Louisiana State Penitentiary

==Cultural references==
===Musical references===
{{More citations needed section|date=August 2010}}
The prison has held many musicians and been the subject of a number of songs. Folk singer [[Lead Belly]] served over four years of his attempted murder sentence and was released early from Angola for good behavior. [[Tejano music|Tex-Mex]] artist [[Freddy Fender]] was pardoned from there.

The song "Grown So Ugly" by American blues musician and ex-convict [[Robert Pete Williams]] references Angola. The song's lyrics have some basis in fact, as Williams was imprisoned there and was officially pardoned (from a murder charge) in 1964, the year the song says that he left the prison.

The classic New Orleans song "[[Junco Partner]]" includes the lines:

{{poemquote|Six months ain't no sentence, and a year ain't no time
They got boys down in Angola doin' one year to ninety-nine}}

In [[the Clash]]'s version of "Junco Partner", the lines are a little bit different:

{{poemquote|
Singing six months ain't no sentence, and one year ain't no time
::I was born in Angola, servin' fourteen to ninety-nine}}

[[Aaron Neville|Aaron]] and Charles Neville wrote "Angola Bound":

{{poemquote|
I got lucky last summer when I got my time, Angola bound
Well my partner got a hundred, I got ninety-nine, Angola bound
}}

Angola also features in the [[Neville Brothers]] song "Sons and Daughters" on the album ''Brother's Keeper''.

[[Folklore|Folklorist]] [[Harry Oster]] recorded "Angola Prison Worksongs" for his [[Folklyric Records]] in 1959, now re-released on [[Arhoolie Records]]. According to Oster, between 1929 and 1940, 10,000 [[flogging]]s were carried out in Angola.

Singer [[Gil Scott-Heron]] wrote and recorded the song "Angola, Louisiana" on his 1978 album with [[Brian Jackson (keyboardist)|Brian Jackson]], ''[[Secrets (Gil Scott-Heron album)|Secrets]]''. The song deals with the imprisonment of inmate [[Gary Tyler]].

Canadian blues and roots musician [[Rita Chiarelli]] filmed the documentary ''Music from the Big House'' at Angola in 2010. The film, directed by [[Bruce McDonald (director)|Bruce McDonald]], focuses on a concert at the prison, organized by Chiarelli, that featured four bands comprising musicians incarcerated in Angola.

Comprising the entire B-Side of his album ''[[Remedies (Dr. John album)|Remedies]]'', New Orleans musician [[Dr. John]] features an extended 17:35 song titled "Angola Anthem".

Singer-songwriter [[Myshkin (singer)|Myshkin]] recorded "Angola" in 1998 for her album ''Blue Gold''. The song refers to the case of former Angola warden [[C. Murray Henderson]], who was sentenced to 50 years in prison for the attempted murder of his wife, writer Anne Butler:

{{poemquote|
Release me from this life I will seek my punishment
On the other side but the judge said
"Warden in cold blood you shot your poor poor wife
You're going back to Angola, there your hell to find"
}}

New Orleans rap artist [[Juvenile (rapper)|Juvenile]] has part of a verse in the [[Hot Boys]] song "Dirty World" that says:

{{poemquote|
They'll plant dope on ya, go to court on ya
Give ya 99 years and slam the door on us
Angola, the free man bout it, he don't play
Nigga get outta line, ship 'em to camp J
}}

New Orleans pianist [[James Booker]] mentions Angola prison in his cover of "[[Goodnight, Irene]]"; where he was sent for heroin possession:

{{poemquote|
Lead Belly and little Booker both, had the pleasure of partying,
on the pon de rosa, *laughs* you know what I mean, you dig?
Yeah, on the pon de rosa, you know, down in Angola
where they have boys doing from one year to ninety nine
}}

(As Booker was less than 10 years old when Lead Belly died, they would not have been there at the same time.)

