Speaker 1: H a wall, street line, shackle change, Oh someome gird,
it's calling my name.
Speaker 2: There is no mercy and it's been a tentery juice
as the hill Stream game Rango the three.
Speaker 1: I'm here be.
Speaker 2: By me to die inside these walls, inside the wild,
hadn't went the girl as I.
Speaker 3: Hey everyone, and welcome back to Bloody Angola, a podcast
one and forty two years in the making, the complete
story of America's bloodiest prison. I'm your host, Jim Chapman.
And with the recent changes that have taken place, I'm
gonna go ahead and kick off a new season. And
this is season seven, episode one, and I'm gonna call
this first episode fucking up to the Master. When I'm done,
you're gonna know why. And I'm gonna jump right into
it today and just stay tuned for some announcements after
the story. Now, way back in episode one of season one,
whatdy and I told you about the Walls, and we
touched on how Louisiana State Penitentiary became Louisiana State Penitentiary
way back then, and we told you about it starting
off as a plantation. But we didn't go all the
way back in history even one hundred years before it
was Bloody Angola. So today I'm gonna give you the
full story of Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. So if
you're new to the podcast, I'm blessed and happy to
have you, and you picked the perfect time to listen,
because we're going to take it back and just quickly.
If you've been a listener for a while, you know
that Louisiana State penitenti lies in a big bend in
the Mississippi River and it's about thirty miles up the
river from Saint Francisville, Louisiana. Now, it originated from several
Spanish land grants, and y'all these land grants were made
in the last decade of the eighteenth century and into
the first decade of the nineteenth century. Most of the
property had been acquired by a guy by the name
of Francis Ruth for the production of cotton, which was
a big business back then, especially in Louisiana. Now, in
the late eighteen thirties, the property passed on to Isaac Franklin,
and he was a wealthy planner and he was a
slave trader from Tennessee, and adjacent lands were added to
those holdings, and the property was managed as seven plantations total.
They were called Angola, Bellevue, Lake Killer, me Losha, manned Longo, Panola,
and Mamro Villa. I know, strange names. The owners lived
primarily on the Angola plantation, and by the twentieth century
the entire property was referred to by that single name. Now,
Isaac Franklin had a wife. Her name was Adalca Hayes,
and she retained the property until eighteen eighty and she
sold it to Samuel James and he held onto that
lease to manage the prison system in Louisiana. And James
worked the property with that convict labor until nineteen oh one,
and then it was purchased by the State of Louisiana.
Now this was an eighteen thousand acre Antebellum plantation property,
right all right, So let's get into France. Ruth and
Francis Ruth was of West Feliciana Parish and Francis Ruth
began acquiring the land that currently makes up Louisiana State
Penitentiary to Angola in eighteen twenty seven, just buying up land.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: By eighteen thirty four, Francis had owned some seventy five
percent of the property, and he divided his holdings into
three adjacent cotton plantations known as Bellevue, killing Ernee, and
these names, y'all, losh LeMond is what I'm going with.
In eighteen thirty five, Francis Ruth formed a partnership with
a guy by the name of Isaac Franklin, who was
a wealthy Tennessee planner, and he had made an enormous
fortune in what was known as the interstate slave trade. Now,
unlike the middle eighteen thirties, Franklin and his slaver associate
It's were considered the leading long distance slave traffickers in
the country and credited with supplying two thirds of all
slaves transported to the Deep South. When Ruth's finances collapsed
in eighteen thirty seven, all of his property was passed
on to Franklin. So Franklin he marries a woman by
the name of Aladisia Hayes, who was a socially prominent
debutante as they were referred to back then from Nashville, Tennessee,
and on July first of eighteen thirty nine, Franklin. At
this time he was fifty years old and Alisea was
twenty two, so she may have been one of those
that married for the money. Right, the couple lived part
of the year in Tennessee and part of the year
in Louisiana. Now, by the early eighteen forties, Franklin added
a fourth plantation into his property, and that was known
as Woodyard. There he constructed a steam powered sawmill and
a gristmill, a barn. He had fourteen slave cabins, a hospital,
a cook house, an office, a storehouse, two sheds in
a two story residence and adding all this stuff actually
increased his land value by twenty thousand dollars, which was
a lot of money back then. The Angola's big house
would serve as the family's main Louisiana residence, and Longo
Plantation was created from the southernmost part of the Angola tract,
so the Franklins there in love right. They have four
children over the next five years, Victoria Oda Sea, Julius Caesar,
yes his name was Julius Caesar, and sadly, Julius Caesar
Franklin died just fourteen hours after his birth. Isaac Franklin
himself dies at Angola on the property on April twenty
seventh of eighteen forty six, and his over eight thousand
acres in West Falliciana at that time, at that time
were valued at five hundred thousand dollars. Now, to give
you an idea of calculating inflation into that, I actually
looked it up, and five hundred thousand dollars in eighteen
forty three is worth twenty one million, three hundred and
four thousand dollars today. So Isaac Franklin dies and his
body was preserved in two barrels of whiskey, and it
was transported in a sheet lead coffin the esteem boat
to Nashville. So that was early embalming for you. While
in Tennessee for the funeral, the Franklin's second child, Adalcilla,
died on June eighth of eighteen forty six of bronchitis.
