prisoners striking today say conditions are not much different from those that prompted the largest prison rebellion—one of the largest prison rebellions, 45 years ago at Attica. It was September 9, 1971, when state police raided the upstate New York prison, ending a protest against racism, officer beatings, rancid food, no rehabilitation programs and forced labor. For four days, the unarmed prisoners held 39 prison guards as hostages. On September 13th, then-New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered armed state troopers to raid the prison. Troopers then shot indiscriminately more than 2,000 rounds. In the end, 39 men would die, including 29 prisoners and 10 guards.
Heather Ann Thompson talking:
it’s really important for folks to realize that this rebellion of nearly 1,300 men for basic human rights ends brutally when the state of New York retakes the prison. And even the hostages were, at the end of this rebellion, begging the governor not to come in with force and to do the right thing—improve conditions in the prison. And that quote and several others in the very beginning of the book really reflect the desire of all participants to come to a peaceful resolution and finally do something about the terrible conditions in Attica.
– For so many years, that 39 number, 39 men dead, the state authorities said that the prisoners slit the throats of their hostages. That turned out not to be true in even one case. Were they all killed by the state troopers
On the day of the retaking, every death was at the hands of trooper or correction officer bullets. And the state stood out and told the entire world that the prisoners had in fact killed the hostages. And that story had a devastating effect on the long-term—on the future of criminal justice policy in this country. It really fuels the engine of punitive policy. And to this day, citizens will tell you that the prisoners killed the hostages at Attica.
– one of the interesting things, this was at a period in American history when racial conflict was perhaps at its strongest, but yet Attica represented an interracial rebellion. There were white inmates and Latino inmates and African-American inmates who banded together. You tell the story of Sam Melville, the Weather Underground member who was in Attica at the time and participated in the rebellion. There were many Latinos. And, in fact, when we were in the Young Lords, we actually had a Young Lords group in Attica prison.
– And we had two of our members, Jose “Fi” Ortiz, who was a leader of the Young Lords, and then Jose Paris, “G.I.,” who had come out of Attica, who went up there as part of the negotiating committee. So this was really an example of racial solidarity among an oppressed group.
And that’s why it was so threatening to the state. Somehow, you have 1,300 men, who are otherwise divided by language or political persuasion or ethnicity or race, and they come together over the basic fundamental desire to be treated as human.
David Rothenberg talking:
I had been—Fortune Society had just started, and we were a volunteer organization at the time. But we were in—I was in correspondence with Roger Champen and Herbert Blyden, two of the men who emerged as leaders. And we had a little, simple newsletter, which was banned. And we went to court and won. The federal courts ruled, Fortune v. McGinnis, who was the commissioner, that they had no right to censor the inmate reading material. So I think they thought that we were this powerful organization that could make changes. And when they took over and they asked—they didn’t trust the state in the negotiation; in the demand, they asked for a list of people to come in and act as observers, and my name was on the list. So I got a call from Arthur Eve, who was an assemblyman from Buffalo, saying, “Will you come up to Attica?” And I said, “Not alone.” And two other guys from Fortune, Kenny Jackson and Mel Rivers, we flew up into the yard.
– in most prison uprisings, there are no outside witnesses, but here you had this group of people, and not just Kunstler and you, but there were elected officials, Tom Wicker, Herman Badillo. Tom Wicker of The New York Times. There was a large group of people that went up there and actually then had a different version of events than the official version.
This was a politically sophisticated group of inmates, which is why the state thought that outside revolutionaries were sponsoring—were igniting the trouble. What in fact caused the trouble is you can’t put 2,000 people in cages, treat them brutally and not think there’s going to be repercussions. That’s what happened at Attica.
That’s Commissioner Russell Oswald meeting with some of the leaders. I recognize L.D. Barkley and Roger Champen and Herbert Blyden. That’s people that I know. I think that’s Flip Crowley there.
They stripped everybody. And then they put them—when they brought them inside, they smacked them with—in their ankles and their knees and their testicles, so that it was brutal. It was—you know, they could have taken over the institution by gassing it, which they did. They didn’t have to fire a bullet.
