Attica Episode 1: Foreshadowing

What happens when years of overcrowding, abuse, neglect, and growing tension finally push thousands of prisoners to the breaking point?

In this episode of Torture: A Dark History, Kevin Young and Dan Hourigan begin the story of the Attica Prison uprising, one of the most infamous prison revolts in American history.

We’ll travel back to the late 1960s and early 1970s to look at the conditions inside Attica Correctional Facility, where more than 2,200 prisoners were packed into a prison designed for 1,200. Poor food, inadequate medical care, overcrowding, harsh discipline, racial inequality, censorship, and brutal working conditions created an environment where tensions were constantly building.

We’ll meet the prisoners organizing for change, including the Attica Liberation Faction, and follow their attempts to negotiate reforms with prison officials and New York State Commissioner Russell Oswald. Then, after the death of George Jackson and a series of increasingly tense confrontations between prisoners and guards, one incident in A Block finally pushes Attica past the point of no return.

On September 9, 1971, the prisoners take control of the prison.

But this isn’t simply a story about prisoners versus guards. Inside the uprising, prisoners protect hostages, organize medical care, establish leadership, and try to create some kind of order while the state prepares to take the prison back.

And that’s where we leave things.

Because the negotiations, the hostages, the deaths, the retaking of Attica, and the massive coverup that followed are still to come.

And because this is Torture: A Dark History, Kevin and Dan bring their usual dark humor to an incredibly serious chapter of American prison history, while telling the story of the people who found themselves trapped inside one of the most important prison uprisings in American history.

If you’re interested in Attica, prison riots, American prison history, the War on Crime, prison reform, civil rights, political prisoners, Richard X Clark, Frank “Big Black” Smith, Sam Melville, the Attica Liberation Faction, and the darker side of American history, this is only the beginning.

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