How about that tells you how far medicine has come.
Bronchitis will kill you in eighteen forty six. Now everybody
gets that at least once a year. It seems like
their oldest daughter, Victoria, also died of croup just three
days later. So all that left was his wife, right,
and she inherited a lot of money and al Decilla
Hayes Franklin, upon her inheritance, was considered the wealthiest woman
in late Antebellum America. They had some wealthy ones back then.
On May eighth of eighteen forty nine, she married Joseph
Alexander Acklin, who was a prominent at Huntsville, Alabama lawyer.
Before the marriage, Ackland signed a prenup agreement relinquishing all
interest in her businesses, property and assets. How about that.
And look, this was a beautiful woman, even for that time.
There's a picture of her that I'm going to put
up on the Blooding Anga Patreon, So check that out
if you're not already a member. But I'm going to
put a picture of her up, and I mean, just
a beautiful woman here in this picture. So aclan, he agrees,
he signs that prenup. And nevertheless he was a superb
businessman in his own right, and he became a plantation
manager and he actually tripled her net worth by the
year eighteen sixty. Now, there was a magazine back then
called The Southern Cultivator and in eighteen fifty two described
Acklin as a man of fine personal appearance, very bold,
frank and decided in everything he does, with great energy
in industry. The writer also added that Acklin was one
of the largest planners on the Mississippi, with the finest
and best managed estate in the South, worked by seven
hundred slaves, who were very much attached him, for he
is the best master I have ever known, some of
them said, And the article continued on and said Colonel
Acklan had thirty mechanics, a large steam sawmill, from which
he is furnished with the best building materials. He employs
six overseers, a general agent and a bookkeeper, two physicians,
a head carpenter, a tenor, a ditcher, and a preacher
from the Negroes. And that's that's written. The houses on
each plantation are neat frame houses on brick piers, and
are furnished with good betting, mosquito bars, and all that
is essential in health and comfort. The Negroes are well fed,
in clothed, and seem to be the happiest population I
have ever seen. Everything moves systematically and with the discipline
of a regular trained army. Each plantation has a hospital
for the sick, well furnished, a nurse house, and a
general cookouse. Colonel Acklan takes great interest in planning as
a fine library, and regardless of expense, keeps up with
all the modern improvements in farming. He is now introducing
grapes on his place and cultivating oranges for hedges. And
it shod a picture of him, and he's a handsome guy.
And I'll post that on the Patreon as well. Now,
soon after their marriage, the Aklans began building what's known
as Belmont Mansion in Nashville, and that was their quote
unquote summer house. It was worth five hundred thousand dollars
back then, which means it was a twenty one million
dollar house today, and it was finished in eighteen fifty two. Now,
by eighteen fifty nine, the Aklans had six children. Joseph
Hayes who was born in eighteen fifty They had twin girls,
Lauren and Corene, who were born in eighteen fifty two,
William Hayes who was born in eighteen fifty five, Claude
who was born in eighteen fifty seven, and Pauline, who
was born in eighteen fifty nine. The twins both died
at just two years of age. They both contracted scarlet
fever at Angola only months after William's birth in eighteen
fifty five, out to see his daughter. Emma. Franklin, then eleven,
died of diphtheria while at the Belmont Summerhouse. So the
Aclans they spent the winters at in Gola Plantation and
the remainder of the year in Nashville at the quote
unquote Summerhouse, you know, the twenty one million dollar mansion.
