The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972

by William Manchester

  Around noon Captain Henry F. Williams of the state police mustered two hundred and fifty troopers with riot equipment and told them: “If somebody on the other side gets killed, well, that’s the way it’s got to be. You’re to take no crap from anybody. Don’t lose your weapon and don’t lose your buddy.” That was tough talk, but it was deprived of much of its force by the fact that precipitate action was likely to lose them thirty-nine buddies—guards being held by the rebels as hostages. The captive keepers had been dressed in convict uniforms, blindfolded, and tied up in D yard. An inmate shouting through a megaphone warned that the hostages would be the first to suffer if the troopers charged, and no one in a position of responsibility, not even Superintendent Mancusi, was eager to call their bluff.

  The man with the legal responsibility of dealing with the situation was Commissioner Oswald, who flew in at 2 P.M. Against Mancusi’s advice, Oswald decided to enter D yard with Herman Schwartz, a Buffalo law professor trusted by the leaders of the revolt, and confront the rebels in person. He intended to tell them that he could not discuss their complaints until the hostages had been released, an unbreakable rule in penal administration. He did demand their release, but he also listened while Blyden dictated a list of fifteen demands to him. The rebels wanted, among other things, permission to hold political meetings “without intimidation,” “religious freedom” for Muslims, an end to mail censorship, the right to communicate with anyone they wished, regular grievance procedures, more recreation and less time in cells, more exercise yards, a full-time physician, a better school, more fruit and less pork, the removal of Warden Mancusi, a committee of outsiders to “oversee” the behavior of the authorities during the revolt, and a federal court injunction against any “physical and mental reprisals” for the inmates’ acts during the revolt. To the end of the list Blyden added that some of the convicts, at least, insisted upon “Speedy and safe transportation out of confinement to a nonimperialist country.” He said: “We are men. We are not beasts, and do not intend to be beaten or driven. What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those oppressed.”

  Oswald’s personal courage in entering D yard was considerable. Even as he sat before the secretariat of rebel leaders, some of them were suggesting that he be added to the group of hostages, and though state police sharpshooters atop the prison walls were lining up the inmates around him in their sights, his chances of surviving a real row were negligible. His wisdom in going was another matter. Once he had heard them out and concluded that many of their points were reasonable, the pressure on him to open negotiations was almost irresistible. He yielded to it. As proof of his good faith he agreed to appoint a committee of overseers and to dispatch Schwartz to Federal Judge John T. Curtin, who was at a Vermont judicial conference, in pursuit of the injunction. Oswald did something else which was deeply resented by Mancusi and his staff. He signed a pledge of “No administrative reprisals against prisoners for activities of Sept. 9, 1971.” The rebels interpreted this as a guarantee of clemency. The governor’s office quickly pointed out that exoneration for criminal acts was out of the question; the commissioner didn’t have the power to grant that. But the seeds of misunderstanding had been sown and were bound to bear bitter fruit.

  That night Oswald returned to the floodlit prison yard, now further illumined by convicts’ campfires. With him he brought a contingent of reporters—a concession to another rebel demand. Much of the time was spent putting together the panel of overseers. The inmates’ choices included William Kunstler, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, State Senator John R. Dunne, Tom Wicker of the New York Times, who had written sympathetically of George Jackson; Herman Badillo, the first Puerto Rican elected to Congress; and Clarence Jones, Negro publisher of Manhattan’s Amsterdam News. Later Rockefeller added a number of selections of his own: his secretary, a school superintendent, a retired general, and various legislators and penologists. At one point there were thirty overseers. That was too many to be effective, and the ideological splits among them further weakened the committee.

