Each August marks the annual commemoration of a month honoring the legacy of Black prisoners kept behind bars for political activism. Black August is a month to honor the history of struggles for Black liberation, in defiance of racial, colonial, and imperialist oppression, both inside and outside prison walls.
The 1971 Attica prison revolt, in which incarcerated people rose up in a struggle against oppression and inhumane conditions, and subsequently repressed by state forces with horrifying brutality, is honored each year during Black August.
On September 9, 1971, Attica prisoners took over a part of the prison in an event notable in its mass participation.Out of roughly 2,200 men imprisoned at Attica, 1,281 seized control of the facility.
“We are men! We are not beasts and we do not intend to be beaten or driven as such. The entire prison populace, that means every one of us here, has set forth to change forever the ruthless brutalization and disregard for the lives of the prisoners here and throughout the United States,” said 21-year old prisoner Elliott James “L.D.” Barkley in a statement to the press. Barkley would later be killed when state forces recaptured the prison, days before he was scheduled to be released.
Prisoners held control for four days, during which officials conceded to 28 of the prisoners’ demands but rejected calls for the warden’s removal and full amnesty for those incarcerated.
On September 13, 1971, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller sent state troopers armed with rifles and pistols to retake Attica from the prisoners. The four-day uprising ended in a hail of blood and gunfire that left 39 dead, among them 10 prison staff. Four more had already died earlier during the uprising.
With 43 men dead, the vast majority from the violence of state repression, the Attica prison uprising is still the deadliest prison uprising in US history.
Reform and revolution
For some involved in the Attica revolt, their motivations extended beyond simply struggling for better conditions. The year following the Attica uprising, prisoner Joseph Little told a government panel, “I’m not for no penitentiary reform. I’m for abolishing the whole concept of penitentiary reform.”
The conditions in New York State prisons were also reflected in the very demands of the prisoners, presented to New York State officials amid the revolt on September 11, 1971. They included “a change in medical staff and medical policy and procedure,” with prisoners claiming that medical personnel were making “mistakes” affecting their patients. Prisoners also called for an end to the “escalating practice of physical brutality” and more food and more access to drinking water during meals.
Prisoners also called for radical changes to the power structure within the prisons, making a bold argument for the self-determination and dignity of each prisoner. The very first demand was “the constitutional rights of legal representation at the time of all parole board hearings.” Prisoners also highlighted the political and free speech repression taking place within the prison, calling for “an end to the segregation of prisoners from the mainline population because of their political beliefs,” claiming that “Some of the men in segregation units are confined there solely for political reasons and their segregation from other inmates is indefinite.”
Revolt amid worldwide struggle
What other factors drove more than 1,000 prisoners to risk their very lives in open rebellion? The Attica revolt took place during a time of heightened struggle and consciousness in the United States, as well as globally. The influence of the Black Panther Party (BPP) was reaching its all time high. The Black liberation movement more broadly was a formidable political force, led by organizations like the BPP, the Republic of New Afrika, and numerous local groups, the movement was not only demanding civil rights but also self-determination and community control.
The late 1960s and early 1970s saw an uptick in radical organizing across diverse sectors of society, with white and multiracial students, antiwar, feminist, and countercultural movements. Mass opposition to the Vietnam War was at its height, with groups like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the broader student antiwar movement challenging US militarism. Some groups, like the Weather Underground, turned to underground actions against the state. Others focused on solidarity with Black liberation and Third World movements. Women’s liberation groups, and Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Indigenous activists expanded the terrain of struggle beyond campuses.
Globally, the late 1960s and early 1970s saw the collapse of Western colonial empire, especially on the African continent. In Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, armed liberation wars against Portuguese colonial rule were at their height, led by movements like the MPLA (Angola), FRELIMO (Mozambique), and PAIGC (Guinea-Bissau). Anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa intensified, with the ANC and Pan Africanist Congress continuing underground organizing. Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) also saw guerilla activity against white settler rule. Countries like Congo, which became independent in 1960, were navigating neocolonial intervention, often by the US and former European colonizers.
The political context of the time had imbued the people of the US with heightened mass consciousness, a phenomenon which did not exclude those behind prison walls. By the time of the Attica uprising, numerous smaller prison revolts had already occurred. In 1970 alone, multiple uprisings shook the New York City jail system, including at the Manhattan House of Detention, the Brooklyn House of Detention, the Queens facilities at Kew Gardens and Long Island City, and the Adolescent Remand Shelter on Rikers Island.
At the Manhattan House of Detention, prisoners held five guards hostage for eight hours until state officials pledged to hear their grievances and assured them there would be no retaliation. Yet despite those assurances, authorities singled out leaders, transferring them to state prisons where they were beaten, confined for months in solitary, and charged with new crimes. Meanwhile, at Auburn Correctional Facility in upstate New York, incarcerated people waged sustained confrontations with officials between November 2, 1970, and June 9, 1971. Prisoners who took part in the Auburn riot were later dispersed to various New York facilities, including Attica.
50 years later
During negotiations at the height of the Attica revolt, then Corrections Commissioner Russell Oswald accepted most of the prisoner demands. But over 50 years later, many of the same injustices and inhumane conditions persist in New York State prisons and US prisons more broadly.
Some of the demands agreed to during the heat of struggle never materialized, including paying prison workers a minimum wage, providing fresh produce to prisoners daily, and permitting access to outside dentists and doctors.
Notably, the brutality in New York’s prison system persists. Earlier this year, NYS prison guards went on an unauthorized strike, following some of their own ranks being charged for the brutal beating of Black prisoner Robert Brooks by white officers.
Shocking body camera footage of Brooks’ death showed multiple guards at Marcy Correctional Facility in upstate New York participating in the beating while the prisoner was handcuffed and bleeding. The video captures a chilling disregard for Brooks’ life. One officer shoved an object into his mouth as another gripped his throat, before several guards launched a brutal assault. At one point, two officers tried to lift Brooks by his shirt and throw him out of a window.
At the heart of their strike was the anger of prisons guards at the HALT (Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement) Act, which limited the right of prison authorities to torture inmates with impunity by reducing the use of solitary confinement. The strike ended in March, after which the state fired over 2,000 prison guards after failing to return to work after a deal was reached between the guards and the state of New York.
The post Attica: when prisoners revolted appeared first on Peoples Dispatch.
From Peoples Dispatch via this RSS feed