Attica Episode 2: Glorious Catastrophe

What happens when a prison uprising turns into a standoff, negotiations break down, and the state decides to take the prison back by force?

In this episode of Torture: A Dark History, Kevin Young and Dan Hourigan continue the story of the Attica Prison uprising, picking up with the prisoners in control of D Yard and negotiations beginning with Commissioner Russell Oswald and a group of outside observers.

We’ll follow the prisoners’ demands for better food, medical care, religious freedom, political rights, and protection from retaliation, with one demand remaining above everything else: amnesty. We’ll also look at the role of the observers, the treatment of the hostages, the growing rumors and misinformation outside the prison, and the increasingly desperate attempts to convince Governor Nelson Rockefeller to come to Attica.

Then everything falls apart.

After Officer William Quinn dies from his injuries, tensions inside and outside the prison reach a breaking point. As negotiations collapse, hundreds of armed law enforcement officers gather outside Attica. On September 13, 1971, tear gas fills D Yard and the assault begins.

What follows is chaos, gunfire, humiliation, and brutality.

Then comes the cover story, the aftermath, the McKay Commission, the criminal prosecutions, the decades long civil rights lawsuit, and the eventual settlements that finally acknowledged the enormous human cost of what happened at Attica.

And because this is Torture: A Dark History, Kevin and Dan bring their own dark and uncomfortable humor to one of the most horrific chapters in American prison history, while digging into the violence, misinformation, political fallout, and decades long fight over what really happened inside Attica.

If you’re interested in Attica, prison uprisings, American prison history, Nelson Rockefeller, Russell Oswald, Frank “Big Black” Smith, Richard X Clark, prison reform, police brutality, prisoner abuse, civil rights, political history, and one of the darkest days in American history, this is where the Attica story reaches its devastating conclusion.

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