A headline in an upstate New York newspaper threw me back 42 years, to a time I will never forget, and to a massacre I hope to never see repeated.
State attorney general seeks to unseal long-secret volumes on Attica prison tragedy
“The passage of time has made clear that – like the shootings at Kent State, the violent police attacks on civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s, the My Lai massacre and the Watergate scandal – Attica is more than just a profoundly tragic event; it is an historic event of significance to generations of Americans,” State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman’s court papers argue in trying to end the permanent seal that courts ordered for the documents.
“Attica was a tragic event in the history of our state,” Schneiderman said in a statement provided to The Buffalo News. His office has asked the State Supreme Court in Wyoming County to release the remaining approximately 350 pages of a 1975 report that some families hope will bring at least more closure regarding the revolt’s death toll.
“It is important, both for families directly affected and for future generations, that these historical documents be made available so the public can have a better understanding of what happened and how we can prevent future tragedies,” the attorney general said.
The article concludes with:
In 1972, the New York State Special Commission on Attica wrote, “With the exception of Indian massacres in the late 19th century, the State Police assault, which ended the four-day prison uprising, was the bloodiest one-day encounter between Americans since the Civil War.”
The documentary, Criminal Injustice:Death and Politics at Attica, co-produced and directed by David Marshall, co-produced and written by Chris Christopher, tells parts of the story many people are still unaware of.
“Rockefeller pulled the trigger, Nixon Gave him the blessing”
In September of 1971, the infamous prison rebellion began at the Attica State Correctional Facility in upstate New York-a dramatic civil rights protest that ended with Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordering more than 600 state troopers to storm the prison and retake it with force. As a result of this forcible retaking, 39 people were shot to death-hostages and inmates alike-and scores of other prisoners were severely wounded and tortured for days.
Criminal Injustice: Death and Politics at Attica brings this historical event to life in new and startling ways. Based on interviews of eyewitnesses who waited four decades to open up and share their stories, as well as newly discovered documents, Criminal Injustice sheds new light on what happened at Attica from September 9th to 13th, 1971, and the role played by local, state, and federal officials. This film raises important new questions about the needless deaths, the White House’s involvement, and the influence of Nelson Rockefeller’s political aspirations on decisions made before, during, and long after the controversial and deadly event.
Forty years after this cataclysmic and highly charged event, filmmakers found witnesses willing to speak with new candor that adds depth to, and often alters, the historic record. The film includes the final interview regarding Attica given by New York Times reporter Tom Wicker, an on-the-scene negotiator who later documented his experiences in the book A Time to Die; Malcolm Bell, the special prosecutor turned whistle blower; Dr. Heather Thompson, the nation’s leading academic authority on the Attica prison uprising; as well as inmates, former hostages, law enforcement officers, and others.
Two groups have been pushing for the unsealing of the records for a long time. The families of the guards and former inmates who died, most mowed down by bullets from helicopters sent in by then Governor Nelson Rockefeller.
Many of you who read this today were not even alive at the time. But for those of us who were, it was one of the most horrific events we lived through. For those of us who were working with prisoners and prison injustices even more so. These were not anonymous “prisoners”. They were our sons, brothers, uncles, nephews, cousins, lovers, husbands and former neighbors, sent “upstate” (as happened to so many of our kin, and still does) to be warehoused in a brutal facility.
Two years ago, The Nation , posted this piece.
The Attica Prison Uprising: Forty Years Later
The prisoners filling the cells of New York’s Attica prison in 1971 faced inhumane conditions. They earned 56 cents per day for manual labor in searing workshops, were only allowed one bar of soap a month and could only shower once every two weeks. They were not allowed to read what they wanted to read and there was no due process in parole hearings. The prison population was largely black and Hispanic, controlled by an all-white guard staff. After years of agitation by civil rights activists and the black power movement, the authorities across America were beginning to push back.
When tempers reached a boiling point on September 9, the prisoners erupted in a full-fledged rebellion, taking over the prison and holding it for four days, along with several guards who had been taken hostage. But when the negotiations broke down over the point of amnesty for violence conducted during the take-over of the complex, the mood in and outside the prison soured. By the time state troopers and police forces had retaken Attica by force on the morning of September 13, ten hostages and twenty-nine inmates had died.
In this video produced by The Nation’s Frank Reynolds and Liliana Segura, lawyer Elizabeth FInk, former national guardsman Tad Crawford and former Attica prisoners Carlos Roche and Joseph “Jazz” Hayden recount what happened during those days forty years ago, and the repercussions still being felt from the uprising.
The Rochester NY newspaper, Democrat and Chronicle, just featured two people, Frank “Big Black” Smith and Dee Quinn Miller-Frank, a former inmate, and Dee, the daughter of Bill Quinn-a guard slain during the massacre.
