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Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, by Heather Ann Thompson
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NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST * LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST * NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK FOR 2016 * NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE BOSTON GLOBE, NEWSWEEK, KIRKUS, AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
THE FIRST DEFINITIVE HISTORY OF THE INFAMOUS 1971 ATTICA PRISON UPRISING, THE STATE’S VIOLENT RESPONSE, AND THE VICTIMS’ DECADES-LONG QUEST FOR JUSTICE
On September 9, 1971, nearly 1,300 prisoners took over the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York to protest years of mistreatment. Holding guards and civilian employees hostage, the prisoners negotiated with officials for improved conditions during the four long days and nights that followed.
On September 13, the state abruptly sent hundreds of heavily armed troopers and correction officers to retake the prison by force. Their gunfire killed thirty-nine men—hostages as well as prisoners—and severely wounded more than one hundred others. In the ensuing hours, weeks, and months, troopers and officers brutally retaliated against the prisoners. And, ultimately, New York State authorities prosecuted only the prisoners, never once bringing charges against the officials involved in the retaking and its aftermath and neglecting to provide support to the survivors and the families of the men who had been killed.
Drawing from more than a decade of extensive research, historian Heather Ann Thompson sheds new light on every aspect of the uprising and its legacy, giving voice to all those who took part in this forty-five-year fight for justice: prisoners, former hostages, families of the victims, lawyers and judges, and state officials and members of law enforcement. Blood in the Water is the searing and indelible account of one of the most important civil rights stories of the last century.
(With black-and-white photos throughout)
- Sales Rank: #18836 in Books
- Published on: 2016-08-23
- Released on: 2016-08-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.60" h x 1.40" w x 6.50" l, 1.25 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 752 pages
Review
Praise for Heather Ann Thompson’s Blood in the Water
“Gripping . . . Not all works of history have something to say so directly to the present, but Heather Ann Thompson’s Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, which deals with racial conflict, mass incarceration, police brutality and dissembling politicians, reads like it was special-ordered for the sweltering summer of 2016. But there’s nothing partisan or argumentative about Blood in the Water. The power of this superb work of history comes from its methodical mastery of interviews, transcripts, police reports and other documents, covering 35 years, many released only reluctantly by government agencies . . . It’s Ms. Thompson’s achievement, in this remarkable book, to make us understand why this one group of prisoners [rebelled], and how many others shared the cost.” —Mark Oppenheimer, The New York Times
“Chilling, and in places downright shocking . . . [Thompson] tells the story of the riot and its aftermath with precision and momentum.” —Bryan Burrough, The Wall Street Journal
“A masterly account . . . Essential . . . Blood in the Water restores [the prisoners’] struggle to its rightful place in our collective memory.” —James Forman Jr., The New York Times Book Review
“A long, memorable chronicle . . . dense with new information . . . Thompson’s capacity for close observation and her honesty [are] impressive.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
“Masterful.” —Lewis M. Steel, The Nation
“Thompson’s book is a masterpiece of historical research; it is thoroughly researched, extensively documented and reads like a novel . . . Magnificent.” —Terry Hartle, The Christian Science Monitor
“Heather Ann Thompson tracked down long-hidden files related to the tragedy at Attica—some of which have since disappeared—to tell the saga in its full horror.” —Larry Getlen, New York Post
“Writing with cinematic clarity from meticulously sourced material, [Thompson] brilliantly exposes the realities of the Attica prison uprising . . . Thompson’s superb and thorough study serves as a powerful tale of the search for justice in the face of the abuses of institutional power.” —Publishers Weekly Review of the Day (starred review)
“[A] real eye-opener for readers whose interest in Attica and knowledge of what happened ended when the headlines receded . . . Compelling . . . Sensitive . . . Impressively authoritative and thoughtfully composed.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Blood in the Water is extraordinary—a true gift to the written history of civil rights and racial justice struggles in America.” —Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
“Remarkable. Blood in the Water is a historical tour de force. It sheds new light on these most important historical events, events that in part triggered the wave of exponential prison growth today. For those of us who have been tracing the rise of mass incarceration in this country, Heather Ann Thompson’s book is a must read.” —Bernard E. Harcourt, Professor of Law and Political Science at Columbia University
“Heather Ann Thompson wields the powers of the historian with mesmerizing force. Forty-five years after the Attica uprising, Blood in the Water offers the most complete history to date on that tragic episode and does so with unflinching purpose: a clearer view of the consequences for human life, both past and present.” —Glenn E. Martin, Founder and President of JustLeadershipUSA
“Blood in the Water tells of warning signs in 1971 that still exist more than forty years later. Heather Ann Thompson’s prophetic analysis is a sobering reminder that we must all care about what is happening to human beings behind prison walls.” —Soffiyah Elijah, Executive Director of the Correctional Association of New York
About the Author
HEATHER ANN THOMPSON is an award-winning historian at the University of Michigan. She has written on the history of mass incarceration and its current impact for The New York Times,Time, The Atlantic, Salon, Dissent, New LaborForum, and The Huffington Post, as well as for various scholarly publications. She served on a National Academy of Sciences blue-ribbon panel that studied the causes and consequences of mass incarceration in the United States and has given congressional staff briefings on this subject. Thompson is also the author of Whose Detroit?: Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City and the editor of Speaking Out: Activism and Protest in the 1960s and 1970s.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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 ago—in 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 Attica’s history will almost certainly remain hidden.
