The Penitentiary Past: The Birth of Louisiana’s Most Brutal Prison

0:05 H a wall, street line, shackle change, Oh someome gird, it's calling my name. There is no mercy and it's been a tentery juice as the hill Stream game Rango the three. I'm here be.

0:46 By me to die inside these walls, inside the wild, hadn't went the girl as I.

1:31 Hey everyone, and welcome back to Bloody Angola, a podcast one and forty two years in the making, the complete story of America's bloodiest prison. I'm your host, Jim Chapman. And with the recent changes that have taken place, I'm gonna go ahead and kick off a new season. And this is season seven, episode one, and I'm gonna call this first episode fucking up to the Master. When I'm done, you're gonna know why. And I'm gonna jump right into it today and just stay tuned for some announcements after the story. Now, way back in episode one of season one, whatdy and I told you about the Walls, and we touched on how Louisiana State Penitentiary became Louisiana State Penitentiary way back then, and we told you about it starting off as a plantation. But we didn't go all the way back in history even one hundred years before it was Bloody Angola. So today I'm gonna give you the full story of Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. So if you're new to the podcast, I'm blessed and happy to have you, and you picked the perfect time to listen, because we're going to take it back and just quickly.

2:55 If you've been a listener for a while, you know that Louisiana State penitenti lies in a big bend in the Mississippi River and it's about thirty miles up the river from Saint Francisville, Louisiana. Now, it originated from several Spanish land grants, and y'all these land grants were made in the last decade of the eighteenth century and into the first decade of the nineteenth century. Most of the property had been acquired by a guy by the name of Francis Ruth for the production of cotton, which was a big business back then, especially in Louisiana. Now, in the late eighteen thirties, the property passed on to Isaac Franklin, and he was a wealthy planner and he was a slave trader from Tennessee, and adjacent lands were added to those holdings, and the property was managed as seven plantations total.

3:55 They were called Angola, Bellevue, Lake Killer, me Losha, manned Longo, Panola, and Mamro Villa. I know, strange names. The owners lived primarily on the Angola plantation, and by the twentieth century the entire property was referred to by that single name. Now, Isaac Franklin had a wife. Her name was Adalca Hayes, and she retained the property until eighteen eighty and she sold it to Samuel James and he held onto that lease to manage the prison system in Louisiana. And James worked the property with that convict labor until nineteen oh one, and then it was purchased by the State of Louisiana.

4:51 Now this was an eighteen thousand acre Antebellum plantation property, right all right, So let's get into France. Ruth and Francis Ruth was of West Feliciana Parish and Francis Ruth began acquiring the land that currently makes up Louisiana State Penitentiary to Angola in eighteen twenty seven, just buying up land. Right. By eighteen thirty four, Francis had owned some seventy five percent of the property, and he divided his holdings into three adjacent cotton plantations known as Bellevue, killing Ernee, and these names, y'all, losh LeMond is what I'm going with.

5:37 In eighteen thirty five, Francis Ruth formed a partnership with a guy by the name of Isaac Franklin, who was a wealthy Tennessee planner, and he had made an enormous fortune in what was known as the interstate slave trade. Now, unlike the middle eighteen thirties, Franklin and his slaver associate It's were considered the leading long distance slave traffickers in the country and credited with supplying two thirds of all slaves transported to the Deep South. When Ruth's finances collapsed in eighteen thirty seven, all of his property was passed on to Franklin. So Franklin he marries a woman by the name of Aladisia Hayes, who was a socially prominent debutante as they were referred to back then from Nashville, Tennessee, and on July first of eighteen thirty nine, Franklin. At this time he was fifty years old and Alisea was twenty two, so she may have been one of those that married for the money. Right, the couple lived part of the year in Tennessee and part of the year in Louisiana. Now, by the early eighteen forties, Franklin added a fourth plantation into his property, and that was known as Woodyard. There he constructed a steam powered sawmill and

