As part of my ongoing series about Laura Scott's life, today I will focus on how women prisoners in San Quentin were treated by staff and how they treated each other in the early 20th century. For this, I am once again relying on the first-hand account of an unnamed ex-San Quentin female prisoner published in the book “Crime and Criminals.” Let’s begin by exploring the apparent corruption of the staff at the prison:

Numerous instances of favoritism in this, as in other regards, are cited, especially where the prisoners were able to do embroidery and other fine needlework for the matron. There is supposed to be a stringent rule forbidding making presents to or doing work for a prison official. “If anyone were so interested as to investigate he would find ‘Buzzard’s Roost’, as the matron designated her abode, literally lined with pillows, table covers, pillow shams and other articles too numerous to mention, forced from the women who hoped by thus catering to her greed to enjoy some of the favors they knew she could and did give to those who worked for her.”

According to the former San Quentin woman prisoner, the matron who oversaw the “Female Department” was capricious and cruel:

“…she is described as having been an incurable gossip, of the foulest kind, showing special partiality to negresses, and completing a day’s work that averaged about five hours by leaving the establishment to itself at 4:30 p.m.”

The matron is alleged to have discouraged church services at the prison in favor of gambling and dancing instead:

“Many a time after the California Club women or the Salvation Army lassies had held their services in the office, the table would be rolled back and the negro women, and those of the white women who were low enough in their tastes to enjoy such a spectacle, would be called in and, while one would strum on a banjo, the rest would raise their clothes and give a leg show. The higher kickers they were the better the matron enjoyed it.” At the same time gambling would be in progress. An attempt to form a bible study class was stopped. No books that could be used for educational purposes were obtainable, and every effort toward self-improvement was discouraged.

It appears that this testimonial was offered by a white female prisoner because it is peppered with allegations of reverse racism while offering racist descriptions of female prisoners of color. For example, “White women who are cleanly and neat are next to some vile-smelling negress, Chinese or Mexican women.” The writer provides some interesting anecdotes that depict “negresses” like a cook who was promoted to “librarian” as terrorizing white female prisoners with impunity while being protected by the white matron of the prison. Here’s an anecdote that was offered:

It is charged that the abuse of the white women by the negresses was deliberately encouraged, and that repeatedly, to the accompaniment of guitars, the matron could be seen waltzing with the big negress cook, whose relations with her were a constantly discussed and most revolting scandal. This negress is said to have ruled the women’s department and, “notwithstanding the fact that she was one of the worst women there, by the matron’s own statement, yet she had the most privileges; she was never punished or even reprimanded for her dreadful statements and wicked talk; she was given the place of cook, which carries with it special privileges, such as warmth, baths, good food, being unlocked at night, and many other favors. The white women were at her mercy.” This is the woman whom the matron, as mentioned previously, appointed librarian.

This seems to be an unusual racial dynamic for that era but I honestly don’t know enough about the history of other women’s prisons to know if this was a unique circumstance or more common. Could it really be possible that a black prisoner like Laura Scott might benefit from her race in prison in 1905? This seems incredible to me. However, the overall account provided about life at San Quentin was corroborated by several other prisoners before it was published by the Prison Reform League. It’s a puzzle.

Some of the most harrowing stories in the account address the abusive treatment that some female prisoners experienced at San Quentin. They were basically tortured.

“A colored woman named Belle N. was serving a term of ten years. At the end of three years, after having been accorded the privileges accorded to all colored women, she turned on the matron and made threats that she would do her bodily harm. This woman was locked in her cell, and for three years, or nearly four, was never allowed to leave it save for one hour every Friday. Just one month before her release should have come she was removed to an insane asylum, and in two weeks was a corpse. A great, healthy animal she was, but dangerous to the matron.

The unnamed female prisoner who offered this testimony ends with these words: “I have not, and I cannot, tell one-hundredth part of the awfulness of the place, which is fitly described by all the women as a ‘veritable hell on earth.’”

Shortly after this account was written, the matron of San Quentin tendered her resignation. Upon hearing about the stories of the horrible conditions for female prisoners at San Quentin, women reformers mobilized to press for improvements and eventually successfully advocated for building a separate facility to house women in California. Hester Griffith (not related to Griffith J Griffith) was part of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). She was a prison reformer who stated at the end of the published account that she had corroborated the allegations about the terrible conditions at the Prison for women. She also highlighted the allegation that in 1904 and 1905 visiting members of the state legislature had used the women’s quarters as a brothel. As Cristina Rathbone writes: “Rape had always been a problem – really the problem — for women in prison in America (p.66).” So we know that female prisoners at San Quentin must have been subjected to sexual abuse especially because they usually shared the same facility as male prisoners and more importantly male guards.

