While various officials were being briefed about the quickly deteriorating situation, and around the same time that William Quinn was being taken to the hospital, Mancusi’s off-duty COs began arriving at Attica. They armed themselves with guns from the prison arsenal as well as baseball bats and axes from a shed behind the prison.5 Eager to get inside to help their fellow officers, these men made some forays into Attica’s chaotic cell blocks but quickly retreated when it became clear that the prisoners were in full control. Mancusi eventually advised his men to stand down and await backup from the New York State Police, whom his deputy superintendent, Leon Vincent, had contacted despite Mancusi’s reservations. A mere fifteen minutes after hearing from Vincent, Major John Monahan of the NYSP’s Troop A in Batavia contacted his division headquarters to let his superiors know that he was readying a battalion of men to go to the prison.6 Governor Rockefeller’s attorney, Michael Whiteman, was alarmed to learn this. There seemed to be no clear plan for reestablishing order at the prison, and yet the NYSP was already on the scene, eager to go in.
Major John Monahan, a formidable-looking man with silvery hair and a long bulbous nose, was indeed determined to retake the prison as soon as possible. Word had reached him that E Block was on fire with people still inside. Wasting no time, he ordered one of his lieutenants into that area of the prison with fire apparatus, a detail of thirty men, and a fifteen-man backup.7 This battalion managed to put out the flames in E Block, which had already been abandoned by all but two sick inmates. The NYSP men were able to secure the area, so at least one section of the prison was now back under DOCS control.
Retaking the other cell blocks was another matter entirely. This mission was undertaken initially, at Mancusi’s behest, by two contingents of correction officers, armed with tear gas canisters as well as weapons ranging from rifles to .38 caliber revolvers and even a Thompson submachine gun. Normally, it was forbidden for guards to carry a gun when confronting prisoners since guards might lose their weapons to the prisoners, but normal rules no longer applied. One contingent of COs was later joined by about one hundred state troopers, and by noon this group had swept through and eventually managed to regain control of B mess hall as well as A and C Blocks. C Block was an easy recapture, because scores of men there had chosen the safety of their cells over the chaos of the corridors.
With more than half of the prison secure by mid-morning, COs and troopers alike assumed they were going to retake the rest of it. Major Monahan, however, said no. Even though extra troopers and COs had already arrived, he considered their numbers insufficient. Helping Monahan think through the next steps was Troop A’s Captain Henry “Hank” Williams, who had also arrived at Attica. Williams, a large man who sported a severe buzz cut and kept his eyes hidden behind dark glasses, had been a trooper since the age of twenty-one, and he now oversaw an eight-county region of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation of the NYSP in western New York.8 Both he and Major Monahan spent most of that morning making sure that NYSP brass was apprised of all that was happening at the prison. George Infante, lieutenant colonel of the NYSP’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, was one of these high-ranking officials who wanted to be kept in the loop, and he too would soon be on the scene.
New York State Police gather outside the prison. (Courtesy of The New York Times)
By noon on the 9th, one hundred men from Troop A had shown up in front of Attica, as had a hundred men from Troops E and D. Word had it that Troop C was nearby, staging another fifty men.9 There was nothing for these men to do, so they paced and fretted. No one seemed to know what should happen next. As prison officials looked from the windows or roofs of A or C Block they could see that rebelling prisoners were getting themselves organized—mostly all moving into D Yard. They could also see that these men had taken guards and civilians hostage, but how many or where they were was unknown.
11
Order Out of Chaos
To the relief of the 1,281 prisoners who found themselves suddenly in charge of their own facility, and to the horror of prison officials and the police who had been watching their actions from the outside, by the afternoon of September 9 Attica’s D Yard had become the scene of a highly organized and remarkably calm protest. Whereas the early morning hours had been filled with the sounds of men screaming and windows being smashed, a few hours later the incarcerated at Attica were bringing some remarkable order to what had been utter chaos.
