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Organized Disorder: The New York City Jail Rebellion of 1970

Orisanmi Burton

To cite this article: Orisanmi Burton (2018) Organized Disorder: The New York City Jail Rebellion of 1970, The Black Scholar, 48:4, 28-42, DOI: 10.1080/00064246.2018.1514925

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2018.1514925

Published online: 06 Nov 2018.

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Organized Disorder: The New York City Jail Rebellion of 1970

ORISANMI BURTON

Introduction

J ails and prisons1 seek legitimacy through their alleged ability to impose order on

captive populations, thereby defending the order of society at large. Out of necessity, captive populations, who experience penal order as immanent violence, must innovate ways to circumvent and resist penal authority. This relentless struggle places total order beyond reach, creating a context in which penal authority aims only to maintain surface order, “the semblance that everything is running smoothly with no official (or public) cause for alarm.”2 When even this minimal form of order is disturbed, and the prison’s “essential instability”3 becomes a matter of public record, its claim to legitimacy is damaged and space for transforming the exist- ing order becomes available. The production of disorder is therefore a powerful weapon for captive populations. As George Jackson, a radical imprisoned intellectual, once observed, “Law and Order is their objective. Ours is Perfect Disorder.”4

In 1970, on the cusp of the US Empire’s globally unprecedented experiment with racial criminalization and human caging, thousands of imprisoned people engaged in a protracted, multi-sited rebellion that brought the New York City (NYC) jail system to a “state of near collapse.”5 This essay

interprets this episode by examining the words, deeds, tactics, and strategies of the captive rebels who organized it. It exposes carceral institutions as sites of domestic warfare, reveals that law and order is always contested, and shows how the organization of disorder can be a productive site of revolu- tionary politics. First, I discuss the broader his- torical, political, and structural developments that created conditions favorable to rebellion. I then show how, beneath the veneer of surface order, captive women and men sur- reptitiously fostered a culture of solidarity and resistance that imbued the broader captive population with a new revolutionary spirit. In the third and fourth sections I analyze how, in August and October of 1970, captive rebels in the Manhattan House of Detention for Men (also known as the Tombs) and the Queens Branch House of Detention seized the jails, articulated an evolving set of demands, and circulated coun- terhegemonic narratives that publicly exposed the racist violence of imprisonment. I then describe how the rebellion spread to five city jails and how community support for the rebels grew, transforming the disorder into a generalized phenomenon. In the final section, I examine how penal authorities restored surface order through the application of violence.

The Terrain of Struggle

The NYC jail rebellion emerged amid a national context of insurgent liberation move- ments and mounting political repression. In July of 1964, four months after New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller passed the

© 2018 The Black World Foundation The Black Scholar 2018

Vol. 48, No. 4, 28–42, https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2018.1514925

nation’s first “stop and frisk” law empowering police to question and detain anyone “reason- ably” suspected of criminalized activity, a rebellion erupted in Harlem. Ignited by lethal police violence, the Harlem Rebellion was just one among hundreds of urban rebel- lions that ruptured US cities between 1964 and 1971. In the wake of this insurgency, Black and Third World youth organized their revolutionary capacity into fighting for- mations such as the Revolutionary Action Movement, the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the Young Lords Party (YLP). These for- mations pursued revolutionary transformation by engaging in community development, internationalist politics, and armed self- defense against racist state repression. They circulated an analysis that urban ghettos and carceral institutions were kindred elements within a historical and geographical conti- nuum of captivity, exploitation, and genocide against indigenous and Black people. As one YLP member articulated, “Third World People are forced to live in substandard and subhuman conditions on many different levels—in the jails, in the schools, in the hos- pitals, and in the streets.”6 This analysis reso- nated with the captives, who described brick and mortar jails as “maximum-security” insti- tutions, only slightly more repressive than ghetto streets, that they called “minimum security jails.”7

Although many establishment experts understood that these militant forms of collec- tive struggle were produced by systemic racial oppression and abysmal urban conditions,8

the US government moved to restore “dom- estic tranquility” by waging war against racia- lized populations and political dissent. In 1967, J. Edgar Hoover, instructed the

Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counterin- telligence Program to “expose, disrupt, mis- direct, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” domestic liberation movements, an objective that was achieved through disinformation, surveillance, frame-ups, and assassinations.9

The following year, the federal government established the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, which “funded the purchase of helicopters, patrol cars, infrared cameras, riot gear, and radios by police depart- ments.”10 This expansion of repressive capacity accompanied the US government’s retreat from New Deal liberalism and the pro- vision of the social wage, elevating policing to the primary means of addressing social and economic marginalization.11

Applauding the ascendance of punitive law and order politics, NYC Department of Correction (DOC) Commissioner George F.McGrath wrote, “it is beginning to be recog- nized that we in Correction have a very special expertise—a very clearly defined function in the total administration of our social structure … [We] have a vital, frontline and essential role in controlling crime in the streets.”12 Yet much to McGrath’s dismay, police agencies—rather than courts, jails, and prisons—were the primary beneficiaries of the federal government’s largesse.13

Warlike policing, and the emerging strategy of “preventive detention,”14 helped create a structural crisis for DOC, which was wholly unprepared to absorb and control the influx of dispossessed and disaffected Black, Latinx, and white radicals that filled the jails with increasing rapidity.