The next edition of Laura’s story recounts her second trial in 1907 for larceny.

Note: I have always appreciated librarians. They ROCK. In particular, the staff at the California Archives have provided me with INVALUABLE help. There is no way that I could write about Laura Scott without the information that they have helped me to unearth. Next time you have a moment, please stop by your local library and thank the librarians on staff for what they contribute to our culture.

In California as in the rest of the country, little to no attention was paid to women prisoners in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Their numbers were very small relative to male prisoners. In 1904, a year before Laura Scott first entered San Quentin Prison, there were 1,451 men and 27 women incarcerated there (source: First Biennial Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections, 1903-1904, p. 11).

After a highly publicized trial, Griffith J Griffith was convicted of shooting and wounding his wife and served two years in San Quentin Prison from 1904 to 1906. Before he was imprisoned, he had been very successful as a California business man and philanthropist. He made his fortune in the mining business. Throughout his trial, he consistently maintained that the incident with his wife had been an accident. As soon as Griffith was released from prison in December 1906, he began working on an expose of the conditions there. His account of his time at San Quentin is published in a book by the Prison Reform League (that I have referenced on the blog before) titled “Crime and Criminals.” Everyone with an interest in the early history of prisons in the U.S. should read his account of his time behind bars.

Griffith also offered an expose of the terrible conditions for women at San Quentin that relied on the written account of an unnamed female prisoner who had spent several years incarcerated there. This account was corroborated by several other prisoners before it was published in Crime and Criminals. It is one of the only available first-hand testimonials of life inside San Quentin Prison for women at the turn of the 20th century.

Female prisoners at San Quentin were supplied with only the bare minimum of clothing and other items:

The state supplies each female prisoner every six months with six yards of white cotton, six yards of tennis flannel, and two pairs of hose. She is given also two blue denim dresses and one heavy blue flannel dress, called a “reception dress”. But it does not supply any underwear, corsets, underskirts, garters, hats, bonnets, coats or overshoes, and the sufferings of those who enter without such supplies and have no money to buy them are extreme. For there is no heat in the cells, and the thick walls, when thoroughly wetted and chilled, remain so all winter. ” It would have been amusing, were it not so pathetic, to see the straits to which the women were reduced to find something that would answer for underclothes, and they picked up from the sewing-room floor scraps of cotton flannel and, by great ingenuity and much labor, made garments. These garments, being most bulky, were refused by the laundry, as they broke the wringer.” In one of such garments the writer counted two hundred and forty pieces. The further comment is made that, although the state is supposed to issue the supplies previously mentioned every six months, they are habitually held back. If, therefore, for example, a woman’s supplies are due in April and she is to be released in May, she will be told that the supplies have not arrived, and will leave the prison without getting them.

What kind of work did the women at San Quentin Prison do?

From eighty to a hundred suits of underwear have to be made each week for the use of the men, but this, like the other work, is divided up. One woman acts as cook and there is a diningroom girl, whose duties are entirely below stairs. Nothing is taught that can be of the lightest use to the prisoner after her discharge, the accomplishments to be learned being cigarette smoking — each woman receiving every Monday afternoon her sack of tobacco and package of papers — and other vices. As to which the writer remarks : ” Nearly every woman there has voiced the sentiment, not once but many times : ‘I shall be a thousand times worse a girl when I leave this living hell than I ever dreamed I could be.’ And it is true, for the viler, lower traits are so encouraged, and whatever better impulses one possesses are so smothered and killed, that the entire nature is changed for the worse. This is no idle statement, for we all know that constant fear breeds hate, and from hate spring all the baser passions.”

Interestingly this account about life at San Quentin at the turn of the century spans the years when Laura Scott would have been incarcerated at the prison. Given this reality, when Griffith’s unnamed source mentions that a two-time negress convict worked as the dressmaker of the prison, one might wonder if this could have been Laura Scott herself. Remember that her occupation was listed on prison and arrest records as dressmaker/seamstress. Many of the dates mentioned in the account range from 1906 to 1909. These would have years that overlap with Laura’s time as a prisoner at San Quentin.

The next installment of this story will focus on the purported racial dynamics between women prisoners as well as on how female prisoners were treated by staff (both male and female) at San Quentin. Stay tuned!

