Wilbert Rideau

by In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment

  Distraught, the former mental patient timidly knocked on my door. “I understand about it being the rule and all, but that don’t make it right,” he said in a despairing voice. “I was sick, and they sent me to the hospital for treatment. I had a good job before I left, but when I come back they stuck me in the field and wouldn’t give me my old job back. I ain’t done nothing wrong to be in the field, unless I’m being punished for going to get treated. You think maybe the penitentiary didn’t want me to go to the hospital and now they’re punishing me for it?”

  “I think it’s probably just a mistake,” I said.

  “It can’t be. I went to classification and security, too. They all told me that it ain’t nothing they can do for me.” He clasped his hands over his face, gulping for breath and choking back a sob. “Them white folks treat us bad out there in the field. They be cussin’ and hollering at us, calling us all kinds of names. They just mess with us, and for nothing a lot of times. It ain’t good for me. I can feel it. I need you to help me. I don’t know what to do, and there ain’t nobody else to help me. One of the security mens told me I oughta come talk to you and see what you can do. If you can’t help me, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

  I was offended by the obvious injustice. Phelps had once said to me: “Sometimes the mere fact that you’re the only one who can do something makes you responsible for doing it, whether you want to or not.” I checked with security and classification. They said they could do nothing because of Maggio’s across-the-board policy. I sent messages to friends in various parts of the prison, asking for the names of all inmates sent to the fields upon their return from the mental health unit. I received two dozen names.

  What I was going to do next was born of a gentleman’s understanding with Maggio I had made months before in exchange for his cooperation on The Angolite.

  Not long after becoming warden, he visited me one night. He was congenial, as always, but to the point.

  “Mr. Phelps told me that he wants you to have the freedom to operate The Angolite as you see fit,” he said. “That’s fine and good. He’s the boss. But you and I have got to reach an understanding, because while he’s the boss, he’s in Baton Rouge. Now, he can sit in Baton Rouge and give all the orders he wants to, but I’m the one who must put those orders into effect on a day-to-day basis, and I will be the one who sees to it that you get what you need to keep the magazine going as you want it. A warden has the power to make sure that if he doesn’t want something to work right, it won’t.”

  My mother, Gladys Victorian, in 1943 at age nineteen. She wanted to escape the farm.

  My father, Thomas Rideau. No Prince Charming, he.

  My mother, a virtual slave, trapped by two kids, pregnancies, little education, no resources, and a brutal husband. I’m on the right, my brother Raymond on the left.

  Southgate Shopping Center, Lake Charles, Louisiana, 1961. I worked at Halpern’s Fabrics, two doors away from the Gulf National Bank, which I attempted to rob.

  Gulf National Bank, site of the failed robbery that would send me to prison for forty-four years. When the holdup went bad, I left through the back door with three employees, one of whom would die by my hand in a moment of panic.

  A deputy at the crime scene where my victim, Julia Ferguson, was mortally wounded, on the outskirts of Lake Charles in 1961. The site was not protected for the ensuing investigation. Most evidence was not preserved; other evidence was altered or fabricated. This would eventually lead to my release from prison—in 2005.

  Sheriff Henry “Ham” Reid brings me into the Calcasieu Parish jail through the back door around 9:00 p.m. on February 16, 1961, to avoid the mob of several hundred angry whites awaiting my arrival in the front.

  District Attorney Frank Salter had been in office only a few months at the time of my terrible (and sensational) interracial crime. He made his local reputation prosecuting me for it three times and opposing my release from prison for forty years, while supporting the release of numerous other convicted murderers.

  The Reception Center building at the Louisiana State Prison, which housed death row, where I arrived on April II, 1962, after being convicted of murder.

  This is how I looked during my first day on Angola’s death row.

  Death row, where I was incarcerated from 1962 to 1973, between trials. In 2007, this facility was replaced by a new, larger death row.

  Most Angola inmates live in dormitories. Above right: A typical sixty-four-man dorm, and, left, its toilet facilities. Privacy was not part of prison life.

  Inmates two abreast on the Walk, heading to the dining hall. Although the prison raised cattle and hogs, much of the meat was deemed too good for the prisoners and was sold on the open market. Cheaper food was purchased for the inmates.

  A lone prisoner walks along the fence of the Big Yard, the recreation area for half of the Main Prison’s 1,800 dormitory-housed inmates.

  Relaxation takes many forms. A game of cards in the dorm.

  Relaxation takes many forms. Volleyball on the Yard.

  Relaxation takes many forms. Basketball teams in the gym.

  Relaxation takes many forms. Inmate musicians who entertain at internal prison events, such as the annual Angola Rodeo, and at church, civic, and political functions outside the prison.

  Guards survey a cache of weapons they discovered in the Main Prison. In the 1970s, everyone had weapons, most handmade. The prevailing sentiment among inmates was that they would rather be caught by security with a weapon than by a hostile prisoner without one.

  An inmate rushes another to the hospital on a buggy in the old days, before the federal court issued an order in 1975 to end the violence and improve prison conditions.

