Organized Inside and Out: The Angola Special Civics Project and the Crisis of Mass Incarceration

Abstract

During the 1980s and 1990s the U.S. prison system expanded at an unprecedented rate, with the South emerging as the region with the highest incarceration rate in the nation. This article charts how prisoners at the nation's largest maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly referred to as Angola, leveraged this moment of crisis to collectively organize for freedom through the Angola Special Civics Project by using a combination of research, political education, electoral organizing, and coalition building. This article contends that their organizing should be conceptualized as a form of prison abolitionist reforms to be learned from today.

Keywords:

• Louisiana State Penitentiary–Angola
• mass incarceration
• prison abolition
• prison reform
• social movements

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Rachel Luft, Elizabeth Steeby, Renia Ehrenfeucht, Evan Casper-Futterman, and DrewChristopher Joy for their feedback and support at various stages of this article.

Notes

Mark T. Carleton, Politics and Punishment; the History of the Louisiana State Penal System (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), 92.

Jordan Flaherty, “Organizing for Freedom,” Counterpunch, June 10, 2008, http://www.counterpunch.org/flaherty06102008.html (accessed April 20, 2011).

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 54–56.

Angela Y. Davis, “From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prison: Frederick Douglass and the Convict Lease System,” in The Angela Davis Y. Reader, ed. Joy James (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1998), 74–95; Kim Gilmore, “Slavery and Prison—Understanding the Connections,” Social Justice 27, no. 3 (2000): 195–205; Jamie Peck, “Geography and Public Policy: Mapping the Penal State,” Progress in Human Geography 27, no. 2 (2003); Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007); Jenna M. Loyd, Matt Mitchelson, and Andrew Burridge, Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012); Christian Parenti, Lockdown America (London: Verso, 2008); and Dylan Rodriguez, Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

David M. Oshinsky, Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (New York: Free Press, 1996); Davis, “From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prison”; Gilmore, “Slavery and Prison.”

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “Pierce the Future of Hope: Mothers and Prisoners in the Post-Keynesian California Landscape,” in Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial Complex, by Julia Chinyere Oparah (New York: Routledge, 2005), 246. It is worth noting the insight developed by the antiprison activists of Mothers ROC that Gilmore documents. To explain the ongoing centrality of anti-Black racism in the prison industrial complex and the increasing incarceration of other communities of color, particularly Latin@s Mothers ROC activists developed the analysis that the U.S. criminal legal system has two laws: one for white people and one for Black people in which you “have to be White to be prosecuted under White law, but you do not have to be Black to be prosecuted under Black law.”

Rodriguez, Forced Passages; Liz Samuels, “Improvising on Reality: The Roots of Prison Abolition,” in The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism, ed. Dan Berger (Rutgers University Press, 2010); Dan Berger, “Social Movements and Mass Incarceration,” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 15, no. 1–2 (2013).

Peck, “Geography and Public Policy”; Gilmore, Golden Gulag; Parenti, Lockdown America.

Cassandra Shaylor and Cynthia Chandler, “Reform and Abolition: Points of Tension and Connection,” Political Resource Associates, Defending Justice: An Activist Resource Kit http://www.defendingjustice.org/organizing/shaylor_reform.html (accessed June 28, 2011).

Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 41.

Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, “Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine: The Structural Bias of Political Process Theory,” Sociological Forum 14, no. 1 (March 1999), 38.

Parenti, Lockdown America, 8–12.

Ron Wikberg, “The Long-Termers.” In Wilbert Rideau & Ron Wikberg Eds., Life Sentences: Rage and Survival Behind Bars (New York: Times Books, 1992), 233.

The Angolite, “Lifers,” November/December 1984, News Briefs.

James M. Jasper, “Social Movement Theory Today: Toward a Theory of Action?,” Sociology Compass 4, no. 11 (November 2010), 967.

Jamie Bissonette, When the Prisoners Ran Walpole: A True Story in the Movement for Prison Abolition (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2008), 41–50.

Burk Foster, “What is the Meaning of Life: The Evolution of Natural Life Sentences in Louisiana, 1973–1994” (lecture, Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Annual Meeting, Boston, May 9, 1995), www.burkfoster.com/MeaningofLife.htm (accessed March 10, 2011).

Wikberg, “The Long-Termers,” 225.

The Angolite, “A Rope without a Noose,” September/October 1982, Legal Spectrum sec.

The Angolite, “The Forgotten Men,” May/June 1980, Cover Story.

Johnston, Kenneth “Biggy” Interview by author. January 15, 2011.

The Angolite is filled with stories of men growing old in Angola who were sentenced to life by trial or as a plea bargain and were promised by their personal attorneys, judges, and even prosecuters that they would only have to do ten years and six months.

Rideau, In the Place of Justice, 75.

The Angolite. “On the 10-6 Front,” March/April 1983, Legal Spectrum sec. Indeed many prisoners took plea bargains on the guarantee they would be released after six years and ten months.

Henderson, Norris. Interview by author. December 14, 2010.