Electric Shock Box

While some people are only now waking up to the connections between the military and the PIC, this has been a trend for decades.

Julilly Kohler-Hausmann has written a terrific chapter titled “Militarizing the Police: Officer Jon Burge, Torture, and War in the ‘Urban Jungle’” which appears in Stephen Hartnett’s edited volume Challenging the Prison Industrial Complex.

Hausmann suggests that: “Americans, as domestic political unrest and the war in the jungles of Vietnam intensified during the late 1960s, increasingly referred to ‘urban jungles’ to organize their comments about the homefront (p.48).”

Furthermore, she adds important information to our understanding of the history of the militarization of law enforcement:

“Urban areas had long been constructed as foreign, racialized spaces; once they were in open revolt, their struggles with state authority were easily interpreted with the same rhetorical devices used for insurgent populations abroad. Thus, it is not surprising that over time, more and more voices called for the state to use the same tools and techniques employed overseas to subdue allegedly dangerous spaces. And so, by the mid-to-late 1960s, domestic law enforcement agencies had begun to interpret the conditions in inner cities as wars and had begun to turn for answers to military training, technology, and terminology (p. 48).”

A couple of weeks ago, I raised the point that some rappers in the 1980s and 1990s were likening their communities to “war zones” and the police to “an occupying force.” What I did not consider in that analysis is that this characterization pre-dated them. Hausmann quotes Inspector Daryl Gates of the LAPD as saying that “the streets of America had become foreign territory” during the 1965 Watts rebellions. It turns out that modern rappers were responding to the conditions in their communities engendered by a war that had been declared decades earlier by the state. Around the same time that Inspector Gates was making his comments about Watts, black nationalists and other activists were describing themselves as inhabiting “colonies” within the United States and being “occupied people.” Here is a quote cited by Hausmann from Black Panther David Hilliard in his autobiography illustrating this concept:

“we’re a colony, a people with a distinct culture who are used for cheap labor. The only difference between us, and, say, Algeria, is that we are inside the mother country. And the police have the same relation to us that the American Army does to Vietnam: they are a force of occupation which will stop at nothing to keep us under control.”

So interestingly, we had the representatives of state power and their targets reinforcing each others’ message that the inner city was “foreign territory.” Ironically by reinforcing the message that the “ghetto” was a war zone (which reflected the truth of their daily experiences in these communities), marginalized people were unintentionally watering the seeds of their own destruction and further oppression.

1968 brought a new opportunity for urban police forces to purchase new equipment and technologies thanks to funding from the passage of the Safe Streets Act. They also had license earned by the social anxiety and fear engendered by Vietnam and domestic urban rebellions to turn these new products on the marginalized population of the inner cities across America.

Jon Burge served in Vietnam in the late 1960s as a military police officer and was responsible for among other things transporting and guarding prisoners of war. Hausmann suggests that he would have observed some of the techniques employed by military intelligence officers who were interrogating prisoners. One of the tools that these intelligence officers used was a “field phone” as an instrument of torture. Hausmann writes:

“Many also admitted that it was common for military intelligence officers to rig wires from hand-cranked field telephones to shock prisoners, ostensibly to extract confessions and information. But the use of field phones in torture was not limited to Vietnam, as the first reports of the device actually surfaced stateside, where it was allegedly assembled in the early 1960s by a doctor at the Tucker Prison Farm in Arkansas. Knowledge of this device, often called the “Tucker telephone,” migrated to Vietnam and references to its use have subsequently been reported all over the world (p.57).”

What is striking about this description of the field telephone is that it illustrates how technologies easily migrated between the U.S. to the war zone and back again.

Burge joined the Chicago Police Department in 1970 and was promoted a couple of years later to detective in Area 2. Hausmann tells us that “the first reports of abuse surfaced shortly after Burge joined the force; the Tucker telephone reappeared in 1973 when Burge used it to torture Anthony Holmes during an interrogation (p.57).”

Between 1972 and 1991, Jon Burge tortured or supervised the torture of more than 100 people (all except one were African American). The methods of torture were diverse, systematic and brutal; additionally the torture which was perpetrated by a group of white detectives who called themselves the “A-team” was always verbally laced with racial slurs:

“He and the detectives under him used a variety of techniques, including beatings, Russian roulette, shocking, and mock executions to coerce confessions from crime suspects; these techniques were intended to inflict high levels of pain or fear without leaving any physical evidence of violence; most of these forms of torture would be familiar to people knowledgeable about the unsanctioned but pervasive interrogation procedures employed by U.S. forces in Vietnam. On other occasions, victims were handcuffed to hot radiators, forced to strip, and repeatedly beaten on the genitals. Officers suffocated some detainees by placing a large bag or typewriter cover over their heads; Burge and his colleagues also shocked victims on the scrotum, penis, anus, fingers, or ears with a cattle prod or the field phone (p.57-58).”