Prisoner Carlos Roche very much liked the freedom of movement that the morning’s upheaval had netted him, but he also found the lack of structure worrisome. Roche was part of 48 Company in D Block and like the thirty-nine other men in his company, including his friend Frank “Big Black” Smith, he was assigned to work in the laundry.1 The morning of September 9, he was at his job when he realized that the metal shop just above the laundry was on fire. The phone was ringing behind him—Superintendent Mancusi’s wife was, at this very moment, calling down to the laundry to order clean sheets for the warden’s mansion—but all Roche could focus on was the smell of smoke, the sound of men yelling, and then, once he’d stepped out into the corridor, the utter chaos.2 When a forklift driven by a prisoner came barreling down the corridor, he finally understood: a riot was in progress.
Not knowing where to go, Roche took off for D Yard, since that seemed to be where everyone else was running. On his way, he saw a seventy-five-year-old prisoner known as “Old Man Perry” leaning over a drum of prison-made wine, passing out big cups to men who were grabbing cartons of cigarettes and rolling big boxes of juice out of the commissary. Roche was more than ready to join the party, but he couldn’t shake his wariness. This couldn’t last, and it felt dangerous that no one seemed to be in charge.3
Roche was right to be concerned. While some prisoners like Old Man Perry were living it up in a relatively harmless way, others were engaging in much more vicious activities. Two prisoners, the nineteen-year-old twins John and James Schleich, who had landed at Attica on parole violations, experienced this firsthand. In the bedlam of that morning, John had gotten separated from James and then watched, horrified, as he saw someone walking his brother toward the bathroom. John ran to his brother’s rescue, but before he knew it another man was holding a knife on him and ushering him into the same bathroom.4 He was surrounded by a group of five or six men who repeatedly raped him.5 Meanwhile John could hear and see his brother “up against a wall, some guy behind him,” also being attacked.6
Others who found themselves wandering Attica’s corridors unsupervised were actually more dangerous to themselves than to others. One prisoner who tried to go into a bathroom near Times Square came upon “a whole bunch of guys in there, all shooting up.”7 They’d taken advantage of their initial moments of freedom to raid the prison hospital for drugs.
Roger Champen, a well-respected jailhouse lawyer from D Block, “stood dumbfounded” by the free-for-all he was witnessing around him in the early hours of September 9.8 When Champ, as his friends called him, walked into D Yard, it was pandemonium. There were cigarettes from the commissary and food scattered everywhere. Overwhelmed, Champ realized that order had to be established soon or else this situation was going to escalate into something scary.9
But the men running around the prison on the morning of September 9 seemed to know that they should stick together in one place and by midday had come to D Yard.10 Still, Champ worried about having so many men in one open space with no one in charge. There were racial as well as political divisions, and it was unclear to Champ how everyone would behave in this unprecedented situation. The racial divisions particularly worried Champ, because he could clearly see from the looks on the faces of the whites, and from the way they had set themselves apart from the rest of the men, that they feared that a racial conflict might be brewing.11 To his mind, this would be an utter disaster. Of the nearly 1,300 men still loose in the prison who decided to congregate in D Yard, nearly two thirds were African American, about a quarter were white, and almost 10 percent were
Puerto Rican.12 Some were affiliated with organizations such as the Black Panther Party or the Young Lords Party, while others were not at all political and wanted largely to be left alone. Champ hoped that someone would step in soon to ease tensions and encourage prisoner unity.
Champ wasn’t the only prisoner out in D Yard who recognized that he needed to do something to prevent clashes and bring some calm in D Yard. Richard X Clark and his fellow Black Muslims took the initiative. They first worked to make sure that the hostages, who had been blindfolded and gathered in one area of D Yard, were protected from further assault. They formed two circles around them, inner and outer, then linked arms and faced outward to ward off any possible attack from other prisoners.13 The way they saw it, without healthy hostages, the prisoners would have nothing to bargain with, nothing to dissuade the authorities from retaking the prison by deadly force.
