Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

Thompson, Heather Ann The Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the infamous 1971 Attica prison uprising, the state’s violent response, and the victims’ decades-long quest for justice—including information that had been withheld from the public for forty years.On September 9, 1971, nearly 1,300 prisoners took over the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York to protest years of mistreatment. They took thirty-eight hostages and over the next several days negotiated with officials for improved conditions in the prison. On September 13, the state abruptly ended discussions and sent hundreds of heavily armed troopers and correction officers to retake the prison by force. Their gunfire killed thirty-nine men—hostages as well as prisoners—and severely wounded more than one hundred others. In the days that followed troopers and officers brutally retaliated against the prisoners. In the aftermath, New York State authorities prosecuted only the prisoners, never once bringing charges against