You should all read Hausmann’s entire chapter for more information on the Chicago Police Torture cases and their connection to the militarization of police forces. Additionally, for more information about the cases, visit the site for the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, a terrific project that I am proud to be associated with.

Update: Thanks to reader Eric for flagging this story and sending it to me. It looks like just today the deaths of two black men in Area 2′s police station have been ruled “suicides.” Attorneys and supporters of these men’s families are invoking Burge and raising suspicions as to what really happened.

Note: My old neighbor Lori Berenson has arrived in New York for the first time since 1995. Earlier this year, I wrote about her case here. Below is that post:

I have never written about this before. I am prompted to do so today because of a New York Times Magazine Feature Story that appeared over the weekend.

I was born and mostly raised in New York City. Growing up, I lived in an apartment complex in mid-town. My neighbor during those years was Lori Berenson.

Lori and I are two years apart. She is older than me. We lived on the same floor in a 8 story duplex apartment complex. This is a building where you got to know your neighbors. Lori’s family still lives in that apartment complex and so does part of my family. So when I go back to NYC to visit, I still stay in the apartment that I grew up in.

Lori and I had a cordial relationship. We were not close friends. She went to public school and I went to private school. When you are a kid, a two year age difference is a big gap. We traveled in different circles that did not overlap. Yet when we ran into each other in the laundry room, in the elevator, at the playground or at the supermarket, we would engage in light banter and chit chat. We were never close.

Lori and I were very similar in temperment. We both liked to keep our own company and did not particularly share our inner-most thoughts with others. We were both serious young people. She was socially conscious even though her family was not particularly political. I too was a young social activist. In retrospect, I think that we would have had much in common to discuss.

Lori left for college a year before I did and I would see her from time to time during the holidays when we were both back home. Lori became interested in Latin America. I was taken with the Caribbean. She traveled to El Salvador and was fascinated with radical nuns. I went to Cuba and was infatuated with Assata Shakur. By the time Lori was arrested in Peru in 1995 and sentenced to life in prison, I had moved to Chicago. I didn’t learn about her arrest until several months later.

What did I do once I learned about Lori’s arrest and conviction? I am sad to say… Nothing. When I would travel back to New York, I never stopped by to check on her family, to ask for news of Lori. I was silent about the situation and so were most of our other neighbors. I think that people were shocked by what had happened and I do not think that anyone knew how to react. I certainly did not.

After the first year of Lori’s imprisonment, I finally started to do things like signing petitions asking for clemency and making phone calls to elected officials asking for them to intervene in her case. But still, I did not directly reach out to her family to offer my support and to ask how I could help. I could have done so at any point and I just did not. I felt guilty about it but I didn’t know how to broach the subject when I would run into her parents. I feared that they must be exhausted from the sad looks and the probing questions. Instead, I acted like nothing was amiss. I acted as I always had with them. Saying hello in the elevators and making small talk.

Over the years though, I became obsessed with following any information on Lori’s condition. I looked for ways to support efforts that were set up to free her from prison. To this day, over 15 years later, I have not yet talked to her parents about Lori’s situation. It feels too late now. That time has passed. I built a wall between the personal and the political. I felt comfortable swimming in the river of the political. This has always been the case for me. I wonder how many others of my neighbors did the same. We have never talked about it. Where Lori Berenson was concerned, the residents of East Midtown Plaza adopted a generalized posture of silence.

Lori is on parole in Peru now. “Free” after 15 years in prison. She is unable to leave the country until 2015. I can’t even imagine what she has endured over all of her years of imprisonment. Now she faces a new challenge: social ostracism in a country that despises her. How much can a person endure? Some part of that answer can be found in the last few paragraphs of the Times story about Lori. I think that it captures the essence of the woman. I encourage those interested to read the entire article. It is long but it needs to be.

