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Hey, history lovers.

I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

If you're a fan of great TV, you've probably watched or heard about oranges the new black.

It's the hit Netflix show about life in a women's prison.

The show is fictional, but the setting is inspired by history,

and sometimes, if you watch closely, you can see it.

In one of the early seasons,

there's a moment when all the women crowd into the television room

and find out that Judy King, a domestic mogul who not by accident resembles Martha Stewart,

is going to be imprisoned at the Alderson Correctional Facility.

The Alderson Federal Prison Camp is not only a real women's prison, it's a prison that has a

history filled with powerful women who both push for the walls to be built there and serve

time within them.

Alderson is located in West Virginia, about a five-hour drive from Washington, D.C.

It was the first federal prison for women in the country and has housed some truly unforgettable inmates.

Jazz legend Billy Holiday, Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita LeBron, World War II propagandist Tokyo Rose, and even Martha Stewart.

So how did this prison come to me? In the 1920s, nearly two dozen women's organizations

were pushing to open a federal facility for women that would be run by women. At the time, women were held in

local jails and state prisons that also housed men. The West Virginia location that became

Alderson Prison was chosen for its location. It was close to Washington, but remote enough

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