7:07 a gristmill, a barn. He had fourteen slave cabins, a hospital, a cook house, an office, a storehouse, two sheds in a two story residence and adding all this stuff actually increased his land value by twenty thousand dollars, which was a lot of money back then. The Angola's big house would serve as the family's main Louisiana residence, and Longo Plantation was created from the southernmost part of the Angola tract, so the Franklins there in love right. They have four children over the next five years, Victoria Oda Sea, Julius Caesar, yes his name was Julius Caesar, and sadly, Julius Caesar Franklin died just fourteen hours after his birth. Isaac Franklin himself dies at Angola on the property on April twenty seventh of eighteen forty six, and his over eight thousand acres in West Falliciana at that time, at that time were valued at five hundred thousand dollars. Now, to give you an idea of calculating inflation into that, I actually looked it up, and five hundred thousand dollars in eighteen

8:40 forty three is worth twenty one million, three hundred and four thousand dollars today. So Isaac Franklin dies and his body was preserved in two barrels of whiskey, and it was transported in a sheet lead coffin the esteem boat to Nashville. So that was early embalming for you. While in Tennessee for the funeral, the Franklin's second child, Adalcilla, died on June eighth of eighteen forty six of bronchitis. How about that tells you how far medicine has come.

9:20 Bronchitis will kill you in eighteen forty six. Now everybody gets that at least once a year. It seems like their oldest daughter, Victoria, also died of croup just three days later. So all that left was his wife, right, and she inherited a lot of money and al Decilla Hayes Franklin, upon her inheritance, was considered the wealthiest woman in late Antebellum America. They had some wealthy ones back then. On May eighth of eighteen forty nine, she married Joseph Alexander Acklin, who was a prominent at Huntsville, Alabama lawyer.

10:03 Before the marriage, Ackland signed a prenup agreement relinquishing all interest in her businesses, property and assets. How about that. And look, this was a beautiful woman, even for that time. There's a picture of her that I'm going to put up on the Blooding Anga Patreon, So check that out if you're not already a member. But I'm going to put a picture of her up, and I mean, just a beautiful woman here in this picture. So aclan, he agrees, he signs that prenup. And nevertheless he was a superb businessman in his own right, and he became a plantation manager and he actually tripled her net worth by the year eighteen sixty. Now, there was a magazine back then called The Southern Cultivator and in eighteen fifty two described Acklin as a man of fine personal appearance, very bold, frank and decided in everything he does, with great energy in industry. The writer also added that Acklin was one of the largest planners on the Mississippi, with the finest and best managed estate in the South, worked by seven hundred slaves, who were very much attached him, for he is the best master I have ever known, some of them said, And the article continued on and said Colonel Acklan had thirty mechanics, a large steam sawmill, from which

11:37 he is furnished with the best building materials. He employs six overseers, a general agent and a bookkeeper, two physicians, a head carpenter, a tenor, a ditcher, and a preacher from the Negroes. And that's that's written. The houses on each plantation are neat frame houses on brick piers, and are furnished with good betting, mosquito bars, and all that is essential in health and comfort. The Negroes are well fed, in clothed, and seem to be the happiest population I have ever seen. Everything moves systematically and with the discipline of a regular trained army. Each plantation has a hospital for the sick, well furnished, a nurse house, and a general cookouse. Colonel Acklan takes great interest in planning as a fine library, and regardless of expense, keeps up with all the modern improvements in farming. He is now introducing grapes on his place and cultivating oranges for hedges. And it shod a picture of him, and he's a handsome guy.

12:42 And I'll post that on the Patreon as well. Now, soon after their marriage, the Aklans began building what's known as Belmont Mansion in Nashville, and that was their quote unquote summer house. It was worth five hundred thousand dollars back then, which means it was a twenty one million dollar house today, and it was finished in eighteen fifty two. Now, by eighteen fifty nine, the Aklans had six children. Joseph Hayes who was born in eighteen fifty They had twin girls, Lauren and Corene, who were born in eighteen fifty two, William Hayes who was born in eighteen fifty five, Claude who was born in eighteen fifty seven, and Pauline, who was born in eighteen fifty nine. The twins both died at just two years of age. They both contracted scarlet fever at Angola only months after William's birth in eighteen fifty five, out to see his daughter. Emma. Franklin, then eleven, died of diphtheria while at the Belmont Summerhouse. So the Aclans they spent the winters at in Gola Plantation and the remainder of the year in Nashville at the quote unquote Summerhouse, you know, the twenty one million dollar mansion.