– Frank “Big Black” Smith, when he was laid out They made him hold a football with his chin for hours. and laid out naked on a table, as they beat him.
Heather Ann Thompson talking:
he was one of the players on a football team. And he had been targeted because the state accused him of having castrated a guard. So they tortured him to say that if he dropped that football, they were going to shoot him. And he had every reason to believe it, since he had just witnessed, over the course of 15 minutes, another massacre.
for 45 years, the majority of the records for Attica remain sealed by the State Attorney General’s Office, or at least very difficult to get. And the reason is that for all of the death at Attica, no member of law enforcement was ever held responsible. So, the book was the journey to figure out who had created so much trauma; what had happened in the Governor’s Office to lead to this retaking; who were the members of law enforcement that not only shot their weapons, but indeed the highest levels of the state police, who worked very had to tamper with evidence, to conceal evidence and to protect their own. And that was a key journey for finding out that information.
The story of Attica resonates nationally and internationally, both because it was televised and people cared very much what happened there, but also because at every level, for the next 45 years, from the lowest-level workman’s comp bureaucrat to the presidency of the United States, the Supreme Court, the Justice Department, everyone turned a blind eye to the torture that continued to go on behind the walls of Attica in the wake of the rebellion. And so that story is very important.
David Rothenberg talking:
There are heroes in her book, and one of them is Malcolm Bell who was a conservative Republican who was hired by the state to be an investigator. And he couldn’t remain quiet, because he saw the cover-up. And he emerges from your book as a really heroic figure. It changed his life, because he discovered the truth.
Heather Ann Thompson talking:
There are a few heroes, and they really stand out—the coroner, who went public, at great expense to himself, to tell the world that, no, in fact, the prisoners hadn’t killed the hostages, that it was trooper bullets. Malcolm Bell is a hero because he blew the whistle on the inside of the Attica investigation, that in fact they were not going to go after the police, no matter that all the deaths were at the police’ hands.
I had been looking and looking for Attica documents, combing upstate New York, and happened upon a whole series of documents that happened to just be in a random room in a courthouse. And, frankly, I don’t think that they knew what was there. It was a wall full of Attica documents. And the most important in those were evidence from the state’s own investigation, its own records about who had done what at Attica.
– The Muslim prisoners
David Rothenberg talking:
It was the Muslim brothers that protected the guards that were the hostages. They surrounded them to make—they knew that they had to be protected and saved.
Heather Ann Thompson talking:
the yard was peaceful, the yard was organized, in no small measure to the Muslim brothers in the yard, the Attica brothers, who were insistent that the hostages were important and that the men sitting there in that circle would have mattresses to sleep on and food to eat. And that was crucial, because, at the end, that’s why the guards are asking Rockefeller to try to help these guys and do the right thing, rather than gun them down, which, of course, is what happens.
– Minister Farrakhan, who the prisoners had requested to be one of the negotiators, declined to do so, because, supposedly, the leader of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad, had told him not to.
that was certainly evidence that I found. But it was interesting, because a lot of people were asked to come, and, for a variety of reasons, they couldn’t be there. And yet, there are so many observers, such as David, and those folks played a remarkable role. I mean, they kept insisting again and again that they stick to the negotiations, that the state negotiated in good faith, and, indeed, at the very end, were calling Rockefeller, insisting that he at least come to Attica, at least assure these guys that if they surrendered, that they would not be harmed. And he refused to do it.
for multiple reasons, but not the least of which was his own political ambitions. His party had moved very much rightward. He wanted to impress the Republican Party that he was tough on crime. But also it was a black rebellion,
they were very clearly intent on going in with force from the very beginning. The only reason, incidentally, they didn’t go in earlier was because of the observer team there. And when they finally do go in, I discovered that they deliberately don’t tell the prisoners that it’s going to be a bloodbath if they don’t give up. They don’t give them an ultimatum. And while it’s happening, Rockefeller is eating a scrambled egg breakfast with bacon in his mansion and is being congratulated by Richard Nixon for having handled this so beautifully.
Oswald was a very tragic figure. He was a liberal, a prison reformer. It was, really, at his insistence that negotiations continued as long as they did with his own people in the Department of Corrections. But at the end of the day, he proves very ineffective in halting what has been decided above his pay grade, which is there’s going to be a retaking.
