Wilbert Rideau

by In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment

  I don’t know how long I sat staring at the framed painting on my wall that an inmate artist, Oscar Higueras, had given me. A single warrior stood on a small hill, a bloody sword in his hand, surrounded by hordes of enemy warriors, some lying dead at his feet. His situation was hopeless, but his face and posture bespoke a determination to die fighting. I related to it. I pulled a cassette tape out of my desk drawer. I listened to Sam Cooke singing “A Change Is Gonna Come,” then the gutbucket blues of Guitar Slim, wailing, “The things that I used to do/Lord, I won’t do no more.” It was the way I dealt with hurt, loss, depression. After sinking as far as I could emotionally, I would emerge strengthened, with an angry determination to prevail over my situation.

  There was absolutely nothing I could do about the politics and politicians that sandbagged me. So I plotted escape. I planned to set up a speaking engagement for that purpose. Dot would pick me up and drive me to a house where I would remain hidden for several weeks, until the manhunt and publicity died down. I planned to go to Brazil, which had no extradition treaty with the United States. If I was successful, she would join me there, and we’d start our lives anew. I began to study Spanish, not realizing that they speak Portuguese in Brazil.

  When it came time to put my plan into action, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t betray C. Paul Phelps. He had been a mentor and a friend. Phelps had told me, “If I overrule my officials and I approve you to travel out of this prison”—which he had—“and you escape, my career in corrections is finished.” I had given him my word.

  “I believe they’re wrong about you,” Phelps had said. His words haunted me. He was the only official to express a belief in my basic goodness, and the first person in my life ever to really trust me, without reservation, not only to do the right thing but to be a certain way. At the last minute, I scuttled my escape plan. I was a prisoner no longer held by force but by the person I had become.

  I set about trying to improve The Angolite. I wanted to make it a better magazine than the whites had made it, for my ego and because, with the civil rights movement providing me a frame of reference, I felt that becoming the nation’s first black prison editor had given me a chance to do something good, to redeem myself, and to make my people proud of me. And, as the first editor of an uncensored prison publication, I had to prove that the censorship that prevailed in the nation’s prisons was unnecessary and wrong.

  I had an eighth-grade education and a crew of untrained high school dropouts for a staff. I knew something about journalism from writing “The Jungle,” and a little less about publishing from my experience with The Lifer, but I had an instinct for what I felt would be right. The Angolite was the only publication serving the Angola prison community of some five thousand people, including prisoners and employees. It commanded no respect from either side. Under my editorship, club, religious, and sports activities were relegated to the back pages. I had shifted the magazine’s focus to studying and reporting on the Angola prison community and the corrections system in the same manner as any local newspaper covered its city, with real news and features about the world we lived in and the things that affected us. I wanted the magazine to deal with the realities of prison life. I wanted to humanize stories, to give the reader the flavor of prison and its frustrations, its people, its misery and madness, and to give keepers and kept a sense of each other.

  I ordered a camera so I could expand the use of pictures, showing the prison world and its people. Security objected to Maggio on the grounds that we might take photos of an officer doing something embarrassing. I argued to Maggio that officers are not supposed to be doing anything embarrassing. He approved the purchase of the camera as well as a telephoto lens. Members of the Angolite staff had permission to carry a camera and a tape recorder anywhere we wanted inside the prison. It was the first time in the history of Angola that inmates had such privileges, and probably the first time it happened in any prison in America. It triggered paranoia on the part of much of the personnel. To minimize problems, Peggi Gresham often paved the way for us with the top official of whatever area of the prison we planned to visit with our camera and recorder.

  My predecessor had encouraged inmates and organizations to write articles about themselves and their activities, which made his job easier. I eliminated the practice and informed everyone that all articles would be staff-written to ensure accuracy and objectivity. I vowed that The Angolite would never again be controlled by those wanting to promote their own interests; even staffers had to agree not to write about themselves or their cases. Still, I was confronted by those who wanted me to make exceptions to the new rules, including the chaplains, who demanded that a page be set aside exclusively for use by their office.

  “Every inmate publication that I know of in this country does it,” Protestant chaplain Joseph Wilson argued. “I think you have a responsibility as editor, Wilbert, to do it for the spiritual good of the inmate population.”

  I had known Wilson since my days on death row. He was typical of Protestant chaplains at Angola—a religious bigot and spineless bureaucrat who, unable to compete for a congregation in free society, took a guaranteed state paycheck, health care, and a pension instead. It was a waste of tax dollars. More prisoners attended religious services conducted by inmate preachers than by Wilson. The Catholic chaplain was no better.

  “We have a conflict of interest,” I said. “Your responsibility is to save souls; mine is to produce an unbiased newsmagazine. And I can’t think of any area of human thought where impartiality is more impossible than in religion. Every religionist has a different belief of what the truth is.”

  Wilson was indignant—especially when Phelps backed me up.

  Later, when the warden’s office sent me a directive to the inmate population from Phelps, I wanted to see just how far my independence went. I refused to publish it.

  “Rideau, he’s the director,” Gresham said to me.

