ANGOLA LOUISIANA STATE PENITENTIARY. A HALF-CENTURY OF RAGE AND REFORM - Tecno-Libro

One tried to swim his way out, masquerading in woman&rsquo.s finery that dragged him beneath the raging waters of the Mississippi River. Others tried to rehabilitate their ways out, only to find themselves after all still mired inescapably in the turbulent murky quagmire of Louisiana politics. Yet others tried merciless self-mutilation to rivet the attention of the press and an uncaring public upon brutalities of the system, and this worked, but only briefly. . Louisiana&rsquo.s immense and infamous state penitentiary called Angola held them all. The more they struck out in despair and desperation and yes, violence, in protest against the system and the place, the more tightly it clutched them. And so the ones who are not dead are still in there, their fascinating stories providing heart-rending glimpses into what it was like to grow up black and deprived in South Louisiana and awaken to the dichotomy between what life promised and what it actually delivered. And yet, these stories are