Spectacle and Suffering at America’s Biggest Prison

ANGOLA, La. — On a blistering fall afternoon, even by Louisiana’s standards, mainly Black incarcerated people cling tightly to bucking horses. They run from barreling bulls and get tossed around like rag dolls in events that are outlawed in rodeos across the country — but not here at the “wildest show in the South.”

Each Sunday in October, thousands of people flocked from all over the country to watch this quintessential American take on the gladiator-to-the-death spectacles of the past at the nation’s last prison rodeo.

Wearing cowboy hats and Make America Great Again shirts, some white spectators pack into a dusty stadium located on the site of a former slave plantation that is now Louisiana’s state penitentiary.

The crowd swells into a roar while they sing “The Star Spangled Banner” and proclaim “The Land of the Free.” The watchtowers and primarily Black men locked behind fences reveal the deep contradictions.

As Louisiana and national politics shift further right, incarceration rates rise, and prison conditions worsen, the rodeo provides a lens through which to examine America’s cultural identity, several Black attendees told Capital B. It’s no coincidence that the state with the world’s highest incarceration rate is home to the last prison rodeo.

“The prison and this prison rodeo is one of the most powerful political tools that is used to stereotype [Black people] and normalize our negative environments,” said Troy Grimes, who was attending the rodeo as a free man after being released from the prison nine months ago. Still conflicted, he said he came to reconnect with his friends who are still incarcerated.

Despite Black people making up about one-third of Louisiana’s population, they make up about 80% of those incarcerated at the facility most commonly called Angola, named after the West African nation where most of the enslaved people who once worked the land hailed from. Today, those incarcerated at the prison remain tilling the land for as little as 2 cents per hour under brutal working and environmental conditions that the United Nations human rights office has condemned.

The vast majority of people incarcerated at Angola, a maximum security prison where two-thirds of people are serving life sentences, are expected to never step outside the farm again. In August, the state eliminated all chances of parole for people convicted of crimes and dramatically reduced early release opportunities for those who demonstrate good behavior — a move long championed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry.

The first Angola Prison Rodeo in September 1965. (Courtesy of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections)

Founded just months after the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, the Angola Prison Rodeo has become deeply embedded in southern Louisiana’s culture and masked these realities. Here, in what the state describes as one of its top rehabilitation programs, it’s all about cowboys, prison garb, and “guts and glory.”

Over the years, broken bones, concussions, and snapped necks have become routine, often to jeers from the crowd. Several petitions are found across the internet calling for the state to abolish the event, but none have made it to the prison warden or state legislators. In recent decades, Oklahoma, Texas, and Mississippi have all ended their prison rodeos because they did not bring in enough money. (Although, Oklahoma’s Republican-dominated state legislature passed a bill earlier this year to bring them back to the Sooner State.)

The power dynamics at play are obvious and shaped by white Southern traditions that ignore the violent realities behind the spectacle, explained a dozen Black rodeo attendees and “rodeo workers” (the title given to incarcerated people at the show).

Tony Grimes, who was released from Angola earlier this year after more than two decades behind bars, attended his first rodeo as a free man after trying to organize a boycott of the event while incarcerated. (Adam Mahoney/Capital B)

While incarcerated at Angola, Grimes said he tried to organize a boycott of the event, which brought in about $450,000 for the state every weekend in October and one weekend in April. He had conversations yearly with other incarcerated people about the backward nature of the rodeo, but it became clear that people were not willing to stop participating in the only event that allowed them unfettered connections to the outside world and a chance to make extra money.

Amid racist policies that have stunted the life outcomes of Black Louisianans, this cultural phenomenon is one of the few ways incarcerated individuals and their loved ones can reclaim their humanity. (Capital B is not directly quoting currently incarcerated people because of a prison media policy that requires incarcerated people to get permission to speak with reporters.)

Outside the rodeo arena, dozens more incarcerated people set up booths to sell their handmade artwork, leatherwork, and woodwork. While some are forced to sell their products behind locked and guarded fences, most others sit out in the open, able to share hugs and laughs with their loved ones.

As one incarcerated person told Capital B, it is the only time he can interact with people outside. It brings back a “familiar” feeling, he said, of being “free to exist.”

On an average day at that 18,000-acre former plantation turned nation’s largest and bloodiest prison, incarcerated people provide some of the state’s most vital but grueling public services like clearing trees and sandbagging properties before storms, and private services like growing food and grains that are used by hundreds of the most popular food brands in the world. But at the rodeo, some people report making as much as $2,000 a year. (The prison takes a 22% tax on these profits.)

“Here you see how politics and money defines how we’re seen and what we accept,” Grimes said.