14:08 They traveled in between these points on river steamers. This schedule that allowed the family to be in Louisiana for cottingenning season and all the pre lentth celebrations in New Orleans. A very Catholic population here in Louisiana now and even then, of course, the majority of Louisianians being French descent, Acklin himself needed to be an Angola six to eight months per year. So Joseph Acklin he purchases several additional Louisiana properties between eighteen fifty two and eighteen fifty seven, and he wanted to kind of compliment his wife's plantations, if you will, So he buys a six hundred and forty acre tract that becomes will was known as Monrovia plantation, and by eighteen sixty, Ackland claimed to possess two million dollars in real estate and one million dollars in personal estate.

15:13 And that was in those times money, so you're talking sixty eighty million dollars worth of property. The previous year, the Ackland's Louisiana plantations had produced three thousand, one hundred and forty nine bales of cotton, making them the third largest cotton producer in the state. Some six hundred and fifty nine slaves worked four thousand acres of improved land. Some one hundred and twenty eight of these slaves lined in forty four cabins on Angola Plantation. This plantation had two quarters areas, one near the Big House and the other on the river about three miles south of the Big House. So what about during the Civil War? Well, during the Civil War Joseph Acklin he signs an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. No surprise, the guy had a boatload of slaves, which obviously horrible, awful shit that should have never occurred, and he was getting rich off these slaves. But it explains why he would sign an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. Now he donated some thirty thousand dollars to the Confederate war effort as well.

16:29 I'm going to imagine he did. He stood to lose everything, right. Acklin even tried to enlist in the Confederacy at one point, but he was crippled with authorritis. He just had really bad authortis problems and they would not allow him to join the military. So their living life. It's during the Civil War, and when the Union Army advanced into middle Tennessee in eighteen sixty two, his wife encourages her husband, Hey, we need to get the hell out of here, and we need to go live in Angola because they're about to take over everything in Tennessee. So in Louisiana, Acklan was in kind of a difficult position. The Federals out of occupied New Orleans and Baton Ridge. They were threatening him from the river and the Confederates were threatening him from the land. His property. It provided like a main river crossing for Confederate provisions, mail, and even troops. They would use the river to get him back and forth. Right, So in April of eighteen sixty two, the US Navy steam slope Brooklyn Docks at Angola, they wanted some fresh meat and vegetables, and Ackland tells a lieutenant by the name of RB. Lawry that the Confederacy told him he had to burn his cotton and if he didn't do it, they would hang him. And the reason they were wanting him to burn on is cotton, y'all, was the Union Army.

17:58 They were worried that they were going to get their hands on that cotton, be able to sell it, and it would continue to be able to fund the Union Army. So he tells that lieutenant that, and the lieutenant basically tells him, look, you come on our side, we'll protect you. But he says, hell no, I ain't doing that because if I do that, I'm going to get killed by the Confederate Army. They're going to know a turncoat, right. So he eventually sells them some poultry and vegetables, and he kind of develops a friendship with the Union Navy as they're traveling back and forth. They left him alone. They didn't burn his plantation, so he was kind of friendly with him, and he would occasionally pass information to them.

18:45 He would even let them use his carpentry shops. He allowed them to bury their dead on his property, and in his last known letter, Acklin wrote for Angola, this was on August twentieth of eighteen sixty three, that all was in ruins in the fields were just wasting, everything was dying, and the Confederates had taken all his mules and horses, and that he had been subjected to all kinds of lies and slander that malice could invent. He wrote. In September of eighteen sixty three, Aklan was thrown from a wagon into a ditch on his Louisiana plantation. He caught pneumonia subsequently, and he died now the very month of Joseph's death. Out to Sea, she submits a claim to the Confederate Army for the thirty one thousand, three hundred and forty dollars worth of cotton, horses and mules appropriated from the Acklan's Louisiana plantations. She was kind of a fire plug, so eventually the war ends, and three weeks after the Confederate surrender in eighteen sixty five, to Sea and her four surviving children, Joseph, William, Claude, and Pauline, they leave for Europe to retrieve money made from wartime cotton sales, and in January of eighteen sixty seven, the Aclans make their first trip to the Louisiana plantations since

