I heard opportunity knocking. I said The Angolite could certainly report on developments and put them in the proper context, but only if we were uncensored. “A censored publication has no credibility,” I said.
“Okay,” said Phelps.
I was surprised by his response. Censorship was the official religion of penal authorities everywhere. From the creation of the first prison in America, authorities had insisted upon reading inmates’ correspondence; listening in on conversations; limiting what an inmate saw, heard, and read, as well as who was permitted to visit him; restricting his communications with the news media and anyone else they felt might potentially be problematic—all in the name of the “security of the institution” or “in the interests of the inmate’s rehabilitation.” While restricting prisoners’ access to certain kinds of information is essential to the peace and security of the prison—maps showing the layout of the facility and manuals for making explosives come to mind—courts had historically blessed the blanket silencing of the nation’s inmates without authorities having ever proven a genuine need for it. Penal authorities had always intimidated judges with predictions that dire consequences—disorder, riots, violence—would follow the granting of any freedoms. But in fact the opposite was quite often true: The first demand of rioting prisoners was frequently to speak to the media or someone in charge in order to have their collective voice heard. Censoring freedom of expression served mainly to shield prison officials from public scrutiny and criticism, permitting them to operate behind closed gates without accountability.
“You know,” Phelps said, “after the courts legitimized the role of jailhouse lawyers, prison authorities accepted ‘inmate counsels,’ who now play an important part in giving inmates access to the courts. By the same token, we have all the elements of outside society here, except a free press. I think there’s a role for the press to play here. The thing is to get you started.”
I told him that in prison a free press faces difficulties jailhouse lawyers don’t. “The truth will upset people, and people play for keeps in here, both inmates and employees. Your employees will do everything they can to pressure you to censor us. And, of course, we’d need access to information.”
“Information is no problem. I’m the warden. If I want you to have access to information, you’ll have it. Of course, you can’t have confidential security information or personal information on inmates or employees, but pretty much everything else can be made available to you. If you’re willing to gamble with me on this, I’ll see to it that you get what you need.” Phelps said I would have his backing to investigate and publish whatever I wanted, as long as I followed the same ethics and standards that professional journalists do; what I published had to be the truth, supported by evidence.
I asked if he would trust me to make responsible decisions, to give me the benefit of the doubt. I knew there would be people who trashed me to him because they didn’t like something I wrote. “I’ve already got enemies,” I said, “plus I’m black in a place run by rednecks.”
“I know,” Phelps said, rising from the chair to stand at my desk. He looked down at me. “You said I’ll have to trust you. Tell me—can I trust you?”
His eyes engaged mine, and I knew the moment of truth had come. “Despite my crime,” I said, “I’m a good person. And I’m a man of my word. That’s all I’ve got—my word, my honor—and that’s important to me. You can trust me.”
“Good, then,” Phelps said, as we shook hands. “Let’s give it a try and see what happens.” He asked me to write out new operational procedures for a reorganized Angolite.
Toward the end of December, Elayn Hunt was hospitalized with terminal cancer, leaving Phelps to manage both Angola and the state corrections system. He spent half a day at headquarters in the state capital, then flew his own plane to Angola, where he’d spend the remainder of the day. His executive assistant at the prison was Peggi Jo Gresham. Since he couldn’t devote much attention to The Angolite, Gresham was made its official supervisor and given the task of resolving problems, removing obstacles to information for me, and ensuring that other prison officials did not interfere with the magazine’s new mission.
Gresham, forty-two, was a chic, petite brunette with a fondness for short skirts, which earned her the moniker “Leggy Peggi” among male employees—out of earshot. She was sharp, intelligent, knowledgeable, and efficient. She had initially come to Angola in 1952 with her husband, Carl, who worked in the prison’s agribusiness division. She started as a clerk-typist in the records office. When H. L. Hanchey became warden in 1964, she became his secretary. When Henderson became warden in 1968, he encouraged her to continue her education and made her his executive assistant. Her duties, power, and visibility increased dramatically under Phelps, who relied upon her to run the administration for and with him. Gresham had become a genuine success in a male-dominated world that was hostile to females. She valued power not for its status but for its usefulness to effect improvements, to make prison operations better, to serve the interest of inmates, employees, and society. She was representative of a substantial number of employees—sincere, honest, and decent—who struggled often with indifferent, corrupt, and mean-spirited counterparts over the prison’s mission.
Gresham approved additional staff that I requested, assigning Tommy Mason to the magazine as a full-time staff writer; Daryl Evans as a part-time sports reporter; and Eugene Morrison, a white, as the illustrator. I had selected them based upon their character; journalism, I could teach them. (Bill Brown was still the figurehead editor.) Some black inmate leaders objected to the integrated staff. But I recognized that the publication could never be fully credible if it discriminated against any segment of the population it served, which is why all-white authority and Southern publications enjoyed no credibility with most blacks.
Under the new regime, the first conflict came when a group of prison officials objected to Gresham’s instructions that they provide me copies of meat purchase orders and warehouse delivery receipts, and make themselves available for interviews. They went to Phelps, complaining that requiring prison personnel to explain their decisions and behavior to inmates was totally unacceptable. Phelps disagreed and ordered the officials to cooperate.