  James “Stinky” Dunn, seen here in 1978, was raped and sexually enslaved by another prisoner. Slaves were treated as property—rented, traded, gambled, sold. A slave won his freedom only through release from prison or the death of his master.

  In a world without females, men sought sexual relief in masturbation and from sexual slaves, some of whom were gay but most of whom were weak inmates forced by stronger prisoners to serve as women. A slave did his master’s bidding, whether that meant dancing, satisfying his sexual needs, doing laundry, prostituting, or smuggling contraband. Some embraced their prison roles as women. Most of the sexual violence in Angola was gradually ended.

  A seven-foot-by-nine-foot solitary-confinement cell, windowless, with a hatch in the door and a lightbulb on the ceiling, both controlled by a guard.

  An isolation cell, distinguished by its front wall of bars, which lets the sights and sounds of humanity in. Either cell could be used for disciplinary reasons, protective custody, inmates deemed a threat to security, or the mentally ill. The length of an inmate’s stay in solitary confinement was at the discretion of authorities, ranging from overnight to, in some cases, more than thirty years.

  All prisoners are required to work or to attend school. Inmates study for their GEDs.

  All prisoners are required to work or to attend school. Paralegal students graduate.

  A guard marches laborers to the field.

  Picking cotton by hand.

  “Busting concrete” by hand.

  Religious services conducted by inmate preachers were more popular than those led by resident chaplains, most of whom were viewed as time-serving bureaucrats. Angola has inmate-led congregations representing most Christian denominations. The Muslims, long misunderstood, became a powerful force for peace in the prison.

  Ross Maggio, Jr., Angola warden, 1976–77 and 1981–84. Tough enough to tame the bloodiest prison in America in 1976, and tough enough to keep our prison newsmagazine, The Angolite, going when a hostile administration wanted to shut it down in 1981.

  I was fortunate to be able to weave meaning and purpose into my prison life through print journalism, radio work as a documentarian and NPR correspondent, and producing television and documentary films. At my Angolite typewriter in 1977.

  A
t the prison radio station in 1987.

  Filming on the levee in 1994.

  Speaking to high school students outside the prison.

  “What you mean is that I could create a little problem for you with Mr. Phelps, but you can create a lot of big ones for me here,” I said.

  Maggio grinned. “Another thing you want to keep in mind: If a warden doesn’t want a man to get out of prison, he’s not gonna get out, and it doesn’t matter who asks the parole and pardon boards to turn him loose.” I knew that to be true.

  I asked, “What kind of deal do you want to make?”

  “Well, not so much a ‘deal’ as an understanding,” Maggio said. “I’m not talking about censoring anything. Mr. Phelps doesn’t want censorship. He wants you to be free to write what you want, and that’s okay with me.” Maggio knocked the ashes from one of the half-dozen Roi-Tan cigars he smoked daily. “But you’re going to have more freedom to move and learn things than any other prisoner—and most employees—in this penitentiary, and common sense tells me that you will run across problems that I might not know exist. It’s how you’re going to handle that information that I’m interested in. If you’re just looking for a sensational story to scandalize the prison and make me and my men look bad, then we’re going to have a problem. And it’s not going to be good for anyone if there’s a legitimate problem that I could have solved but can’t solve once it comes out. I’ve got to defend my men and their actions, and I’m going to do that.

  “All I ask is that when you come across a legitimate problem that affects the prison, let me know about it. I’m not talking about snitching or giving me information about prisoners or other people’s business. I’m never going to ask you anything like that. I’m simply talking about the kind of problems that affect the institution and my administration of it. You give me a chance to solve it first, then you can write whatever you want, stating that the warden’s office either solved or didn’t solve the problem. Then you’re not going to have any difficulties with The Angolite. In fact, I want to see you and the paper do a good job because it’s to my benefit.”

  What Maggio wanted was reasonable, and his wanting to defuse problems before they became public gave me an opportunity to approach him for solutions. Once a problem was brought to Maggio’s attention, he would act on it.

  So to deal with the former mental patient’s problem, I called Frank Blackburn, associate warden for treatment. I explained the problem and said: “The public would never stand for this. There is something particularly offensive about sending a mentally ill person to a hospital for treatment and then punishing him for it.”

  “We didn’t put those people in the field for punishment,” Blackburn replied.

  “I know—you put them out there to teach them good work habits,” I said. “You can paint this thing any color you want, but there is no way you can justify sticking mental patients in the most stressful work detail in the prison.”

  “Warden Maggio gave the order and it’s to be applied straight across the board—no exceptions. It’s what he wants, and he’s the warden.”

  “If this thing leaks to the news media,” I said, “he’ll get front-page coverage from New York to Bangkok. I’m sure he’d rather have you make logical exceptions.”

  “Well, Rideau, I don’t have the authority to make an exception to Warden Maggio’s orders.”

  I already knew that. “Then maybe you could take the policy to him and point out the need to make an exception. My guess is that when the media starts asking questions, his first question to you will be: ‘Why wasn’t I told about this?’”

  After some more back-and-forth, Blackburn told me to send the names to him. “I’ll talk to Warden Maggio,” he said.