20:19 the war, and Inngla William Acklin he writes in his journal that my mother was welcomed as if she had been a queen setting foot on her own domain. She shook hands with the overseer, and then in turn with the oldest settlers, as they called themselves. They followed her to the house and onto the rear porch of the house, and those who did not meet her at the landing came to pay their respects. And while these presentations are taking place, the elderly women of the household knelt down in a group about her chair, forming sort of a bodyguard. So she was obviously a very well respected woman. Now, on June twenty six of eighteen sixty seven, the beautiful old seas she marries doctor William Archer Cheatham. He was a noted Nashville physician and a cousin of Confederate General Benjamin chiafam At the time of their marriage, Outaicea was fifty years old and doctor Cheatham was forty seven, so she was a little bit of a cookar. Upon his marriage, Doctor Cheatham also signed a prenuptial agreement disavowing all claims to her properties. Boy she she didn't play when it came to her money right. However, Chiefam made several trips to West Feliciana, sometimes accompanied by Joseph Junior, to oversee the Louisiana properties on his wife's behalf. The Aclan Cheatham

21:49 holdings do not appear at all in the schedule for West Feliciana Parish in eighteen seventy, which suggested that the family's fortunes had begun to reverse at this time. So Aldosia, she travels to Angola in early eighteen seventy two, and she had the intention of taking over the plantations management. She's saying, we're losing some money here, and the fireplug that she is, she thinks she can solve that problem. So the crop that year was very small and the taxes were very burtisome. In addition, a disease of mules in eighteen seventy four and several crop failures had forced the estate into rapid decline. So on December twenty third of eighteen eighty, Aldaseea and William they sell their West Feliciana properties to a partnership to guys, a guy by the name of Lewis Traeger and another guy by the name of Samuel James, and the property totaled ten thousand, fifteen acres and it was sold to Trigger and James for one hundred thousand dollars in eighteen eighty five. Out to Sea, she leaves Belmont, that Nashville mansion, and she separates from Doctor Chiefam, which is surprising. People didn't separate back in them days, especially when they had been married

23:20 eighteen years, as Doctor Chiefam and ou to Sea were at that time. So she William Claude and Pauline. They moved to Washington, d c. Where Aldacilla becomes very ill and dies from pneumonia on May fourth of eighteen eighty seven. She was seventy years old. So who was Samuel James. Well, he was a civil engineer who in eighteen sixty nine he forms a firm called James Buckner and Company Levy Contractors, and that's a big business at this time in history. And he receives a five year lease from the State of Louisiana to manage the prison system. This lease gave the company authority to manage the main prison in Baton Rouge, which at that time was none as the Walls. So if you haven't listened to that, go listen to it episode number one of season one. What the State of Louisiana would do was they would lease out convicts to Samuel James. Now these convicts, they will work on private plantations and they would also do public works projects like the Levy system. In eighteen seventy, that lease was extended from five to twenty one years, during which time James reportedly maintained the most cynical, profit oriented and brutal prison

24:50 regimen in State of Louisiana's history. Approximately three thousand prisoners died under the James leasing system between eighteen seventy and nineteen oh one, when the State of Louisiana took it back over. Now in eighteen eighty two, he had a business partnership Trager and James, and that was dissolved as a result. James retained in Gola, Bellevue and Longo plantations, and Trager he got to keep Panola, Momravilla, and Lake killing Me plantations, as well as losh LeMond plantations. So on, June fifteenth of eighteen eighty nine, Trager. He loses Lake killing Me plantation to James as the result of a lawsuit that James filed against him. On January sixth of eighteen ninety three, William and Claude Acklin, they receive Panola, losch LeMond and Monroe Villa plantations in a recession from Lewis Tregger. Obviously, Lewis Tregger wouldn't paying his bills, so when Samuel James acquired the West Felician implantations, which are now referred to by the single name Angola, he simply moved himself, his sharecroppers, and the inmates into existing buildings on that property. Pre War slave quarters and later tenant

