the get-away car and ran, followed by the other two employees. He said that Rideau killed in panic rather than by premeditation. The defense urged a verdict of manslaughter. The jury unanimously convicted Rideau of manslaughter, and the judge sentenced him to the maximum of 21 years. As Rideau had already served more than twice that long, he was immediately freed. Prison journalism In the early 1970s, Rideau wrote a column, "The Jungle", for a chain of black weeklies in Louisiana. He freelanced articles to mainstream media, including the Shreveport Journal and Penthouse. A headline referred to him as "The Wordman of Angola", saying "Rideau is Angola Penitentiary's Birdman of Alcatraz. He is a prisoner who has transformed the dark, drab, terror-filled life of prison into a greenhouse for the flowering of his talent." Rideau had not gone beyond the ninth grade in his formal education before his arrest and incarceration. He educated himself by extensive reading while in prison. In 1975, a federal court ordered the Angola prison to be reformed, the result of a civil suit by the ACLU because of the high level of violence and abuse of prisoner rights. The consent decree required the prison to institute desegregation of programs and work assignments. The outgoing warden appointed Rideau as editor of The Angolite; he was the first African-American editor of any prison journal in the United States. The incoming warden ratified the choice and, with a handshake, gave Rideau freedom from censorship. This warden's progressive administration supported the nation's only uncensored prison publication. During his 25 years as editor, Rideau became well known nationally, gaining a reputation beyond the prison. In 1979, Rideau and co-editor Billy Sinclair won the George Polk Award for the articles "The Other Side of Murder" and "Prison: The Sexual Jungle". In addition, the magazine won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award, and a 1981 Sidney Hillman Award. The Angolite was the first prison publication ever to be nominated for a National Magazine Award, and it was nominated seven times. Rideau was permitted to travel the state accompanied only by an unarmed guard to lecture about the prison newspaper. He was permitted to fly to Washington, D.C. twice to address the nation's newspaper editors on the subject of prison journalism. Rideau and co-editor Ron Wikberg were named "Person of the Week" for their journalism on