ALSO BY HEATHER ANN THOMPSON
Whose Detroit?:
Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City
(as editor)
Speaking Out:
Activism and Protest in the 1960s and 1970s
Copyright 2016 by Heather Ann Thompson
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Thompson, Heather Ann [date], author.
Title: Blood in the water : the Attica prison uprising of 1971 and its legacy / Heather Ann Thompson.
Description: New York : Pantheon, 2016. Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016000477. ISBN 9780375423222 (hardback). ISBN 9781101871324 (ebook).
Subjects: LCSH : Prison riotsNew York (State), Attica Prison.
BISAC: HISTORY /United States/20th Century. LAW /Criminal Law/General.
POLITICAL SCIENCE /Political Freedom & Security/Law Enforcement.
Classification: LCC HV 9475. N 716 T 46 2016. DDC 365/.974793dc23.
LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/2016000477
Ebook ISBN9781101871324
www.pantheonbooks.com
Endpaper drawing by Robert Bull
Cover image: Prisoners during the uprising at the Attica Correctional Facility in Attica, New York, on September 9, 1971. AP Photo.
Cover design by Kelly Blair
Book design by Cassandra J. Pappas
v4.1
a
For all who were killed at the Attica Correctional Facility more than four decades ago
William Allen
Elliot Barkley
John Barnes
Edward T. Cunningham
John DArcangelo
Bernard Davis
Allen Durham
William Fuller
Melvin Gray
Elmer Hardie
Robert Henigan
Kenneth Hess
Thomas Hicks
Emanuel Johnson
Herbert Jones
Richard Lewis
Charles Lundy
Kenneth Malloy
Gidell Martin
William McKinney
Lorenzo McNeil
Samuel Melville
Edward Menefee
Jose Mentijo
Milton Menyweather
John Monteleone
Richard Moore
Carlos Prescott
Michael Privitera
William Quinn
Raymond (Ramon) Rivera
James Robinson
Santiago Santos
Barry Schwartz
Harold Thomas
Carl Valone
Rafael Vasquez
Melvin Ware
Elon Werner
Ronald Werner
Willie West
Harrison Whalen
Alfred Williams
And for all who were wounded, maimed, tortured, and scarred on September 13, 1971. A list too long to recount here.
You have read in the paper all these years of the My Lai Massacre. That was only 170-odd men. We are going to end up with 1500 men here, if things dont go right, at least 1500.
ATTICA CORRECTION OFFICER EDWARD CUNNINGHAM
The officer pulled out a Phillips screwdriver and told the naked inmate to get on his feet or hed stab the screwdriver into his rectum.Then he just started stabbing him.
NATIONAL GUARDSMAN JAMES O DAY
You just wake up in the night sweating. It was just so overpowering, to see that much trauma.
NEW YORK STATE TROOPER THOMAS CONSTANTINE
I could see all this blood just running out of the mud and water. Thats all I could see.
ATTICA PRISONER JAMES LEE ASBURY
Contents
PART I T HE T INDERBOX
Frank Big Black Smith
PART II P OWER AND P OLITICS U NLEASHED
Michael Smith
PART III T HE S OUND B EFORE THE F URY
Tom Wicker
PART IV R ETRIBUTION AND R EPRISALS U NIMAGINED
Tony Strollo
PART V R ECKONINGS AND R EACTIONS
Robert Douglass
PART VI I NQUIRIES AND D IVERSIONS
Anthony Simonetti
PART VII J USTICE ON T RIAL
Ernest Goodman
PART VIII B LOWING THE W HISTLE
Malcolm Bell
PART IX D AVID AND G OLIATH
Elizabeth Fink
PART X A F INAL F IGHT
Deanne Quinn Miller
Introduction
State Secrets
One might well wonder why it has taken forty-five years for a comprehensive history of the Attica prison uprising of 1971 to be written. The answer is simple: the most important details of this story have been deliberately kept from the public. Literally thousands of boxes of documents relating to these events are sealed or next to impossible to access.
Some of these materials, such as scores of boxes related to the McKay Commission inquiry into Attica, were deemed off limits four decades agoin this case at the request of the commission members who feared that state prosecutors would try to use the information to make cases against prisoners in a court of law. Other materials related to the Attica uprising, such as the last two volumes of the Meyer Report of 1976, were also sealed back in the 1970s. Members of law enforcement fought hard to prevent disclosure of this report in particular. Although a judge has recently ruled that these volumes can now be released to the public, the redaction process that they first will undergo means that crucial parts of Atticas history will almost certainly remain hidden.
The vast majority of Atticas records, however, are not sealed, and yet they might as well be. Federal agencies such as the FBI and the Justice Department have important Attica files, for example, but when one requests them via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), they have been rendered nearly unreadable from all of the redactions. And then there are the records held by the state of New York itselfcountless boxes housed in various upstate warehouses that came from numerous sources: the states official investigation into whether criminal acts had been committed at Attica during the rebellion, its five years of prosecuting such alleged crimes, and its nearly three decades of defending itself against civil actions filed by prisoners and hostages. In 2006 I was able to get an index of these files, which made clear that this is a treasure trove of Attica documentation: autopsies, ballistics reports, trooper statements, depositions, and more. It constitutes ground zero of the Attica story.
Everything that the state holds in these warehouses can also be requested via FOIA, but here as well it is difficult to get documents released. As this book goes to press, and after waiting since 2013 for some explanation of whether my latest FOIA request would net me important documents, I just received word that state officials will not be giving me those materials. I know the items that I requested are there, according to the states own inventory, and I also know that I did not ask for any grand jury materials that would be protected, and yet my request is still being denied.