Cassie Riley
Corrections
In the Place of Justice
March 29, 2015
We all know of The Louisiana State Penitentiary, otherwise known as Angola; but none of us know it as well as Wilbert Rideau. Wilbert was imprisoned for forty-four years, mainly in Angola, for a crime he never even committed. He was convicted of the murder of a white bank teller in 1961, by an all-white jury. In this essay, his struggles and hardships will be brought to light.
What began as a botched bank robbery, turned into a life sentence. It is strange to think that Rideau was the same age as I am right now when he was sentenced to death. Rideau was a prime target in angola. He believed what saved him, was his ability to dodge the electric chair. He said that the weakest inmates served as slaves or ¨galboys¨, and that new inmates were sized up and mostly gang raped. The khaki backs, which were pistol toting convicts served as guards, were the only source of protection. Rideau said, ¨the slaves only way out was to commit suicide, escape or kill his master.¨ He described Angola as a living hell. It took some time to get used to and find a way of survival, but he truly made the best of the horrid situation.
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It was a prison’s news magazine. The magazine was nominated numerous times for national magazine awards. Not only did he redeem himself, he became an important advocate for prison reform. He said that what saved him emotionally while he was sitting alone in his solitary death row cell, was his books. Wilbert said, “Reading ultimately allowed me to feel empathy, to emerge from my cocoon of self-centeredness and appreciate the humanness of others. . . . It enabled me finally to appreciate the enormity of what I had done.” A few years after he began writing for the prison magazine, the reform