In 1967, DOC confined an average daily population of 9534 people within its nine jails, across four city boroughs and Rikers

Orisanmi Burton 29

Island. By 1969, the captive population had increased to 12,743 people caged within a system designed to hold just 7763. Eighty- four percent of this growth came from the city’s “detention population”—people who were charged with but not convicted of crimes, who remained in jail largely because they could not afford to pay exorbitant bails. A corps of 2400 guards maintained the fragile penal order, but by March of 1970 even they were in revolt, launching a work slowdown to compel DOC to improve labor conditions and hire 800 new guards.15

The rebellion that ensued was part of an escalating national trend in which captive populations responded to carceral violence through organized disorder. One national study identified five prison riots in 1967, 15 in 1968, 27 in 1970, 37 in 1971, and 48 in 1972, indicating a deepening crisis of penal authority.16 This terrified the political estab- lishment. They recognized that if they could not maintain order within the most repressive institutions in society, that society itself was doomed.

TheWeaponization of Prisoner Culture

The rebellions disturbed surface order and captivated public attention, yet much of the groundwork that made them possible remained hidden from view. In her Autobio- graphy, Angela Davis theorizes the two layers upon which carceral struggles are waged:

The first layer consists of the routines and be-

havior prescribed by the governing penal

hierarchy. The second layer is the prisoner

culture itself: the rules and standards of

behavior that come from and are defined

by the captives in order to shield themselves

from the open or covert terror designed to

break their spirits.17

The first layer corresponds to what we have already called “surface order.” Controlled by penal authority, this layer is designed to keep the prison operational and prevent orga- nized resistance from within. Crucially though, Davis identifies a second layer, the layer of “prisoner culture,” which provides captives with a strategy for navigating the immanent violence of captivity.

Davis developed these insights while imprisoned in NYC’s Women’s House of Detention on charges stemming from her alleged role in aiding Jonathan Jackson’s armed attempt to free three political prisoners from a California courthouse. She was moved by the methods captive women used to support themselves amid the “atrocious con- ditions that characterize virtually every Amer- ican prison.”18 Women in the House of D, as it was called, participated in an “improvised kinship structure” that provided them with a network of support and belonging. Women whom Davis had never met joined her in a hunger strike to protest her initial placement in solitary confinement. Each night, after lights out, they performed an elaborate ritual, which Davis called “the saying of goodnights.”19

Captive women and men practice rituals of solidarity similar to those Davis describes as a means of survival.20 Yet Davis asserts that prisoner culture tends to be weak and “incap- able of striking a significant blow against the system.” In some ways, prisoner culture facili- tates penal order because “all its elements are

TBS • Volume 48 • Number 4 • Winter 201830

based on the assumption that the prison system will continue to exist.”21 Davis and other captive radicals understood that to mount an effective challenge to the prison, captives needed to overcome this fatalistic outlook and enact strategies to exploit the weaknesses in the regime.

This is precisely what happened in 1970. The rebellion was the outcome of a protracted period of organization in which captives throughout the system cultivated a spirit of resistance. In May, men confined to the ninth floor of the Tombs formed the Inmates Liberation Front (ILF). Believing that “organiz- ation can’t exist prior to education,” Victor Martinez, an imprisoned Young Lord who emerged as a key figure in two jail insurgen- cies, circulated counterhegemonic narratives through political education workshops:

We would gather in the shower or we would

take the last cell on the floor and sit on the

floor. Or we would sit at a table and spread

out a deck of cards. If the guard came by

he would assume that we were playing

cards while we were really discussing politi-

cal science.22

In these furtive spaces, captives collectively analyzed the brutality of penal order and they developed strategies to challenge it. They fos- tered the idea that unity across racial difference was essential to mounting a successful chal- lenge to penal authority. According to Marti- nez, “[interracial animosity] was an obstacle but it was easy to overcome. All of us were locked up and were being deprived of basic human rights. As soon as we were able to explain this to the men they couldn’t go along with the guards.”23

The ILF followed local, national, and inter- national events by corresponding with outside communities, reading newspapers, and listening to their transistor radios. Even- tually, they established The Inmates Forum, an illicit, hand-printed newspaper, which they used to “spread propaganda, … plans, education activities, and political views.”24

The Tombs was not exceptional. Captive men and women engaged in these veiled forms of disorder throughout the system, including in the four NYC jails that did not riot in 1970.25 In the Women’s House of D, Angela Davis organized groups to study con- traband political literature. She led exercise and self-defense sessions in unoccupied jail corridors. She joined an organization with other captive women to organize a fund to bail women out of jail.26