The vast majority of Attica’s 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 itself—countless boxes housed in various upstate warehouses that came from numerous sources: the state’s 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 state’s 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.
But thanks to so many who lived and litigated the Attica uprising, as well as so many others who took the time to chronicle or to collect parts of this history in newspapers, in memoirs, and in archives outside the control of the state of New York, I was still able to rescue and recount the story of Attica.
And, because of two extraordinarily lucky breaks I had while I was trying to write this book, the history you are about to read is one that state officials very much hoped would not be told.
First, in 2006 I stumbled upon a cache of Attica documents at the Erie County courthouse in Buffalo, New York, that changed everything. I had, for two years, been calling and writing every county courthouse and coroner’s office and municipal building in upstate New York in order to find any Attica-related records that had not been placed under lock and key by the Office of the Attorney General or sealed by a judge. I had little to go on in these early years—I didn’t have case numbers to search, I knew few names to inquire about. But one day I hit pay dirt. I was on the phone with a woman from the Erie County courthouse who thought that a bunch of Attica papers had recently been placed in the back room there. They had been somewhere else, but had been moved to the Office of the Clerk, perhaps after suffering some water damage. I headed to Buffalo.
When I walked into that dim file room at the courthouse I was taken aback. In front of me, in complete disarray on floor-to-ceiling metal shelves, were literally thousands of pages of Attica documents. In this mess was everything from grand jury testimony, to depositions and indictments, to memos and personal letters. Most stunningly, though, I found in this mountain of moldy papers vital information from the very heart of the state’s own investigation into whether crimes had been committed during the rebellion or the retaking of the prison. In short, I had found a great deal of what the state knew, and when it knew it—not the least of which was what evidence it thought it had against members of law enforcement who were never indicted. I took as many notes as I could take, and Xeroxed as many pages as they would let me, and, finally, had much of what I needed to write a history of Attica that no one yet knew.
Then, in 2011, I had another incredibly lucky break. I had just published an op-ed in The New York Times on the occasion of Attica’s fortieth anniversary when I received an email from Craig Williams, an archivist at the New York State Museum who wanted help making sense of a new trove of materials he had received from the New York State Police. Troopers had just turned over an entire Quonset hut full of items they had gathered from the prison yards of Attica immediately after the four-day standoff there in 1971—items that the state considered evidence in the cases that it might make against prisoners or troopers. I was thrilled to hear this, and soon headed to Albany.
When I got to the museum’s cavernous warehouse, I was glad to be joined by Christine Christopher, a filmmaker making a documentary on Attica with whom I had been working closely. Together we just stood for a while, staring at rows and rows of cartons, boxes, bags, and crates of materials that had been removed from the prison forty years before. And what had been gathered and hidden away for those many decades turned out to be grim indeed. In one particularly mangled container lay a heap of clothing—the dirty, rumpled pants and shirt of a slain correction officer, Carl Valone. His clothing wasn’t soiled merely with decades-old mud from Attica’s D Yard. It was stiff and stained with blood. I had met two of Carl Valone’s kids who were still desperate for answers regarding what, exactly, had happened to their father on September 13, 1971.
And this was just one box. Next to it sat another in which I found the now rigid, blood-soaked clothing of Attica prisoner Elliot “L. D.” Barkley. Like Carl Valone, L. D. Barkley had been gunned down during Attica’s retaking. I had met one of his family members too—L.D.’s younger sister, Traycee. She, like every one of the Valone kids, was also still haunted by Attica.
Although the detritus of Attica that the NYSP had saved in these many boxes revealed little new about why this event played out as it did, it was a harrowing reminder of its human toll. There was a dog-eared red spiral notebook filled with messages written by the prisoners who had survived the retaking, men who had hoped these pages could somehow be smuggled out so that their families and friends might know that they were still alive. There were also cartons of torn and faded photographs of prisoners’ loved ones, countless legal proceedings that the prisoners had painstakingly copied, and even their Bibles and Qurans—all of which had been ripped out of cells in the aftermath of the rebellion.
All of the Attica files that I saw in that dark room of the Erie County courthouse have now vanished, and all of the Attica artifacts that the New York State Museum had been willing to share have also been removed from anyone’s view. But all that I learned from those documents back in 2006 can’t be unlearned, and all of the boxes of bloody Attica clothes and heartbreaking letters written by Attica’s prisoners that I saw back in 2011 can’t be unseen.