  Schwartz brought back the injunction signed by Judge Curtin. It had been drafted by one of the white prisoners, Jerome S. Rosenberg from Brooklyn, murderer of a policeman, but now the rebels rejected it as inadequate. The overseers were off to a lumbering start. Wicker, Jones, and Julian Tepper of the National Legal Aid and Defenders Association breakfasted with Wyoming County District Attorney Louis James; the best they could wangle from him was a written promise of no “indiscriminate mass prosecutions”—an assurance hardly likely to diminish the fears of the edgy convict secretariat. Another shaky agreement was broken at 4 A.M. Saturday, as the revolt approached the end of its second twenty-four-hour period, when the press pool was barred from the prison. Police hostility toward the reporters had been growing, a grim sign which usually foreshadows actions that policemen do not want outsiders to watch.

  Yet Oswald was optimistic that morning. The inmates’ demands had grown to thirty, but he had agreed to twenty-eight of them, drawing the line only at complete amnesty, which he now called “nonnegotiable,” and the firing of Mancusi. Just as he was expressing confidence that these could be resolved, however, new developments shriveled hopes for a peaceful end to the riot. Quinn died, ending any possibility of leniency for the rebel leaders. Then Bobby Seale arrived. Before entering the prison he told fifty cheering radical demonstrators outside the walls that “If anything happens to those guards, the state and the governor should be charged with murder.” Then his entourage passed out copies of a statement from the Panther Central Committee: “The prison guards, called ‘hostages,’ have actually in reality been placed under arrest by the 1,280 prisoners who are rightly redressing their grievances concerning the harassing, brutal, and inhuman treatment to which they are constantly subjected…. A promise of amnesty is the first thing that must be done to start negotiations of the prisoners’… demands. This is the only bail the arrested guards can have, from the analysis of the Black Panther party.”

  Obviously Seale had no interest in a resolution of the crisis. Inside, he told the inmates that they must make their own decisions in dealing with Oswald. In a pathetic display of trust, they begged him for advice. He replied that he could offer them no counsel without the approval of Huey P. Newton. After participating briefly in the overseers’ deliberations he left, telling newspapermen that their questions and the armed state troopers were upsetting him. To cap this, Kunstler, in an act of extraordinary irresponsibility, told the rebel secretariat that representatives of “Third World nations are waiting for you across the street.” Presumably he meant the fifty demonstrators, but he didn’t explain, and the prisoners, now hoping for total victory, lost interest in bargaining with Oswald.

  Sunday was a day of mobilization for both sides. Throughout the afternoon trucks arrived to disgorge National Guardsmen, powerful fire hoses, and crates of gas cylinders and gas masks. The overseers issued a statement warning that they were “now convinced that a massacre of prisoners and guards may take place at this institution.” Wicker, Jones, Badillo, and Dunne spent over a half an hour on the telephone pleading with Rockefeller to come to Attica, but the governor issued a statement of his own saying that “In view of the fact that the key issue is total amnesty… I do not feel that my physical presence on the site can contribute to a peaceful settlement.” He and Oswald had already agreed that if the convict leadership did not respond to a final ultimatum, they would have to resort to force. They were not sanguine. Plainly the mood of the prisoners was turning uglier. Gates were being wired to make them electrically hot, trenches were filled with gasoline. Booby traps of peat moss and oil were wired with time charges. Crude rocket catapults were fixed in position; the spears were resharpened. Barricades of metal tables were built along the main catwalk leading from A block to Times Square—a route invading troopers would have to follow. That afternoon rebels paying off old scores stabbed two white convicts to death.

  The point of no return was reached ear
ly Monday. At 7 A.M. teams of policemen were assigned to specific functions: marksmanship, rescue, barricade demolition, and reserve strength. Two helicopters hovered overhead reporting on the disposition of convict forces and the situation of the hostages. At 8:35 Oswald met Richard Clarke in the DMZ. Brother Richard insisted that the rebels must be assured of “complete, total, unadulterated amnesty” and the dismissal of “that guy Mancusi.” He said he wanted another half-hour to confer with other members of the secretariat. Oswald gave it to him. At 9:05 an inmate shouted through a megaphone that all the hostages would be killed by inmate “executioners” if rebel positions were attacked. An Oswald aide called back, “Release the prisoners now. Then the commissioner will meet with you.” The convict yelled, “Negative.” That was, literally, the last word in the negotiations. Only savagery was left.