They traveled in between these points on river steamers. This
schedule that allowed the family to be in Louisiana for
cottingenning season and all the pre lentth celebrations in New Orleans.
A very Catholic population here in Louisiana now and even then,
of course, the majority of Louisianians being French descent, Acklin
himself needed to be an Angola six to eight months
per year. So Joseph Acklin he purchases several additional Louisiana
properties between eighteen fifty two and eighteen fifty seven, and
he wanted to kind of compliment his wife's plantations, if
you will, So he buys a six hundred and forty
acre tract that becomes will was known as Monrovia plantation,
and by eighteen sixty, Ackland claimed to possess two million
dollars in real estate and one million dollars in personal estate.
And that was in those times money, so you're talking
sixty eighty million dollars worth of property. The previous year,
the Ackland's Louisiana plantations had produced three thousand, one hundred
and forty nine bales of cotton, making them the third
largest cotton producer in the state. Some six hundred and
fifty nine slaves worked four thousand acres of improved land.
Some one hundred and twenty eight of these slaves lined
in forty four cabins on Angola Plantation. This plantation had
two quarters areas, one near the Big House and the
other on the river about three miles south of the
Big House. So what about during the Civil War? Well,
during the Civil War Joseph Acklin he signs an oath
of allegiance to the Confederacy. No surprise, the guy had
a boatload of slaves, which obviously horrible, awful shit that
should have never occurred, and he was getting rich off
these slaves. But it explains why he would sign an
oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. Now he donated some
thirty thousand dollars to the Confederate war effort as well.
I'm going to imagine he did. He stood to lose everything, right.
Acklin even tried to enlist in the Confederacy at one point,
but he was crippled with authorritis. He just had really
bad authortis problems and they would not allow him to
join the military. So their living life. It's during the
Civil War, and when the Union Army advanced into middle
Tennessee in eighteen sixty two, his wife encourages her husband, Hey,
we need to get the hell out of here, and
we need to go live in Angola because they're about
to take over everything in Tennessee. So in Louisiana, Acklan
was in kind of a difficult position. The Federals out
of occupied New Orleans and Baton Ridge. They were threatening
him from the river and the Confederates were threatening him
from the land. His property. It provided like a main
river crossing for Confederate provisions, mail, and even troops. They
would use the river to get him back and forth. Right,
So in April of eighteen sixty two, the US Navy
steam slope Brooklyn Docks at Angola, they wanted some fresh
meat and vegetables, and Ackland tells a lieutenant by the
name of RB. Lawry that the Confederacy told him he
had to burn his cotton and if he didn't do it,
they would hang him. And the reason they were wanting
him to burn on is cotton, y'all, was the Union Army.
They were worried that they were going to get their
hands on that cotton, be able to sell it, and
it would continue to be able to fund the Union Army.
So he tells that lieutenant that, and the lieutenant basically
tells him, look, you come on our side, we'll protect you.
But he says, hell no, I ain't doing that because
if I do that, I'm going to get killed by
the Confederate Army. They're going to know a turncoat, right.
So he eventually sells them some poultry and vegetables, and
he kind of develops a friendship with the Union Navy
as they're traveling back and forth. They left him alone.
They didn't burn his plantation, so he was kind of
friendly with him, and he would occasionally pass information to them.
He would even let them use his carpentry shops. He
allowed them to bury their dead on his property, and
in his last known letter, Acklin wrote for Angola, this
was on August twentieth of eighteen sixty three, that all
was in ruins in the fields were just wasting, everything
was dying, and the Confederates had taken all his mules
and horses, and that he had been subjected to all
kinds of lies and slander that malice could invent.
Speaker 1: He wrote.
