Never mind its history and reputation, with its high walls and turrets. The infamous prison in the village of Attica in western New York has a foreboding look about it.
Thirty-three years ago, the Attica Correctional Facility – a maximum security prison – was the scene of what has been called “the bloodiest prison confrontation in American history.”
“The Attica Rebellion is more than a prison insurrection. It is also a window into the time and culture that produced it,” said Dr. Gerald Zahavi, project director of Attica Revisited, which has examined through interviews, documentaries and reports, the before-during-and-after of the fatal rebellion, in which National Guard and State Troopers killed dozens of inmates, and even fellow ‘law enforcers.’
“We lock away millions of people every decade in penal institutions; occasionally, as in the case of Attica, their inmates rebel and become socially and politically visible. When they become visible, so do our prisons and our criminal justice system,” Zahavi continued.
“Prisoners rebel for various reasons: because the warden is insensitive and cruel, because they are abused by guards, because living and sleeping conditions become intolerable, because certain prison communities foster group militancy, because social and cultural movements outside prisons encourage rebellion. Whatever the reasons, the act of rebellion brings public attention.
“Ultimately, the Attica Rebellion is about us. Revisiting it permits us to peer into a world that we, after all, created, and perhaps re-examine our penal institutions once again, without waiting for another bloody rebellion.”
Remembering what happened in Attica will “stimulate debate and discussion of America’s criminal justice system,” said the SUNY professor.
“On the anniversary of the Attica uprising when they stormed the yard, the inmates always do something,” said Herman Ferguson, former political prisoner and former prisoner-in-exile.
A target of the government’s Counter-intelligence Program (COIN-TELPRO), Ferguson was convicted by an all white jury, on what he charges were false charges of trying to assassinate NAACP national secretary Roy Wilkins, and Urban League head Whitney Young.
Ferguson spent 19 years in political exile in Guyana. When he returned to New York in April 1989, he spent three years in prisons such as Attica, Woodbourne and Queensborough Correctional Facility. In March of 1996, when Ferguson was 76 years old, he finally got off work release and parole, when Hon. Judge Bruce Wright ruled against the Parole Board and ordered his release.
“For those days from the 9th to the 13th the tension is high among the guards, and on the 13th, it is even higher. The guards are very much on alert; there is a fear in their eyes, because they have never gotten over what happened. It lives on and never dies. When the new inmates come in, the old inmates tell them what happened, and tell them that there will be some non-violent action to commemorate what happened. No inmate dare not participate.
“Yard D was the focus of the rebellion, but even though the other yards were locked down, they showed their support.
“There may be complete silence in the mess room. It is quite devastating, and the silence is deafening. When there are 700 men in the mess room, you can imagine the usual pandemonium and the noise. Sometimes there may be no eating by all the inmates.”
More than 1,200 inmates seized sections of the prison on September 13, 1971.
The inmates had had 31 demands – all related to health care and basic prison conditions – and also a demand for the removal of the warden, Vincent Mancusi. Inmates complained of bad conditions and treatment, including: working in the metal shop in 106 degree heat for 56 cents per day; being allowed one shower per month; bad food and no educational or vocational programs.
Feeling ignored and abused as they called for humane conditions, inmates finally launched the Attica Rebellion. It lasted until the 13th, when it was ended with the explosion of government bullets; bloody corpses lay strewn in the prison yard. Inmates held 10 prison guards hostage. By day five, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller called in the National Guard and state troopers, ordering them to storm the inmate-controlled ‘D Yard.’
Depending on the source, between 39 and 43 people were shot dead, including 10 or 11 guards.
Negotiations failed, and Rockefeller authorized then-Corrections Commissioner Russell G. Oswald to order the State Police to forcibly retake the D Yard. Some observers have stated that, evidently, Rockefeller would rather fire on his own men than acquiesce to the inmates’ demands to be flown to a ‘Third World’ country.
“Gov. Nelson Rockefeller said that they should regain control of the prison at any cost, even if it meant killing the hostages,” said Ferguson.
