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angola prison rodeo
The opening Parade at the Angola Prison Rodeo.
Every Sunday in October, at two in the afternoon under the Louisiana scorching sun, the rodeo at the Louisiana State Prison in Angola begins. The penitentiary, a maximum security prison which has played host to the filming of death row scenes for Dead Man Walking, the movie, inaugurated its first rodeo in 1965. Since then a growing number of inmates participate for prizes and to amuse the visiting crowd. In the year 2000 more than 150 men competed in calf roping, horse taming and lassoing livestock. The crowd, almost twenty-five thousand in total, brought more than four hundred thousand dollars to the inmates Common Fund. The entry tickets are sold at eight dollars each, the sandwiches and sodas go for market value, but paintings or any other crafts made during the year by the inmates are sold to the best offer.
The Fund is used to cover expenses that the State budget doesn't consider: qualified law assistance to the poorest inmates, educational and sporting gear, musical instruments, books and religious articles. Also The Angolite, the paper published in the Penitentiary, is financed with the Fund.
Reading suggestion: God of the Rodeo, the Quest for Redempion in Louisiana's Angola Prison, by Daniel Bergner. A journalistic essay that reads like a novel.
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