Prisoner Perspectives:

Life Behind the Wire

When I first arrived at Angola prison in Louisiana, in the 1970s, I worked in the fields like everyone else and then in the “tag plant”’ making the state’s license plates. On weekends, I’d go to law classes taught by some of the other prisoners. Many prisoners only had a fifth-grade education, but I’d been to some college, and I loved to read. I played sousaphone in high school and was used to memorizing sheet music. Memorizing case law felt similar. Pretty soon, I was the one teaching the classes.

​

An older prisoner named Kenneth Johnston—we called him “Biggie”—mentored me, and I became his protege, learning how to write motions, appeals and other legal documents. One day, he read a little memo I’d written, and he said, “Bang it up!,” meaning, go ahead and write up the motion. That was the first time I did something on my own.

​

I got a job in the law library and became “counsel substitute.” It was a bit like a competition: Guys would come into the library looking for the best person to help them with their cases. I told myself, One day they’ll be coming through that door looking for me.

​

Now, looking back, I’m grateful to the guys who entrusted me with their life. That’s what it boiled down to.

Eventually, I got to run the library. I’d show up at 7 a.m. and work all day—with breaks for lunch and count times—and sometimes stay up all night working. The library was my sanctuary. I had to read every periodical before it went on the shelf and, because this was before the days of computers, I would write out index cards about new cases for the library catalog. I’d write to lawyers, asking them for briefs that had been successful in court, so that other men in prison could use similar arguments.

​

We had a crew of maybe 50 jailhouse lawyers, and we set up the library like a firm: we had specialties, like criminal appeals or divorce or custody—all common issues in prison. At first, the library was maybe 1,100 square feet, set up like a shotgun house. But after a fire in the 1980s, the education building was rebuilt. We had a much bigger space. It rivaled anything on a college campus.

​

Every once in a while a guy would thank us for helping him get out of prison. That felt really good.

This was an era when riots were erupting at prisons across the country: Attica, San Quentin, New Mexico State Penitentiary. Some people on the outside said Angola would see the biggest riot of all, and we’d say to each other on the inside, “Well, nobody gave us the memo!” But we also knew our prison was on 18,000 acres: If we rioted, they would just send us to another section. We’d still be in prison.

​

So we asked ourselves: Do we want to change our conditions, or do we want to change our circumstances?