Speaker 3: In September of eighteen sixty three, Aklan was thrown from
a wagon into a ditch on his Louisiana plantation. He
caught pneumonia subsequently, and he died now the very month
of Joseph's death. Out to Sea, she submits a claim
to the Confederate Army for the thirty one thousand, three
hundred and forty dollars worth of cotton, horses and mules
appropriated from the Acklan's Louisiana plantations. She was kind of
a fire plug, so eventually the war ends, and three
weeks after the Confederate surrender in eighteen sixty five, to
Sea and her four surviving children, Joseph, William, Claude, and Pauline,
they leave for Europe to retrieve money made from wartime
cotton sales, and in January of eighteen sixty seven, the
Aclans make their first trip to the Louisiana plantations since
the war, and Inngla William Acklin he writes in his
journal that my mother was welcomed as if she had
been a queen setting foot on her own domain. She
shook hands with the overseer, and then in turn with
the oldest settlers, as they called themselves. They followed her
to the house and onto the rear porch of the house,
and those who did not meet her at the landing
came to pay their respects. And while these presentations are
taking place, the elderly women of the household knelt down
in a group about her chair, forming sort of a bodyguard.
So she was obviously a very well respected woman. Now,
on June twenty six of eighteen sixty seven, the beautiful
old seas she marries doctor William Archer Cheatham. He was
a noted Nashville physician and a cousin of Confederate General
Benjamin chiafam At the time of their marriage, Outaicea was
fifty years old and doctor Cheatham was forty seven, so
she was a little bit of a cookar. Upon his marriage,
Doctor Cheatham also signed a prenuptial agreement disavowing all claims
to her properties. Boy she she didn't play when it
came to her money right. However, Chiefam made several trips
to West Feliciana, sometimes accompanied by Joseph Junior, to oversee
the Louisiana properties on his wife's behalf. The Aclan Cheatham
holdings do not appear at all in the schedule for
West Feliciana Parish in eighteen seventy, which suggested that the
family's fortunes had begun to reverse at this time. So Aldosia,
she travels to Angola in early eighteen seventy two, and
she had the intention of taking over the plantations management.
She's saying, we're losing some money here, and the fireplug
that she is, she thinks she can solve that problem.
So the crop that year was very small and the
taxes were very burtisome. In addition, a disease of mules
in eighteen seventy four and several crop failures had forced
the estate into rapid decline. So on December twenty third
of eighteen eighty, Aldaseea and William they sell their West
Feliciana properties to a partnership to guys, a guy by
the name of Lewis Traeger and another guy by the
name of Samuel James, and the property totaled ten thousand,
fifteen acres and it was sold to Trigger and James
for one hundred thousand dollars in eighteen eighty five. Out
to Sea, she leaves Belmont, that Nashville mansion, and she
separates from Doctor Chiefam, which is surprising. People didn't separate
back in them days, especially when they had been married
eighteen years, as Doctor Chiefam and ou to Sea were
at that time. So she William Claude and Pauline. They
moved to Washington, d c. Where Aldacilla becomes very ill
and dies from pneumonia on May fourth of eighteen eighty seven.
She was seventy years old. So who was Samuel James. Well,
he was a civil engineer who in eighteen sixty nine
he forms a firm called James Buckner and Company Levy Contractors,
and that's a big business at this time in history.
And he receives a five year lease from the State
of Louisiana to manage the prison system. This lease gave
the company authority to manage the main prison in Baton Rouge,
which at that time was none as the Walls. So
if you haven't listened to that, go listen to it
episode number one of season one. What the State of
Louisiana would do was they would lease out convicts to
Samuel James. Now these convicts, they will work on private
plantations and they would also do public works projects like
the Levy system. In eighteen seventy, that lease was extended
from five to twenty one years, during which time James
reportedly maintained the most cynical, profit oriented and brutal prison
regimen in State of Louisiana's history. Approximately three thousand prisoners
died under the James leasing system between eighteen seventy and
nineteen oh one, when the State of Louisiana took it
back over. Now in eighteen eighty two, he had a
business partnership Trager and James, and that was dissolved as
a result. James retained in Gola, Bellevue and Longo plantations,
and Trager he got to keep Panola, Momravilla, and Lake
killing Me plantations, as well as losh LeMond plantations. So on,
June fifteenth of eighteen eighty nine, Trager. He loses Lake
killing Me plantation to James as the result of a
lawsuit that James filed against him. On January sixth of
eighteen ninety three, William and Claude Acklin, they receive Panola,
losch LeMond and Monroe Villa plantations in a recession from
Lewis Tregger. Obviously, Lewis Tregger wouldn't paying his bills, so
when Samuel James acquired the West Felician implantations, which are
now referred to by the single name Angola, he simply
moved himself, his sharecroppers, and the inmates into existing buildings
on that property. Pre War slave quarters and later tenant
houses went to sharecroppers and to inmates. James reportedly housed
convicts in the Angola Sugar House, built by Isaac Franklin.
