My SRP: Brainstorm, part deux

I chucked all of my ideas out the window this morning and decided to start from scratch.  I was doing this wrong.  I was thinking about topics based on what I thought I should research, not what I really wanted to research.  My mother always says, "Don't say should".  So, I'm starting over.

My first thought was to research the Free People of Color in New Orleans in the 18th and 19th centuries.  I'm totally fascinated by the fact that there were African-American doctors, teachers, and business owners in New Orleans living in such close proximity to (and often owning) slaves.  how did that happen?  How did it change after the Civil War?  What rights did Free People of Color lose or retain during and after Reconstruction?

Then I started thinking about my interest in New Orleans and Louisiana in general.  I think that state, and especially that city, are totally unlike any other place in the US.  The port of New Orleans means that the city is as multicultural as a place can get, in a deeply rooted, so-far-back-I-can-hardly-remember, cuisine and music producing way.  Louisiana is, in spite of this seemingly diverse cultural center, a hotbed of American racism.  I mean this is some severe and damaging racism (not that all racism isn't, but I think you get my drift).  Horrid, nasty, far reaching racism.

Then I thought about Angola Prison.

This is the art project that started my interest.

Several years ago I went to the New Orleans Contemporary Art Center and saw an installation that was a replica of a solitary confinement cell from Angola.  Three men, the Angola Three, who had been sent to Angola in 1971, were accused of killing a prison guard in 1972 and placed in solitary confinement.  One stayed there for 29 years.  The other two were in their cells for FORTY years.  Did you read that correctly?  Yes, you did.  FORTY years.  An organization working to release the last of the three was planning to build him his dream house, made mostly of windows.  He died three days after his release. I've been thinking about this for years.

So, Ms. Ortega and I started googling.

the rodeo

Angola has an annual prison rodeo that, to me, smacks of gladiators at the Colosseum.
Angola has a golf course and tourist center.
Angola is known as the bloodiest prison in America, and federal courts have called its treatment of prisoners "cruel and unusual".
Angola is bigger than the island of Manhattan.

looks like something from the early 1800s, doesn't it?

So, I am TOTALLY hooked on this topic.  What is the deal with Angola?  If the treatment of the prisoners' is so awful, why hasn't it been shut down?  Why are they spending time and money on a rodeo?  And what is that rodeo supposed to symbolize?  Who even attends the rodeo, and what are the implications of that in terms of condoning the exploitation of these men?  Are they being exploited, or are they happy to participate?

I could go on all day, and I'm going to go on ALL YEAR.  I am giddy.  My curiosity is through the dang roof.