  “I know, and he’s the same man who told me that I don’t have to publish anything I don’t want to. The warden’s office has more immediate and effective ways to get that message to the inmates.”

  Phelps clarified things by saying that he had merely asked the warden’s office to pass his directive on to The Angolite for our information. Whether it was worthy of publication was left to the discretion of the editor. Phelps’s personal support gave me freedom to do whatever I thought necessary to improve the publication. It was an entirely different story with the inmates.

  Most of the problems during the early stage of my editorship came from blacks who, having been denied a voice in the past, harbored high expectations with me in control. Since getting off death row, I had been their writer—the prison’s first black writer—as editor of The Lifer, as a newspaper columnist, and as a freelance writer. They had given me their unflinching support. Now they applied immense pressure for me to make The Angolite a black publication, just as it had been a white publication throughout its quarter-century history. This was my power base, the prison’s overwhelming majority, whose support I would need in future battles to make The Angolite the publication I wanted it to become. To relieve the pressure, I made one concession: When Bill Brown paroled, I did not replace him, leaving the editorial staff—me and Tommy—all black until it became politically possible for me to add a white.

  Blacks also expected favored treatment. While coverage of them, which had been minimal, would naturally be increased, I was determined that race would not influence anything in the magazine. Many blacks were urged by their leaders to shun me. Some did; most didn’t.

  When I refused the demand for a column by Narcotics Anonymous, the prison’s black “outlaw” organization, they began their own campaign to pressure me. Confronted in the education building one night by their leaders, I told them The Angolite didn’t belong to prisoners, that it was published to provide news and information for them. Besides which, I said, “The Angolite has been here for years, and the white boys had it all that time. But you never
got these dudes together to try to pressure them like you’re trying to pressure me.” I paused; then in a whisper, I said, “Now, you were either scared of those white boys or—”

  “I ain’t scared of no fucking honkies, niggah!” was the response.

  “Yeah, you were scared of ’em!” said Lionel Bowers, a “family” member who had accompanied me to the meeting. His voice boomed from behind me. He was a big man, and now he tapped his chest angrily. “That’s right—I said that! Long as the white boys had that paper, you ain’t messed with them. But the first time a brother get it, you can’t wait to fuck with him. That’s what’s wrong now—y’all crying about white folks, but they don’t have to hold us down, we’ll do it for ’em.” He turned and slammed his fist on the windowsill, furious. “And if anybody got an argument with that, then you better hit me in my face, because I’m through talking.” Between the truth of his words and the obvious fury of a big man who was universally liked and respected, they weren’t going to take up his challenge. The moment had been won, but it was a temporary peace.

  The biggest problem, I gradually learned, was that no one wanted truth or objectivity. Personnel wanted only good things said about them (especially by a black editor). Prisoners wanted a one-sided publication lauding inmates and criticizing guards, and conveying to the public how badly they were being treated, a desire that increased in direct proportion to Maggio’s increasing control of the prison and their behavior in it. Criticizing anyone in The Angolite, therefore, was potentially dangerous—the employees controlled my world, and I had to sleep among the prisoners. I would gradually have to condition everyone to the idea of being criticized in print.

  I was undergoing an educational process that would influence the way I saw and thought about things. Phelps was taking me to meetings where I observed deliberations prisoners never had access to—on how to turn inmate labor to enterprises profitable for the Department of Corrections, on the problems field supervisors had in meeting their harvest quotas when the medical department issued light-duty status that kept too many injured or ill inmates out of the fields, on the processes by which the prison acquired goods and services needed for the inmate population, on how and where facilities within the prison were to be expanded, on how and why new rules and regulations were created, and, often, even on issues of prison security. Phelps invited me to participate in official administrative discussions, sometimes asking my opinion, which shocked many of his staffers. He brought me to corrections headquarters and introduced me to his staff. He introduced me to those who exercised power so I could see how they made their decisions. He frequently brought outside officials and state politicians to the Angolite office to chat about the prison, the corrections system, and political affairs, regularly referring officials, reporters, and individuals seeking assistance or information to me. In doing so, he was conferring credibility upon me.

  Phelps was the first of a line of wardens to sit in my office and discuss prison issues. I learned that it really was lonely at the top. It’s difficult for wardens to get honest advice from those around them. The warden is all-powerful within his prison world; it’s a rare subordinate or inmate leader who is going to disagree with him. Subordinates tell the warden what they think he wants to hear as opposed to what he needs to know.

  The warden is the one official—corrupt, honest, inept, or mean-spirited—who wants his prison to run smoothly because he is responsible for everything and is judged accordingly. Most prison problems occur in mid-level management, where the operable rule too often is to avoid offending the boss and to cover your ass.

  Both Phelps and Maggio spent a lot of time in my office, talking and listening. My pre-Angolite writings in “The Jungle,” The Shreveport Journal, the New Orleans States-Item, the Baton Rouge Gris-Gris, and Penthouse on the inmate economy, prison society, and veterans in Angola had led them, particularly Phelps, to feel that I had a grasp of the issues. They found it useful to have a prisoner like me as a sounding board, which is how I came to accept that they wanted to right the ship.

