According to recent reporting from The Appeal, a federal judge’s ruling on Louisiana’s Angola’s farm line calls for greater heat protections. But Angola has a historic link to slavery and inhumane conditions, so how far will this go?
Angola originated as a former slave plantation awarded to a former Confederate Army officer Samuel L. James in 1880. Under his control, Angola was known as James Prison Camp. Black people there were leased to other landowners to replace their lost slave labor, while white prisoners were given clerical and craftsmen jobs.
Louisiana purchased the James Prison Camp in 1900 after public outcry, resulting in the ban on convict leasing and the formation of the New Orleans Prison Reform Association. The state fully took over operations in 1901. Despite being under state control, Angola continued its tradition of slavery.
Today, Angola is known as the “Alcatraz of the South,” and it is the largest maximum-security prison in the U.S., where many of the incarcerated population serve life sentences. Angola prisoners toil in the same fields as their enslaved ancestors, enduring extreme heat with little to no rest.
The history of Louisiana's Angola Prison and its inhumane conditions demonstrate the prison industrial complex's blatant disregard for human life. The torturous heat people are subjected to there is just one example.