David Rothenberg talking:
I always said he was a good man who failed history. He didn’t rise, because he had been parole—he became commissioner of correction because of his progressive position as parole head. And he was considered a leader. And the fact that he went up there was unprecedented. He went—one of the pictures is him sitting with the—he went in the yard. But he was—he didn’t understand them. I don’t know how you describe a progressive academic—no, I don’t want to blame the academics.
we were in and out. And eventually it was reduced down to five people—Clarence Jones, Kunstler, John Dunne, Herman Badillo—because we felt we were too cumbersome of a group. But there were points in the—we would meet after the takeover for months and months at Kunstler’s house. And the feeling was, we would have been killed had we stayed there.
Heather Ann Thompson talking:
One of the most important things in the book that I discovered was there was a myth for years after Attica that the hostages that were killed was—was a mistake, accidental, shouldn’t have happened. And it’s very clear that the state knew the hostages were going to die. They discussed it before they went in. And their own state employees were dispensable. I think it’s pretty clear that had the observers been in there, that there was no controlling this once it was unleashed. These prisoners were at the mercy of people who had been, for four days, passing out weapons indiscriminately. And when they went in, these troopers took off their identifying badges so that they would not be held accountable for what then happened. some of them used their personal guns, as well.
I think the evidence is pretty clear that, as David has said elsewhere, law enforcement had control of this prison from the moment they dropped the gas. The gas is a powder. It clung to people’s nasal passages, made them sick, incapacitated everyone in the yard. Then the shooting begins. For 15 minutes, it continues. And what is significant is that all of the observers reported later that they could still hear gunfire many hours later that day. And many of the prisoners reported that not only had people been killed after the retaking, but the very specific men had been targeted by law enforcement.
Barkley and Melville, people have told me that they had seen them alive after the takeover. L.D. Barkley, who was so eloquent and whose voice was heard on national television during the protest, was targeted, as was Sam Melville, who was perceived as a traitor to his race because he was white.
In the aftermath is when the real brutality begins. The doctors are trying to help prisoners, while guards are dumping them off of stretchers, kicking them, urinating into wounds, making the most horrific scene unfold. And, indeed, this national guardsman, among many, was trying to tell people outside what was happening. This particular man tried to get the Justice Department to look into this. He called the FBI. He called the Justice Department. And again, at every level, people abandoned these guys to this fate.
there are many more records we have yet to see. But the records I did see indicated that despite the attempts of the state police to tamper with evidence and conceal evidence, there was evidence. And that evidence not only indicated specific troopers that had killed specific inmates, but also specific troopers who had killed specific hostages. And those people could have been indicted, and instead the state chose to indict 62 prisoners for all that had gone wrong at Attica, again sending the message to the world that Attica was about prisoner barbarism and that those sorts of people don’t deserve basic human rights.
What surprised me most was actually not the lower-level troopers who I name, but actually the highest-level troopers, the head of the New York State Police, who—people who would literally step in to make a low-level trooper resign rather than face prosecution, top police officers who are tampering with photographs. But again, the responsibility still lies with the state of New York. They are the ones that sent these guys in and then, afterwards, allowed these guys to investigate the retaking that they had just carried out.
the settlement was very important. It took 30 years. It took determination on the part of these men, such as Frank “Big Black” Smith, to stick with it. But I think the nation was also feeling like they finally got justice. No brother feels like they got justice. It was a pittance for some people. It was $6,500 for a death, at the end of the day. And the cost was still there, because the state still has not admitted responsibility, still denies that anything happened at Attica.
I think we are back here. And we are back here in no small part because the nation failed to learn the lessons of Attica, and we created one of the most brutal prison societies in the world. And as was the case in Attica, when you treat people as animals, and they are human beings, they will resist. And we are seeing that across the country again today.
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Heather Ann Thompson
an American historian, author and activist. Her new book is Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. She is a professor of history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
David Rothenberg
member of the Attica observers’ committee. He was one of the 35 people brought into Attica to negotiate on behalf of prisoners. He is founder of The Fortune society.
— source democracynow.org