Storming the Gates: Fifty Years After the Attica Prison Uprising

Fifty years ago this week, September 9-13, 1971, incarcerated men at the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York took control of the state prison to demand humane treatment and better living. The revolt captured the nation’s attention, with journalists, historians and political analysts calling it a pivotal moment in the national prisoners’ rights movement. 

Now, after the murder of George Floyd inspired renewed protests across the country demanding accountability around law enforcement, corrections and criminal justice, the WNYC Race and Justice Unit sought to reexamine the 50th anniversary of the Attica uprising, what has changed in New York State’s prison system to improve the quality of life for inmates, and what remains unaddressed half a century later. 

PART ONE: Setting the Stage

By Emily Lang and Joseph Gedeon

An event that started as a prisoner uprising over living conditions morphed into an organized rebellion that included taking prison guards hostage and negotiating with state and federal officials over a list of 27 demands. It ended in the storming of the facility and the deaths of 43 people —  incarcerated men and corrections officers. 

We begin our series with The Witnesses: three men who were incarcerated at Attica 50 years ago this week, when all hell broke loose. 

Tyrone Larkins, Alhajji Sharif and Akil Shakur spoke with WNYC Race and Justice reporter Joseph Gedeon. 

While these men have the lived experience of what happened inside Attica, Professor Heather Ann Thompson, a historian at the University of Michigan, has been able to assess the large political forces at play that pushed tensions inside and outside the prison over the edge in her book, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. Thompson spoke with series producer Emily Lang; here’s a condensed version of that conversation:

LANG: We just heard from three men who were among the incarcerated people, a population of mainly Black and Puerto Rican men, on September 9th, 1971. They alluded to some of what led to the uprising, but can you describe some of the political chapters that informed this moment? 

THOMPSON: I mean this entire event takes place at a time when the entire nation is in flux. The entire nation is aware that there is deep, deep racial injustice at every corner of the nation.

The men at Attica are standing up for racial justice and for basic human rights in the same way that anyone is—whether you're in the yard at Attica or anywhere. You are determined, that finally in American history, the promise of equality and justice for all is going to mean something.

There had been institutions like the New York prison system that had been saying ‘Yes, you know, we will take parole rules seriously. We will take seriously that we need to feed people decently within our prisons. We will honor yard time and basic care.’

None of these things were happening. People were being fed on $0.63 cents a day. The abuse was rampant. That is the context.  

LANG: Peaceful negotiations continued for nearly four days. In your book, you suggest that the conversations and documents passed between these various political actors show the government's true intentions: to end these negotiations with bloodshed. The blood of prisoners and state employees. Describe some of that evidence. 

THOMPSON: One of the real tragedies of Attica is that, at the time, we don't really realize how much extraordinary sympathy so much of the American public really had for basic human rights behind bars.

One of the things that Attica did was it really lifted the veil. They were able to show what life was really like. Ordinary Americans were appalled when they realized. And so what happens, right? How can these people then become the same people that will vote for the punitive policies that become mass incarceration?

Well, the state of New York is in large part responsible for that. In those hours, those minutes, those days at the very end of the Attica Uprising are what we have to look at. What happens essentially is that we are told that the State of New York has no choice, but to go into Attica with armed troopers and to retake this prison by force.

We know this many decades later, now that we've actually gotten in there and been able to finally see some of those documents, we now see that negotiations were proceeding. Everybody wanted them to proceed. The observers there were telling the Rockefeller administration: ‘Do not go in there with force because it will be a blood bath.’

We now know that in fact, the Rockefeller administration was told, if you go in there, you will end up killing your own state employees because it is so volatile and they did go in anyway. We know that what ensued was not just a massacre, but an orgy of violence. 

Professor Heather Ann Thompson is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy.”

This article has been updated to reflect that Akil Shakur's correct last name (it is Shakur, not Shaquan).