26:21 houses went to sharecroppers and to inmates. James reportedly housed convicts in the Angola Sugar House, built by Isaac Franklin. In James and his family they occupied what was known as the Angola Big House, which was Aldosia's former home. Now sl James Junior, known as law James. He managed the Angola properties in the late eighteen eighties and assumed complete control after his father's death. James Senior he died from a heart aneurism on the porch of the Angola Big House on July twenty six of eighteen ninety four, and he left behind a fortune of over two million dollars.

27:05 Y'all that's close to one hundred million dollars in today's money. In the property itself, it was heavily mortgage, even though he had a lot of money. For whatever reason, he just mortgaged his property even though he could pay it off. Low James. He takes his family and they move into the Angola Big House now. At the time, this house contained nine bedrooms, halls upstairs and downstairs, a kitchen, dining rooms in front, side and back galleries. The house stood in the center of a very large yard and also contained oak trees, two servant houses, a chicken house, and a small stable. In the backyard there were a dozen pecan trees, fig trees, two large stables, and a privy.

27:56 The Lner located about a block from the Big House. They have wooden above ground cisterns which were cleaned yearly, and y'all's cisterns are used to catch drinking water, and they also had underground wells filled with water not fit for drinking, but they would use those for laundry, for watering animals, et cetera. And the milk was kept cool by suspending bottles of cool water in the wells in the yard, and it was almost like a Cajun refrigerator, if you will. Now. A convict camp for a few men and women was also located near the big house the inmate's house. There were mostly women who worked as field hands or servants in the big house. And it's interesting that the nurse for Law's daughter and his daughter's name was Dot. She was a convicted murderess. Dot's older sister, Cecil, said that Papa always chose the murderer in preference to the thieves to act as servants. A thief is a sneak and not to be trusted in one's house. Once a thief, he's apt to steal again, whereas a murderer is hot headed, commits a crime which is usually sorry for later and probably will not do again. Of course, these people were trustees and had to be handled with diplomacy. When a servant was not competent, she was not scolded. Only another was sent from camp to filler place. The next day.

29:28 The few convict men and women at Angola were worked in gangs in the field with always a guard watching. So several hundred Negro families worked on Angola as sharecroppers and lived in the surviving quarters areas. These croppers paid rent for their land and homes with a percentage of the crop produced. Each one owned two mules, usually bought on time from the James family, cow pigs, chickens, and had vegetable patches. Some had their own wagon. They bought groceries, clothes, and other supplies at two stores that were on the plantation, usually on credit, and the debt was deducted from their crop.

30:16 Schools and churches both Baptists and Methodists were also established for the croppers. So on March twenty seventh of nineteen oh one, the board of the Central Louisiana State Penitentiary purchased Angola, Longo, Bellevue and Killerny plantations, and that was about eight thousand acres from the estate of Samuel James, and they bought it for twenty five dollars per acre. Law was asked to stay on the place as a manager, but he refused. The sharecroppers were distrusted at the cell of the plantation, and law James tried to relocate as many of them as possible to other plantations. Now when the Board took over in Goola in nineteen oh one, forty five two room cabins were still standing, three three room room cabins, twenty three four room cabins, in thirty other buildings, including three residences. The house at Bellevue was valued at eighteen thousand dollars and in Gola's Big House was valued at thirty thousand dollars. Camps for prisoners were established at the old quarters and industrial complexes still standing across the property. Numerous new buildings were also constructed, including a blacksmith shop built east of the Angola Big House where the Antebellum slave quarters once stood. So the state rotated its Angola cotton crop with corn and cowpees each year,

