Written by Eddie LeShure –
Part One –
Soon after my 22nd birthday I got busted for selling heroin. I was set up by a guy who’d been nailed on a possession charge and sold me out to save his own ass. I was no real drug dealer. Those of us using took turns buying in quantity and then selling to each other, basically covering our cost. I’m not saying I wasn’t guilty, just that it’s not like I was cruising the playgrounds giving kids free samples! I had a court-appointed attorney who talked me into a plea bargain based on a promise that went unfulfilled, so when the judge gave me “an indeterminate term of up to seven years” I was more than just a little shocked and pissed off. I got exactly the same sentence that a fellow arrestee got who’d stabbed a bloke to death for sleeping with his ex-wife. Plus, even though it was my first arrest for anything, I was sent to one of the most notorious penitentiaries in existence: Attica!
The good news was that a couple of years earlier, the name had been changed from Attica Prison to Attica Correctional Facility, the guards were now “correctional officers” and the warden was now the “superintendent”. Funny…the cells were still 6 X 8 X 10 and getting violated was still a high risk for a scrawny, young, white dude like me. During my Orientation, the Superintendent advised me to “Only associate with other whites cause the blacks and Latinos can’t be trusted!” I was dealing with a harsh reality and made a promise to myself right away that, “It wasn’t going to get the best of me!” After I slammed a guy up against the wall, the “predators” left me alone and I settled into the routine of doing time. I figured that I’d end up spending between 2 1/2 and 3 three years in the joint before getting paroled. Fortunately my friends had stuck with me and my sister had given me great support. My parents were in such a state of shock that my father informed people who asked him about children that, “We have a daughter.”
I was assigned to the school in D Block, one of the best paying jobs at Attica where I raked in the lofty salary of 55 cents per day. I was a “cell study teacher” for Math and Music – this was comparable to a correspondence school where inmates could earn a High School Equivalency degree. They’d do the homework and I’d correct it and return it. Interviews could be arranged for special tutoring, but I normally never saw my students. Attica had such high security that it was really five prisons within one, with each block (A to E) remaining isolated from the others. But I soon met Francois Scaglia, a Corsican from Marseille who taught French and Spanish, and who I later learned was a key figure the 1962 heroin smuggling operation chronicled in the famous movie with Gene Hackman called The French Connection. One day in the school he commented, “You like to read…you might enjoy this book.” It was about the crime, which involved stuffing 44 kilos (about 100 lbs) of heroin into a 1960 Buick Invicta owned by French entertainment personality Jacques Angelvin that was imported to New York via cargo ship called the SS United States.
In early 1971, the movie came out and suddenly Francois was gone, though he still faced several years. Apparently a deal had been cut which included his deportation. He’d always told me to look him up if I ever got to Marseille, but I never did while in France and somehow I think by 2000 he’d probably gotten rubbed out anyway.
My prison mates were an interesting lot, some obviously pathological and deranged. I knew a mafia hit man who bragged that he’d “bumped off nearly a couple of dozen men…just a job!” The guys on each side of my cell were both near the end of life sentences for First Degree Murder. I met Joe Bonnano’s nephew, though I didn’t meet Joey Gallo, H. Rap Brown or Son of Sam, all of whom were guests roughly during that era. But despite these notorious individuals, most of those there seemed like regular folk who either got out-of-control on substances or just screwed up and couldn’t afford to hire F. Lee Bailey and Johnny Cochran! Here’s a truism: “The rich set the bail and the poor go to jail!”
At the time I got busted in August 1970, my health habits could’ve been described as appalling, at best. My drug use was excessive (though I’d just stopped using heroin), I was an enthusiastic beer drinker, smoked a couple of packs of cigarettes per day (Camels and Kools) and my diet was total crap: whatever I felt like putting into my body at any given moment. About the only vegetables I ever got were those tossed into my Big Mac or hoagie. Exercise amounted solely to whatever walking I was forced to do. Soon after arriving at the Big House, I stopped smoking (and by necessity had been off drugs and alcohol since my arrest), became a vegetarian and shunned sugar and caffeine. I started running and playing basketball and handball in The Yard and doing yoga in my cell. My primary influence was Sam Melville, a fellow cell study teacher who locked in the same company as me. Sam would impact my life in a big way.
In 1969 Sam made a name for himself when he blew up some buildings in NYC and that name was “The Mad Bomber”. He described himself as an anarchist and justified his actions with fierce ideological rhetoric, believing these violent acts would help trigger “a people’s revolution”. Loosely connected to the radical Weathermen group, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison while his girlfriend and partner in crime Jane Alpert jumped bail and for four years was on The FBI’s Most Wanted List. She finally turned herself in, cutting a deal for 27 months and later writing a book called ”Growing Up Underground”. While in Attica, Sam enhanced his revolutionary reputation by picking political fights with the administration and guards and soon reached virtual demigod status while periodically getting thrown into what was euphemistically referred to as Punitive Segregation, but in prison jargon was known as “the box”.
