had just authorized more than $22 million to hire additional staff and purchase equipment to bring Angola into compliance with a federal court order to curb the violence.
There was a growing consensus among the more responsible inmate leaders that if we hoped to maintain the gains we had won, we had to curb the bloodletting. Even our contact visiting program, which allowed us to visit at small tables in a large cafeteria, was at risk; some security officials wanted to make us visit through a screen or glass. With the cooperation of about thirty club leaders, we took the message to their membership meetings, telling them of the coming crackdown and educating them on what we stood to lose in terms of the quality of our lives. Those involved in activities that fomented violence were warned that unless they immediately became model prisoners, they could expect their enemies to snitch them out.
Not long after I’d settled into my new job, Warden Henderson came to the Main Prison and met with me in the parole board room. He told me he was indeed leaving for Tennessee. He inquired about my efforts to get out of prison. He told me that he had taken notice of my self-education and development as a writer and had read my published writings. “Apart from doing well for yourself, you’ve worked to help make this prison a better place for the inmate population,” he said.
“I’ve got a mission,” I said. “The biggest obstacle to meaningful reform is the popular misconceptions about criminals and society’s misguided efforts to cope with them. Since I’ve got to be here, I felt I could do a little good by clarifying a lot of that.”
“You’ve done that, but there comes a time when you need to be a little bit selfish and concentrate on getting out of this place,” he said. “You don’t belong here.”
Louisiana had ratified a new constitution in 1974, and with it came a new system of pardons that eliminated the review by the attorney general, lieutenant governor, and the inmate’s sentencing judge. The 10–6 release mechanism had been suspended pending the creation of a new five-member pardon board of “professionals,” all appointed by the governor, to review applications and recommend action. The ultimate power to grant or reject commutations of sentences lay solely with the governor, who, like the board, was bound by no criteria and rules. Henderson advised me to seek the services of Camille Gravel, executive counsel to the governor and one of the state’s most influential lawyers. He also informed me that he intended to recommend my release to the pardon board and guarantee me employment and housing in Tennessee, where he was going to head that state’s corrections system.
I filed an application to the board for a commutation of my sentence. In preparation for the hearing, Classification Officer Mike Schilling created an official profile of me, and my former supervisor, Kelly Ward, mailed copies of my published works to several journalism schools around the nation, requesting a professional evaluation of my writing ability. Professor William E. Porter of the University of Michigan’s Department of Journalism said, “I’ve seen a certain amount of writing from prisons and I suspect he’s the best I’ve ever seen.” Acting dean David Littlejohn at the University of California, Berkeley, said, “Though he is evidently a man of strong convictions, he is no mere propagandist. He seems imbued by an obligation to be true to the facts—the realities—of whatever he writes about. This is a prime attribute of a real journalist.” All the responses were similarly positive. I was both gratified and humbled by them, and I hoped they would show the pardon board that I had spent my years in prison wisely preparing for a successful return to society.
As we approached year’s end, The Angolite, for all practical purposes, had been shelved. Brown was preparing for his upcoming parole hearing, and I for my pardon board hearing. The head of the NAACP in Lake Charles, Florce Floyd, had checked with Frank Salter, who assured him, as he had Freeman Lavergne before, that he would not oppose my release through executive clemency. Since I was a model prisoner, had been confined almost fifteen years—far longer than the 10-6 life sentence—and had Henderson’s personal recommendation and guarantee of housing and employment in Tennessee, my application to the new pardon board was impressive. Not only did I have every reason to expect to get out, but I realized that I needed to get out. When the governor announced that Henderson was leaving and would be replaced by a penologist on loan from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, some guards began gloating. Life was going to be much more difficult at Angola. And who knew what the new warden would think of me?