[[Ray Davies]] has recorded a song entitled "Angola (Wrong Side of the Law)", which was released as a bonus track on the expanded release of ''[[Working Man's Café]]'' in February 2008.

The American folk singer [[David Dondero]] in the song "20 years" describes the experiences of a prisoner released from Angola prison:

{{poemquote|
All I got on me, is my Angola prison I.D.
Ain't a place in this whole damn city willing to hire me
It's been twenty years
}}

Jazz trumpeter [[Christian Scott]] has a track on his 2010 album ''[[Yesterday You Said Tomorrow]]'' called "Angola, LA & the 13th Amendment"

Texas Country Music artist, [[Sam Riggs]] of Sam Riggs and the Night People (Austin, Texas) wrote and recorded a song called "Angola's Lament". It was released in 2013 on the ''Outrun the Sun'' album.

American folk rock duo [[Indigo Girls]] reference Angola in the song "The Rise of the Black Messiah" from their 2015 album ''[[One Lost Day]]''.
{{poemquote|
Hey ol’ man river, what do you know
Bout plantation they call Angola?
The devil spawned a prison there
The saddest farm that ever lived}}

===Books about Angola===
* ''In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance'' by Wilbert Rideau (Knopf, 2010)
* ''Cain's Redemption'' by [[Dennis Shere]]
* ''[[Dead Man Walking (book)|Dead Man Walking]]'' by Sister [[Helen Prejean]]
* ''God of the Rodeo'' by [[Daniel Bergner]]
* ''The Search for Hope, Faith, and a Six-Second Ride in Louisiana's Angola Prison'' – Daniel Bergner – [[Crown Publishers]]
* Life Sentences, edited by Wilbert Rideau and Ron Wikberg (Random House, 1992)
* [[A Life in the Balance: The Billy Wayne Sinclair Story]] by [[Billy Wayne Sinclair]]
* Reference in ''[[A Confederacy of Dunces]]'' by Jones when describing the racial inequality in the New Orleans judicial system
* The main character of [[Poppy Z. Brite]]'s novel ''[[The Lazarus Heart (novel)|The Lazarus Heart]]'' is sent to Angola for the murder of his lover.
* ''[[The House That Herman Built]]'' by Herman Wallace of the Angola 3, co-written with artist [[Jackie Sumell]]
* An attempt at chemically-induced social control at Angola is a major part of the plot in [[Walker Percy]]'s novel ''[[The Thanatos Syndrome]].''

====Non-fiction books about Angola====
* Butler, Anne and C. Murray Henderson, ''Angola. Dying to Tell'' (Lafayette, LA: The Center for Louisiana Studies, 1992)
* Butler, Anne and C. Murray Henderson, ''Angola Louisiana State Penitentiary: A Half-Century of Rage and Reform'' (Lafayette, LA: The Center for Louisiana Studies, 1990)
*[[Mark T. Carleton|Carleton, Mark T.]], ''Politics and Punishment: The History of Louisiana State Penal System'' (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971)
*Foster, Burk, Wilbert Rideau and Douglas Dennis (Editors), '' The Wall is Strong: Corrections in Louisiana'' (Lafayette, LA: The Center for Louisiana Studies, 1995)
*Howard, Robert, ''The other side of the coin: The spiritual life of a black man held captive in Angola prison 40 years'' (Austin TX: 78764, 2006)
*King, Robert Hillary King, ''From the bottom of the heap: The autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King'' (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2009)
* Mouledous, Joseph Clarence, ''Sociological Perspectives on a Prison Social System'' Unpublished Master's Thesis, (Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 1962)
*Pelot-Hobbs, Lydia "The Contested Terrain of the Louisiana Carceral State" Unpublished Dissertation, (Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, CUNY Graduate Center, New York City, 2019).
*Woodfox, Albert, ''Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement. My Story of Transformation and Hope'' (New York: Grove Press, 2019)

===Articles about Angola===
* Maya Schenwar, "America's Plantation Prisons", ''Global Research'' (August 30, 2008)
* "Witness – Death Behind Bars – Part 1". ''[[Al Jazeera Media Network|Al Jazeera]]''
* "Witness – Death Behind Bars – Part 2". ''Al Jazeera''
* [http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/05/louisiana_is_the_worlds_prison/1952/comments-5.html Cindy Chang, "Louisiana Is the World's Prison", ''The Times-Picayune'' (May 13, 2012)]
* Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, "Organized Inside and Out: The Angola Special Civics Project and the Crisis of Mass Incarceration", ''Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society'' 15:3 (2013), 199–217.