While Davis and other prominent political prisoners had a radicalizing effect on the captive population, political consciousness and the will to struggle emanated from many sectors of the population. In an open letter to Right On!, a House of D captive named Laurie draws on the writings of George Jackson and Frantz Fanon to powerfully articulate the prison struggle as a struggle over collective being. While still reeling from a miscarriage that “really fucked me up both physically and mentally for quite a while,” Laurie asserts that oppressed peoples in the jails and the streets are faced with

a choice between existence and nonexis-

tence—between determination and pacifi-

cation. If we are truly to exist we [must] be

aware of what is going down, we must

analyze and understand it. Once you do

this it becomes impossible to accept life in

Orisanmi Burton 31

America’s concentration camps and once

you no longer accept it you must struggle

to destroy it and once you struggle to

destroy it its creators and keepers will

struggle to destroy you. It is a choice

between a short, hard existence—one of

living and dying for the Peoples preservation

or an existence on nonexistence.27

Dispatches from the Tombs

On August 10, 1970 “the accumulated frus- tration, desperation and rage of the prisoners was transferred into a flaming determination to better their plight by taking the only form of action that the pigs of the power structure relate to—revolutionary action.”28 At 6 am, on the ILF stronghold of the ninth floor, 225 men captured five guards and locked them into cages. After kicking panes of bulletproof glass from the building’s façade, they tossed handwritten messages onto the streets. One of these read, “The people are tired of being treated like animals in this hell. I might die from the beat up but its [sic] worth it. The people of Cuba Puerto Rico Black and whites.”29

When Commissioner McGrath arrived shortly thereafter, he entered the jail and par- ticipated in what Barry Gottehrer, one of his key advisors, described as a “long, loud and angry face-to-face meeting.” In their list of grievances, the captives condemned the court system for subjecting them to “excessive bail,” “sham hearings,” and for allowing defense attorneys to “aid and abet the incur- sions and abuses of our rights.” They denounced the moldy and rotten food, the lack of clothing provisions, the substandard medical care, and the restricted access to

law books. They described the jail as “ridden with body lice, roaches, rats and mice.” They accused guards of employing extrajudicial violence, “largely directed against the Black and Puerto Rican inmate population.” It was common practice, they continued, for groups of guards to “beat …

defenseless inmate[s] into unconsciousness, often injuring [them] for life physically and mentally or both.” They accused the Tombs physicians of covering up the racial violence by submitting false accident reports to the administration. They argued, further, that physical violation and harassment was not reserved for those confined in the jail: it was also enacted upon the captives’ “wives, sisters and mothers,” who were “variously insulted and indecently proposed to by the officers of Tombs Prison when they come to visit.” The document rejected the notion that the abysmal situation in the jails was the result of individual bad actors, arguing instead that the system was fundamentally ordered by racial violence. They wrote, “not one leaf of a tree could turn yellow without the silent knowledge and consent of the tree itself.”30

Their final demand was for the adminis- tration to ensure that guards would not seek reprisals for their actions. McGrath reportedly conceded. After an eight-hour impasse, the rebels released the hostages unharmed.

On August 11, as Mayor John Lindsay and Commissioner McGrath held a press confer- ence to assure the public that order had been restored, the Tombs erupted for the second day in a row. This time, more than 800 captives seized control of the fourth, fifth, seventh, and eighth floors. They cap- tured three hostages, smashed locks,

TBS • Volume 48 • Number 4 • Winter 201832

incinerated bed sheets, broke windows, and ejected burning trash and dead rats onto the city streets. They reiterated their demands from the previous day and employed a new tactic: they refused to release their hostages until the administration publicly committed to investigating conditions in the Tombs. McGrath agreed. Seven hours later, the hos- tages were released.31

In an effort to restore surface order as quickly as possible, Commissioner McGrath led the public to believe that DOC had reas- serted its authority. Yet reporters later revealed that rebels remained in control of the fourth floor for 10 days after releasing the hostages. Captives continued to plan during this period of self-rule. They discussed the possibility of taking their case before the United Nations. They also launched a boycott of the court system, which materia- lized in two separate jails. On August 17, only 94 out of the 190 Tombs captives sched- uled for hearings actually appeared in court. Captives in the Branch Queens House of Detention, across the East River, also partici- pated, with only 13 out of 100 appearing before a judge. The Tombs boycott continued the following day, when only 52 captives out of a total of 155 appeared for hearings.32

The occupation of the Tombs and the boy- cotts concluded on August 20, after 80 state agents stormed the Tombs and reasserted order by force.33 While the captives failed to ameliorate the brutal conditions of captivity, their collective praxis demonstrated to them- selves, prison authorities, and the general public that they could disrupt surface order and compel a response from prison auth- orities. Victor Martinez and other leaders were transferred from the Tombs, to the

Branch Queens, where organized disorder would soon reemerge.