In the 15 years Berenson spent in prison, her peers have moved from early adulthood into middle age. “The world has changed,” she told me in August. “Internet, giant malls.” Technologically, she’s catching up, and has grown comfortable using e-mail and Skype. But at 41, she is still grappling with the fallout of youthful choices that have ended badly: her vocation; her marriage; her love of Latin America. The passion that fueled her move there seems to have left a kind of void, and beyond the need to support herself and her son, her future remains a blank.

Of course, Berenson’s future won’t really be her own until her parole ends; for now, she is raising Salvador alone in Peru, with limited options. If she ever feels despair or defeat at these conditions, she wouldn’t show it — not at 26, with a life sentence in front of her, and not now. Her capacity to absorb fear and discomfort is partly what has saved her — and also, most likely, what got her into trouble in the first place. But this is speculation; Berenson resists such storytelling, leaving the rest of us to our own devices in trying to unlock the mystery of her biography. What she can’t elude is our desire to do so: a notoriety she has sustained, uncomfortably, for most of her adulthood. “I am always conscious,” she said, “of who I am.”

Click here to watch video of Lori speaking for herself. Lori Berenson was a political prisoner and also my neighbor…

We seem enured to the brutality that many prisoners are subjected to behind bars. We should not be. Cases like this one should be an affront to our sense of decency and should jar us out of our complacency:

Late on the night of August 4, 2010, a badly beaten young man arrived at the trauma ward of Jackson Hospital here. Although the patient was hardly a flight risk, security was tight and prison guards crowded into the emergency room as doctors began treatment.

The patient’s limp body spoke to the savagery of an assault that had left deep contusions on his legs and torso, and inflamed knots bulging from his head and face. He was unresponsive, with fixed and dilated pupils, and doctors quickly diagnosed a traumatic brain injury. Only a ventilator kept him alive. He never regained consciousness and died the next day.

His name was Rocrast Mack. An Alabama prison inmate, his death at age 24 came at the hands of six corrections officers, who took turns battering him with their fists, feet and batons in retribution for a minor altercation with a female guard earlier that night, according to witness accounts and prison records.

The Federal government, it was announced, is now investigating the Alabama Prison System for claims of abuse and brutality. If you think that cases like Mr. Mack‘s are isolated incidents, think again. For several weeks now, I have been planning to write about the brutality that many prisoners and inmates experience at the hands of guards. In September, the ACLU of Southern California issued a devastating report titled “Cruel and Unusual Punishment: How a Savage Gang of Deputies Controls LA County Jails.” The report suggested that:

“To be an inmate in the Los Angeles County jails is to fear deputy attacks. In the past year, deputies have assaulted scores of non-resisting inmates, according to reports from jail chaplains, civilians, and inmates. Deputies have attacked inmates for complaining about property missing from their cells.

They have beaten inmates for asking for medical treatment, for the nature of their alleged offenses, and for the color of their skin.

They have beaten inmates in wheelchairs. They have beaten an inmate, paraded him naked down a jail module, and placed him in a cell to be sexually assaulted.

Many attacks are unprovoked. Nearly all go unpunished: these acts of violence are covered up by a department that refuses to acknowledge the pervasiveness of deputy violence in the jail system.”

I am not naive but I was honestly stunned at the brazenness of the systematic violence and abuse that inmates in LA County were subjected to by staff. The following video features a former inmate detailing the abuse and brutality that he suffered.

The former inmate made the following statement in the video: “This is just a concrete concentration camp.” The concept of prison as a “concentration camp” is actually not new. In the 1960s and 70s, many prisoners made similar claims.

Were the guards who took part in these acts of brutality in Alabama or in L.A. sadists before they started working in jails and prisons? This is doubtful. Instead a more plausible explanation of such violence could be that working in these environments has a profoundly negative and perhaps even dehumanizing impact on people.

I think that the examples of brutality cited above push us to consider the impact that being a jailer has on the people who fulfill this role. During the recent campaign to save Troy Davis’s life, a group of former Wardens wrote a letter asking for a stay of execution. This should not have been remarkable but it was. A couple of sections of the letter particularly stood out to me:

“We write to you today with the overwhelming concern that an innocent person could be executed in Georgia tonight. We know the legal process has exhausted itself in the case of Troy Anthony Davis, and yet, doubt about his guilt remains. This very fact will have an irreversible and damaging impact on your staff. Many people of significant standing share these concerns, including, notably, William Sessions, Director of the FBI under President Ronald Reagan.

Living with the nightmares is something that we know from experience. No one has the right to ask a public servant to take on a lifelong sentence of nagging doubt, and for some of us, shame and guilt. Should our justice system be causing so much harm to so many people when there is an alternative?”