===Other references===
*Angola was featured in the documentary ''[[The Farm: Angola, USA]]'' (1998).
*Angola Prison was featured in [[Oliver Stone]]'s movie ''[[JFK (film)|JFK]]''. The scene where [[Jim Garrison]] ([[Kevin Costner]]), along with Bill Broussard ([[Michael Rooker]]), goes to interview Willie O'Keefe ([[Kevin Bacon]]) is portrayed as having taken place at Angola Prison.
*Angola Prison was mentioned in the 2007 [[Coen brothers]] film ''[[No Country for Old Men (film)|No Country for Old Men]]''.
*Actor [[William Hurt]] prepared for his role in the 2008 remake of ''[[The Yellow Handkerchief (2008 film)|The Yellow Handkerchief]]'' (2008) by spending four days at the Penitentiary, including an overnight stay, rare for a volunteer, in a maximum-security cell. In a 2010 interview, he spoke of having a three-hour sight-unseen (around the corner of the dividing wall) talk with his next-door neighbor that night. He also said "the bed has about an inch-and-a-half-thick mattress on sheer steel. The toilet has no soft seat. The floor is marbleized concrete. It's horrible. It's unthinkable." He felt mostly sorrow for the inmates he got to know, "85 percent of the people in there are going to die there." In the film, he played an ex-con released after serving a six-year sentence in a Louisiana prison for "an accidental bit of trouble".<ref>[https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=124043013 Interview with William Hurt: Transcript], by Terry Gross for ''[[Fresh Air]]'', February 25, 2010. Retrieved November 30, 2010.</ref>
*In season 6, episode 15 of the TV series ''[[Bones (TV series)|Bones]]'', an inmate is threatened with a transfer to Angola should he not cooperate with an investigation.
*Sister Prejean's book ''Dead Man Walking'', about prisoners on death row, inspired [[Dead Man Walking (disambiguation)|numerous works]], including adaptations as a [[Dead Man Walking (film)|film]], an opera, and a play.
*The prison is the central setting for the [[Animal Planet]] documentary series ''Louisiana Lockdown'', which debuted in 2012.
*The feature film ''[[Whiskey Bay]]'' (2013), starring [[Willem Dafoe]] and [[Matt Dillon]], started shooting in Baton Rouge and at the Angola penitentiary on August 7, 2012.<ref>Scott, Mike. "[http://www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2012/08/matt_dillon_willem_dafoe_join.html Matt Dillon, Willem Dafoe join cast of Baton Rouge-shot 'Whiskey Bay']." ''[[The Times-Picayune]]''. (August 16, 2012)</ref>
*Angola Prison was mentioned in [[True Detective (season 1)|season one]] of the TV series ''[[True Detective]]''.<ref name="esqu_15Bu">{{Cite web| title = 15 Burning Questions for True Detective to Answer| work = Esquire| date = 2014-03-07| access-date = 31 August 2020| url = https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a32803/true-detective-finale-questions/}}</ref>
*The casket for [[Billy Graham]] was made by a male inmate, a senior carpenter named Richard, nicknamed "the Grasshopper", who had been convicted for murder, and in residence there 35 years, at Angola.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.facebook.com/FranklinGraham/videos/1840597789329727/|title=Franklin Graham – Many people have asked me about my...|access-date=February 14, 2020|via=www.facebook.com}}</ref>