14. Paul D. McGinnis, Commissioner of Correction, “Agency Appraisal Report, 1970,” July 15, 1970, Nelson A. Rockefeller gubernatorial records, Departmental Reports, Series 28, New York (State), Governor (1959–1973: Rockefeller), Record Group 15, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York.
15. Department of Correction Program Meeting Report, September 22, 1960, Present: Paul McGinnis, William Leonard, John Cain, William J. Ronan, Charles Palmer, John Terry, Edith Baikie, Richard Wiebe, William Rand, Nelson A. Rockefeller gubernatorial records, Departmental Reports, Series 28, New York (State), Governor (1959–1973: Rockefeller), Record Group 15, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York.
3. VOICES FROM AUBURN
1. Jomo Davis, conversation with author, Deerfield Correctional Facility, Capron, Virginia, February 16, 2006. At various points in this book this man is referred to by different names. This is the name he goes by now.
2. New York State Senate Committee on Crime and Correction, The Hidden Society: Annual Report, 1970, 12.
3. For an eyewitness account of a participant in this Auburn riot, see: Mariano “Dalou” Gonzalez, Interview by Michael D. Ryan, Transcript, W. E. B. Du Bois Library, Special Collections, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 7–8.
4. James F. Campbell, Hostage: Terror and Triumph (Connecticut: Greenwood, 1992), 49–57.
5. New York State Senate Committee on Crime and Correction, The Hidden Society, 14.
6. Russell G. Oswald, Commissioner, Department of Correctional Services, Memorandum to Nelson A. Rockefeller, Governor, Subject: “Activities Report—February 25, 1971–March 22, 1971,” Nelson A. Rockefeller gubernatorial records, Departmental Reports, Series 28, New York (State), Governor (1959–1973: Rockefeller), Record Group 15, Box 2, Folder 31, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York.
7. Ibid.
8. Herman Schwartz, telephone conversation with author, July 28, 2004.
9. Frank Lynns, “State Prison Chief Writes to Rebellious Inmates,” New York Times, February 11, 1971, 36.
10. Oswald Memorandum to Rockefeller, Subject: “Activities Report—February 25, 1971–March 22, 1971,” Rockefeller Archive Center.
11. Lynns, “State Prison Chief Writes to Rebellious Inmates,” 36.
12. Russell G. Oswald, Commissioner, Department of Correctional Services, Memorandum to Nelson A. Rockefeller, Governor, Subject: “Activity Report—March 23, 1971–April 7, 1971,” April 6, 1971, Nelson A. Rockefeller gubernatorial records, Departmental Reports, Series 28, New York (State), Governor (1959–1973: Rockefeller), Record Group 15, Box 2, Folder 31, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York.
13. Ibid.
14. Oswald, Attica—My Story, 37.
15. Russell Oswald, Letter to Frank Walkley, May 11, 1971, obtained through FOIL request #110818 of the New York State Attorney General’s Office, 000912.
16. Douglas Robinson, “Abuses Charged in Auburn Prison: Relatives of Prisoners Tell of Beatings and Gassing,” New York Times, April 23, 1971.
17. Russell G. Oswald, Commissioner, Department of Correctional Services, Memorandum to Nelson A. Rockefeller, Governor, Subject: “Activity Report—March 23, 1971–April 7, 1971,” April 6, 1971.
18. Ibid.
19. Russell G. Oswald, Commissioner, Department of Correctional Services, Memorandum to Nelson A. Rockefeller, Governor, Subject: “Activities Report—May 6, 1971–June 2, 1971,” June 9, 1971, Nelson A. Rockefeller gubernatorial records, Departmental Reports, Series 28, New York (State), Governor (1959–1973: Rockefeller), Record Group 15, Box 2, Folder 31, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. On the transfer of Auburn prisoners to segregation at Attica, see: Oswald Letter to Walkley, May 11, 1971.
4. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
1. Alton Germain, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 14, 1972, 737.
2. Lucien Lombardo, “Attica Remembered: A Personal Essay,” Paideusis: Journal for Interdisciplinary and Cross-Cultural Studies 2 (1999): 7–14.
