The Entire Story of Angola — The Bloodiest Prison in America and the Plantation It Was Built On

The Entire Story of Angola — The Bloodiest Prison in America and the Plantation It Was Built On #angolaprison #louisianastatepenitentiary #prisonhistory The Mississippi River bends around this land on three sides. Eighteen thousand acres, larger than Manhattan, still farmed today by the men incarcerated on it — on the same soil where enslaved people once worked under a slave trader named Isaac Franklin. This is the entire story of Angola. In this video, we trace the Louisiana State Penitentiary from its origins as Isaac Franklin's slave plantation, through the convict-leasing horror of Samuel James, to the state takeover of 1901, the 1951 Heel String Gang protest, the failed 1946 electrocution of Willie Francis, the decades-long solitary confinement of the Angola Three, and the modern federal lawsuit over forced field labor in extreme heat that remains unresolved today. Angola has never stopped being a working plantation. Only the legal name for the people forced to work it has changed. 🔍 TOPICS COVERED Angola prison, Louisiana State Penitentiary, Isaac Franklin, Samuel Lawrence James, convict leasing, Heel String Gang 1951, Willie Francis electric chair, Gruesome Gertie, Sister Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking, Angola Three, Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace, Robert Hillary King, Ruchell Magee, Wilbert Rideau, The Angolite, Lead Belly, Burl Cain, Angola Prison Rodeo, Farm Line lawsuit, VOTE v. LeBlanc, prison labor, Louisiana history 📜 SOURCES This video draws on records and reporting from the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, the Angola Museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, court filings and rulings in VOTE v. LeBlanc (Middle District of Louisiana), the Promise of Justice Initiative, Rights Behind Bars, and contemporaneous reporting from The Angolite, The Lens, Verite News, and the Louisiana Illuminator. 🏛️ ABOUT THIS CHANNEL We explore the forgotten institutions of America. The asylums. The prisons. The wards that history tried to bury. If you want to understand the architecture of confinement and the people it consumed, subscribe and turn on notifications. #angolaprison #louisianastatepenitentiary #prisonhistory #darkhistory #truecrime #documentary #forgotteninstitutions #angolathree #farmline #prisonlabor #ushistory #americanhistory #slaveryhistory #louisiana #forgottenwards