Wilbert Rideau

Terry speaks with Wilbert Rideau, an inmate serving a life term at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. He reports on various aspects of life, culture and rehabilitation at the penitentiary. This segment will focus on the issue of literacy, education programs and self-education at Angola. These reports from prison have been arranged in cooperation with prison officials, who administer a number of outreach programs to educate the public about prison policies and rehabilitation efforts. Rideau is an eighth grade dropout and taught himself to write while in prison.

Since 1975, Rideau has been the editor-in-chief of "The Angolite," the prison newsmagazine of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where he's serving a life sentence for murder. An eighth-grade dropout, he was convicted of murder in 1961 and spent eleven years on death row at Angola, where he taught himself to write. "The Angolite" has highlighted issues of execution and prison rape. For his writing, Rideau won the Sidney Hillman Award in 1981, the George Polk award in 1980, and the Robert F.