3. Ibid.
4. Bernard “Shango” Stroble, Chapter, “Anatomy of a Defense,” unpublished book, ed. Ernest Goodman et al., Preliminary Inventory of the National Lawyers Guild Records, 1936–1999, Ernest Goodman Files, Box 67, Series 10, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
5. Larry Boone, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 17, 1972, 20.
6. For more on the ways in which Attica’s men understood the broader imperative of keeping state power in check within the criminal justice system, see: Heather Ann Thompson, “Lessons from Attica: From Prisoner Rebellion to Mass Incarceration and Back,” Socialism and Democracy 28, no. 3 (September 2014): 153–71.
7. David Addison, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 17, 1972, 38. Also see: Lawrence Killbrew, Auburn transferee at Attica until January 3, 1972, Testimony, State of New York Select Committee on Correctional Institutions and Programs, New York City, February 11, 1972.
8. Jomo Cleveland Davis, conversation with author, February 16, 2006.
9. Elizabeth Gaynes, conversation with author, Long Island, New York, April 8, 2006.
10. McKay Report, 130.
11. Russell Oswald, Attica—My Story (New York: Doubleday, 1972), 39.
5. PLAYING BY THE RULES
1. Larry Boone, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 17, 1972, 27, 150.
2. Attica Liberation Faction, Letter to Russell Oswald, as quoted in: David Addison, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 17, 1972, 95.
3. As quoted in Jeremy Levenson, “Shreds of Humanity: The Attica Prison Uprising, the State of New York and ‘Politically Unaware’ Medicine,” Unpublished Undergraduate Honors Thesis, Department of Urban Studies, University of Pennsylvania, December 21, 2011, in author’s possession, 39–40.
4. Attica Liberation Faction to Oswald, McKay Transcript, 97.
5. Russell G. Oswald, Commissioner, Department of Corrections, Memorandum to Nelson A. Rockefeller, Governor, as quoted in: David Addison, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 17, 1972, 97. Copy also held at the Walter Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs, DRUM Collection, Subseries 2C National Lawyers Guild: 1963–74, Box 7, Folder 11, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan.
Russell G. Oswald, Commissioner, Department of Correctional Services, Memorandum to Nelson A. Rockefeller, Governor, Subject: “Activities Report—June 2, 1971–July 2, 1971,” July 6, 1971, Nelson A. Rockefeller gubernatorial records, Departmental Reports, Series 28, New York (State), Governor (1959–1973: Rockefeller), Record Group 15, Box 2, Folder 31, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York.
6. Russell G. Oswald, Commissioner, Department of Correctional Services, Memorandum to Nelson A. Rockefeller, Governor, Subject: “Activities Report—June 30, 1971–July 29, 1971,” July 30, 1971, Nelson A. Rockefeller gubernatorial records, Departmental Reports, Series 28, New York (State), Governor (1959–1973: Rockefeller), Record Group 15, Box 2, Folder 31, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Also see: Russell G. Oswald, Interview by CBS News correspondent Walter Cronkite, September 21, 1971, Transcript, Dorothy Schiff Papers, Box 4, New York Public Library.
7. Russell Oswald, Attica—My Story (New York: Doubleday, 1972), 40.
8. Herbert X Blyden and Akil Al-Jundi, Testimony, Deferred Joint Appendix, Herbert Blyden et al. v. Vincent Mancus, et al., United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, 186 F. 3d 252, Docket No. 97-2912, Vol. I, November 11, 1991, in the papers of Elizabeth M. Fink, Brooklyn, New York, A-1-687. Also see: “Folsom Manifesto,” in Frank Browning, Prison Life: A Study of the Exploitative Conditions in America’s Prisons (New York: Harper & Row, 1972).
9. Robert E. Tomasson, “Melville, Attica Radical Dead: Recently Wrote of Jail Terror,” New York Times, September 15, 1971.
10. Oswald Memorandum to Rockefeller, July 30, 1971.
11. Russell Oswald, Letter to Attica Inmates, July 7, 1971, as quoted
in: David Addison, McKay Transcript, 106.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Frank Lott, Letter to Russell Oswald, July 19, 1971, as quoted in Addison, McKay Transcript, 107.
15. Ibid., 108.
16. Ibid., 110.
17. Ibid., 111.
18. Russell Oswald, Letter to Attica Inmates, undated, as quoted in: Addison, McKay Transcript, 111.
19. Second Oswald Letter to Attica Inmates quoted in Addison, McKay Tran-script, 111.
20. McKay Report, 138.
6. BACK AND FORTH
1. “August–September, 1971,” Agricultural Business Weather Bureau, Historical Databases.