The rodeo stands not only as a testament to Southern traditions but also as a reminder of the ongoing struggle for justice and recognition. (Adam Mahoney/Capital B)

Why the rodeo is “one of the better days of the year”

Over the past decade, there has been a renewed focus on prisons and their history of extraction and exploitation of incarcerated workers. Arguably, the lineage is strongest at Angola.

After the abolition of slavery, the plantation system transformed into convict leasing, where Black people convicted of crimes as futile as walking down the wrong street were “leased” as workers to plantations. But by the late 19th century, the Angola plantation was purchased by the state of Louisiana and turned into an actual prison facility. The conditions continued to echo the brutality of slavery.

Throughout much of the 20th century, Angola gained notoriety as one of the most violent and dangerous prisons in the United States, fueled by poor oversight and aided by its massive, isolated location. In the first three decades of its existence, 100 people incarcerated there died while working every year, reportedly buried in the levees they were helping to build along the Mississippi River. Decades later, in 1951, 31 people cut their Achilles tendons in protest of the continued treatment.

Incarcerated men building the levees along the Mississippi River in the early 20th century. (Andrew D. Lytle Collection, Louisiana State University Library Special Collections)

Today, Angola’s size allows the prison to continue to run various loosely regulated farming operations, from raising cattle to growing crops like soybeans, corn, and cotton. Earlier this year, an Associated Press investigation found that incarcerated people help produce millions of dollars worth of agriculture that end up being sold in the open market and found in most American kitchens in products like Frosted Flakes cereal, Ball Park hot dogs, and Coca-Cola.

The financial boon relates to Louisiana being the only state in the U.S. where prisoners are legally required to work — and often without pay. Norris Henderson, who was a jailhouse lawyer during his 27 years of incarceration for a crime he did not commit, has since founded the

Louisiana-based nonprofit the Voice of the Experienced, which has helped hundreds of men released from Angola. But on the inside, he has vividly recalled often being called “slaves” by Angola prison guards.

A prison guard rides a horse alongside prisoners as they return from farm work detail at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana in 2011. After the Civil War, the 13th Amendment’s exception clause, that allows for prison labor, provided legal cover to round up thousands of mostly young Black men. They then were leased out by states to plantations like Angola and some of the country’s biggest privately owned companies, including coal mines and railroads. (Gerald Herbert/Associated Press)

Herman Wallace of the Angola 3, a group of Black Panther Party members who spent over 40 years in solitary confinement, famously described the prison as not just a correctional facility but “an institution designed to break men.” Many describe being forced to work in the sweltering heat, often without adequate medical care or breaks, leading to an average of 50 people dying prematurely at the facility every year.

So in comparison, incarcerated people told Capital B, the rodeos are “one of the better days of the year.”

One incarcerated man said he loves the chance to showcase his artistic side, including on his hand-panted shirt that reads “Rodeo Worker.” (Adam Mahoney/Capital B)

Grimes said he understands why the rodeo is loved by many incarcerated people: a chance for a little cash and human interaction. “I came back to support the guys, kick it with them, and to spend a little money with them, because a lot of these guys, I’m gonna say 90% of these guys, don’t have any income coming in, don’t have family supporting them,” he said.

“But, I’m like, wow. My people — Black people inside here and out — are supporting this?” he said, adding that he didn’t feel like the estimated $2 million made at the rodeo yearly was benefitting life inside the prison. (The state says the rodeo revenue helps support nearly all the programs that benefit the lives of those incarcerated at Angola, including subsidizing trade schools, a high school education program, and prison hospice care.)

“When I was in here, it was a different ball game, but now when I look at it, I’m like how are we giving these politicians and the state all this money? Why is anybody outside of these fences supporting this?”

Prisons shape the lives of those incarcerated, and society at large

While prisons have historically functioned as sites of disrupting life, those incarcerated have sowed some of America’s lasting cultural pillars, from music to these rodeos. They’re spaces shaped by society but also actively shaping culture outside of the walls.

Inside Angola, Lead Belly, born Huddie Ledbetter, a Black sharecropper, developed his sound, propelling him to become one of the most powerful figures in the early years of American folk and blues music. Angola’s musical legacy continued with prison bands like the Guts and Glory Traveling Band, which performed publicly, showcasing the prison’s image of “reform,” much like the rodeo, while profiting from the labor and creativity of incarcerated musicians.

The “Goree Girls,” incarcerated at The Goree State Farm for Women, performed at the Texas Prison Rodeo throughout the 1940s. (Courtesy of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice)

However, as Black Southern traditions and histories have slowly disappeared, Michelle Clark said, the rodeo is one of the few activities she can imagine that allows her grandchildren to remain connected to those roots. She has been attending the rodeo for nearly a decade, often making the five-hour, one-way drive from Houston multiple times every October.