Written by Eddie LeShure –
Part Two –
On Monday morning the 13th, Commissioner Oswald, weary and frustrated, delivered an ultimatum to the inmates. Many of their demands could be met, but the state would not budge on the issue of amnesty. Oswald gave them an hour to respond and their response was negative. At 9:43 a.m., the attack on Attica began. It started as I witnessed a military helicopter lifting off the grass outside. Shortly after I heard it maneuvering over the prison, I smelled the unmistakable pungency of tear gas and it burned my eyes, even though we were far from D Yard. Then I heard the gunfire! As the prison complex quickly filled with CS pepper gas, the National Guard and State Police, armed with shotguns loaded with Double O buckshot, stormed D Yard, indiscriminately shooting everything that moved – despite the fact that they’d been briefed that none of the inmates had conventional weapons or ammunition. By the testimony of witnesses there was little or no resistance form the prisoners after the tear gas was dropped, yet in six minutes, more than 2000 rounds of ammunition was fired.
When the gas cleared, D-yard resembled the aftermath of a war zone – 39 men lay dead or mortally wounded and 110 seriously wounded. Ten of the hostages were dead. Under the pretense of freeing the hostages, the State had gunned down about one-quarter of them! It’d been a good old “nigger shoot” and the hostages were collateral damage. It was later revealed that some of the employees had positioned themselves on the roof with high-powered rifle utilizing scopes (strictly against the law) with the objective of picking off the “ring leaders”. Sam Melville died in the takeover and many believe he was killed in this manner. The final death toll was 43 – 39 killed by police, one guard killed in the takeover, plus three inmates were found murdered by inmates. These three were prisoners that had had “grudges squared” against them. I later heard that they were snitches, which in prison is verboten.
Rumors soon spread of the savage treatment the hostages received at the hands of the prisoners. Prison officials claimed that all of the dead hostages were victims of the inmates and that their throats had been cut during the early stages of the siege. Other rumors claimed that some hostages had their genitals removed and were forced to consume them. Once the yard was secured, the troops forced all the inmates to strip naked and many were herded through a gauntlet of officers brandishing clubs and batons. Some inmates were singled out and taken to rooms where they were beaten in what some later described as an “orgy of brutality.”
In the yard, officers struck Big Black’s (Frank Smith’s) testicles with their nightsticks and dropped lighted cigarettes and hot shell casings on his chest, he told jurors in a 1991 hearing. The guards repeatedly announced they would soon castrate him. (He spent the rest of his life, dying in 2004 at age 71, keeping the memory of Attica alive, largely through legal proceedings that began in 1974 and ended in 2000, when inmates won a $12 million settlement: $8 million to split among themselves and $4 million for their lawyers.
Dr. John Edlund, the county coroner, worked the entire night performing autopsies on all of the dead hostages and several of the prisoners. His investigations revealed that every one of the dead hostages had died from gunshot wounds. No mutilations were found. All of the dead had perished on Monday morning, during the attack. Despite this evidence Commissioner Oswald and Governor Rockefeller insisted that they had done everything properly and had taken the necessary course of action. Surprisingly, the press did little to criticize their actions, probably because they had been reporting myth as fact for several days. The State took no action on any of the inmate’s demands, not even the ones they had agreed to during the negotiations.
That I’d been in the Box probably saved my life because otherwise I would’ve been in the school in D Block and ended up in “the yard”. When the prison was taken by force I might have very well been targeted for assassination since the guards especially hated me as a “nigger lover”, a white who’d crossed racial boundaries and gained the respect of Blacks. I was considered very dangerous because of this, along with the fact that I was educated and articulate. I was not really a major player in all this, but they still probably would’ve tried to kill me.
After the assault finished, guards brought inmates from the yard into vacant cells in the Box. They were severely beaten while being brought in naked, and some had serious injuries, including broken bones and gunshot wounds. Blood was all over the gallery floor and that night I was kept awake by moaning as they tried to sleep on bare mattresses without blankets. A black man with the nickname “Snowball” in the cell next to me uttered, “The police were shooting everyone – it was a bloodbath!” The next morning, several State Police came into the Box wearing gas masks and came down the gallery cell by cell, entering in pairs, beating inmates with clubs. I nervously waited, anticipating the worst. When my door opened, the guard on duty barked out, “Skip this guy…he wasn’t out there!” The door slammed shut and I heaved a huge sigh of relief! But you can imagine the terror I experienced while waiting, trauma that would have a lasting impact on me.