2. James E. Cochrane, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 13, 1972, 290.
3. David Addison, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 17, 1972.
4. For an important recent discussion of George Jackson and the broader California prisoner rights movement, see: Dan Berger, Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).
5. Wallace Turner, “Bingham Charged in Prison Deaths,” New York Times, September 1, 1971; “Officials Report Racial Angle in San Quentin Break,” New York Times, August 25, 1971. Also see: Pacifica Radio Reports PM 054 and PM 122 on the killing of George Jackson, in: The Freedom Archives, San Francisco, California, as well as: Television News Archive, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.
6. Conversation #571-10 (rmn_e571b), September 13, 1971, 4:36 p.m.–6:40 p.m., Oval Office; and Conversation #74-2, September 14, 1971, Richard Nixon White House Recordings, Presidential Recordings Program, Miller Center for Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. Hereafter referred to as Nixon Tapes.
7. Larry Boone, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 17, 1972, 155.
8. Davis, conversation with author, February 16, 2006.
9. Boone, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 17, 1972, 154.
10. From an August report written by Russell Oswald for Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Copy of report removed from Rockefeller Archives, New York State Archives, by the state of New York, but this quote was reprinted in Oswald’s own autobiography. See: Russell Oswald, Attica—My Story (New York: Doubleday, 1972), 42.
11. Deanne Quinn Miller, conversation with author, Batavia, New York, August 11, 2004.
12. Henry Rossbacher, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 17, 1972, 14; Addison, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 17, 1972, 38. Also see: McKay Report, p. 130.
13. Boone, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 17, 1972, 157.
7. END OF THE LINE
1. As quoted in: Russell Oswald, Attica—My Story (New York: Doubleday, 1972), 117.
2. As quoted in: ibid., 118.
3. As quoted in: ibid., 119.
4. As quoted in: ibid., 122.
5. Raymond Jordan, Jr., Letter to Russell Oswald, September 8, 1971, FOIA request #110818 of the New York State Attorney General’s Office, FOIA p. 000848.
6. Ibid.
7. As quoted in McKay Report, 141.
8. Ibid.
9. As reproduced in: Samuel Melville, Letters from Attica (New York: William Morrow, 1972), 173–74.
10. Herbert X Blyden, Letter to John R. Dunne, September 8, 1971, FOIA request #110818 of the New York State Attorney General’s Office, FOIA p. 001676.
11. Ibid.
12. As reproduced in: Melville, Letters from Attica, 173–74.
PART II · POWER AND POLITICS UNLEASHED
1. Michael Smith, conversation with author, Batavia, New York, August 10, 2004.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Michael Smith, Testimony, Attica Task Force Hearing, July 30, 2002, Albany, New York, 197.
8. TALKING BACK
1. For more information on the Weather Underground and the Young Lords Party see: Dan Berger, Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (Chico, California: AK Press, 2005) and Johanna Fernandez, When the World Was Their Stage: A History of the Young Lords Party, 1968–1974 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).
2. Chris Mayers, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 14, 1972, 173.
3. Rockefeller Administration, Confidential Memo, “Events at Attica: September 8–13, 1971,” 1. This nearly seventy-page so-called Albright-Vestner Report was compiled by Rockefeller’s closest aides so that the governor could be briefed on every detail about the upheaval at Attica during the rebellion. The existence of this report was denied for years but in the 1980s it was finally produced under subpoena. This copy was found in the Office of the Clerk, located in Erie County courthouse, Buffalo, New York, when the author visited in October 2006.
4. Investigators James Stephen and F. A. Keenan, State of New York Organized Crime Task Force Memorandum to R. E. Fischer, Subject: “Interview of Lt. Robert Curtiss,” December 9, 1971, Erie County courthouse.
5. Karl Pfeil, Testimony, In the Matter of the Additional, Special and Trial Term of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Designated Pursuant to the Order of the Appellate Division, Fourth Department. County of Wyoming, January 20, 1972, Erie County courthouse.