In James and his family they occupied what was known
as the Angola Big House, which was Aldosia's former home.
Now sl James Junior, known as law James. He managed
the Angola properties in the late eighteen eighties and assumed
complete control after his father's death. James Senior he died
from a heart aneurism on the porch of the Angola
Big House on July twenty six of eighteen ninety four,
and he left behind a fortune of over two million dollars.
Y'all that's close to one hundred million dollars in today's money.
In the property itself, it was heavily mortgage, even though
he had a lot of money. For whatever reason, he
just mortgaged his property even though he could pay it off.
Low James. He takes his family and they move into
the Angola Big House now. At the time, this house
contained nine bedrooms, halls upstairs and downstairs, a kitchen, dining
rooms in front, side and back galleries. The house stood
in the center of a very large yard and also
contained oak trees, two servant houses, a chicken house, and
a small stable. In the backyard there were a dozen
pecan trees, fig trees, two large stables, and a privy.
The Lner located about a block from the Big House.
They have wooden above ground cisterns which were cleaned yearly,
and y'all's cisterns are used to catch drinking water, and
they also had underground wells filled with water not fit
for drinking, but they would use those for laundry, for
watering animals, et cetera. And the milk was kept cool
by suspending bottles of cool water in the wells in
the yard, and it was almost like a Cajun refrigerator,
if you will.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: A convict camp for a few men and women was
also located near the big house the inmate's house. There
were mostly women who worked as field hands or servants
in the big house. And it's interesting that the nurse
for Law's daughter and his daughter's name was Dot. She
was a convicted murderess. Dot's older sister, Cecil, said that
Papa always chose the murderer in preference to the thieves
to act as servants. A thief is a sneak and
not to be trusted in one's house. Once a thief,
he's apt to steal again, whereas a murderer is hot headed,
commits a crime which is usually sorry for later and
probably will not do again. Of course, these people were
trustees and had to be handled with diplomacy. When a
servant was not competent, she was not scolded. Only another
was sent from camp to filler place. The next day.
The few convict men and women at Angola were worked
in gangs in the field with always a guard watching.
So several hundred Negro families worked on Angola as sharecroppers
and lived in the surviving quarters areas. These croppers paid
rent for their land and homes with a percentage of
the crop produced. Each one owned two mules, usually bought
on time from the James family, cow pigs, chickens, and
had vegetable patches. Some had their own wagon. They bought groceries, clothes,
and other supplies at two stores that were on the plantation,
usually on credit, and the debt was deducted from their crop.
Schools and churches both Baptists and Methodists were also established
for the croppers. So on March twenty seventh of nineteen
oh one, the board of the Central Louisiana State Penitentiary
purchased Angola, Longo, Bellevue and Killerny plantations, and that was
about eight thousand acres from the estate of Samuel James,
and they bought it for twenty five dollars per acre.