  I realized that as long as I relied on reason and diplomacy, I could accomplish much. I had to be seen as totally trustworthy, and a useful resource. I also learned that the key to solving problems was never to present one without a proposed solution. My position allowed me to connect good people with each other, to promote good ideas and projects, and to find the resources to bring them to fruition.

  I was becoming much more than an editor. The more I learned about management, politics, the decision-making process, the complaints, problems, and frustrations of personnel and management, the more my perspective broadened. I gained a greater understanding of what I wanted and needed to do as an editor. I saw I could help deserving individuals, be they employee or inmate.

  Phelps and I developed a real friendship. We were drawn together for want of sympathetic understanding elsewhere. That was even more true of Maggio. He had used fear to whip personnel into shape, firing and hiring more employees than any warden in Angola’s history, increasing the number of employees nearly threefold in his first two years. As I said, he cracked down on employees, who cracked down on the inmates, which dramatically reduced Angola’s violence. But fear leads to avoidance, and there was little meaningful communication between Maggio and his employees. They had become sycophants, and he knew it. I could tell him things they wouldn’t.

  He would roam through the Main Prison and then drop in on me, unable to understand why inmates didn’t approach him about problems so that he could correct them. Maggio would never admit it, but he wanted the prisoners, even more than the employees, to understand, respect, and appreciate what he was doing for them. They didn’t, not then.

  With both inmates and employees avoiding Maggio whenever possible, The Angolite became the unofficial middleman for solving problems. I could cut through bureaucratic red tape by talking directly to Maggio or Phelps, so many people brought their grievances to me. Maggio was capable of brutality and callousness, but as long as he felt himself in control of the physical circumstances, he was a soft touch, a benevolent dictator, a liberal even, although he would never think of himself as one. Neither prisoners nor employees understood that.

  Maggio’s desire to operate the best prison made him receptive to new ideas and improvements. He gave almost everything I asked for on behalf of the prisoners once I showed him that it posed no threat to his control or the security of the facility. He would always listen to reason, and I was able to rescue the inmate population from many harsh and unnecessary measures proposed by security officers and administrative officials attempting to impress the warden with their hard-line zeal. I had to keep both Maggio’s and Phelps’s confidence, not repeating what either told me; otherwise I’d lose their trust and my credibility, and my ability to help others.

  Most of my friends were not caught up in Maggio’s massive lockups. In fact, they benefited from the changes he implemented at Angola. As model prisoners, many were able to take advantage of the Department of Corrections’ effort to relieve overcrowding. They maneuvered transfers to the minimum-security state police barracks in Baton Rouge, where there was not even a fence to keep them prisoner. Living there, they could work at the Department of Corrections headquarters as aides or chauffeurs, or at other government buildings as gardeners and maintenance men, or at the governor’s mansion, where only lifers, murderers in particular, were accepted as servants—a long-standing practice grounded in statistics showing that murder is almost always a once-in-a-lifetime event and that murderers have the lowest recidivism rate of all prisoners, as well as the wardens’ practical experience that murderers tended to be the most responsible of all inmates. Jobs in the mansion were the most sought-after in the system, because they included unchaperoned weekend passes into free society, among other privileges. And the ultimate prize for these servants was another tradition—governors would free their inmate domestic staff when they left office. Some of my closest friends, including Daryl Evans and Lion
el Bowers, earned those jobs, shrinking my “family” considerably.

  Maggio’s dismantling of gangs and the massive transfer of inmates out of Angola radically altered the inmate power structure. He ordered inmates to elect representatives to a revived inmate grievance committee, which, with The Angolite and the elected leaders of formal inmate organizations (such as the Jaycees, the lifers’ association, the boxing association, the Dale Carnegie club, Vets Incarcerated, and a host of other civic and religious organizations), formed the new power structure. My position as editor of The Angolite and an established inmate leader, together with my ability to get things done and my visible friendship with Phelps, made me the single most powerful prisoner in the new order. That didn’t make everyone happy. One day, an angry security officer, Major Roland Dupree, gave me a direct order to begin working in the field after lunch. Frantic, I called the warden’s office and was told by his secretary to stay in my office. As the appointed time approached, I grew increasingly concerned, because refusing to follow a direct order was punishable with time in the Hole. Just moments after Dupree came back to my office, Maggio strode up to him and declared: “You don’t mess with him. If you have a problem with The Angolite, you bring it to me—I am The Angolite.” The symbolic message conveyed in that act reinforced my status.

  Phelps taught me that with power came obligation. It was a lesson that was brought home to me in a forceful way. Prisoners who violated the rules in satellite facilities were usually transferred back to Angola. Maggio required all inmates returning to Angola to work in the field hoeing, shoveling, chopping, and harvesting, whether the whip was on the winter wind off the Mississippi or the subtropical summer sun parched land and man alike. This included a large number of prisoners undergoing intensive therapy at the mental health unit near New Orleans, who would be sent back to Angola upon being pronounced cured. One of the patients, feeling his punishment was undeserved, began complaining. Although the counselors, security officials, and classification officers were all sympathetic, they told him there was nothing they could do because of Maggio’s policy.