In the Place of Justice

Download or read book In the Place of Justice written by Wilbert Rideau and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2011-01-06 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1961, young, black, eighth-grade dropout Wilbert Rideau despaired of his small-town future in the segregated deep south of America. He set out to rob the local bank and after a bungled robbery he killed the bank teller, a fifty-year-old white female. He was arrested and gave a full confession. When we meet Rideau he has just been sentenced to death row, from where he embarks on an extraordinary journey. He is imprisoned at Angola, the most violent prison in America, where brutality, sexual slavery and local politics confine prisoners in ways that bars alone cannot. Yet Rideau breaks through all this and finds hope and meaning, becoming editor of the prison magazine, going on to win national journalism awards. Full of gritty realism and potent in its evocation of a life condemned, Rideau goes far beyond the traditional prison memoir and reveals an emotionally wrought and magical conclusion to his forty-four years in prison.