Although some of the COs who’d been taken hostage were fairly well liked by the prisoners, including Mike Smith and John Stockholm, others, like Lieutenant Robert Curtiss, were not. According to one of his fellow officers, Curtiss was, in fact, “one of the most unpopular officers in the prison….He was famous for his 14-day keep-locks.”14 Attica’s Black Muslims not only succeeded in preventing any revenge attacks against the unpopular COs who now were being contained in what was being called the “hostage circle,” but they also tried to make them as comfortable as they could be under the circumstances.15 They gave clothing to all of the hostages who’d been stripped.16 CO hostage G. B. Smith asked one of the men if he would tie his arms in front rather than behind to alleviate the terrible pain in his shoulders, and to his great relief, he did as asked.17 Gary Walker, an unpopular CO who’d been grabbed out of the metal shop, stripped, and made to run through a gauntlet of prisoners, found himself grateful when the security team surrounded him.18
As the Muslims protectively encircled the hostages, Champ impetuously grabbed a bullhorn he had seen lying near Times Square, jumped up on a table, and issued an appeal for unity.19 While Champ spoke to his fellow prisoners of the need to stand by one another across political and racial lines, a hush fell over D Yard. Everyone was clearly listening to his plea to “eliminate fights among ourselves and focus our hostility outside.”20 Champ was in a good position to make this pitch, because he was well known to many of the men at Attica as a fair man, someone who had been holding free classes in the yard concerning law and politics since 1968. He had a way of speaking that was authoritative without being threatening, and his overall message—that they should work together—seemed sensible.21
As Champ spoke, several other men made their way to the table. Leading the way was L. D. Barkley, whom Champ had earlier asked for help. He was joined by Herbert X Blyden, Don Noble, and Frank Lott. Blyden’s Auburn experience had taught him something about how to negotiate with prison authorities, and Noble and Lott, two authors of the original July Manifesto, had great credibility as well. Shortly thereafter, white radical Sam Melville also made his way to the table, as did Muslim Richard X Clark, Black Panther Tommy Hicks, and Young Lords leader Mariano “Dalou” Gonzalez. Together these men formed a committee that would help bring order to the yard. The addition of Dalou to this group was an important sign that all of Attica’s men would be included in what happened next. His job was to make sure that discussions held at the table would be translated for Attica’s Spanish-speaking prisoners.
In time, Champ’s bullhorn was being used not just to spread calm and unity, but also to get practical things accomplished in D Yard. A prisoner skilled in electrical work managed to set up a speaker system, and everyone was soon listening as instructions were issued to immediately cease all drug taking, sexual acts, and hoarding of food and cigarettes. They were told to bring any and all weapons—crowbars, iron pipes, knives—and put them under the table where the speakers stood.22 Dalou translated every directive into Spanish.23
L. D. Barkley, although the youngest man at the table, quickly became one of the most mighty speakers in the yard. Thanks to him, tensions were eased between various political factions because he insisted that his own group, the Black Panthers, work cooperatively, even with other organizations they might not like, because, as he put it, “everybody was in this thing together.”24
Although there was remarkable good will among the men in the yard, the committee up at the table suspected they might still need a security detail. A call for volunteers netted about fifty men. Blyden and Clark went out into the yard to actively recruit more security guards, aiming for a mix of blacks, whites, and Puerto Ricans. Targeting some of the most respected—and largest—men in the group, they recruited a dedicated group, including Frank “Big Black” Smith.
Because of his size and strength, because he was one of the best players on the D Block football team, and because everyone knew he had no political allegiances that would lead him to favor some prisoners over others, Big Black was chosen to head up the security force. His friend Carlos Roche begged him not to do it, fearing the price he would pay when the takeover inevitably ended, but Big Black agreed to accept the position. Along with Herbie Scott Dean (aka Akil Al-Jundi), another well-liked man who routinely refereed the basketball and football games, he took charge of almost three hundred fellow prisoner security guards. They made sure that food was evenly distributed, that personal violence was kept in check, and that anyone who threatened another prisoner was removed from the yard. Specific security guards were also given particular tasks in the yard. A prisoner by the name of Bernard Stroble (known by all as Shango) was assigned to guard the entrance to D Block, while former Auburn prisoner Jomo Joka Omowale, known simply as Jomo, was put in charge of the door through which observers entered and left D Yard.