Turnabout Day

At 12 pm on October 1, captives seized Branch Queens. As they were being marched to the mess hall, roughly 100 cap- tives turned on their keepers, placing seven guards on “the right side of the bars for a change.”34 They fanned throughout the facil- ity, smashed phones, fractured plumbing, destroyed kitchen equipment, disabled the electrical system, set fire to the chapel, broke the arms off the crucifix, and unlocked cages until all 396 captives were loose. A reporter observed that the only area of the jail that remained unscathed was the library.35

Among those unleashed were nine Black Panthers, being held on charges of allegedly plotting to assassinate police officers and bomb public spaces throughout NYC. Kuwasi Balagoon, one of the so-called “Panther 21,” called the commencement of the Branch Queens rebellion and the inver- sion of power relations between the keepers and the kept, “turnabout day.“

Articulating the euphoria of collective rebellion, Balagoon continued:

It was a trip, a really hip experience. The

only relief oppressed people can get is to

strike out against the oppressor, and it is

the only freedom we know of. The freedom

of doing what you think is right and doing

what you must do, of saying fuck the conse-

quences. Embraced by a natural high, I

looked into the faces and the eyes of my

brothers; the vibrations were right on. I

Orisanmi Burton 33

wish I could express the spiritual explora-

tions that took place. It was a religious

experience. ‘Trane would have to play it,

and Henderson and Villon would have to

put it into colors. It was art and it was life.36

Leaders quickly emerged which allowed the rebels to discipline the disorder into a stable form of organization. The captives barricaded entry points, established guard posts, posted lookouts, and developed systems to communi- cate to different areas of the jail. They elected a committee of representatives, including three BPP members—Kuwasi Balagoon, Lumumba Shakur, and Kwando Kinshasa; Victor Marti- nez, the Young Lord who helped form the ILF and participated in the Tombs rebellion; and two unaffiliated captives—Kenneth Cender, a white man, and Robert Drake, a Black man. Proclaiming the emergence of a new order, the rebels hung a red, black, and green flag out of the top-floor window.

Their demands reflected important politi- cal and tactical developments within the escalating struggle. Like those issued during the Tombs rebellion two months earlier, the Queens Branch rebels denounced brutal jail conditions and maddening court delays. Yet they also articulated identity-based demands which called for greater access to ideological and cultural resources. They wanted the reli- gious rights of Muslims to be respected; more Spanish-speaking staff; greater access to radical publications such as YLP’s Palante and The Black Panther newspaper; and the release of Afeni Shakur, a Panther 21 defen- dant being held in the Women’s House of Detention.

In an effort to communicate directly with the public, the rebels demanded, and were

granted, the opportunity to hold a press con- ference, which began the following after- noon.37 Present, upon the captives’ request, were two mayoral aids, Commissioner McGrath, former Bronx Borough President Herman Badillo, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Puerto Rican activist Manuel Casiano, Nation of IslamMinister Louis Farra- khan, and roughly 100 print, radio, and TV journalists. “Along the prison walls, the faces of watching inmates jammed the smashed but still bared windows.” CBS-TV recorded rebel spokesmen entering the courtyard, their faces partially obscured by sunglasses and white t-shirts, held in place by head- bands. “McGrath watched the discussion, half nervous and half bored. Bored, because he knew that the whole affair would soon be resolved with clubs, gas and blood. Nervous, because the feeling at the scene of the negotiations was that the prisoners were on top.”38

When it was his turn to address the media, Victor Martinez, speaking on behalf of “all Hispanic and oppressed people,” ardently pronounced, “This system, which has oppressed us for the last 400 years and we’re here to put a stop to it … and make this known, make this known to your press, that we are ready to die and kill until you pigs give us back our rights.”39 Martinez’s proclamation reveals the captives’ belief that their struggle extended beyond the jail. His reference to the “last 400 years” of oppression challenged the dominant narrative that the rebellion was caused by technocratic ineffi- ciencies such as overcrowding and poor con- ditions. Instead, he placed the violence of captivity within the longue durée of European settler colonial violence and racial slavery. In

TBS • Volume 48 • Number 4 • Winter 201834

this context, the rebels’ efforts to disorder the jails was part of a centuries-long struggle to reorder the world, a struggle led by the conge- nital captives of US empire. “This is not a protest. This is not a riot,” Martinez added. “This is a whole thing. We are going to create a paradise out of this hell.”40

Just before the conclusion of the press con- ference, the captives added a new demand. Seeking to expose the injustice of the city’s court system, they promised to kill the hos- tages unless a bail review hearing was held on the grounds of the Queens Branch jail. Then, with raised fists, they exited the court- yard and disappeared into their jail.

41

Generalized Disorder

At 3 pm on October 2, just before the start of the press conference, captives in the Tombs rebelled again. This time, when captives on the 11th floor were marching from the chapel, a group jumped out of line, split into two formations, and quickly captured 25 jail workers.42 They barricaded the gates, secured the hostages, “formed a revolutionary committee,” and expressed “solidarity and complete support of all demands made by the brothers at Branch Queens House of Detention.”

43

They again communicated with the outside by ejecting notes through broken windows. One note, written in Spanish, asked for greater support from “all Spanish- speaking people.”44 As Juanita Diaz-Cotto has shown, Latinx and Black communities, especially women, heeded this call:

Relatives and friends flooded DOC officers

and El Dario45 with calls and letters inquiring

about the status of imprisoned kin, some of

whom had been transferred to other local

or state facilities or who had been hospital-

ized as a result of guard brutality … The

inquires of family members were frequently

ignored and women asking about the fate

of loved ones were at times physically

abused by guards, but such requests for

information did help to further encourage

public scrutiny of jail conditions.46

The violence of captivity exceeds the physical confines of the jail, gravely impacting the social networks of captive populations. It is therefore unsurprising communities of both sides of the wall rebelled against the jail. By this point, hundreds of Black, Latinx, and white women and men encircled the Tombs and Queens Branch to demonstrate their support for the captive rebels. They were held at bay by perimeter barricades and a phalanx of uniformed police officers donning riot gear, gas grenades, and shotguns.

