Dept of Law 2016 Civil Rights Staff Ride

Cadets Visit Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary. Cadets on the Civil Rights Staff Ride studying the criminal justice system, got a first-hand look at mass incarceration at the State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana. In preparation for this visit the cadets read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. At Angola, cadets met inmates serving life-without-parole sentences participating in vocational training of inmates serving shorter sentences. Cadets also visited death row, and spoke with wardens who were adamant about the progress this once notorious prison has made. Cadets met with Equal Justice Initiative Founder Bryan Stevenson. and got to meet another author of their many required books, Bryan Stevenson. His book Just Mercy was a favorite of the cadets who admitted they were star-struck to meet its award-winning author at the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), which he founded in Montgomery, Alabama. They also took part in a ceremony to honor West Point’s first African-American graduate Henry Ossian Flipper, Class of 1877. The ceremony was sponsored by the West Point Society of Tallahassee in Thomasville, Georgia, Flipper’s hometown.