On this day 50 years ago, 9 September 1971, the Attica prison uprising began in upstate New York when over 1000 imprisoned people took control of the facility.
2200 people were detained in the prison designed to hold only 1600. 54% of those imprisoned were Black, while 100% of the guards were white. Historian Howard Zinn described the situation in A People’s History of the United States: “Prisoners spent 14 to 16 hours a day in their cells, their mail was read, their reading material restricted, their visits from families conducted through a mesh screen, their medical care disgraceful, their parole system inequitable, racism everywhere.”
Less than three weeks after the killing of Black prisoner activist George Jackson, Attica inmates united across racial lines and, using pipes, baseball bats and chains, rose up and took over the prison, taking 42 staff hostage. They then formulated and agreed a set of demands including better sanitary conditions, federal takeover the prison, the dismissal of the prison superintendent and amnesty for acts committed in the uprising.
While the corrections commissioner was prepared to accept most of the demands, amnesty was not agreed. Instead, New York governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered a violent attack to retake the prison.
On September 13, state troopers and prison guards stormed the prison, indiscriminately fired machine guns, and murdered 39 people. 10 of those they killed were prison staff whom officials then claimed were killed by prisoners.
Despite the repression, a wave of rebellion swept prisons across the US.
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