6. Richard X Clark, The Brothers of Attica (New York: Links Books, 1973), 8–9.
7. Chris Mayers, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 14, 1972, 189.
8. Ibid., 191.
9. Rockefeller Administration, Confidential Memo, “Events at Attica: September 8–13, 1971,” 2.
10. Investigators Stephen and Keenan Memorandum to Fischer, December 9, 1971.
11. Rockefeller Administration, Confidential Memo, “Events at Attica: September 8–13, 1971,” 2.
12. Richard Maroney, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 18, 1972, 397–98.
13. Investigators Stephen and Keenan Memorandum to Fischer, December 9, 1971.
14. McKay Report, 152.
15. Rockefeller Administration, Confidential Memo, “Events at Attica: September 8–13, 1971,” 2.
16. Maroney, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 18, 1972, 409.
17. Jack Florence, Testimony, In the Matter of the Additional, Special and Trial Term of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Designated Pursuant to the Order of the Appellate Division, Fourth Department. County of Wyoming, January 20, 1972, Erie County courthouse, 17.
18. Ibid., 17–18.
9. BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE
1. Chris Mayers, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 14, 1972, 194.
2. Ibid., 195.
3. Ibid.
4. Rockefeller Administration, Confidential Memo, “Events at Attica: September 8–13, 1971,” 2.
5. Steven Rosenfeld, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 14, 1972, 219.
6. There is conflicting testimony about who decided the prisoners should be refused rec time and taken back to their cells (see McKay Transcript testimonies), and even the governor’s office was given a wholly different account of who was where and who said what that morning (see: Rockefeller Administration, Confidential Memo, “Events at Attica: September 8–13, 1971,” 3). Taking the testimony of all of the prisoners and correction officers together, however, Curtiss’s version seems the more likely. Pfeil testified before a grand jury that he “either gave the order or re-affirmed the order of Mr. Mancusi, that this is what he should do, order that A Block door be locked and personally supervised that that company was locked in on their respective galleries.” Pfeil, Testimony, In the Matter of the Additional, Special and Trial Term of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Designated Pursuant to the Order of the Appellate Division, Fourth Department. County of Wyoming, January 20, 1972, 12.
7. Rosenfeld, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 14, 1972, 220.
8. Rockefeller Administration, Confidential Memo, “Events at Attica: September 8–13, 1971,” 3.
9. In his memoir, former Attica inmate John Hill (also known as Dacajewiah) asserts that he, Sam Melville, and an unnamed African American prisoner were the three who jumped on Curtiss and began hit
ting him. As he wrote, “The brother said, ‘Fuck you honky,’ and punched him in the face dropping him instantly. Sam Melville and I followed suit and kicked the crap out of the Captain and his boys. A black, white, and red man were unified in one instinctive impulse—to defiantly engage the brutal regime.” John Boncore Hill and Sandra Bruderer, The Autobiography of Dacajewiah: Splitting the Sky, from Attica to Gustafsen Lake (Canada: John Pasquale Boncore, 2001), 18.
10. Lieutenant Robert Curtiss, Hostage, Statement taken by M. D. Gavin and E. Palascak, September 28, 1971, 4:15 p.m., Erie County courthouse.
11. Richard X Clark, The Brothers of Attica (New York: Links Books, 1973), 22.
12. Edward Douglas Zimmer, Testimony, In the Matter of the Additional, Special and Trial Term of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Designated Pursuant to the Order of the Appellate Division, Fourth Department. County of Wyoming, January 20, 1972, Erie County courthouse, 3–4.
13. Investigators James Lo Curto and F. E. Demlar, Memorandum to A. G. Simonetti, Subject: “Quinn Homicide Investigation,” October 20, 1971, State of New York Organized Crime Task Force, Erie County courthouse. Also see: Zimmer, Testimony, In the Matter of the Additional, Special and Trial Term of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Designated Pursuant to the Order of the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, 3–4.
14. Harold Goewey, Testimony, McKay Transcript, April 13, 1972, 397.
15. Investigators James LeCurto and F. E. Demlar, Memorandum to A. G. Simonetti, Subject: “Quinn Homicide Investigation,” October 20, 1971. Also see: Rockefeller Administration, Confidential Memo, “Events at Attica: September 8–13, 1971,” 5.
16. Investigators James LeCurto and F. E. Demlar, Memorandum to A. G. Simonetti, Subject: “Quinn Homicide Investigation,” October 20, 1971.
17. “The weld itself was defective. The two ends had been butt-welded, so that no more than ¹⁄₁₆” of metal held the two ends of the rod together around its circumference.” After this rod had been improperly reconnected, the joint was then “ground smooth, further weakening it.” McKay Report, 161.
Blood in the Water Page 69