I spent long hours talking to Sam, either while eating in the mess hall or walking around D Yard. He turned me on to yoga, but more importantly encouraged me to move beyond the “immature” New Left politics of my college days and gain a solid theoretical foundation of history and political science. He showed me how to get publishing companies producing Leftist books to send them to me at no charge, common practice. He occasionally lent me reading material and one of his I recall reading was, “The Master and Margarita”, by Russian anti-Stalinist Mikhail Bulgakov. “I only read fiction if it’s really excellent!” he assured me. Another book was “Sisterhood is Powerful”, a radical feminist compilation by his acquaintance Robin Morgan. He often played guitar in his cell and was an accomplished finger picking blues stylist with a sweet voice.
I settled into doing time, establishing a routine keeping occupied. I read, wrote letters, did yoga and pushups in my cell, played handball and basketball in the yard and worked. I developed friendships with a few other inmates, both white and black, and particularly gravitated towards those who were politically oriented. One guy who took a liking to me was Frank Smith, a veteran convict that everyone knew as Big Black…for good reason since he was really big and really black! Most people simply called him “Black” and he appointed me “Little Brother”. I’d done him a couple of favors, typing up something in the school or whatever and he liked talking with me so on occasion he’d come up to me and say, “Hey Little Brother, walk with me, talk with me!” Even if I hadn’t immensely enjoyed our conversations, you just don’t say no to Black. He was not only a physically powerful man, but also politically formidable within Attica. A wise con didn’t even think of crossing Black.
One time a young guy came into Attica named Drake Graham, or maybe it was Graham Drake – it was one of those kinds of names. He’d been a druggie acquaintance back in Corning and had managed to get himself a three-year bid for dope. I spotted him and could see that he was both naive and skinny as hell and would end up getting “stuffed” really soon! So I ambled up to Black and said, “Hey Black, walk with me, talk with me!” He did. “See that guy over there? He nodded, “Yeah…fresh meat…you know him?” I acknowledged that I did and he responded, “Say no more Little Brotha!” You can bet that the word got out really fast that to mess with this kid was to mess with Big Black, and to this day Drake Graham or Graham Drake probably has no clue that I may have saved his ass – literally!
In 1970, radical politics in America was at its peak. The movements against the Vietnam War and for Civil Rights/Black Liberation as well as Women’s Liberation were full on. Protests were raging in cities and on campus and within Attica the consciousness was peaking. Angela Davis, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X were folk heroes, as was Che Guevara. Any issue within prison quickly became viewed with a radical political perspective and related in appropriate jargon. Virtually all convicts saw themselves as “political prisoners” and to a large extent that could be justified. “The System” clearly was stacked in favor of those with wealth and there was no question that racial minorities were getting the short end of the economic stick. Numerous Vietnam veterans who’d come back from Southeast Asia with massive emotional problems and often with drug addictions ended up in places like Attica. White collar crimes were either virtually ignored or the perpetrators got off light, but if you were a person of color and stuck up a liquor store to feed your family, you were history.
In 1971, the population at Attica was more than 2,200 and 54% were black prisoners, 9% Puerto Rican, and 37% white. The 383 guards were 100% white! Plus, many of those locked up were urban, those doing the locking were all rural and most employees openly viewed inmates with contempt. That, in and of itself, was potential for trouble. We were allowed one shower a week, allotted one bar of soap and one roll of toilet paper each month. Our mail was heavily censored, access to literature was restricted and visitors were harassed, when they were even allowed inside. Black and Latino prisoners were routinely subjected to racist slurs and beatings by prison guards who referred to their billy clubs as “nigger sticks.” There were no real education programs, food and medical care was horrible. There were efforts to “work within the system”, but whenever anyone tried that they were instantly and brutally repressed. This just pissed everyone off even more and further fanned the flames of discontent and determination to push onwards…no matter what the cost!
Across the country a prisoners’ rights movement was growing and within Attica, certain prisoners were working on bringing together the various political groups: the Black Panthers and Young Lords Party (Puerto Rican) being the principal radical groups. There were also the Black Muslims who were quite large, but they were then still running their “don’t trust whitey” riff and remained separate from others. Within Attica, an organization called the Attica Liberation Faction was developed. Its goal was to unify and articulate the anger and revolutionary fervor that was brewing.
