The Soil of Resistance
A interactive timeline documenting the strategy, care, and brilliance of those held on the land known as Angola across centuries.
Spread across 18,000 acres and surrounded on three sides by the Mississippi River, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola represents both the harsh brutality and the audacious beauty that shape Louisiana’s history. Angola, named for the largest of five plantations consolidated under slave trader Isaac Franklin, has been a site of unbroken captivity and forced labor for over 200 years.
Beginning in 1951 with the Achilles Heel protest, where 51 incarcerated men slashed their achilles tendon to protest brutal conditions at Angola, this timeline charts resistance, collective care, and extraordinary strategy at Angola, mapped against national and international movements for justice. As this project develops, we will expand the scope to include enslaved resistance, and document more stories of defiance and brilliance.
This is a project of sacred memory-keeping, built in collaboration with and in honor of the brilliant visionaries whose lives and legacies laid the groundwork for abolition then, and provide the roadmap to abolition (and beyond) now.
Special thanks to Charlotte Grubb for building the foundation for this timeline; Keaton Schiller and Em Lessley for contributing; Kanyinsola Anifowoshe for revising; and all those whose bravery and vision have contributed directly or indirectly to resistance in all its forms.