The Wardens were in part making the case that killing a potentially innocent man would have lasting effects on the executioners themselves. One of the Wardens, a man named Allen Ault, spoke eloquently about these concerns on several television programs in the run up to Troy’s ultimate state-sanctioned murder:

In his book New Jack: Guarding Sing Sing, Ted Conover describes his year-long experience as a prison guard. It is a complex portrayal of the role of correctional officers in a prison. We read as Conover, a journalist, is indoctrinated into the ways of prison life. He paints a picture of prisoners who are sometimes scary, unlikeable and dangerous but always human. At one point in the book, he muses about beating up prisoners and setting their cellhouse on fire. He describes the frustrations and sometimes the brutality of his fellow guards who have come to see their charges as something less than human over time. What I found most important in the book though was his reporting about the toll that being a jailer took on the lives of the guards. They had high rates of divorce, health issues, anger, and depression. I think that the book is an essential read for anyone who is interested in how the PIC impacts more than just those who are held captive. It also leaves an indelible mark on the jailers and their families too.

In her brilliant song “Mr. Jailer,” Asa seeks to underscore the interdependence of and the human connection between the jailer and the jailed:

Am in chains you’re in chains too I wear uniforms
You wear uniforms too Am a prisoner
You’re a prisoner too Mr Jailer

I have fears you have fear too I will die
You self go die too Life is beautiful don’t you think so too Mr Jailer

Am talking to you jailer
Stop calling me a prisoner
Let he who is without sin
Be the first to cast the stone Mr Jailer

You suppress all my strategy
You oppress every part of me
What you don’t know
You’re a victim too Mr Jailer

The same theme about the interconnectedness of the jailer and jailed and the sense that their destinies are inextricably linked is struck by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish in his exquisite poem “The Prison Cell.” I have taught this poem to youth and it always gets them talking about how we can all be “imprisoned” even without setting foot in a cell. Always, those of us on the “outside” are intimately connected to those we lock in cages. Not to understand this is to live in denial or to live in South Korea which is apparently experimenting with robot prison guards.

This publication about the Attica Prison uprising of 1971 is not intended to be a curriculum guide, but a brief primer for educators and organizers. It includes a timeline of events (with primary sources); testimonies from Attica prisoners; poetry by Attica prisoners; sample activities for youth; and other suggested resources.

We do not claim to have addressed all of the complexity of the rebellion in this short document. This is by no means intended to be the definitive word about the context and meaning(s) of the rebellion. We simply offer this resource as another in the long line of publications that have been produced about the Attica uprising. We do so knowing that we will omit a lot important information. This is unavoidable.

We had been looking for exactly this type of resource to foster our own popular education efforts and activism on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Attica rebellion. We didn’t find anything that quite worked so we took it upon ourselves to create what would be useful for us. A core value of ours is to share information with others in order to facilitate movement-building to eradicate incarceration. As such, we share this resource with you.

This primer was produced by organizers and educators rather than by historians. While we tried to be objective, we are not neutral. We state this unabashedly and honestly. We sincerely hope that this material is useful to you if you plan to discuss the Attica uprising with your students, community members, and others. We encourage others in the future to add to our collective knowledge about the Attica Rebellion and its legacy.

Finally, we invite you to freely reproduce and distribute this primer. We ask that it be disseminated at no cost and that Project NIA be acknowledged as producing this resource. We love hearing from folks about how they have used our resources so make sure to drop us a line at projectnia@hotmail.com.

Download the Attica Prison Uprising Short Primer Here

Download the Attica Prison Uprising 101 Illustrations Appedix Here

Special thanks to the following people who contributed to making this primer a reality…

Caitlin Seidler has once again lent her considerable talents to designing and laying out this resource. Caitlin’s commitment to social justice is unrivaled and she has our deepest gratitude.

Lewis Wallace has been integral to the development of our work at Project NIA. He is a terrific organizer who is committed to the abolishment of prisons. We would like to thank Lewis for all of his contributions to this project.

Katy Groves is a fierce advocate and ally to youth in conflict with the law. She is tireless in the struggle for criminal legal reform. Our thanks to Katy for her incredible illustrations.

Finally, this primer is dedicated to the memory of all who died at Attica, we will not forget.

Note: Please join us for a series of events about the Attica Prison Uprising this September.