At 9 pm that night, 900 captives at another Queen’s jail, the Kew Gardens Branch, opened another front in the rebellion. They took no hostages, but gained “complete control of the joint.”47 They sabotaged jail property, set fires, and used hoses to shoot water onto the streets below. At this point, “the situation had become one of the most serious crises in the history of the city prisons. More than 1400 inmates in three jails were in command of scores of cellblocks and were holding a total of 23 hostages— including three guard captains, 14 guards and six civilian employees.”48 The following afternoon, nearly 1500 captives in the Brook- lyn House of Detention seized three more

Orisanmi Burton 35

hostages and gained control of seven floors in what reporters called a “lunch-hour rampage.”49

It was in the context of this generalized dis- order that the Queens Branch bail review hearing occurred. On the afternoon of October 3, under the captives’ threat of lethal violence, three state Supreme Court jus- tices reviewed bail cases in a makeshift court set up in an anteroom adjacent to the warden’s office.

For the rest of the day, the three-judge panel ruled on previous bail decisions. The rebels had pre-selected 47 cases for review and had appointed Gerald Lefcourt, one of the defense attorneys in the Panther 21 case, as their legal representation.50 Lefcourt, a 27-year old white man, had no doubt the rebels would have killed all the hostages

had these hearings not taken place. “They were all so serious,” he recalled. “And the Panthers were facing life and assumed that they would do life.”51

The result of thehearingwas remarkable.Not onlydid the judges confirm the rebels’claim that city courts were setting excessive bails, but 13 captives were able to walk out of the jail that day. One of them was Gilbert Jimenez, who was awaiting trial on a charge of possessing stolen property. After reviewing his case, the judges reduced his $3500 bail to zero and released him on his own recognizance. They reached the same conclusion in eight other cases. An additional four captives had their bails reduced to $25 each. According to Lef- court, supporters who had amassed outside the jail quickly pooled $100 to post the bails, secur- ing the captives’ immediate release.52

Supporters of the rebellion protesting outside theQueen Branch Jail, October 4, 1970. Photo Courtesy of Tamiment Library, New York University

TBS • Volume 48 • Number 4 • Winter 201836

This victory had a transformative effect on the political consciousness of people on both sides of the walls. Lefcourt described it as “one of the most unusual things I’ve ever lived through or heard about. It was the first ever ‘legal’ jailbreak.”53 His apt pairing of the antonyms “legal” and “jailbreak” exposes how this massive mobilization of col- lective illegality and disorder resulted in a favorable outcome sanctioned by the auth- orities of law and order. Upon his improbable release, Gilbert Jimenez joined the YLP. He continued to support the rebels by writing articles in Palante and helping to establish the ILF into a YLP division.54

Emboldened by their growing recognition of their capacity to win, the rebels reneged on their promise to release all the hostages, choosing instead to release two as a show of “good faith.” They also announced their desire to form a “congress of inmates,” where rebels from each of the riotous jails could meet and strategize. They had no inten- tion of giving up. An advisor toMayor Lindsay later recalled, “for every point we yielded, the inmates put up another demand.”55

Restoring Surface Order

On October 3, Commissioner McGrath told reporters, “we can’t tolerate this if we’re to survive as a civilization.”56 Amid the captive victory during the bail hearing and the ongoing expansion of disorder, Lindsay and McGrath decided to restore order through force. Many had anticipated this moment from the start. Hundreds of guards, police offi- cers, vigilantes, and “hangers-on” encircled the besieged jails brandishing state-issued teargas guns, gasmasks, shotguns, riot gear,

batons, iron pipes, pickax handles, baseball bats, and table legs. Many were intoxicated.57

During the early hours of October 4, prison authorities announced that rebels in the Brooklyn House of Detention had one hour to surrender or face an incursion from the assault force amassed outside the jail. They started in Brooklyn because it was the last to erupt and they believed “the longer the pris- oners were in control, the more entrenched their resistance would become.” Their assess- ment was correct. By this point, the Brooklyn insurgency was only hours old, giving the rebels little time to fortify their positions in a manner similar to the Tombs and Queens Branch. The imminent threat of siege caused the rebels to fight among each other and gave authorities an opportune moment to strike. Guards fired teargas along the tiers and stormed the jail, reasserting control through a “brief spate of hand-to-hand combat.”58

After freeing the hostages and re-caging the captives, the assault force filed on to a motor- cade of DOC buses and traveled to Queens. They immediately stormed the Kew Garden jail, “[starting] at the top of the building and [fighting] their way down, floor by floor.” Although guards reported that “resistance was heavy,” by 6 am all the rebels were in cages. Reporters estimated that 200 rebels and 12 guards sustained non-lethal injuries.59

As the struggle to retake the jails unfolded, captives in the Adolescent Remand Shelter on Rikers Island briefly opened a new front of rebellion. Several young people took three hostages but were summarily defeated after guards regained control.60 In a matter of hours, prison authorities had shifted the momentum in their favor. Yet the struggle

Orisanmi Burton 37

was not over: they still had to contendwith the Tombs and Queens Branch, two deeply entrenched sites of resistance.