They were furious. Though Phelps normally ruled through persuasion, he reminded them that, given his dual positions, there would be no appealing his decision. Disobedience was grounds for dismissal.
He stopped by the Angolite office and let me know what had transpired. I told him that the meat situation was one of the inmates’ biggest complaints because we had been getting wieners and bologna almost every day—sometimes twice a day—when the prison had purchased beef that we were never served, not to mention all the hogs inmates raised and slaughtered at Angola.
“The free people say that inmates are stealing it and smuggling it down to the dormitories, where they cook and eat it,” Phelps said. “They’ve caught enough inmates doing it to make a legitimate argument.”
“Chief, that’s bullshit,” I said. “They allow, if not encourage, the inmates to do that, and bust some every now and then, just enough to be able to make that very point. Inmate workers have told me how much meat they steal, and that it’s impossible for them to take more because they have to smuggle it inside their shirts. Now, if you multiply the number of inmates working in the abattoir and warehouse times two smuggled steaks per man per day for a month, it doesn’t add up to the five thousand pounds of meat that disappeared. I know from inmates how the meat was ripped off and who did it, and I can lay you a trail that ends with one of your assistant wardens, who got a piece of the action last week, as well as the names, dates, times of day, and locations where the free folks made their pickups.”
The following week, Gresham escorted Stan Williams, director of food services for the Louisiana Department of Corrections, and Judy Sims, who headed a training program for inmate culinary workers, to the Angolite office for us to interview. Having Williams com
e from corrections headquarters to answer questions about his operation was as unique an event as Gresham and Sims being physically in our office. Women were never permitted inside the Main Prison. Prison authorities, all white males, traditionally held that a woman entering a prison compound full of sex-starved men, predominantly black, would inevitably be sexually assaulted, reflecting the historical Southern white belief that black males lusted after white women and could not control their sexual impulses. We asked difficult, even embarrassing questions about the discrepancy between warehouse delivery receipts for meat and the bologna diet we’d been fed. We found out what we wanted to know.
When the story was published in the first “new” Angolite in six months, it was more aggressively written than stories had been in the past, but there was no mention of the theft of meat. Phelps, who expected an exposé, came to the office wanting to know what happened.
“The people involved have all resigned or been fired or transferred,” I said. “The problem has been solved, and we’re eating better. The only point in running an exposé would be for the sake of scandal, which would have offended some people and generated a lot of hostility toward The Angolite.”
I knew that my freedom to operate without censorship could be lost if I didn’t handle it carefully. My adversaries were waiting to pounce. The inmate population wanted The Angolite to be a journalistic gun to shoot the administration with, but I wanted there to be a gradual, two-way education process.
Elayn Hunt died on February 3. I was in the warden’s office the next morning to ask Phelps who would replace her.
“I’d hope it would be me,” he said.
I hoped so, too. While I was there, I tried to persuade him to rescind a few orders he had issued with a view to “rehabilitating” the employees as well as the inmates. He had had all the guards’ chairs removed because, he said, “I want them on their feet, walking, moving around, seeing what’s going on.”
“But that’s not stopping them from sitting,” I said. “It only forces them to sit on desks, on the walkway, on the railing—which pisses them off. These are the people you have to rely upon to achieve whatever changes you want made in this prison.”
He’d expressed his intention to do away with inmate orderlies, coffee boys, shoe-shine boys. “There are prisoners here who don’t do anything but wait on some officer, bring him coffee, make him comfortable, help him do his job,” he said. I pointed out that both sides benefited, as those inmates enjoyed more privileges because of the relationships.
Phelps had also ordered that all inmates except night workers rise at 5:30 a.m., make their bed, and be prepared to go to breakfast by 6:00, then to work. That did not make most inmates happy, including me. My routine was to sleep through breakfast, rise around 8:00, shower, get to the Angolite office by 9:00, brew coffee, and read the Baton Rouge newspaper. I could begin my day late because I worked late into the night writing, my day having been spent gathering prison news from inmates or employees and listening to the problems of both. Rising at 5:30 would dramatically disrupt my schedule.
I argued to Phelps that this wasn’t the time to take on the prison culture on multiple fronts. I suggested that during the search for a new corrections head, he might want to back off a little. His new policies would alienate both guards and inmates, who might join forces against him. That would lead to nothing good.
He fell silent for a moment. Then he said: “I think my orders perhaps need to be changed because they’re not accomplishing what I had hoped they would.”
“Good,” I said. I shared with him my view that although prison authorities possess the power of law and the gun, prisoners are not powerless. They possess the power of disobedience, rebellion, disruption, sabotage, and violence. A peaceful maximum-security prison owes its success to the consent of its prisoners, a consent that comes from mutual understanding and reasonable, commonsense accommodations at almost every level of interaction. And the one thing prisoners hate most is what seems to them to be nonsensical, arbitrary rules and actions.
Phelps invited me to review and assess proposed rules and actions from the inmate perspective before their implementation. This was no small thing. In prison, it is almost impossible to get authorities to rescind a rule already enacted.