P.S. Look out [in the next couple of weeks] for an Attica Prison Uprising Zine that we are creating along with our friends Lewis Wallace and Micah Bazant specifically for an upcoming event in September. It will be available for downloading.

A big part of what keeps me posting on a regular basis is the feedback that I get from readers. I also love it when I get questions that make me think or lead me to do more research. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about corporal punishment and torture in early U.S. penitentiaries. It got a very big response judging from the number of views that it has amassed so far. I’m not sure why so many people seem interested in this aspect of prisons and frankly I do not want to think too deeply about it. I hope it is because people are deeply disturbed by these images and ideas. I want this to be true.

Anyway, a reader asked if I had any examples of the media of the time (19th century) inveighing against prison torture practices. In fact, I do. I have an original article from Harper’s Weekly dated December 18, 1958 titled “Torture and Homicide in an American State Prison.” I purchased the original article as a collector’s item mainly because of the illustrations that are included. I dug it out of storage earlier this week and will quote some of it below to illustrate how some media outlets covered prison torture in the 19th and early 20th centuries:

“We now present a far more fearful picture of the mismanagement of our public institutions for the confinement and correction of criminals. On 2nd inst. a convict named More, imprisoned in the State Prison at Auburn, was showered to death by prison officials. The circumstances of the case are simply as follows:

The convict, More, was a negro. He is certified to have been a man of naturally pleasant temper, but violent when crossed. On 1st inst. he was said to have been in a bad humor; he was seen, or is said to have been seen, to sharpen a knife, and to mutter threats against someone; on the strength of which he was, on 2nd inst. seized by several keepers or deputy-keepers of the State Prison, and by them dragged toward the shower-bath. Like most negroes, he entertained a lively fear of cold. He knew that the water of the shower-bath would be very cold indeed; and, after vainly appealing to the feelings of his captors to release him, he broke away from them and fled — be it remarked — to the shop where he was in the habit of working. At the door of the shop a convict arrested him; a keeper and his assistants swiftly followed: he was dragged by main force, and after many violent struggles, to the shower-bath; all the water that was in the tank — amounting to from three to five barrels, the quantity is uncertain — was showered upon him in spite of his piteous cries; a few minutes after his release from the bath he fell prostrate, was carried to his cell, and died in five minutes.

It is the homicide which we this week illustrate. The use of the shower-bath as a means of coercing criminals into submission to the orders of prison authorities began to be general about the year 1845. In that year a convict at the Auburn State Prison was whipped by order of competent authority, and died under the lash. The public indignation which was aroused by the event led to the abolition of whipping as a punishment in the prisons of the State of New York. It was preserved in other States, as, for instance, in Connecticut, in which State Prison wardens are authorized to this day to administer stripes — not over ten in number — to refractory prisoners. But in New York the cat was disused, and the shower-bath reigned in its stead.”

The article goes on for several pages to describe how the shower-bath works and to underscore several other forms of punishment that prisoners are subjected to at Auburn Prison. The expose also relies on research by leading experts about the physical and psychological effects of being subjected to the shower-bath. The article is definitely of its time as it distinguishes between whites who are believed to better be able to withstand the torture of the shower-bath and blacks who are seen as constitutionally unable to endure the practice. If you are interested in the history of American prisons, the article is worth reading and I am sure that it can be accessed through any library.

Below is an image of the shower-bath apparatus:

The article ends with these words:

“An inquest has been held on the body of the negro. Eight men composed the jury, six of whom are said to have been prison contractors. They refused to allow the prison physician to deliver his evidence, as he wished; and found the absurd verdict that the man’s death had been ‘hastened’ by the use of the shower-bath. It is clear that if any notice is to be taken of this poor convict’s death the District Attorney must move in the matter. It remains to be seen whether he will do so; or whether the civilization of the State of New York is to be disgraced by the torture and homicide, by State officials, of a poor convict in a State prison.”

In case you were confused or needed a reminder, it is impossible to overstate how horrible life for Blacks in the U.S. was for most of the past 400 years. I collect a lot of memorabilia about the Black experience in the U.S. and my latest find is a document from 1801 salvaged from town meeting minutes that documents the punishment for two black women in Rhode Island.

Whereas Sally Gibbs now confined in the Bridewell having returned to this Town to dwell after having been removed to Smithfield as being her place of her last legal settlement without the liberty so to from this Council whereby the said Sally Gibbs has incurred the penalty of Seven Dollars and in case of inability to pay the same is liable to be publicly whipped. Resolved therefore that the (crossed out) ——————– said Sally Gibbs be subjected to that payment of the said fine of Seven Dollars and that in default of her paying the same that she be publicly whipped fifteen stripes on her naked back between the hours of four and five of the clock in the afternoon of this Day and conducted thereafter without the limits of this Town and that the Clerk be and he is hereby directed to issue a Warrant for the above purpose accordingly forthwith.