Law was asked to stay on the place as a manager,
but he refused. The sharecroppers were distrusted at the cell
of the plantation, and law James tried to relocate as
many of them as possible to other plantations. Now when
the Board took over in Goola in nineteen oh one,
forty five two room cabins were still standing, three three
room room cabins, twenty three four room cabins, in thirty
other buildings, including three residences. The house at Bellevue was
valued at eighteen thousand dollars and in Gola's Big House
was valued at thirty thousand dollars. Camps for prisoners were
established at the old quarters and industrial complexes still standing
across the property. Numerous new buildings were also constructed, including
a blacksmith shop built east of the Angola Big House
where the Antebellum slave quarters once stood. So the state
rotated its Angola cotton crop with corn and cowpees each year,
and stock on the plantation consisted of over three hundred
and fifteen head of cattle in seven hundred holls. A
sawmill was constructed to harvest the surviving timber on the property,
and by May of nineteen oh eight, the penitentiary housed
eighteen hundred and sixty inmates, of whom only two hundred
and sixty four could read and write in twenty eight
of the convict y'all were between the ages of twelve
and fifteen years old. Now, lumber and corn production at
Angola was very successful during this period, but high water
in low prices hurt the cotton crop. The bull weavil
destroyed about fifty percent of Angola's cotton in nineteen oh
eight and seventy five percent of it in nineteen oh nine. Now,
as a consequence, cotton cultivation was abandoned and sugar cane
became the principal crop. A modern sugar mill was constructed
in nineteen eleven. Then in nineteen twelve, the levees around
in Gola broke. The entire plantation was innedated and the
cotton mill was destroyed. Rebuilding the levees cost about twenty
thousand dollars in those days. In a total of four
hundred thousand dollars in those days, money was lost altogether. Then,
in nineteen thirty three, a second flood required crews to
work at night to maintain those levees, and the Ngola
Big House survived these floods, but the row of nearby
tenant houses did not, and they were all destroyed.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: By nineteen ten, doctor Emil Ellert, a resident prison physician,
and his family. They occupied the Ngola Big House. Convicts
continued to be employed at the house as servants. In
November of nineteen thirteen, an inmate by the name of
Harry Harriet He fatally shoots Miss Ellert and then shoots
himself in the Ngola Big House with a revolver belonging
to the warden at that time. In nineteen sixteen, Governor
Ruffin Pleasant, who was appointed by Henry Fuqua, Baton Riridge
as the general manager of the State Penitentiary. He abolishes
the Board of Control, and in an effort to centralize
prisoners and eliminate the huge expenditure of paying guards and
other personnel at construction sites, he comes up with the
idea of using what's none as convict labor to construct
a large penitentiary at Angola. This was in nineteen sixteen.
Almost all paid security officers that Angola were fired and
replaced by trustee guards. Much more emphasis was placed on
reform under Fuqua, who did away with the striping uniforms
to lessen the convict humiliation. Fuqua, however, was appointed to
his position primarily for his business abilities. W. P. Gibbons,
a success full sugar planner, was made form superintendent in
nineteen nineteen and his family occupied the Angola Big House.
Then in nineteen twenty two, they had severe flooding on
the Mississippi River and the Angola Sugar refinery and the
Big House got inundated. The prisoners flooded out of Angola
and were dispersed to all sorts of temporary housing. To
ensure that no such massive relocation off prison property would
be necessary again, Fuqua promoted the purchase of all the
property between Angola's levee and the Tunica Hills, and during
floods convicts could just move to higher ground on the
farm itself. So he contacts the Aklan brothers and they
actually end up selling Panola, mon Revia and Locomon Plantation
to the state in nineteen twenty two, and by nineteen
twenty four or the prison area had increased from eight
thousand acres to the eighteen thousand acres that you have today.
It made evacuation was not necessary. When they had another
flood in nineteen twenty seven thatdated the property, primarily because
of this reason, they just moved a higher ground by
the middle of the nineteen twenties, the prison was virtually
self supporting over three thousand heads of cattle. They had
three hundred and eighty seven mules, two hundred horses, and
twenty thousand foul were kept on that property. Of the
eighteen thousand acres under cultivation, six thousand were pastors and
eight thousand planted in sugar and believe it or not
nineteen twenty one, the sugar refinery at Angola at that
time was the fourth largest sugar refinery in the South.
It produced six million pounds of granulated sugar and one
million pounds of lump sugar. So in nineteen thirty five
the penitentiary it housed seven hundred and forty six white men,
fourteen white women, fourteen hundred and fifteen black men, and
sixty five black women. The eighty one employees on salary
included four preachers, five physicians, a druggist, forty three foreman
and two gate men, as well as two telephone operators,
eight clerical workers and a storekeeper, nine captains, one chief engineer,
a superintendent, an assistant superintendent, an expert sign and metal worker,
the warden, and a general manager. Some three hundred and
thirty eight inmates were employed at that time as convict guards.
A forty cell concrete structure known as the Red Hat
Cell Block was built after a riot in nineteen thirty
three when three men were killed. We tell you all
about that in the prior episode called the Red Hat
Cell Block. Now prior to the beginning of his term.
