This post is Part 2 of my series on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina striking the Louisiana coastline, causing immense damage and costing at least 1,800 lives. Since virtually everyone knows how it impacted civilian life but very few people know how it affected those of us serving LWOP and lengthy sentences in Louisiana State Prison (Angola).
“The first really impactful item that sent shivers down our spines was when word began to filter up to us of frightening events in New Orleans – prisoners were abandoned in their cells, left to the steadily rising waters when their guards abandoned them and fled their posts. Thereports were horrendous. Already off-balance with our own conditions, our only thought was “Could we be next?”
Bill Kissinger from Part 1 of this series.
Nothing happens to improve your lot in life immediately. Anywhere. In prison it takes an inordinate time longer. How much is “inordinate?” What is “safety?” How “uncomfortable” are prisoners supposed to be and for how long? Are prisoners supposed to be considered “less than” outside civilians?
For the first few weeks of our life in the gym, chaos continued to reign and it was on free people (guards) and convicts alike. We had gotten folding Army-style surplus cots to sleep on, we were eating in the Main Prison chow hall although at separate feeding times. We were starting to return to our regular jobs (although, those of us who were able-bodied had been working every day on emergency clean-up crews) and new procedures had been worked out between crew foremen, Main Prison wardens (5) and the Outcamp Warden and the Camp F warden . The wardens passed down their agreements to their colonels and lieutenant colonels who passed it to majors and captains and lieutenants and – theoretically, at least – orders were carried out and changes made and policies implemented.
Nothing really quite worked that way with us as we were the new kids on the block and would remain that way for a long time. There had always been a kind of veiled hostility towards prisoners who lived at Camp F from both security and Main Prison convicts. They saw us as spoiled brats with way too many freedoms and comforts and way too much “political” power; politics in Angola is everything, and at every level: sergeants, lieutenants, captains, majors, colonels, wardens – everybody had their favorites and every favorite had their own connections. It’s just the way things work and it’s the way things have always worked – think back to your school days or your military service or even the company you work at. It’s just that way.
So, the majority of our obstacles were based on this type of thing – the way we were viewed. So what did we do to counteract the “little brother” dilemma we were boxed into? We worked together to accomplish more, to secure what we felt was ours, to improve our lot, and we did it in small ways. We had a stellar plumbing crew, a skilled electrical crew, a grand carpentry crew, and a whole bunch of crafty wise little dudes in various positions who were capable of pulling off semi-miracles.
Our leaky toilet? Fixed! Our lack of electrical outlets? Fixed! Phone lines installed and ready for Securus to come in? Done! Hygiene supplies and cleaning supplies? Done! Real, metal bunks and mattresses for sleeping comfortably? Done! Water fountain? Done! Fans? Done! Over time, when we finally returned to Camp F a year later, we left behind a much better framework for the next group of people who found themselves here under similar circumstances.
On only our 3rd day in the gym, I was summoned to a Camp F supervisor’s office. They told me I needed to be ready to go to work in the morning. WHAT? I was the Clerk for Camp F. At F, my duties consisted of filing paperwork generated by each shift, creating new blank forms for them, doing ACA mandatory paperwork (i.e., temperature logs, hobbyshop inventories, tower checks, camp vehicle mileage reports, flammable inventories, etc.), making coffee for the E-Bldg, keeping the lobby clean, and in general, generating whatever written reports my boss needed when needed so that he’d look good when called upon.
I Went To Work The Next Day…
The next morning I was up and cleaned up and dressed and ready to go to work. By this time, there was a procedure worked out for the patrol driver to pass through the Sallyport and drive to the back door of the gym, load up callouts, and drive back out. The patrol van driver picked me up at a little before 5:00am, which guaranteed that I would be a few minutes late to get coffee made for the shift, but I was so happy to get out of the gym and back to work that I didn’t care.
