A St. Paul’s School teacher who has been using the documentary “The Farm – Angola USA” as part of his curriculum for nearly 20 years found a way for the film to impact his students even more deeply. He brought one of the main subjects to speak personally to his classes.
“It’s an honor to have him here today,” said St. Paul’s teacher Luke Barwick of speaker Ashanti Witherspoon. “I’ve been using ‘The Farm’ for classes for so long, I feel like I know him. He’s definitely one of my heroes.”
Witherspoon, 74, spoke to all junior religion classes and some senior groups on March 24 in the school’s chapel and theater. He shared parts of his experience from his time in prison and how he turned his life around in the process.
A Chicago native who now lives in Baker and works as a pastor and alcohol and drug counselor, Witherspoon served 28 years for armed robbery in the Louisiana State Penitentiary known as Angola. The state’s oldest and only maximum-security prison, Angola “was believed to be the bloodiest prison in the nation when I was there,” Witherspoon said.
He was released in 1999, the result of a law change that finally allowed him a parole hearing.
Witherspoon said he grew up with good role models, including his mother and an aunt he was close to. He said several relatives held professional positions in fields ranging from ministry to medicine and education. “There was no reason for me to do what I did. It just takes one stupid decision to throw you off course,” he told the students gathered before him.
Despite all those good examples around him, Witherspoon became involved with drugs and gangs in Chicago; he admitted being on hallucinogenic drugs when he and friends robbed a convenience store while passing through Shreveport in 1971. The police arrived, a shootout ensued, and Witherspoon took bullets to both his hip and his mouth, the latter going straight in from one side of his jaw to the other.
“By the grace of God, nobody died,” he said of the fateful event.
He’s left with a hole in his pallet and a specially-made retainer allows him to speak. He removed the retainer to show the students that without it, his words are unintelligible.
He repeated the message and theme of his talk multiple times to the students: “Don’t let anyone or anything sway you off the path of doing right. Follow God, and stay focused.”
Witherspoon said he turned to God while in prison upon the urging of another prisoner for him to read the Bible. He said he began to put his faith in God to help him handle prison life.
He said prayers were answered first when he moved out of the maximum-security section of the prison and into an area where he could get involved in activities.
There, Witherspoon was instrumental in helping to create a CPR training program for prisoners after watching a prisoner die from a heart attack because EMS services could not get from one end of the prison facility to the other in time to save him.
He said prayers were answered again when he finally received the parole hearing that resulted in his release.
“I learned that when I place my trust in God, miracles will happen,” Witherspoon told the students.
Barwick said he has always admired Witherspoon’s perseverance and his ability to turn his life around. He said he thought it was kind of a “crazy idea” to invite Witherspoon to speak but was thrilled when he accepted.
“He’s now a family man, a man of God, a hard worker and a selfless giver,” Barwick said. “It was obvious that today we were in the presence of greatness. ”
Witherspoon has been married to his wife, Susan, since 2008, and works with the Innocence Project, which seeks to exonerate those wrongly convicted. They are raising their three grandchildren since Susan’s daughter died tragically in 2021.