Warrant Alexander this day.

** the reference to “the Bridewell” means that she was in jail.

bottom half: in full:
Whereas Deborah Barry a Black Woman, a transient person has neglected to depart as expected and who it is represented is still residing here, resolved therefore that she be apprehended and removed with her young child by the name of Charles to Warren in the County of Bristol adjudged to be her place of last legal settlement and that the Clerk make out a Warrant forthwith for her removal with her said Child Accordingly……….. NB Warrant issued …Henry Alexander

Note: As if on cue, Julianne Hing’s article published in Colorlines today underscores a history of the criminalization of black women (particuarly mothers).

Here’s another poem about the Attica Prison Revolt from the edited volume titled “Betcha Ain’t: Poems from Attica.”

Sept. 13
By Christopher Sutherland

Let the drums roll
Give the first command
That puts us in the ground

R-E-A-D-Y!

We stiffen our shoulders
Hold our heads up high
Let the world take note
That proud, black men
Are here about to die

A-A-A-I-M!

If our actions
Cause brothers and sisters to unite
As we die,
In their fighting spirits we live.
So let the drums roll
And damn that final order that us in
The ground…
F-I-R-E!

Christopher Sutherland – Multi-talented (poet, musician) and eyes that appear to pierce the soul – an early standout in the group sessions.

For those interested in a short primer on some of what happened 40 years ago, here is a short clip (under 10 minutes) from the documentary “Disturbing the Universe” about the lawyer William Kunstler who served as an observer and negotiator at Attica during the revolt.

Note: If you are in the Chicago area any time between September 6-8, you are invited to a photographic exhibition about the Attica Rebellion that will be taking place at Mess Hall, 6932 N. Glenwood Ave. In particular, we will be having a reception and reading on September 8th from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Attica Rebellion. All are invited.

We throw around the words solitary confinement in a very cavalier way in the U.S. Thanks to efforts like Solitary Watch public awareness is being raised about the brutality and torture of solitary confinement. This is a good thing. Today there is an excellent Op-Ed by Colin Dayan in the New York Times about the plight of prisoners at Pelican Bay and also about their resistance through hunger strikes. Yet I find something missing in our consideration of isolation in prison. We need to hear more of the voices of those who have experienced this torture.

A prisoner named Ahmad Al Aswadu wrote an essay titled “A Black View of Prison” in the April-May 1971 issue of the Black Scholar. In his essay, he describes the experience of living in the “hole” while incarcerated. Here is some of what he wrote:

The “Hole” (called such because its locality is usually under the prison’s first floor) is solitary confinement. One could stay in the hole for a week or a lifetime depending upon his color and attitude. It is here in the hole that men are made and broken at the same time. It is here that the previous threat of getting “hurt” can realize itself all too quickly. And it is here that the seeds of Black Consciousness have been cultivated in the minds of many black men.

It is very difficult for a layman such as I to describe the atmosphere of the hole but I shall try. I believe that the very first thing that the brother notices about the hole is the desolateness and the feeling of utter aloneness. The first time that I was sent to the hole I felt as if my soul had deserted me. I don’t believe that I had ever experienced such a feeling of intense emptiness in my life before then. I had been sent to the hole to have my attitude changed, because, as they stated, it was not conducive to “good order.” A brother had just been murdered by the guards who worked in the hole, and rather than go through that type of thing, I pretended to be institutionalized. Fortunately, my stay only lasted fourteen days and I was returned to the general inmate population.

Life in the hole is epitomized by one big question mark. Uncertainty is the order of the day. Your visitors are turned around at the gate when they come to see you. The food quantity and quality is drastically reduced to the level of subsistence. You might get a shower and you might not — depending upon whether or not the guard’s wife was good to him the night before. I believe that it is the hole that is the most memorable aspect of the prison experience. They are all the same, and yet they are totally different from one another.

Today, Critical Resistance is hosting a national conference call about the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike. All of the relevant details are below:

Monday, July 18th
6pm EST/ 5pm CST/ 4pm MST/ 3pm PST
toll-free call in number: 1(800)868-1837 (new number)
participant code: 62435226