Little did I know how happy and excited I would be at the end of the day, my first day back at work. First, I would be free to do what I loved doing – bringing efficiency and order to an office – and second, that I would meet and be entranced by a girl from New Orleans, and that I would also take a trip to the dungeon and back.
We got to Camp F, and one of the female security officers told me, “Alright, Kissinger, they’ve got a few hundred ladies here now, so things are gonna’ be a little bit different. We need to figure out a way to get all these ladies assigned to a bed, and once we do that, we can figure out what to do next.”
Females? WHAT?! I’m really, really confused because Angola is a MEN’S maximum security prison! Females had originally been sent to Angola to what had become known as “The Willows,” a small collection of clapboard buildings that typically housed anywhere up to 125 women at a time and was located in the northwestern corner of the prison.
Women had been housed at Angola since around 1901. Remember that all during that time, throughout the South, was a period of extreme segregation, so there were separate living quarters for Blacks and Whites. There were several occasions when the females came under close scrutiny from “committees” and “study groups” and “prison experts.” Was anything ever done to resolve the problems that existed? No….especially during the Huey Long administration. The state’s legislature, as a matter of course, kept their hands off of the penitentiary, as it had always been viewed as the Governor’s “property.”
It took a stripper from New Orleans to cause the women to be moved to an entirely separate facility of their own. (Source: Academia, Marianne Fisher-Giorlando, originally Kerry Myers of the Angolite)
The “Forbidden City” held many, many secrets. The last of the females left Angola in the summer of 1961. A new era dawned. Forty-four years later, women would once again walk through Angola, and would walk in my dorm.
When I got over my initial shock it was time to look at what was before me. There was a stack of different spiral-bound logbooks and single pieces of lined paper with handwritten and nearly illegible names and numbers scrawled across them. Pure turmoil, and the office phone constantly ringing, radios continually chattering with Control Center traffic and a few highly frustrated free people expressing themselves in colorful terms.
A Nightmare Of Work Awaited Me
I grabbed a cup of coffee and dove into it. First, I had to figure out what the logbooks contained and how the information was put together (they were all filled with lists of names and DOB’s and DOC numbers….next to some of the names was a single letter – “W” or “B” or “O” indicating race – but not all of them were indicated.) Then, had to assemble all of the individual pieces of lined paper into some form of order and try to match them up with names already in the logbooks to make sure there were no double entries.
Suffice it to say that the entire office was in total disarray and the king of the day was Utter Chaos. It took the better part of several hours to get everything organized to where I could start to enter data into a hastily constructed database and begin to match it to the database updated by Control Center at midnight every night. So, as it was quickly approaching the second “mandatory” count of the day, I needed to get them an accurate printout showing how many and who Control Center said was actually here.
Now, let me remind you of something I’ve talked about several times throughout my writings. Angola ran about 15-20 years behind the times with everything technological. Here it was 2005, and the office computer was still running old versions of MS Windows (and different versions in separate offices!) and the master database operated by Control Center was an old, clunky and slow DOS-based relational database called “NutPlus.”
Let me be the first to admit here that what I was doing was pretty much considered “illegal” by rank or authority. There was actually a policy that prohibited me from using this computer because it had inmate data on it. Let me tell you how much that mattered when there is a crisis or emergency situation and you’re the only one around who has the knowledge to do it. Yeah, about that much. The point is to get the work done, and pretty much everyone will turn their head while you get it done.
Miraculously, the 11:00 count cleared after only 3 or 4 recounts! (And, I can testify that there was NOT a “paper count,” with imaginary numbers.) So, what remained was to get everybody into an assigned bed so that they could be located at any time of the day or night, and make an accurate record of that assignment. The phone rang again, and the major called for me. The bed assignments would have to wait, as there were trucks pulling up at the camp with donations for the women. Oh boy….this would turn out to be an interesting episode and a chapter of Angola’s already infamous history, and I’ll tell you about it next time.
NOTE: For a look at other sides of Angola, might I suggest you take a look at my friend Rose Vines Substack, “Graphic Dead Man Walking.”
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