The Angolite
| Frequency | Bimonthly |
|---|---|
| Year founded | 1976 |
| Company | Louisiana State Penitentiary |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | Angola, Louisiana |
| Language | English |
| ISSN | 0402-4249 |
The Angolite is the inmate-edited and published magazine of the Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola) in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana.
As with the rest of the prison, The Angolite was segregated; originally only white prisoners, a minority at the facility, were allowed to work on it. Under federal court-ordered reforms, including desegregation of work assignments and programs, the prison warden picked Wilbert Rideau as editor in 1975. He was the first African-American editor of any prison newspaper in the United States. This choice was ratified in 1976 by a new prison warden. In 2009, the magazine published six issues annually. Louisiana prison officials believed that an independently edited publication would help the prison.
The Angolite gained a national reputation for reporting. It won international awards under prisoner co-editors Rideau and Billy Sinclair; Sinclair joined as co-editor in 1978. The magazine won the George Polk Award in 1979, for the articles "The Other Side of Murder" and "Prison: a Sexual Jungle".
The magazine won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award.The Angolite was the first prison publication ever to be nominated for a National Magazine Award, for which it was nominated seven times by early 1993. In 1993 the Columbia Journalism Review had referred to Rideau and Sinclair as "the Woodward and Bernstein of prison journalism." [[File:WilbertR.JPG|thumb|left|Wilbert Rideau was a co-editor of The Angolite from 1975 to 1987, gaining an associate editor to 1992; Rideau served until his release in 2005]
In 1987 Sinclair disclosed that he had been cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in their investigation at the prison of a pardons-for-sale scheme. Eventually the state indicted the head of the pardons board, an appointee of Governor Edwin Edwards. No federal or state charges were made against Edwards. The New York Times said, "But news of Mr. Sinclair's role shattered The Angolite's credibility. Mr. Sinclair, now a snitch, has been transferred out of the prison for his own safety, leaving Mr. Rideau to confront skeptical readers and sources."
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