On April one of nineteen thirty six, Warden Lewis Jones
described the conditions adding gullie. He said, apparently there was
little system to the safety and protective measures, which were
slipshod in the extreme. Guards were carelessly selected and untrained.
They were armed with old, worn out, undependable shotguns of
which there was no inventory or accurate control. Ammunition was
scant and in poor condition. There were no rifles. Men
were taken to the fields before daylight and often brought
in after dark. There was no outer line of guard
towers on the levee around the farm. Supervision was poor
or nonexistent. When an escape occurred, there was a lack
of organization or cooperation in the pursuit and search attempts
were frequent. Due to the lack of discipline and low
morale of the inmates. There was much unfair treatment of
prisoners and a certain amount of actual brutality. Soft jobs
were given to some inmates who had not had a
period of work in the line, and probably to some
who had money. Contact with the Board of Pardons and
Parole was difficult for the inmate. Food was insufficient in
quantity and variety, poorly prepared, and lacking in meat and
other elements needed by the men doing hard labor. Camps,
kitchens and dining rooms were often dirty. At some camps
there were such crowdic conditions and poor ventilation that they
were actually disease breeders. Case after case of tuberculosis developed
at old Camps B and I. There were no recreational facilities.
School classes were inadequate and poorly run. There was no library.
What little reading the men had was often of a
degrading nature. For extra items such as cigarettes, candy, fruit, toothpaste, etc.
They were charged high prices at CA commissaries privately owned
by employees of the institution. All inmates were not required
to wear prison uniform. There were several trustees at most
units allowed to wear civilian clothing. Loose handling of the
mails and slack supervision of visitors made it easy to
smuggling contraband of various sorts, including marijuana and other dope.
So a blizzard in January of nineteen forty it damages
the prison crops and the federal crop restrictions had been
placed on sugar because the market had been poor the
last few years, and attempts to get help from the
Corps of Engineers to upgrade Angola's levees at this time
proved pretty much fruitless, so they were in bad shape.
So to kind of solve all this, they start making
Louisiana license plates at Angola, and this started in nineteen fifty.
They also had a dairy and a dehydration plant inmate guards.
They still continued to use them until the nineteen fifties,
and the old Angola Big House survived into the forties,
but by nineteen fifty the house had to be torn
down so to protests the harsh conditions. It was just
horrible back then, and to avoid working in the fields
thirty one inmates they slashed their Achilles tendons. In February
of nineteen fifty one. Got listen to season one of
Blooding and Gola. We talk all about that The next year,
Judge Robert Keenan of men In based his campaign for
governor on the need for prison reforms. The main prison
complex was subsequently built, Convict strikes were eliminated and various
camps renovated. Flogging was also discontinued. Now, in nineteen sixty one,
the prison's budget was drastically reduced and in Gola fell
into serious decline. It became known as the bloodiest prison
in the South during this time with the number of
inmate assaults. Women inmates were moved out of Angola in
nineteen sixty one and a federal court order demanded the
conditions at Angola be improved. The trustee guard system gets
eliminated and the number of guards employed nearly quadruples during
this time. The sugar meal was eventually sold in nineteen
seventy four and sugar was completely abandoned as a crop.
Now by this time, the convict camps were officially desegregated.
So there you have it. I wanted to give you
the complete history from the very beginning, and boy did
I go back to the very beginning. I hope you
got something out of that. Look horrible time in history.
In my opinion. Horrible time, but it is part of history.
And I wanted to give you that little bit of
information about the bloodiest prison in America, Louisiana State Penitent
Tree add Inkola, And I'm about to have some really
good stories that in your way, So stay tuned. It's
only getting better from here and until next time, I'm
Jim Chapman for Bloody and Gola, a podcast one hundred
and forty two years in the making. The complete story
of America's bloody is present.
Speaker 1: Peace a wall, street line, shackle, change, some gird.
Speaker 2: It's calling my name. There is no mercy and this
being a tentery juice the huge stream game Rango three,
I'm in fide. I'm me to die inside these walls,
inside the wild and when the wars, I know it's
overbody anger, ohbody angle, Yeah,