Authorities doubted their ability to simply storm the jails as they had done before. Instead, they decided to broadcast an ulti- matum to the rebels over the radio. At 9:30 pm on October 4, Lindsay’s voice came over the radio and implored the rebels to release all hostages or “face other courses of action.” Following Lindsay’s message, the Tombs’ Warden called the 11th floor and attempted to intimidate the rebels. “He teased and he bullied and he pushed up the pressure,” exacerbating the internal fissures that rebel leaders had been struggling to keep at bay.61 The external pressure led to the implosion of the rebellion’s internal order:

All the divisive influences began to make

themselves manifest; quarrels and fights

were developing in the ranks about the

dumbest things—food, cigarettes, candy,

and pills. Some of the committee members

were on ego trips; the pill heads were

running around creating confusion, fighting.

Ethnic animosity between blacks and Puerto

Ricans was smoldering, fanned by ignorance

and fear of the oppressor … Between

dealing with pigs and trying to maintain a

united front, all our efforts were being dissi-

pated on ineffectual activity.

The ultimatum produced two hours of chaotic deliberation. “Immediately, all the wavers, fence sitters, and opponents started shouting, ‘Let them go! Let them go!’” According to Ricardo de Leon, a Black Panther, this faction “steamrollered the surrender” and rushed to release all 18 hostages.62

Following the Tombs surrender, penal authorities traveled to Queens Branch and issued the same ultimatum. This time, debate among the rebels centered around the question of violence. During their press conference, Martinez and others had expressed their willingness to die and kill. But since the first Tombs uprising back in August, none of the rebels had killed or criti- cally injured a single guard. In fact, upon their release, many of the guards told of their humane treatment while in captivity. “They did for us better than we do for them,” recalled Daniel Zeeman, a former Tombs hostage.63

Having fashioned makeshift arsenal of “spears, clubs, Molotov cocktails and booby traps,” the Queens Branch rebels were pre- pared for war. Now, facing siege, the rebels fractured into what Balagoon called “war- riors” and “non-warriors.” The non-warriors wanted to relinquish the hostages, “return to their master and seek forgiveness,” while the warriors, Balagoon among them, wanted to maintain their positions and fight. If the guards stormed the jail, Balagoon imagined a confrontation that would

take the form of a medieval war, the Cru-

sades, a gory, bloody, extremely down-to-

earth old-fashioned real war, extremely

real. With every weapon used up to the

invention of the gun. How many inside the

building would die? Maybe all of us before

the shit was over.64

After a contentious vote, the Queens Branch rebels narrowly chose to release the hostages and surrender. This was unconscionable to Balagoon, who experienced the surrender as

TBS • Volume 48 • Number 4 • Winter 201838

a negation of the rebels’ claims to human being and manhood:

Can you dig how it feels to be tired of feeling

like nothing, a piece of shit? Can you dig how

it feels to be a human being? A man? A man

with a will and a purpose and a quest for

justice? Can you relate to being a man for

four days—and then stepping back into a

cage, that houses a hollow shell, a bundle

of blues, a being who receives whatever a

treacherous society throws at him, who has

been forgotten by so many people that he’s

forgotten his damn self, on your own

accords? For the sake of an unjust peace?

And a continuation of non-existence?65

Despite their disappointment, the warrior faction chose not to impede the popular will. Instead, as their comrades willfully entered into police custody, a contingent of 39, including the Panthers and Martinez, bar- ricaded themselves on the top floor. Although McGrath and Lindsay had repeatedly prom- ised no reprisals, they knew they would be brutalized at the first opportunity. Moreover, as identifiable leaders, they expected to be singled out for special abuse. They therefore promised to continue resisting until their lawyers were able to enter the jail and ensure they could surrender unharmed.

As many predicted, brutal retaliation com- menced immediately. Several reporters wit- nessed surrendering captives being savagely beaten and bloodied by packs of “club-swing- ing guards.”66 The holdouts saw the violence from the top-floor window:

The guards were in their element now, and

they were pigs. Five and sometimes ten

guards ganged up and smashed prisoners

on the head with long clubs, as other

guards watched and laughed. They

climbed over one another to get in their

licks, and they beat at least ten men into

unconsciousness. They then tossed their

limp and bleeding bodies into waiting

police vans.67

It was through this chaotic exhibition of superior violence that surface order was restored. Framing this retaliatory state vio- lence as a moral imperative, one guard told a reporter, “If you want a jail, you got to run it right.”68

It was not until 12:30 am on October 6, 1970, with the assistance of Gerald Lefcourt, that the final holdouts allowed themselves to be lowered to the ground in a fire department cherry picker. In groups of three, the captives were lowered to the ground with their fists raised triumphantly. Lumumba Shakur was the last to exit the jail. As he descended to the ground, a crowd of over 200 supporters cheered him on. He responded with a sym- bolic gesture of liberation. Shakur raised his arm, revealed the keys to the jail, and tossed them into the crowd.69