Within Attica was a school where I taught a Sociology class led by a former college professor named Bill Coons who’d decided to supplement his salary at Skidmore College by dealing some LSD. It was a showcase class allowed by the warden to make the school look impressive. This class actually allowed prisoners to sit together in a room, which was important since Attica has five different cell blocks which prevent prisoners from mixing. But the class got the leaders of different blocks to get together and talk about what we were all doing to improve our conditions. This included people like Sam Melville, Herbert X Blyden, Big Black and other key figures. When Bill was paroled, I took over the class as “teacher”. In May of 1971, the Attica Liberation Front put together the Manifest of Demands, which was signed by five prisoners (some of whom were in the class). I typed up the Demands in the school because I had access to a typewriter. They were sent out to the new commissioner of correctional services, Russell G. Oswald – who didn’t even have the courtesy to address the prisoners in person.
https://libcom.org/blog/attica-prison-liberation-faction-manifesto-demands-1971-06012012
Then on August 21, 1971, revolutionary Black prisoner George Jackson was murdered in cold blood in a California state prison. This was a key event leading up to the Attica Rebellion. As word of Jackson’s murder spread from cell to cell, a plan developed to organize the whole prison in a united protest of bitter outrage and mourning. The next morning, as the men filed out for breakfast, they organized themselves into two columns, a Black prisoner heading each one. Inside the mess halls, hundreds of prisoners sat in total silence. Wearing black armbands, they fasted, seething with hostility at the system that had murdered their comrade and continued to incarcerate them under brutal, inhumane conditions.
Prior to this I’d been put into the box for “possession of inflammatory literature” and given 60 days. The guards had started getting suspicious about me, searched my cell, and found a petition we were circulating, plus some radical books and a handwritten newsletter that Sam had put together called “The Iced Pig”. I was originally given 30 days, but when the warden asked me how I liked that I replied, “I can do 30 days standing on my head!” I was definitely feeling my oats that day! His reply, “Then I’ll give you another 30 days to do standing on your feet!” I had more guts than brains!
On September 8, 1971 a football game led to a fight in the A-yard and guards quickly broke up the fight and separated the two inmates they believed responsible, Ray Lamorie and Leroy Dewer. The situation escalated, but ended in a standoff with many prisoners surrounding the guards, who promised there’d be no punishment dealt out. After supper that evening Dewer and Lamorie were both removed from their cells in different parts of A-block. Both men resisted and the guards responded in kind. Before long the entire block was yelling and throwing things from their cells, taunting and threatening the guards. One guard (Thomas Boyle, who I’d grown to despise) was deeply lacerated when a soup can was thrown from a cell. The prisoner responsible for throwing the jar was immediately placed on 24-hour lockdown. Rumors quickly spread between the inmates that both Lamorie and Dewer had been beaten severely, maybe killed.
The next morning (September 9th), Company 5 left the mess hall at 8:50 a.m. and headed back towards A-block and soon afterwards, the inmates quickly overpowered the five men in charge of A-block. Prisoners rushed through the halls and captured “Times Square,” the central office with lock controls to all the major intersections, then formed an angry mob of destruction that tore down bars and barricades that had been thought impregnable. They set fire to the chapel, school and tailor shop. They ruthlessly beat any guards they came across and one guard, William Quinn, was thrown off of a catwalk. About 1,200 prisoners were able to access D Yard and as they did they seized 32 guards and 6 civilian employees as hostages. Within two hours Richard Clark and Herbert X. Blyden had taken charge in D-yard and began to protect the hostages and issue some semblance of order. When negotiations began with the State of NY, the Manifest of Demands re-emerged as the terms of release for the hostages.
Negotiations went on for five days between prisoners and Commissioner Oswald, with numerous outside observers included, such as the famous lawyer William Kunstler and NY Times journalist Tom Wicker. The stakes got higher when word got out that Officer Quinn had died of his injuries. By this time, the prisoners had added three more demands, including “complete amnesty for crimes committed during the rebellion”, and “transport to a non-Imperialist country”. There was no way that Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller would agree and over time the prisoners also became more intransigent and fiery in their rhetoric. “We would rather die like men than live being treated like dogs!” they chanted!
During this time I was locked up in the Box, but was pretty much aware of what was happening since the prison radio system was still operating. Each cell had three jacks to plug head phones into and amazingly the inmate operator was still on the job! It was very tense and I knew I was part of history. The guards were bringing me food, if you call baloney sandwiches food. The water had been shut off throughout the prison, so we were forced to shit in old newspapers we then rolled up and threw across the hallway. Ironically, the Box had the best view of any cells and I could see out over the high wall and observe much of the activity taking place outside Attica. Both the national news organizations and the National Guard had arrived, helicopters parked on the grass.
To be continued……..
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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.