  Minutes later one of the helicopters radioed that four hostages were “at each corner of Times Square with knives at their throats.” It was a chilling sight: each captive’s head was yanked back by the hair, arching his neck; the blades, held by cocked hands, were biting into the flesh. Actually this looked more desperate than it really was. What officials could not know was that they were witnessing a prime example of militant overstatement. The hostages weren’t going to die at the rebels’ hands. Like the demand for resettlement in “a nonimperialist country” (which had been withdrawn the first time Oswald had raised an eyebrow), the grisly gestures with the homemade daggers were a kind of rhetoric, designed to impress the world and, perhaps, the convicts themselves. There have always been men prepared to die for acts of bravado. Some were about to fall here now, and they were going to take helpless victims with them.

  Convinced that the hostages were in grave peril, that they might be massacred anyway—that the danger was imminent and time was of the essence—Oswald said to his aides, “There’s no question now—we’ve got to go in.” More than five hundred local law enforcement officers and yellow-clad state troopers were coiled at the doors leading to the catwalks as Jackpot Two, a CH-34 helicopter, swooped down on Times Square with a load of tear gas, pepper gas, and mustard gas. The radio dispatcher’s voice crackled: “Move in! Move in! The drop has been made! Base to all posts—move in. Launch the offensive!”

  Troopers burst through the doors and blasted away at the barricades; marksmen on the gray walls began picking off inmates. Clearing the catwalks of obstacles took ninety minutes. Then the main attack went in. With clouds of turbid gas drifting across Times Square and D yard, it was difficult to see what was going on, and the fact that the hostages were wearing convict uniforms didn’t help. Troopers insisted afterward that strong resistance persisted for about two and a half minutes. One said, “They came at us like a banzai charge, waving knives and spears. Those we had to shoot.” Another said, “The ones that resisted—throwing spears and Molotov cocktails—were cut down. We caught some men with arms extended to throw weapons. Anybody that resisted was killed.”

  But some who didn’t resist were killed, too. Sporadic firing continued for almost an hour. The New York State Special Commission on Attica (the McKay Commission) later found that the police assault had been “marred by excesses,” which included “much unnecessary shooting.” Some of the needless violence was attributable to carelessness, possibly even to a contempt for human life. Rockefeller had specifically forbidden prison guards to participate in the assault, but they went in anyhow and were responsible for at least two homicides. Some of the policemen fired shotguns loaded with “oo” buckshot which spread at distances exceeding thirty yards, hitting “unintended targets,” the McKay investigators found, and creating “a high risk of injury and death to unresisting inmates and hostages.” An attending physician, Dr. Lionel Sifontes of Buffalo, reported afterward that “Many of the ringleaders were approached by guards and shot systematically. Some had their hands in the air surrendering. Some were lying on the ground.”

  More than 120 men lay wounded or dying. Counting Quinn and the convicts who had been murdered by other prisoners during the uprising, Attica’s death toll was 32 inmates and 11 guards or administrative officers—a total of 43. Compounding the confusion in the hours after the recapture of the prison were highly inaccurate reports about how the hostages had died. One Oswald aide said that a guard had been found emasculated, his testicles stuffed in his mouth. Another aide told reporters that “Several of the hostages had their throats slashed.” Stories that the guards had been butchered by their captors gained credence from the fact that their bloodstained blindfolds had fallen around their necks. In fact, three surviving guards had suffered throat wounds, but when the medical examiner issued his report the following morning, he found no castrations and no mutilations among the dead. All had been killed from gunfire. And only policemen had carried guns.

  Governor Rockefeller said the hostages had “died in the crossfire.” Oswald lamely suggested that they “could very well have been used as shields.” The rescued hostages vigorously endorsed the police assault, and in Washington President Nixon said that the “painful, excruciating” decision to storm Attica had been the only thing the authorities “could possibly do.” The conflict of opinion over what had happened was rapidly becoming ideological. Those who distrusted liberals, penal reforms, “bleeding hearts” and “do-gooders” rejected all criticism of the troopers. They blamed the convicts—in a fierce editorial the Atlanta Constitution denounced “the animals of Attica” for trying to impose “kangaroo justice” on the hostages—and many also blamed the overseers. As an exhausted Wicker left Attica a guard at the door hissed at him, “You people will never again be allowed inside this facility under any circumstances.”