Watchdog column: Prison riot’s scars connected two very different people
Frank was an inmate at Attica when the riot erupted, a bear of a man – as his nickname implies – who’d been jailed for robbing an illegal craps game in New York City. He was wrongly identified as an instigator of the riot, but did become a leader – providing security for the inmates and the hostages – during the standoff that lasted four days. After the violent retaking of the prison on Sept. 13, 1971, Frank was singled out by police and others who’d stormed the maximum-security facility. He was beaten and laid out on a table with a football squeezed between his chin and throat. Lit cigarettes were dropped upon him, and he was told he’d be killed if he allowed the football to slip free.
He survived the torture, and upon his release became a lead plaintiff in an inmate lawsuit against the state of New York for the bloody retaking and its brutal aftermath.
Dee Quinn Miller was only 5 during the Attica riot. Her father, William “Billy” Quinn, was a corrections officer who valiantly tried to head off rampaging inmates, only to have a prison gate give way and topple upon him. He was beaten by prisoners, and died two days later at a Rochester hospital. Later in life Dee decided she wanted to learn more – much more – about her father. She’d heard little of his life, or his death. Sometimes she and her sisters would be asked to leave history classes if the riot was expected to be a topic.
At the time, I was a member of the Young Lords Party (YLP), and we had a YLP chapter inside Attica, as did the Black Panther Party. The inmates issued a list of demands, along with 15 proposals to address changing the brutal system.
They specifically asked for members of our leadership to be part of that process, and called for a civil rights lawyer, and for journalists to come to the table.
Their 5th demand was:
We urgently demand immediate negotiation thru Wm. M. Kunstler, Attorney-at-Law, 588 Ninth Ave., NYC, Assemblyman Arthur O. Eve of Buffalo, the Solidarity Committee, Minister Farrakhan of MUHAMMAD SPEAKS, Palante, The Young Lords Party Paper, the Black Panther Party, Clarence Jones of the Amsterdam News, Tom Wicker
of NY Times, Richard Roth of the Courier Express, the Fortune Society, David Anderson of the Urban League of Rochester, Blond-Eva Bond of NICAP, and Jim Ingram of
Democrat Chronicle of Detroit, Michigan. We guarantee the safe passage of all people to and from this institution. We invite all the people to come here and witness this
degradation, so that they can better know how to bring this degradation to an end.
Previously, in July, the Attica Liberation Faction had issued a Manifesto. It opened:
We, the men of Attica Prison, have been committed to the New York State Department of Corrections by the people of society for the purpose of correcting what has been deemed as social errors in behaviour. Errors which have classified us as socially unacceptable until reprogrammed with new values and more thorough understanding as to our values and responsibilities as members of the outside community. The Attica Prison program in its structure and conditions have been enslaved on the pages of this Manifesto of Demands with the blood, sweat, and tears of the inmates of this prison.
The program which we are submitted to under the façade of rehabilitation are relative to the ancient stupidity of pouring water on a drowning man, inasmuch as we are treated for our hostilities by our program administrators with their hostility as medication.
In our efforts to comprehend on a feeling level an existence contrary to violence, we are confronted by our captors with what is fair and just, we are victimized by the exploitation and the denial of the celebrated due process of law.
In our peaceful efforts to assemble in dissent as provided under this nation’s U.S. Constitution, we are in turn murdered, brutalized, and framed on various criminal charges because we seek the rights and privileges of all American People.
In our efforts to intellectually expand in keeping with the outside world, through all categories of news media, we are systematically restricted and punitively remanded to isolation status when we insist on our human rights to the wisdom of awareness.
Those of us on the outside who were called went. Here is one person’s story.
On September 9th, 1971, the brothers incarcerated in Attica stood tall and demanded their human rights. G.I. and Juan “Fi” Ortiz from the Y.L.P.’s central committee joined the national team of negotiators from outside the prison walls. When the negotiations failed and the negotiating committee was ordered out of the prison, G.I. refused to leave the prison yard. He had decided to die with his brothers. Those brothers were the ones who forced him out, because in their words “if anyone had to leave the yard it was G.I. because he was the only one there that day that could tell the world about the hell they were living in Attica”
The world was told, and told again. Yet even after investigations and lawsuits, there are questions that remain unanswered.
Attica is All of Us has published Attica Prison Uprising: 101, a short primer, with the history, documents, and events that took place during and after the massacre.
The Attica Revisited website, is another important source of information.
With the cooperation of the New York State Archives and the Pacifica Foundation, we have gathered together an extensive collection of audio, video, and textual records of the Attica rebellion-including written transcripts and audio recordings of the McKay Commission hearings as well as dozens of audio documentaries produced by the Pacifica Foundation. The documentaries contain many hours of interviews with key actors in and observers of the drama played out in September of 1971. We have also asked historians to contribute their perspectives on the story of Attica. We hope you find these resources useful to understanding the history of the event and the history of New York and American penal institutions in general.
The time has come – for the records to be opened.
You can contact New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, to express support:
General Helpline: 1-800-771-7755
TDD/TTY Toll Free Line: 1-800-788-9898
Office of the Attorney General
The Capitol
Albany, NY 12224-0341
press office email
NYAG.Pressoffice@ag.ny.gov
Cross-posted from Black Kos
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