Despite initial-yet-quickly-discounted reports that inmates slit the throats of prison guards, the medical examiner contradicted the statements of prison officials, as autopsies revealed that the 10 prison guards were actually shot by the National Guard and state troopers.
After the uprising was put down, it was to be revealed later that prison guards went on a violent quest of revenge.
Films on Attica like “The Killing Yard,” and Court TV’s documentary “Ghosts of Attica,” ensure that generations to come will get some sense of what occurred.
Previously, organizations such as former Attica inmate Eddie Dingle’s Al-Jundi: The Attica Justice Foundation, Inc., have sponsored demonstrations in honor of all who died in Attica D Yard on September 13, 1971.
They said that they have also engaged in extensive outreach work to engage young people in discussions about the criminal justice system.
In 1999, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out a 1997 jury verdict, which awarded former Attica Inmate Frank ‘Big Black’ Smith $4 million, after he charged that he was viciously beaten and tortured by correction officers in retaliation for the uprising.
He was one of the many inmates who said that he was savagely tortured – burnt and beaten. According to Smith’s 1997 attorney Elizabeth Smith, “Rockefeller, Gov. Pataki and Gov. Cuomo refused to settle in 1992. Thirty nine people were killed, 140 injured and over 1200 tortured.”
According to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in their opinion argued on August 3, 1999, they acknowledged that, “most or even all of the D Yard inmates were the victims of brutal acts of retaliation by prison authorities.”
The opinion acknowledged that “there was evidence of numerous random acts of violence against prisoners,” such as some torture tactics used by prison guards like sodomy of at least one injured inmate with a screw-driver and playing “Russian Roulette” with others.
Ferguson said that the recent Abu Ghraib prison scandal is reminiscent of tactics used in Attica.
“What they did in Abu Ghraib is the same abuse and terrorist tactics used in American prisons by the guards to try and intimidate and try and control inmates.
“If the causes of the riots are looked at, people will see that it is not just one but a series of things like: the tampering with the food; interfering with mail; not being allowed to use telephone; not being able to have showers. These are things that guards routinely denied the inmates.”
Smith died recently, but not before the December 2000 settlement.
Reflecting on the ordeal that is incarceration, Ferguson told the paper, “You struggle to retain your dignity and your humanity and, at any cost, you refuse to let them dehumanize you and treat you like something less than a human being. So what the brothers did in Attica was to take a courageous stand. They took a strong message to a lot of other inmates all over the nation that when you stand up like men and refuse to be treated like animals, it forces your captors to treat you with more dignity and more concern as human beings.”
What happened in Attica must be kept in the current lexicon, because it is vital to the socio-political present, the former vice-principal continued.
“The lesson to be learned from Attica is that, under the worst circumstances, if a group of people who find themselves in a bad situation – whether being in prison, being tortured, tormented or oppressed – take a strong stand and stand together, they can overcome any of their problems and make a change.”
He continued, “I wasn’t in Attica when the uprising happened. I was in Guyana. On the night of the rebellion I had a short wave radio, which had on-the-spot broadcast. I heard the inmates and the descriptions were very vivid. I remember saying to my co-defendant Arthur Harris, ‘If we hadn’t gone into exile, that’s where we would be.’
“We were told that we were going to be sent right there, and because of the notoriety of the case, we would have been targeted.”
“After the uprising was put down, the prison guards went through the cell blocks and found who they thought were certain troublemakers and executed them.”
“All of those people found were not killed in the yard. According to reliable witnesses, many of the deaths occurred after the yard was brought under control. The guards went around getting their revenge, evening the score, pulling out people and just shooting them and throwing their bodies out into the yard.”
Almost 84 years old now, Ferguson said that he does not dwell on that day so much.
While he pays respect to those lost for the stance that they took, the great grandfather said, “Occasionally, I think about some of the people I met when I was in Attica in the 1990s. I wonder how many of them have been released, and if they are going forward with their lives in a positive and political manner.”
