Every Sunday afternoon in October, thousands of people drive deep into the Tunica Hills of West Feliciana Parish, past the cotton and soybean fields, past the watchtowers, and into the grounds of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. They come for the Angola Prison Rodeo, which this year marks its 60th anniversary. The show -- bareback riding, wild horse races, bull riding, chariot racing -- is staged entirely by men serving time inside one of the largest maximum-security prisons in the country.
It is the longest-running prison rodeo in the United States, and it began as a joint endeavor. In 1965, according to the Louisiana Prison Museum, offenders, prison employees, and civilians who live in Angola's residential area decided to put on a rodeo together. The earliest versions were modest affairs: spectators at the first rodeos had to either sit on pickup trucks or bring seating of their own. The first two rodeos, in 1965 and 1966, were not even open to the public.
That changed in 1967, when a limited number of tickets went on sale to outsiders. Proceeds went to the Inmate Welfare Fund, which pays for recreational and educational programs for prisoners -- a funding model that continues today. As word spread, the prison built its first rodeo arena in 1969, with room for about 4,500 spectators. The current arena holds more than 10,000. The rodeo's own slogan calls it "the wildest show in the South," and the nickname has stuck.
What draws the crowds is a mix of the familiar and the singular. There is traditional rodeo fare -- bull riding, bronco riding, barrel racing, steer wrestling -- but Angola has invented events found nowhere else. In Convict Poker, four inmates sit at a card table while a loose bull is turned into the arena; the last man still seated wins. In Prisoner Pinball, men stand inside randomly placed hula hoops as a bull roams among them, and the last one still in his hoop takes the prize. The grand finale, and the event the rodeo is most infamous for, is Guts and Glory: a poker chip is fastened to the head of a bull, and competitors try to snatch it while the animal bucks and charges.
Participation is voluntary, and the prison frames it as a behavioral incentive. Inmates with good conduct can earn the chance to compete, to collect prize money, and to sell hobbycraft -- furniture, woodwork, paintings, jewelry -- at the semiannual arts and crafts festival that runs alongside the rodeo. For many, that market is the point. Melissa Schrift, author of "Angola Prison Art: Captivity, Creativity, and Consumerism," has written that inmates "find enormous value in creating works that embody or mimic the everyday images and goods so readily available in the outside world." The museum notes that many see the rodeo as a rare chance to feel part of society beyond the gates and to take pride in showing what they can do.
That framing is also where the deepest arguments begin. Angola sits on the site of the old Angola Plantation, named for the African region from which its enslaved laborers were once brought, and it remains a working farm. Incarcerated men there have historically earned as little as a few cents an hour for their labor. Critics, including formerly incarcerated organizers, describe the rodeo as exploitation dressed as entertainment -- a spectacle in which mostly Black men perform dangerous stunts for largely white audiences on the grounds of a former slave plantation. Supporters, including prison officials, point to the rehabilitative programs the ticket money funds and to the discipline and craftsmanship on display.
Whatever one makes of it, the rodeo has outlasted its peers. Other prison rodeos across the country have faded away over the decades, leaving Angola as the last of its kind still in operation. The event now runs every Sunday in October plus one weekend in April. Visitors should know the rules before they go: clear bags are required.
For the men inside, the rodeo is a complicated kind of freedom. It is a chance to be watched, cheered, and paid for something they have made or done, even as the fences and towers remain in view. For the crowds who make the drive each fall, it is a Sunday unlike any other in America -- part county fair, part gladiator show, and now, after sixty years, a Louisiana institution that shows no sign of slowing down.