America Is the Prison: Arts and Politics in Prison in the 1970s

Conclusion

conclusion In 1924 Huddie Ledbetter played a concert at the Sugar Land Prison Farm for the governor of Texas. Ledbetter, who would go on to international celebrity as “Lead Belly,” was doing time as “Walter Boyd,” the name he assumed after escaping from a previous prison.This time, Ledbetter was arrested after he murdered a relative during a fight in 1917, receiving a sentence of seven to thirty-five years at Sugar Land, a former plantation near Houston. Ledbetter cut sugar cane on the prison farm and entertained other inmates and the prison staff with ballads and blues songs. Ledbetter was particularly good at reworking the lyrics of well-known prison songs to include references to the exploits of other prisoners, prison staff, or notorious Houston police officers.1 In January 1924 a captain at the prison asked Ledbetter to perform for Pat M. Neff, the Texas governor who was then on a tour of the state’s prisons. Ledbetter danced a demeaning number he called the “Sugar Land Shuffle,” in which he lampooned an eager and happy cotton picker. The songs included the hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and the minstrel song “Ole Dan Tucker.” He also played an original ballad in which he asked for forgiveness. The plea went over well: Neff returned to the prison several times to hear Ledbetter perform and specifically requested the original ballad in which the musician asks for his forgiveness.2 Just before leaving office in January 1925, Neff delivered on a promise he made to Ledbetter by granting him— as Walter Boyd—a full pardon. Many years passed before Ledbetter became a fixture on the folk music circuit with songs like “Midnight Special” and “Goodnight, Irene.” In the meantime, Ledbetter supported himself as a laborer and musician in Louisiana and once again ran into trouble with the criminal justice system. In 1930 Ledbetter received a sentence of sixto -ten years of hard labor for assault with intent to murder after an 174 conclusIon altercation in Mooringsport, near Shreveport. Ledbetter, then fortythree , was sent to Angola Prison Farm, also a former plantation. One observer called Depression-era Angola “probably as close to slavery as any person could come in 1930.”3 Gun-toting convict “trusties” carried out the orders of the prison staff. They had the authority and incentive to shoot people who attempted to escape. In 1933 and 1934 the famed musicologists John and Alan Lomax arrived at Angola, where they recorded Ledbetter for the Library of Congress and sent a petition to O. K. Allen, the Louisiana governor, along with their recording of Ledbetter performing “Goodnight, Irene.” Although there is some disagreement about whether the petition was instrumental or coincidental to Ledbetter’s release—Ledbetter had petitioned the governor himself before the Lomaxes arrived—there is no question that Allen authorized Ledbetter’s release. Over time, the legend of Lead Belly’s release grew: in 1937, Life magazine featured the story of the two pardons in a photo essay featuring a close-up of the musician’s hands strumming his twelve-string guitar with the caption: “These hands once killed a man.”4 Life boiled down Ledbetter’s story into a racist fantasy. In this telling, a violent, oversexed man—the story included often repeated stories of “Leadbelly’s” sex life—became a complacent servant, entertainer, and object of professional analysis, oneweek driving John Lomax and his recording equipment around the South as he searched for the next diamond in the rough and the next week playing “Midnight Special” for intellectuals at a Modern Language Association conference.The article also betrayed, however, a nagging fear that Ledbetter used his grin and guitar to play a confidence game: “Amuse the public, and you can get away with almost any crime.”5 By the late 1970s and early 1980s, the days of singing for a pardon had long passed, but the attractions, fears, and self-doubt of the Lead Belly story were still sources of conflict when attention turned to prison writings and performances. Some observers might still be tempted to view the widespread interest in the cultural and political expressions of people in prison as a con. According to this false logic, if Lead Belly needed to play the role of a “darkie” to get out of Sugar Land and Angola in the 1920s and 1930s, Jack Henry Abbott needed to play a revolutionary in the late 1970s and early 1980s in order to [18.217.220.114...