  The problem was promptly resolved, and the former mental patients were reassigned to less stressful jobs.

  And so I became kind of an unofficial ombudsman for the prison, solving many inmate problems through low-level prison officials who preferred to resolve the issues themselves rather than have me take them to Maggio or expose them in The Angolite. Indeed, many employees came to welcome my intervention. I liked being helpful, and I also liked the fact that my role as Angolite editor freed me from the deadening regimentation of prison routine. Unlike the lives of those who labored at difficult or mindless jobs, mine was determined rather by the events, intrigues, and problems of the day.

  Instead of relieving overcrowding by releasing the old, infirm, and handicapped among its mostly black inmate population, as other states did, Louisiana, flush with oil money, instead chose in 1976 to build its way out. The state spent more than $100 million to construct and expand facilities, creating a lucrative prison-building boom for politically connected architects, contractors, and builders. Camp J, Angola’s new maximum-security disciplinary cellblock, opened near the end of May 1977, just in time to take in a couple hundred of the seven or eight hundred rebellious fieldworkers staging a “work slowdown.”

  I rushed to the Control Center Gate, which led to the Big Yard, when I heard about the disturbance, because I wanted to photograph it. I was stopped by a guard who sent me back to the Angolite office. He was following the warden’s instructions. Furious with Maggio, I complained to Phelps. He already knew about it.

  “You probably won’t appreciate this, but what Ross did was for your protection,” he said. I told him I didn’t need to be protected from the inmates, that Maggio did it to protect his guards from getting their picture taken doing something they didn’t want anyone to see.

  “A criminal will do just about anything to prevent exposure and punishment,” said Phelps. “What makes you think a guard will respond any differently to your pointing that camera at him when he’s beating an inmate with a baton, regardless of whether he’s justified or not? Guards are like people everywhere: They don’t always follow orders or obey rules or laws. Ross wasn’t protecting them from you, but you from them. I can assure you those guards would have taken that camera from you, destroyed it, and probably hurt you very badly in the process. Freedom of the press is an ideal we’re trying to make work in here, but our first priority is to protect life—in this instance, yours. You just confirmed that you weren’t even aware of the danger you were about to walk into. Ross did the right thing.”

  I asked him if that meant our agreement that I wouldn’t be censored was subject to the whim of the warden. He responded that there could be no free press if I was lying in a hospital bed. “In order to accomplish anything, both you and The Angolite have to survive,” he said. “You know, Wilbert, people who have power don’t always cooperate with the press. In fact, they will do almost anything to protect themselves from bad press.” He told me publishing does not occur in a vacuum, and at times I would have to be creative in order to do what the power-holders didn’t want me to do. He said publishers, editors, and reporters all over the world confront this same problem every day. He also pointed out that journalists didn’t always have cameras. “But you still have the power of the pen,” he said, “and the freedom to do what any good journalist would do—backtrack, investigate what happened, interview inmates and guards who were involved, then paint a word picture of what took place for your readers. Quit complaining—do your job.”

  My frustration at having been barred from covering the disturbance vanished as Phelps’s lecture sank in. He had given me a broader context in which to see myself and my work. I wasn’t just a prisoner who had been handed certain rights; I was a real journalist with a real job to do. Like the best journalists, I would sometimes have to be resourceful to surmount obstacles to a story. This new view of myself shaped my work in all the years to come.

  7

  Truth Behind Bars

  1977—1981

  When Tommy left to become the governor’s personal valet, I decided it was time to add a white inmate to the staff of The Angolite: Billy Wayne Sinclair.

  “You’re gonna catch enough flak from blacks for putting a white boy in my place, without picking on
e the administration hates,” Tommy said when I told him. “He’s a criminal and a dopehead.” Billy had recently emerged from a stint in the cellblock for possession of LSD. Everyone I knew advised against my bringing him on board.

  I first met Billy in 1965, when he was a tall, skinny twenty-four-year-old who was shoved by angry deputies into the Hole near me behind the booking desk of the East Baton Rouge Parish jail. He had been on parole after serving a year in Angola for a sex offense, followed by a stint in the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute. He was already wanted for robberies in several states when he gunned down a popular convenience store manager in Baton Rouge. Hostile deputies perpetrated numerous little cruelties to make his stay in the Hole tough, like leaving his bright overhead light on even at night, so he couldn’t sleep. To ease his misery, I passed him cigarettes and food, and once turned up my transistor radio so that he could hear a little music. For my trouble, the jailer transferred me to a solitary-confinement cell, the only black in the middle of the white section of the jail. Shortly afterward, I discovered Billy had been placed in the cell behind me. In the middle of winter, one of the jailers turned on an air conditioner that streamed cold air in on him. Freezing, his voice reduced to a whisper, Billy pleaded through a ventilation shaft for me to help him. I instigated the white inmates to rebel. Their protest brought in top officials, who rescued Billy. He would forever credit me with saving his life. As Billy was led out, the angry local sheriff vowed I would remain in my isolation cell as long as I was in his jail. He kept his word. I was there another two years, longer than any other prisoner held in isolation.