The next morning, those of us who’d been locked in the box during the rebellion were taken out to be transported to another prison. Individually, we ran down the gallery and then a spiral staircase. When we reached the next level below us, a gauntlet of guards took turns swinging at us with their “nigger sticks”, especially taking aim at our genital area. We were then handcuffed and shackled in pairs and put on school buses, along with a couple of hundred others. Once seated, a burly-looking officer holding a shot gun stood at the front of the vehicle and announced, “We going to Great Meadow Correctional Facility, an all-day ride, and we won’t be stopping. If you need to piss, piss in your pants! If you need to shit, shit in your pants! If anyone does anything I don’t like, I’ll shoot you!”
I spent from then until just before Christmas at this prison, situated near the Vermont border. It was about a week before I could even send a letter to tell anyone where I was or even that I was alive…they’d sat in suspense until then. Eventually my property arrived, though my guitar was in two pieces – obviously deliberately smashed! At Great Meadow, we were largely held in our cells with occasional access to the recreational yard. It was there that my life was threatened by another inmate.
I was in the mess hall eating dinner and a young Black next to me asked me to pass him the plastic water pitcher, which I did. “Hey whitey motherfucker, you touched the spout, you contaminated the water!” he yelled. I made no response and he kept on with it, telling me how I was “the Devil” and how he couldn’t drink the water now and how he ought to kick my ass! Finally, I turned and looked at him, “Listen, I didn’t contaminate anything and I’m tired of listening to your shit. If you’re gonna bring it on, then bring it on…otherwise, shut the fuck up!!!” He turned to his homies and mumbled a bunch of stuff, but left it there. He knew that if he jumped me then and there, the guards with guns on the catwalks above us just might see that as a golden opportunity to drill us.
Since companies eat together, I got to listen to more of his chatter that night, “I gonna stick a shank in you, you white devil motherfucker…it’s just a matter of time!” Stuff like that. In the cell next to me was a veteran con named Dhafu, a black brother who I’d gotten tight with. His real name was Kerry, but Dhafu was his “righteous name”. It was common practice for more politically conscious Blacks to do that, to reject their “slave name”. “You know this guy is a Five Percenter and he’s bound by honor to kill you since he feels you insulted him?”, he told me. The 5 % Network was a mix of Black Nationalism and Islam that was even more radical than the Black Muslims (Nation of Islam) and, according to Dhafu, appealing to young Blacks who felt particularly oppressed by “Whitey” and were especially prone to violence. “This guy is crazy and dangerous and you’ll need to watch your ass every second” he advised.
At this point, Dhafu yelled out to the guy, “What’s your beef with this white brother, brother?” After a pause, the kid yelled back, “Who are you and how can you call this white devil brother?” Dhafu then introduced himself and added. “This guy you call a devil is a righteous dude and MY brother and I don’t see color…brother! And if you got a beef with him, then you’ve got a beef with me…understand?” Dhafu was a big guy and spoke with clear authority.
Silence.
I knew that despite the fact that Dhafu was watching my back when he could, that I needed to be very careful. For all I knew this guy was already facing 150 years and getting another 25 tacked on would mean nothing! But, as luck (or karma) would have it, within a week of this incident (just before Christmas 1971) I was told to pack my stuff up – I was being transferred back to Attica. I immediately knew why: I would be questioned by authorities for my supposed “role in causing the riot”. I had good reason to be concerned, since in previous situations where there’d been high profile rebellion, the government had tried the conspiracy approach to get convictions. For example, after the Democratic Convention Riots of 1968 there’d been a huge trial with the state using that spin.
Along with some other guy, I was handcuffed and shackled and put in the back of a car and driven westward on the New State Thruway. Once there, I was subjected to several days of interrogation by the BCI (Bureau of Criminal Investigation), the state version of the FBI. They did the whole “good guy, bad guy” routine with one cop being a real prick, telling me how “the leaders of the riot had butt fucked all the hostages before cutting off their dicks and stuffing them down their throats” – absolute total bullshit! Plus he threatened me, telling me that if I didn’t cooperate I would end up “never seeing daylight again”. He’d get pissed off and yell, throwing chairs around, then get about two inches from my face breathing his disgusting cigarette breath on me, screaming about how “some poor kids are going to grow up without a father…thanks to scum like you!”