Foster, “What is the Meaning of Life.” By 1994, there were over 2,500 natural life sentences in the Louisiana prisons system.

The Angolite, “Treen Speaks Out on Pardons,” November/December 1981, News Briefs.

Rideau, In the Place of Justice, 170.

The Angolite, “Life: No Rhyme, No Reason,” September/October 1982, Special Section.

The Angolite, “Treen Speaks Out on Pardons,” November/December 1981, News Briefs.

Henderson, Norris. Interview by author. December 14, 2010.

The Angolite, “The Double-Bunking Issue,” September/October 1982, Editorial. The other option proposed, and eventually adopted, was the expansion of the Louisiana prison system.

Burk Foster, “Politics and Pardons: How It All Went Wrong,” The Angolite, January/February 1988.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Kenneth “Biggy” Johnston. Interview by author. January 15, 2011; Norris Henderson. Personal communication with author. October 7, 2010.

Robert Hillary King, From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2009), 175; The Angolite, “A New Beginnings,” March/April 1984, Cover Story.

The Angolite, “A New Beginnings,” March/April 1984, Cover Story.

Rideau, In the Place of Justice, 113.

Norris Henderson. Personal communication with author. October 7, 2010.

The Angolite, “A New Beginnings,” March/April 1984, Cover Story.

Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010.

Francesca Polletta and James M. Jasper, “Collective Identity and Social Movements,” Annual Review of Sociology 27, no. 1 (2001).

Kenneth “Biggy” Johnston. Interview by author. January 15, 2011; Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010.

Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010.

Wilbert Rideau, “Special Civics Project,” The Angolite, November/December 1987, Politics.

Checo Yancy. Interview by author. January 7, 2011.

Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010.

“The Crowded Cage,” The Shreveport Journal, August 9, 1988, Editorials.

Katy Reckdahl, “Not Barred,” Gambit Weekly (New Orleans), March 30, 2004, News sec., http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/not-barred/Content?oid=1242661 (accessed April 6, 2011).

Ted Quant. Interview by author. February 9, 2011.

Ibid.; Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010; Kenneth “Biggy” Johnston. Interview by author, January 15, 2011; Wilbert Rideau, “Special Civics Project,” The Angolite, November/December 1987, Politics.

Wilbert Rideau, “Special Civics Project,” The Angolite, November/December 1987, Politics.

Ted Quant. Interview by author. February 9, 2011; Wilbert Rideau, “Special Civics Project,” The Angolite, November/December 1987, Politics.

Ted Quant. Interview by author. February 9, 2011.

Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010; Ted Quant. Interview by author. February 9, 2011.

Wilbert Rideau, “Special Civics Project,” The Angolite, November/December 1987, Politics.

Floyd Webb, “Special Civics Project,” The Angolite, January/February 1990.

Wilbert Rideau, “Special Civics Project,” The Angolite, November/December 1987, Politics.

Ibid.

Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010; Ted Quant. Interview by author. February 9, 2011; Wilbert Rideau, “Special Civics Project,” The Angolite, November/December 1987, Politics.

Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010.

Rideau, In the Place of Justice, 194–202; The Angolite, “The Omen,” May/June 1989.

Rideau, In the Place of Justice, 204.

Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010; Floyd Webb, “Special Civics Project,” The Angolite, January/February 1990.

Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010.

Kenneth “Biggy” Johnston. Interview by author, January 15, 2011; Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010; Floyd Webb, “Special Civics Project,” The Angolite, January/February 1990.

Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010.

Ibid.

Checo Yancy. Interview by author. January 7, 2011.

The Associated Press, “Louisiana Inmates Offer Reform Package,” The Dallas Morning News, March 26, 1990.

Naomi Farve. Interview by author. March 21, 2011. Clarence Goodlow and Ron Wikberg, “A Nobel Effort,” The Angolite, May/June 1990.

Eugene Dean. Interview by author. December 31, 2010; Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010; Checo Yancy. Interview by author. January 7, 2011.

Eugene Dean. Interview by author. December 31, 2010; Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010; Checo Yancy. Interview by author. January 7, 2011.

Eugene Dean. Interview by author. December 31, 2010; Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010; Checo Yancy. Interview by author. January 7, 2011; Michael Glover, “Call for Unity,” The Angolite, January/February 1991.

Eugene Dean. Interview by author. December 31, 2010.

Checo Yancy. Interview by author. January 7, 2011.

Naomi Farve. Interview by author. March 21, 2011; Kenneth “Biggy” Johnston. Interview by author, January 15, 2011.

Checo Yancy. Interview by author. January 7, 2011.

Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010.

Kenneth “Biggy” Johnston. Interview by author. January 15, 2011.

Rideau, In the Place of Justice, 241.

Norris Henderson. Interview by author. December 14, 2010; Rideau, In the Place of Justice, 242–246.

Jenna M. Loyd, “Race, Capitalist Crisis, and Abolitionist Organizing: An Interview with Ruth Wilson Gilmore,” in Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis, ed. Jenna M. Loyd, Matt Mitchelson, and Andrew Burridge (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012), 51.