Wilbert Rideau - Prison Journalism

Prison Journalism

In the early 1970s, Rideau wrote a column, "The Jungle", for a chain of black weeklies in Louisiana. He freelanced articles to mainstream media, including the Shreveport Journal and Penthouse. A headline referred to him as the "The Wordman of Angola", saying "Rideau is Angola Penitentiary's Birdman of Alcatraz. He is a prisoner who has transformed the dark, drab, terror-filled life of prison into a greenhouse for the flowering of his talent." He had not gone beyond the ninth grade in his formal education before his arrest and incarceration.

In 1975, a federal court ordered the Angola prison to be reformed, and the outgoing warden appointed Rideau editor of The Angolite. The incoming warden ratified the choice and, with a handshake, gave Rideau freedom from censorship and thus created the nation’s only uncensored prison publication. Rideau became well known during the 25 years he was an editor of The Angolite. He became the first African American prison newspaper editor in the United States.

In 1979, Rideau and co-editor Billy Sinclair won the George Polk Award for the articles "The Other Side of Murder" and "Prison: a Sexual Jungle". In addition, the magazine won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award, and a 1981 Sidney Hillman Award. The Angolite was the first prison publication ever to be nominated for a National Magazine Award, for which it was nominated seven times. Rideau traveled the state as a lecturer accompanied only by an unarmed guard and was permitted to fly to Washington, D.C. twice to address the nation's newspaper editors on the subject of prison journalism.

Rideau and co-editor Wikberg were named “Person of the Week” for their journalism on Peter Jennings's World News Tonight in August 1992.