“Your guards would shit bricks if they knew you were listening to me,” I said to Phelps.
“Why? They all listen to somebody, usually snitches,” he replied. “Every smart manager, whether in government, the corporate world, or corrections, listens to those whose opinions he values. You’ve demonstrated in your writing that you understand this world better than most. That makes your perspective potentially more valuable to me than any of my top officials’, because yours is one that none of us has.”
I educated Phelps on the inmate economy, on how the need for everything from deodorant to appellate lawyers to dope drove initiative as well as violence. Men earned money by mending clothes, repairing watches, writing letters for illiterates, and loan-sharking. They sold plasma, food stolen from the commissary or kitchen, drugs smuggled in by visitors or employees, handcrafted weapons, and the services of their sexual slaves. Some redistributed wealth by strong-arming and stealing; others sold protection to the weak. The security force would not tolerate the drug or weapons trade but largely accommodated whatever divided rather than united the inmate population. Sexual slavery, in particular, made security’s job easier: They could gain cooperation from the master, who did not want to lose his slave, and if he was a good master—one who did not pimp out or beat his slave—the “wife” would also become an informant for security, on threat of being transferred to an out-camp, where “she” had no protection from new predators. I told Phelps how inmates, in turn, sometimes exploited the administration’s fear of militants to get revenge on an enemy by identifying him as a militant, which would get him thrown in the Dungeon until he could convince authorities that he was not a radical.
Just as Phelps knew little about the world that I was unveiling for him, I knew next to nothing about the world of management to which he introduced me, often taking me along to official prison business meetings, which brought a startling new element into the otherwise all-white, all-staff affairs. More than that, he gave me an education in morality, personal responsibility, goal setting, and civic duty.
I suggested to Phelps that he might enhance his bid for the director’s job by taking credit for the lull in violence at the prison. There had been no stabbing deaths in the three months since he became warden.
“Do you know why there haven’t been any?” he asked.
“Well, let’s see,” I said. “The prison is still flooded with weapons. Guys are still unhappy about the same things. Emergency medical care hasn’t improved. So what’s different?” I told him that a lot of inmates knew a crackdown was imminent—Judge West’s order to clean up Angola had been well publicized on television and in the newspapers—and the smarter ones had been lying low as a result. The new pardon board had begun reviewing clemency applications, promising to free prisoners who demonstrated rehabilitation, so eligible inmates were on their best behavior.
“It makes sense,” he said, “but I can’t take credit for the drop in deaths since I’ve been here. I can’t take credit for something I didn’t do.”
One afternoon I entered the lobby of the Main Prison Office (MPO), where a noisy crowd of demanding inmates had encircled Phelps. “They got another food-poisoning incident going down,” Daryl explained to me.
“How much of it is real?” I asked.
“I don’t know. The shit is just on the Big Yard. Trusties ate the same thing—ain’t none of them sick. Dudes on the Big Yard are talking about boycotting the chow hall. They not talking strike yet—just boycott.”
The year before, massive food poisoning had resulted from contaminated roast beef served in the Main Prison dining hall. The demand for toilets outstripped availability as diarrhea ran through the facility, forcing inmates to resort to buckets
and necessitating the creation of makeshift medical stations. The incident triggered an inmate strike that lasted several days. The state health authorities investigated and condemned the Main Prison dining hall and kitchen: Poor drainage had caused a swamp of sewage to collect beneath the huge, elevated structure; it was infested with vermin; and flyovers by the nesting bird population put every plate at risk of droppings. The food manager was fired, and numerous prisoners filed lawsuits. Now, a year later, we were still being fed in the same dining hall, which was still condemned. It was a source of continuing discontent among the inmates.
I told Daryl that our friends and allies were to steer clear of the boycott as much as they could.
He promised to spread the word and find out what was being planned. He gestured toward Phelps. “We need to rescue your boy.”
Phelps was talking earnestly to the inmates. He still hadn’t learned that you can reason with inmates only when they want to listen. The men around him were more interested in confronting authority than they were in solving any problem.
Soon afterward, Phelps came to my office. “There are a lot safer situations to be in than the one I saw in the lobby,” I said, pouring myself a cup of coffee.
“I’m sure there are,” Phelps answered, seating himself in front of my desk. “But the Big Yard is complaining of food poisoning. The inmates talking to me in the lobby actually believe the administration poisoned them—and that’s ludicrous. I tried to make them understand that it is not in our best interest for them to be ill.”
“Those guys were role-playing, and the situation isn’t as simple as you think,” I said. “Without knowing the details of what’s happening on the Big Yard, I can tell you there’s a radical element down there fanning the flames, trying to assert themselves. Last year, they lost out to more rational leaders, but they came close.” I explained that there were other factors at play—bitter inmate rivalries, ambitious men eager to challenge established leaders, personality clashes. I said there were racists among the employees who would like to see a race riot, to defeat integration, and those who wanted a riot as evidence of how dangerous their work was, which would be helpful when they asked the legislature for a pay hike. Those were the components of every disturbance.
Wilbert Rideau Page 15