31:50 and stock on the plantation consisted of over three hundred and fifteen head of cattle in seven hundred holls. A sawmill was constructed to harvest the surviving timber on the property, and by May of nineteen oh eight, the penitentiary housed eighteen hundred and sixty inmates, of whom only two hundred and sixty four could read and write in twenty eight of the convict y'all were between the ages of twelve and fifteen years old. Now, lumber and corn production at Angola was very successful during this period, but high water in low prices hurt the cotton crop. The bull weavil destroyed about fifty percent of Angola's cotton in nineteen oh eight and seventy five percent of it in nineteen oh nine. Now, as a consequence, cotton cultivation was abandoned and sugar cane became the principal crop. A modern sugar mill was constructed in nineteen eleven. Then in nineteen twelve, the levees around in Gola broke. The entire plantation was innedated and the cotton mill was destroyed. Rebuilding the levees cost about twenty thousand dollars in those days. In a total of four hundred thousand dollars in those days, money was lost altogether. Then, in nineteen thirty three, a second flood required crews to work at night to maintain those levees, and the Ngola

33:23 Big House survived these floods, but the row of nearby tenant houses did not, and they were all destroyed. Now. By nineteen ten, doctor Emil Ellert, a resident prison physician, and his family. They occupied the Ngola Big House. Convicts continued to be employed at the house as servants. In November of nineteen thirteen, an inmate by the name of Harry Harriet He fatally shoots Miss Ellert and then shoots himself in the Ngola Big House with a revolver belonging to the warden at that time. In nineteen sixteen, Governor Ruffin Pleasant, who was appointed by Henry Fuqua, Baton Riridge as the general manager of the State Penitentiary. He abolishes the Board of Control, and in an effort to centralize prisoners and eliminate the huge expenditure of paying guards and other personnel at construction sites, he comes up with the idea of using what's none as convict labor to construct a large penitentiary at Angola. This was in nineteen sixteen.

34:36 Almost all paid security officers that Angola were fired and replaced by trustee guards. Much more emphasis was placed on reform under Fuqua, who did away with the striping uniforms to lessen the convict humiliation. Fuqua, however, was appointed to his position primarily for his business abilities. W. P. Gibbons, a success full sugar planner, was made form superintendent in nineteen nineteen and his family occupied the Angola Big House. Then in nineteen twenty two, they had severe flooding on the Mississippi River and the Angola Sugar refinery and the Big House got inundated. The prisoners flooded out of Angola and were dispersed to all sorts of temporary housing. To ensure that no such massive relocation off prison property would be necessary again, Fuqua promoted the purchase of all the property between Angola's levee and the Tunica Hills, and during floods convicts could just move to higher ground on the farm itself. So he contacts the Aklan brothers and they actually end up selling Panola, mon Revia and Locomon Plantation to the state in nineteen twenty two, and by nineteen twenty four or the prison area had increased from eight thousand acres to the eighteen thousand acres that you have today.

36:08 It made evacuation was not necessary. When they had another flood in nineteen twenty seven thatdated the property, primarily because of this reason, they just moved a higher ground by the middle of the nineteen twenties, the prison was virtually self supporting over three thousand heads of cattle. They had three hundred and eighty seven mules, two hundred horses, and twenty thousand foul were kept on that property. Of the eighteen thousand acres under cultivation, six thousand were pastors and eight thousand planted in sugar and believe it or not nineteen twenty one, the sugar refinery at Angola at that time was the fourth largest sugar refinery in the South.

36:52 It produced six million pounds of granulated sugar and one million pounds of lump sugar. So in nineteen thirty five the penitentiary it housed seven hundred and forty six white men, fourteen white women, fourteen hundred and fifteen black men, and sixty five black women. The eighty one employees on salary included four preachers, five physicians, a druggist, forty three foreman and two gate men, as well as two telephone operators, eight clerical workers and a storekeeper, nine captains, one chief engineer, a superintendent, an assistant superintendent, an expert sign and metal worker, the warden, and a general manager. Some three hundred and thirty eight inmates were employed at that time as convict guards.