Conclusion

The NYC jail rebellion was at once a victory and a defeat. By organizing disorder through a diversity of tactics (political education, writing, petitioning, litigation, passive resist- ance, strikes, boycotts, sabotage, abduction, and rioting), captive rebels exposed the prison as a site of domestic warfare. In doing so, they heightened the political conscious- ness of liberation movements on both sides

Orisanmi Burton 39

of the wall. Yet they paid a high price for their resistance: 39 captives were indicted on a range of charges stemming from the rebellion, and brutal reprisals continued. A captive named Eighton later wrote:

We have gained very little for our combined

efforts, the sweat and tears and burns from

mustard tear gas, the bruises and fractured

arms and skulls from clubs and black-

jacks.70

Following the Queens Branch surrender, a reporter pronounced “the collapse of the final strongpoint in the inmate uprising.”71

But this proclamation was premature: while surface order was restored in the jails, massive disorder ensued in other carceral sites throughout New York State. In Novem- ber of 1970, nearly 1600 captives rebelled in Auburn Prison in upstate New York. In December, a group of “Captive Sisters” in the Women’s House of Detention escalated their struggle by submitting a list of demands and engaging in passive resistance until prison authorities attacked them with water hoses. In September of 1971, nearly 1300 incarcerated people engaged in the infamous Attica Prison rebellion.72 This continuity of struggle calls to mind the questions posed by the revolutionary theorist Frantz Fanon: “How can they fail to understand that no rebellion is ever vanquished? What can it possibly mean to vanquish a rebellion?”73

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Delio Vasquez and Patrick King for their help with this article.

Notes

1. New York City Jails confine people who are awaiting trial or sentenced to terms of one year or less. People sentenced to terms of more than one year are confined in the state prison system.

2. The Yale Law Journal, “Bargaining in Cor- rectional Institutions: Restructuring the Relation between the Inmate and the Prison Authority,” Yale Law Journal 81, no. 4 (1972): 726–757; 729.

3. D. Rodriguez, Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

4. G. Jackson, Blood in My Eye (Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 1990), 59.

5. New York State Senate Committee on Crime and Correction, “The Tombs Disturbances: A Report” (5 October 1970).

6. Latin Revolutionary News Service, “Seize the Jails,” Palante 2, no. 10 (28 August 1970): 7.

7. K. Balagoon et al., Look For Me In The Whirlwind: The Collective Autobiography of the New York 21 (New York: Random House, 1971).

8. National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Report of the National Advisory Commis- sion on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968).

9. W. Churchill and J. Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2002).

10. N. Murakawa, The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 73.

11. J. Camp, Incarcerating the Crisis: Freedom Struggles and the Rise of the Neoliberal State (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016).

12. G.F. McGrath, “Commissioner’s Column,” Correction Sidelights 11, no 1 (1967): 2–3.

13. Murakawa, First Civil Right.

TBS • Volume 48 • Number 4 • Winter 201840

14. For more on the concept of preventive detention, see: T. Losier, “Against ‘Law and Order’ Lockup: The 1970 NYC Jail Rebellions,” Race & Class 59, no. 1 (2017): 3–35.

15. NYC Department of Correction, “Annual Report,” 1969; The Rand Corporation, “Untitled Rand Corrections Budget 1970–1971,” NYC Municipal Library.

16. B. Useem and P. Kimball, States of Siege: U.S. Prison Riots, 1971–1986 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

17. A.Y. Davis, Angela Davis: An Autobiogra- phy (New York: Random House, 1988), 52–53.

18. A.Y. Davis, “Prison Interviews with Angela Y. Davis,” in If They Come in TheMorning (Califor- nia: Signet, 1971), 198.

19. A.Y. Davis, Angela Davis, 52–53. 20. D. Berger, Captive Nation: Black Prison

Organizing in the Civil Rights Era (Chapel Hill: Uni- versity of North Carolina Press, 2014); M. Hames- Garcia, Fugitive Thought: Prison Movements, Race, and the Meaning of Justice (Minnesota: Uni- versity of Minnesota Press, 2004).

21. A.Y. Davis, Angela Davis, 52–53. 22. Liberation News Service, “A Talk with Mar-

tinez, Hunted Ex-Inmate,” The Black Panther 4, no. 29 (January 1971): 4.

23. Ibid. 24. Black Community News Service, “It Must

be Fully Understood,” The Black Panther 5, no. 15 (10 October 1970).

25. The NYC jails that did not riot in 1970 include the New York Correctional Institution for Men, the New York City Reformatory, the Bronx House of Detention, and the Women’s House of Detention.

26. A.Y. Davis, Angela Davis. 27. Laurie, “From the Women’s House of D.,”

Right On! 1, no. 9 (December 1971): 11. 28. Black Community News Service, “It Must

be Fully Understood.“ 29. Latin Revolutionary News Service, “Seize

the Jails,” Palante 2, no. 10 (August 1970): 7.;

B. Gottehrer, The Mayor’s Man (New York: Dou- bleday, 1975), 263.

30. “Text of Tombs’ Inmates’ Grievances” New York Times, August 11, 1970, 30.