  The other side was also vehement. Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson called the crushing of the prison revolt “one of the most callous and blatantly repressive acts ever carried out by a supposedly civilized society.” Wicker later noted that although sixty inmates had been indicted on some 1,300 counts, not a single law enforcement officer had been charged with anything, despite “evidence of official negligence, official brutality, official indiscipline, official excess—possibly even official murder.” After the rebellion had been suppressed, the McKay Commission found there had been “widespread beatings, proddings, kickings.” Prisoners had been stripped and forced to run a gauntlet of guards with hickory billy clubs. Wounded guards had been swiftly treated, their families quickly notified. Wounded inmates had been left without medical attention for four hours, their bodies tagged “P1, P2, P3.” Four days later the families of some prisoners were still frantically trying to learn whether their sons or husbands were alive or dead. Often Attica wouldn’t tell them even that. Those who did hear received curt wires: REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR HUSBAND RAYMOND RIVERA NUMBER 29533 HAS DECEASED. THE BODY REPOSES AT THIS INSTITUTION.

  “All right we are two nations,” John Dos Passos had written bitterly of the chasm between the rich and the starving in an earlier America. The rupture was along different lines now, but it cut equally deep. Three years earlier a new occupant of the White House had vowed to “bring us together.” He hadn’t done it. The people were as far apart as ever, unable to agree on the most elementary issues—justice and mercy, war and peace, right and wrong—and with a new presidential election a year away Americans were beginning to eye anew Richard Nixon’s standings in the polls. Here, however, there was a change. As late as early August pollster Albert Sindlinger found that only 27 percent of the voters wanted to see Nixon reelected, but before the month was out his popularity curve paused, leveled out, and slowly rose. The decisive factor was resolute executive action at home and abroad.

  ***

  The thirty-first world table tennis championships were held in Nagoya, Japan, that April, and the composition of the U.S. team was a tribute to the sport’s widespread appeal: a Chrysler personnel supervisor, a Du Pont chemist, an editor of Sports Illustrated, a college professor, a black federal employee, an IBM programmer, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, an em
ployee of a Wall Street bank, two teen-age girls, two housewives, and two college undergraduates. One of the students, Glenn Cowan of Santa Monica, was the most flamboyant member of the party; he wore tie-dyed purple bell-bottoms and a shirt with a peace symbol, and he kept his shoulder-length hair under control during play with a headband. Possibly because the headband was red, possibly because he was alert and extroverted, Cowan was singled out by players from the People’s Republic of China for a historic proposal. How, he was asked, would he and his teammates like to make an all-expenses-paid tour of Red China?

  They were delighted—“To quote Chairman Mao,” Cowan said after consulting his teammates, “I seem to have struck the spark that started a prairie fire”—and a formal invitation to them from Secretary General Sung Chung of the Chinese table tennis delegation quickly followed. Washington had no objection; just a few weeks earlier the State Department had lifted all restrictions on Americans who wanted to travel in the People’s Republic. Everyone concerned, including the ping-pong players, knew that the relationship between the two events was not coincidental. It was generally interpreted as an opening move toward detente, a reflection of the new confidence in Peking since the violent three-year power struggle there, known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, had ended in the final triumph of Mao and Premier Chou En-lai two years earlier. When seven western newspapermen were granted permission to enter China and cover the tour, it was clear that the world had reached a historic turning point. Obviously the Chinese, like the Russians before them, were using sport for diplomatic purposes. Table tennis acquired a new status overnight. Even President Nixon told his staff that “I was quite a Ping Pong player in my days at law school. I might say I was fairly good at it.” Moscow sulked. The Kremlin called Peking’s overture to the Americans “unprincipled.”