And I have decided to include all that I have learned and seen in this book.
That said, this decision was agonizing. Although my job as a historian is to write the past as it was, not as I wished it had been, I have no desire to cause anyone pain in the present. I am well aware, and it haunts me, that my decision to name individuals who have spent the last forty-five years trying to remain unnamed will reopen many old wounds and cause much new suffering. That old wounds were never allowed to heal, and that new suffering is now a certainty, however, is, I believe, the responsibility of officials in the state of New York. It is these officials who have chosen repeatedly, since 1971, to protect the politicians and members of law enforcement who caused so much trauma. It is these officials who could have, and should have, told the whole truth about Attica long ago so that the healing could have begun and Attica’s history would have been just that: history, not present-day politics and pain.
Of course, even this book can’t promise Attica’s survivors the full story. The state of New York still sits on many secrets. This book does vow, however, to recount all that I was able to uncover, and by doing that, at least, perhaps a bit more justice will be done.
Most helpful customer reviews
47 of 49 people found the following review helpful.
Fabulously written, meticulously researched history of one of the most brutal acts ever undertaken by a state government
By Alan Mills
Just finished Heather Ann Thompson's Blood in the Water. It is absolutely essential to understanding the history of prisons in the US, and mass incarceration more generally. Professor Thompson spent a decade fighting for access to the long hidden records, and painstakingly reviewing the evidence to find out what really happened. Her investment in time, blood, sweat and tears has paid off for the reader!
45 years ago, prisoners took over an exercise yard at Attica prison, after months of having their complaints about insufficient food, lack of medical care, guard brutality ignored. As negotiations with the prisoners were beginning to bear fruit (the state agreed that virtually all,of their complaints were legitimate), Rockefeller decided to slaughter the prisoners, to ensure he was viewed as "tough on crime" and to further his national political ambitions. The casual racism behind this decision was explicitly approved by Nixon sitting in the Oval Office (as we know because of his now famous taping system).
Over the following decades, New York State did whatever it could to obscure what happened and shift blame from itself to the prisoners. Before a single body was examined, the state announced that prisoners had eviscerated guards, and castrated at least one of them, cutting off his genitiles and stuffing them in his mouth. Nothing of the sort occurred. All of the guards killed in the end were slaughtered by law enforcement; none by prisoners.
After reviewing all of the events of the days during the uprising and the slaughter in the days after, Thompson turns to the cover up...which reached all the way to Governor (and then Vice President) Rockefeller. She then turns to the tireless efforts of the men at Attica to gain legal redress for the harm done to them, and then to the surviving guards' battle for an apology and compensation.
At the end is a wonderful Epilogue, discussing the impact not so much of the uprising itself on the course of history, but the even bigger impact of the false narrative and cover up which followed the mass slaughter by the state in the aftermath.
The book was so fascinating, that I kept going all the way through the acknowledgments. A pretty comprehensive list, including illustrious scholars like Michele Alexander and Toussaint Losier; and my great friend, Shaena Fazal. Buried in the middle, was mention of Alan Mills. If this is me, I do not belong in this esteemed crowd, and had nothing to do with the book..but am so honored to be included. Wow.
Anyway, read the book! Attica; Fight Back.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
He was not only a racist but a terrible doctor. I never thought I'd have a forum ...
By WillaMuirWaverly
I was born and grew up in Attica and was there during the riot and takeover by authorities. I saw the helicopters drop the tear gas and whatever else they introduced. I cannot thank Ms. Thompson enough for her raw recounting of the prison take over. As well, some of the people she named were important. Seldon Williams was my family physician. He was not only a racist but a terrible doctor. I never thought I'd have a forum
to voice I this. Paula Krotz was my fourth grade school teacher. She and her husband, Paul, had a unique relationship. At the time of Attica,
I remember her being crazed over his being a hostage. She never understood that her husband was one of many and the state of NY was perfectly willing to feed the hostages to a sloppy retaking of the prison. Pappy Wald was a dental patient of my Father. I remember he was never
Quite the same.
It is a hard read for me. It mirrors a Nazi concentration camp. The take over went so beyond a professional response it was bizarre. Finally, I'm
getting some answers to long standing questions.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
The Roots of Social Injustice in the 21st Century
By Gary Kastal
One needs to look no further for the root causes of 21st Century social injustice. "Blood in the Water" is a must read for all seeking both an understanding and viable, practical and just remedy to not only how one is incarcerated in America, but also how to engage in a meaningful and cogent dialogue and course of meaningful action involving all inclusive participants from urban, suburban, and rural settings. "Blood in the Water" provides a strong historical foundation for change in American society that has been overlooked, but in the wake of public greed, corruption and a legal system and government bureaucracy that suffers from serious accountability issues along with the disenfranchisement of millions of disadvantaged and impoverished US citizens that are victimized daily, can no longer be denied. Great book!!
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