31. “Prisoners in Tombs Riot for Second Day,” New York Times, August 12, 1970, 1.

32. F.X. Clines, “Tombs Prisoners Boycott Hearings,” New York Times, August 18, 1970, 1.

33. “Jail Guards Push Plan on Security,” New York Times, August 19, 1970, 22.

34. Balagoon et al., Look for Me in the Whirlwind.

35. P.L. Montgomery, “Damage by Inmates Makes Queens Jail Unusable,” New York Times, October 7, 1970, 1.

36. Balagoon et al., Look for Me in the Whirl- wind, 330

37. Ibid; J. Sibley, “Prisoners Seize Hostages, Take Over Jail in Queens,” New York Times, October 2, 1970, 1–20; Liberation News Service, “Revolt Explodes in City Prisons,” Liberated Guar- dian, October 19, 1970, 3 and 16.

38. D. Flynn and W. McFadden, “Hostage Lives Threatened, Judge Talks with Inmates,” New York Daily News, October 3, 1970, 27; Got- tehrer, Mayor’s Man, 266; Liberation News Service, “Revolt Explodes In City Prisons,” 16.

39. AP Archive, “U.S. Prisoners Riot,” http:// www.aparchive.com (3 October 1970).

40. Liberation News Service, “Revolt Explodes in City Prisons,” 16.

41. Flynn and McFadden, “Hostage Lives Threatened,” 3.

42. They soon released seven, reducing the number of hostages to 18.

43. R. De Leon, “Rebellion in the Tombs: An Inmate’s Chronicle,” The Village Voice, November 5, 1970, 9.

44. J. Duddy and J. Murphy, “Mayor Tells Rioters: Free 23, We’ll Talk,” New York Daily News, October 3, 1970, 27.

45. El Dario is a prominent Spanish-language newspaper based in NYC.

Orisanmi Burton 41

46. J. Diaz-Cotto, Gender, Ethnicity and The State: Latina and Latino Prison Politics (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996), 38–39.

47. Duddy andMurphy, “Free 23,We’ll Talk,” 3. 48. R.D. McFadden, “Prisoners Rebel In 2

More Jails; 23 Held Hostage,” New York Times, October 3, 1970, 1 and 58.

49. R.D. McFadden, “Rioting Spreads to a Fourth Jail,” New York Times, October 4, 1970, 1.

50. Gottehrer, Mayor’s Man, 268. 51. Gerald Lefcourt in discussion with the

author, April 20, 2017. 52. G. Jimenez, “We Must Fight to Be Free,”

Palante 2, no. 14 (October 1970): 15. 53. Gerald Lefcourt in discussion with the

author, April 20, 2017. 54. Jimenez, “We Must Fight to Be Free,” 15. 55. F. Mazza and W. McFadden, “Ask to Form

‘Congress of Inmates,’” New York Daily News, October 4, 1970, 3; Gottehrer, Mayor’s Man, 265.

56. CBS Evening News, “New York City Prison Riots,” Vanderbilt Television News Archive, October 5, 1970.

57. Gottehrer, Mayor’s Man, 277; Gerald Lef- court in discussion with the author, April 20, 2017.

58. Gottehrer, Mayor’s Man, 270–273. 59. Ibid., 272; R.D. McFadden, “Tombs Prison-

ers Free 17 as Mayor Warns of Force,” New York Times, October 5, 1970, 1.

60. Mcfadden, “Tombs Prisoners Free 17,” 48.

61. Gotthehrer, Mayor’s Man, 275–276. 62. De Leon, “Rebellion in the Tombs,” 11. 63. Liberation News Service, “Revolt Explodes

in City Prisons,” 16. 64. Balagoon et al., Look for Me in the Whirl-

wind, 335–336; P. Montgomery, “Damage by Inmates Makes Queens Jail Unusable,” New York Times, October 7, 1970, 1.

65. Balagoon et al., Look for Me in the Whirl- wind, 342.

66. M. McCardell, “Reporter Tells of Beating of Some Queens Prisoners,” New York Daily News, October 4, 1970, 3.

67. Liberation News Service, “Revolt Explodes in City Prisons.“

68. McCardell, “Reporter Tells of Beating of Some Queens Prisoners.”

69. Gerald Lefcourt in discussion with the author, April 20, 2017.

70. Eighton, “There Will Be Outright War: A Letter from the Tombs,” Liberated Guardian, October 19, 1970, 4.

71. R.D. McFadden, “All Hostages Out; Holdout Inmates in Queens Yield,” New York Times, October 6, 2017, 1.

72. Black Community News Service, “To the Concerned People of New York,” The Black Panther 5, no. 26 (December 1970): 5.

73. Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 31.

Orisanmi Burton is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at American University. His work has been published in North American Dialog, Cultural Anthropology online, and PoLAR online. An active member of the Critical Prison Studies Caucus of the American Studies Association and the Abolition Collective, he is currently hard at work on a bookmanuscript—tentatively entitled The Tip of the Spear — that analyzes the historical development of the radical movement in men’s prisons throughout New York State since 1963.

TBS • Volume 48 • Number 4 • Winter 201842

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