By the 1950s the more vicious cruelties of prison life—beatings, torture, starvation, filthiness—had been almost completely eliminated from American facilities. There were, however, a few unfortunate exceptions, especially in poor southern states. One such prison was Louisiana's Angola state penitentiary, where, as Newsweek reported on 12 March 1951, thirty-seven prisoners crippled themselves, some permanently, by slicing the tendons in their heels with razor blades. Warden Rudolph Easterly tried to downplay the incident, but such a graphic protest was difficult to ignore. Governor Earl Long appointed a committee to investigate conditions at Angola.

At the prison the committee found the miserable results" of several decades of neglect by the Louisiana state government, beginning during the reign of Governor Long's brother, Huey, in 1928. Prisoners lived crowded together by the hundreds into wooden, tumbledown barracks. Four toilets without seats and four showers were shared...