Though the task of keeping everyone safe seemed monumental, Big Black was determined to ensure that “anyone in the yard could feel like they could be in the yard without any bodily harm coming to ’em.”25 The Schleich brothers were especially glad to see men with security armbands roaming around and keeping watch over things. When Richard X Clark heard about the attack on them, he and Champ organized a security team to take the brothers on a flashlit search that night to find their rapists.26 Although the young men were unable to identify their attackers, they nevertheless were grateful for the support.27
Another urgent problem facing the men in D Yard was finding some way to deal with prisoner and hostage injuries, as well as chronic maladies such as diabetes and asthma. Blyden called for anyone in the yard with medical experience to come forward.28 Once again, volunteers headed up to the table in the corner of D Yard and began offering their services. Some went to the prison hospital to bring out bandages, and others negotiated with personnel on the outside to obtain additional supplies. One man, forty-seven-year-old Tiny Swift, became the chief prisoner administering medical care. By day’s end he and his fellow volunteers had set up a fully functioning medical station, designated by a makeshift cross and a large white sheet draped over the area. Painkillers were dispensed to the injured, and medications like insulin were given to those who needed them.
As the afternoon wore on, moves were made to house people by setting up tents using cell block sheets and also to make sure that everyone got fed. The men who had assumed leadership asked a group of prisoners to go to the commissary to get its remaining supplies, and then directed that all the swiped foodstuffs and other goods the men had grabbed be deposited in a community kitty. After some discussion about how most efficiently to feed nearly 1,300 people, they decided that men would be called up to eat by cell block, and then served each meal by designated volunteers. Canned goods like Spam were among the offerings, as were sandwiches and coffee.29
The organized medical station (Courtesy of the Associated Press)
Once basic needs were attended to, the men at the table began discussing how a more democratic decision-making body might be formed. Eventually, it was agreed that an election should be held—one in which the members of each cell block would elect two
men to vote on all important decisions. Addressing the men in the yard, they asked for everyone to group together by cell block to decide which man would then “talk for the group.”30 This wasn’t a speedy process, but D Yard was being transformed from anarchy into an organized tent city with democratically elected representatives, a security force, a dining area, and a fairly well-equipped medical station.
In many cases, it was the most politically engaged and outspoken prisoners who were elected. A Block chose Black Muslim leader Richard X Clark and Black Panther L. D. Barkley; B Block’s men selected former New York City jail activist Herbert X Blyden to represent them. C Block elected a man named Jerry “the Jew” Rosenberg, who was highly respected for his legal knowledge, as well as Flip Crowley, who was very good at articulating a position. Champ was one of the leaders elected out of D Block. In addition to the officially elected leaders, others were eager to participate, including Sam Melville, Frank Lott, and Tommy Hicks. These men gathered around the table to be available in case anyone wanted their assistance on matters of strategy and organization.
Once it was decided who would represent the nearly 1,300 men now gathered in D Yard, the bullhorn was up for grabs, and everyone who wanted to speak could line up to voice their opinions and concerns. Free speech had come to Attica. As Richard X Clark later recalled, “a lot of rhetoric was spoken at that time,” and the speeches were pointed and powerful.31 Most focused on the many things that needed to be changed at Attica. With so many important issues being raised, it was soon clear to the leadership that they needed to draft an official statement of demands to present to prison officials. Although they had not planned this prison uprising, the men who found themselves in the middle of it wanted to make sure that they used the opportunity to make their grievances known.32 A call for typists went out over the bullhorn, and after an hour-long cacophony of shouts, impassioned pleas, and indignant outbursts, two white and two black prisoners had tapped out a list of the major things the men in the yard wanted to accomplish.33 Votes were taken in order to reach consensus on each point, and the leaders worked hard to help the group prioritize their demands and distinguish between issues that were urgent and those that could be dealt with later.34
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