By Edwin Cooney
Edith Rachel Gassman, my best friend ever, was a quiet dignified lady. However, she was especially quiet that Friday, September 10th morning when she picked me up to take me back to Attica for the weekend. The first thing she told me upon entering my college room that morning was that a prison riot had occurred the day before and that a group of prisoners in defiance of warden Vincent Mancusi had control of Cell Block D. She told me further that two of our neighbors, Frank and Joe, were hostages of the rebellious prisoners. We hardly knew either Frank or Joe despite the fact that they lived on both sides of us — Frank lived just to our right and Joe lived to our left about three houses down the block. Edith grew even quieter when my reaction didn't match her sense of invasion and disquiet. She and her late husband had lived in Attica since the 1940s where they raised daughter Sharon and son Michael. Mr. Gassman had died in 1961 and Edith had become a house parent at the New York State School for the Blind in nearby Batavia, New York. That's where we met in the fall of 1963 and a year later she invited me to join her family as sort of a son. That was the core of our relationship from 1964 until her death in 2010. Thus, Attica didn't quite mean the same to me as it did to Edith. She also told me that a guard who had been injured on the day of the takeover and who eventually died, Billy Quinn, had been one of her Cub Scouts back in the 40s or 50s, although they were never really close personally.
Upon arriving in Attica that Friday, there was a certain expectancy of trouble that was about to visit either the town (the population of which was approximately 2,500 citizens) or the prisoners. The prison population was 2,243 uneducated, young and angry Blacks and Puerto Ricans. According to Heather Ann Thompson's book "Blood In The Water," 40% were under 30, 77% came from cities, 80% had not graduated from high school, 63% were Black or Puerto Rican, and two thirds had been incarcerated before although that didn't mean that they were all hardened criminals. Many, as Ms. Thompson points out, had been transferred from more heavily populated prisons downstate due to their angry temperament and the overcrowded populations of downstate prisons. In other words, rather than building larger prisons downstate, the population problem was kicked upstate by the Department of Corrections as, no doubt, ordered by the governor.
Most people I knew, family included, heartily wished that the prison with its population of "criminals and perverts" lived elsewhere. As for me, I didn't care so much that they were in Attica. I was simply sorry that they had screwed up and hoped they would realize the error of their ways, and simply get through their sentences and get back home where they could be happy citizens once again. (I was still young and naive enough that living happily ever after was what could and should be everyone's fate!)
As the weekend passed, Atticans saw prominent newspaper men such as Tom Wicker from the New York Times, famous lawyers like William Kunstler, and Herman Schwartz, Assemblymen named James Emery and John Done, as well as a Congressman named Herman Bedillo enter their lives and ultimately judge community mores. They didn't much like it!
Throughout Saturday and into Sunday, I listened intensively to local radio and television. Saturday night, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther party flew in from San Francisco to offer his party's support to the rebels, but it turned out to have no substance. Neither Elijah Muhammad nor Lewis Farrakhan were willing to assist the prisoners in a substantial way. Meanwhile, lawyers William Kunstler and Herman Schwartz were doing all they could on behalf of the prisoners. Everyone, me included, was praying and hoping for the freedom of the correction officers who were hostages.
Whether Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller would or should make a personal appearance was both an open and debatable question. One of the most vivid moments of the weekend for me was when Michael Smith, Sr, father to correction officer Michael Smith, a hostage, said: “I don't care whether Rockefeller comes here or not, because I wouldn't walk across the street to even look at him, but he has an obligation to end this situation." That generally summed up most everyone's feelings. What was the cause of the riot was a matter which would have to be faced, but the ultimate feeling was to get it over with.
So, at 9:46 a.m. on the morning of Monday, September 13th, 1971, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller did exactly that. Consequently, ten hostages lost their lives, not because prisoners cut their throats and castrated one of the men (as the governor for some time believed), but because the supposed "sharp shooters" weren't such sharp shooters. (Happily, both Frank and Joe survived the crisis.) Author Heather Ann Thompson's book "Blood In The Water: The Attica Uprising in 1971 and its Legacy" tells the story and outlines its consequences in great detail.
A day or two after the re-occupancy of the prison, I heard Lawyer William Kunstler tell an audience: Nelson Rockefeller is a downright murderer! Now, when I call him a murderer, I am libeling him — and I dare him to sue me!
At the close of that historic weekend fifty years ago, I believed that "Rocky" had made the right, although agonizing, decision to re-occupy the prison. Yet, in the wake of Mr. Kunstler's public libel of the governor and no response from Mr. Rockefeller, I had to take Kunstler's charge seriously. I still continued to like and even admire Nelson Rockefeller through his Vice Presidency and up to his subsequent and morally untidy death on Friday night, January 26th, 1979.
Time and events have changed my perspective. Back in 1971, my mind and heart were very impressionable. I was still very much an establishment Republican. After all, that was my environment and, subsequently, my mind set.
I wonder if I'm less innocent than I was back in 1971 or if I'm merely differently innocent today?
I'll leave it up to you to decide!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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