37:45 A forty cell concrete structure known as the Red Hat Cell Block was built after a riot in nineteen thirty three when three men were killed. We tell you all about that in the prior episode called the Red Hat Cell Block. Now prior to the beginning of his term. On April one of nineteen thirty six, Warden Lewis Jones described the conditions adding gullie. He said, apparently there was little system to the safety and protective measures, which were slipshod in the extreme. Guards were carelessly selected and untrained. They were armed with old, worn out, undependable shotguns of which there was no inventory or accurate control. Ammunition was scant and in poor condition. There were no rifles. Men were taken to the fields before daylight and often brought in after dark. There was no outer line of guard towers on the levee around the farm. Supervision was poor or nonexistent. When an escape occurred, there was a lack of organization or cooperation in the pursuit and search attempts were frequent. Due to the lack of discipline and low morale of the inmates. There was much unfair treatment of prisoners and a certain amount of actual brutality. Soft jobs were given to some inmates who had not had a period of work in the line, and probably to some who had money. Contact with the Board of Pardons and Parole was difficult for the inmate. Food was insufficient in

39:17 quantity and variety, poorly prepared, and lacking in meat and other elements needed by the men doing hard labor. Camps, kitchens and dining rooms were often dirty. At some camps there were such crowdic conditions and poor ventilation that they were actually disease breeders. Case after case of tuberculosis developed at old Camps B and I. There were no recreational facilities. School classes were inadequate and poorly run. There was no library. What little reading the men had was often of a degrading nature. For extra items such as cigarettes, candy, fruit, toothpaste, etc.

39:58 They were charged high prices at CA commissaries privately owned by employees of the institution. All inmates were not required to wear prison uniform. There were several trustees at most units allowed to wear civilian clothing. Loose handling of the mails and slack supervision of visitors made it easy to smuggling contraband of various sorts, including marijuana and other dope. So a blizzard in January of nineteen forty it damages the prison crops and the federal crop restrictions had been placed on sugar because the market had been poor the last few years, and attempts to get help from the Corps of Engineers to upgrade Angola's levees at this time proved pretty much fruitless, so they were in bad shape.

40:45 So to kind of solve all this, they start making Louisiana license plates at Angola, and this started in nineteen fifty. They also had a dairy and a dehydration plant inmate guards. They still continued to use them until the nineteen fifties, and the old Angola Big House survived into the forties, but by nineteen fifty the house had to be torn down so to protests the harsh conditions. It was just horrible back then, and to avoid working in the fields thirty one inmates they slashed their Achilles tendons. In February of nineteen fifty one. Got listen to season one of Blooding and Gola. We talk all about that The next year, Judge Robert Keenan of men In based his campaign for governor on the need for prison reforms. The main prison complex was subsequently built, Convict strikes were eliminated and various camps renovated. Flogging was also discontinued. Now, in nineteen sixty one, the prison's budget was drastically reduced and in Gola fell into serious decline. It became known as the bloodiest prison in the South during this time with the number of inmate assaults. Women inmates were moved out of Angola in nineteen sixty one and a federal court order demanded the conditions at Angola be improved. The trustee guard system gets eliminated and the number of guards employed nearly quadruples during this time. The sugar meal was eventually sold in nineteen

42:20 seventy four and sugar was completely abandoned as a crop. Now by this time, the convict camps were officially desegregated. So there you have it. I wanted to give you the complete history from the very beginning, and boy did I go back to the very beginning. I hope you got something out of that. Look horrible time in history. In my opinion. Horrible time, but it is part of history. And I wanted to give you that little bit of information about the bloodiest prison in America, Louisiana State Penitent Tree add Inkola, And I'm about to have some really good stories that in your way, So stay tuned. It's only getting better from here and until next time, I'm Jim Chapman for Bloody and Gola, a podcast one hundred and forty two years in the making. The complete story of America's bloody is present.

43:22 Peace a wall, street line, shackle, change, some gird. It's calling my name. There is no mercy and this being a tentery juice the huge stream game Rango three, I'm in fide. I'm me to die inside these walls, inside the wild and when the wars, I know it's overbody anger, ohbody angle, Yeah,