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Angola is the longest running slave plantation in the United States. It is also the nation’s largest maximum-security prison.
Angola was a plantation run by Isaac Franklin and his family from 1834-1880 to produce cotton. Franklin was described as the “richest man in the South” and owned the nation’s largest his slave-trading corporation. He built his wealth from enslaving over 600 black people.
After he died, a Confederate army officer bought the plantation and contracted with the state of Louisiana to “lease convicts”, almost all of whom were black, to work the fields. This arrangement enabled the basic operations and purpose of the slave plantation to continue.
In 1901, the state of Louisiana bought the plantation from the Confederate’s family and expanded it into the present day Angola, otherwise known as the Louisiana state penitentiary. This is a photo of the plantation-prison in 1934. 
Men incarcerated there are required to work the fields doing hard labor, full-time, for the benefit of the state. A plantation running for nearly 200 years. theatlantic.com/business/archi…
Today Angola prison confines over 6,000 people. 75% are black. This represents a massive, continuous expansion of this operation over time. There are now 1,800 correctional guards and other prison staff in the area who are employed to maintain this system. washingtonpost.com/entertainment/…
This is also maintained by state laws in Louisiana that impose some of the harshest prison sentences in the country, giving the state the second highest incarceration rate in the *world* (Oklahoma’s 1). AND then there’s this Louisiana law... legis.la.gov/legis/law.aspx…
Angola is a MASSIVE operation. It’s bigger than the size of Manhattan. The average prison sentence is 90 years.
Ninety. Years.
This is a plantation where human beings are forced to labor the rest of their lives in the fields for crimes they were convicted of, often, as youth.
Ninety. Years.
This is a plantation where human beings are forced to labor the rest of their lives in the fields for crimes they were convicted of, often, as youth.
This is a description of the conditions for people at Angola state penitentiary. Sound familiar? theguardian.com/us-news/2019/a…
If you’re wondering why Louisiana’s legislators don’t stop this operation, it might have something to do with fact that the state profits from prison labor. In fact, incarcerated workers do most of the work maintaining legislator’s state capitol offices.
Then there’s the state’s Governor, who lives in a mansion that is designed to look like the Oak Alley plantation - a place where over 100 people were enslaved. And incarcerated workers maintain the Governor’s mansion, too.