Then he’d storm out and Mr. Good Guy Cop would stroll in and apologize for the other guy’s behavior and offer me a cigarette (I didn’t smoke) and suggest that I “just play ball” and he’d make sure I “was taken care of”. It was so cornball – straight out of some B movie! I told them nothing, just like I told the D.A. nothing back when I got busted in Corning and he wanted me to finger some other people. I’ve been guilty of plenty I’m not proud of, but I’ll go to my grave knowing I’ve never been a snitch! Finally, they left me alone. I was left in a segregated unit for several more weeks and when they finally put me in general population, I’d accumulated a total of about six months in isolation.
Since originally being sent to Attica in November, 1970, I’d gotten a huge amount of support from my sister Midge. She visited me regularly, bringing me books and food packages. Soon after I arrived there, I became convinced that I’d been given the shaft in my sentencing and over time convinced her of that. She and her husband Keith agreed to lend the money to get a lawyer who was an appeals specialist and he’d been plugging away on my case, trying to get the new judge in my county to reduce my sentence, based on numerous reasons. Finally, in at the end of June 1972 I was shipped back to Steuben County Court and resentenced to “time served”. I walked out of the court room a free man. I’d served nearly 23 months.
I moved to Rochester, NY where my sister lived. The first thing I did was buy a copy of “Letters from Attica” by Sam Melville (Morrow Publishers). Sam was killed in the police takeover of Attica and a book was put together with an overview of what happened before and during the rebellion, along with letters that Sam wrote from inside. The fact that Sam was a close friend of mine was reason enough to get and read it, but another contributing factor was that I was mentioned several times in the book. Before I got out, this had been pointed out to me and I was keen to read it! But I should point out that since I was in my teens in high school, I’d gone under the named Fred, a clear act of rebellion against my parents. So that’s the name I called in the book and the one I went under for many years after.
The next thing I did was get a job and I found one working on a loading dock. Then I looked for people doing political work around prison issues and I quickly located the People’s Defense Committee, a collection of very likable, post-college radicals who were totally plugged into the “Attica struggle”, as well as issues connected to the local jail in town. Soon after my release, the State of New York issued indictments against a number of inmates and former inmates. Two men were charged with murder of the guard that died and many others were charged with kidnapping of the hostages and other crimes. The conspiracy approach was not taken and I was not charged with anything because that would’ve been impossible to prove. I was off the hook, not that I’d done anything other than try and improve the conditions in Attica, but numerous prisoners were now facing heavy prison time! The state was determined to cover up its role and pin all the blame on those inside Attica!
I did a lot of speaking engagements, striving to educate people about what life was actually like in a place like Attica. My audiences ranged from radical political rallies to church groups to educational institutions of all levels to TV and radio programs to even a group of guards and their wives nearby the town of Attica. On one occasion, I went on a speaking tour with one of the Attica Brothers who was indicted, which took us up and down the Atlantic coast, raking in thousands of dollars in honoraria for the legal defense team. We were spreading the word and Attica was becoming a rallying point for a growing number of people.
I continued with the healthy lifestyle I’d adopted in Attica. While incarcerated, I’d quit smoking, become a vegetarian, plus started yoga practice and running and kept this up. My life was very full and meaningful. I felt my life had a purpose and that purpose was to help people. It was Che Guevara who once said, “Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.”
By 1975, two of the Attica defendants had been convicted (one of murder, the other for second degree attempted assault) as a result of the guard’s death during the rebellion. Initially, sixty-two prisoners were charged with 1289 crimes in 42 separate felony indictments and at that point thirty-eight still faced prosecution. Eventually only four more cases actually went to trial which resulted in acquittals. All the other indictments were thrown out. Not a single trooper, correction officer, deputy sheriff, or policeman was ever tried for wrongful death or torture at Attica. Indeed, no law enforcement or correction officer was ever tried for anything connected to the violence at Attica.
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Eddie LeShure is an insight meditation teacher and substance abuse counselor whose primary passion is bringing mindfulness practice into the realms of addiction recovery, trauma relief, and self-care. He teaches and leads groups in various treatment and recovery settings, as well as in series classes, workshops, retreats, conferences and conventions. Eddie began meditating in the early ‘80s, regularly teaches at Asheville Insight Meditation, is a NAMI Family Support Group Facilitator, and is co-founder of A Mindful Emergence, LLC (amindfulemergence.com).
These days, Eddie’s writing centers around his teaching and presentations, but in the past it was quite different. He chronicled and displayed his adventures around the world for several years under the banner, “On the Road With Fast Eddie”, and in more recent times numerous articles on the local jazz scene were published in Rapid River Arts & Culture as “WNC Jazz Profiles”. Eddie is now co-authoring a manual for treatment centers which focuses on integrating mindfulness practices with stages of addiction recovery.