LOST SOULS OF ATTICA PRISON
News flash from Attica Prison, September 13, 1971:
39 men were killed who were rioting over disgusting prison conditions not fit for animals.
R.I. P. prison inmates & lost souls
Where have I seen that number before??
In 1862 the U.S. government hung 39 Chippewa Indians in Minnesota: the largest mass execution in United States history. These Indians were guilty of trying to recapture their homeland taken away by force by the White Man.
While the White Race appears to be the most inhumane, cruel, and murderous of all races, even in the middle of such a great tragedy the compassion of a single white man shines through. His name? Abraham Lincoln.
Originally, 400 Indians were scheduled to face the hangman’s noose. But Lincoln, the prairie lawyer, reviewed all the cases one by one. He pardoned all but 40 and then, right before the execution, he pardoned one more!
The remaining 39 warriors went to their deaths bravely, perhaps their spirits bolstered in part by the generosity of this unseen friend of theirs in the nation’s capital. At a time when the nation was choking itself to death on bigotry against Native Americans, Lincoln took a chance. His political career was already considered in jeopardy long before the 1864 elections rolled around, in which he was initially given only a slim chance of winning.
Never mind the odds, the rumors, or play-it-safe talk: Lincoln acted on his principles.
The warriors were prepared, physically and mentally, to face this death. They had sung their songs of death and painted their faces and bodies accordingly.
The hand of no white man aided in their final moment. They stepped forward to the place of execution and each of the 39 warriors put the noose around his own head and neck.
Think of it! Think of the bravery of these 39 men, guilty of no crime save the desire to protect their families, their homes, and their ancestral lands! All European and English law is built on the sanctity of this very same concept and fundamental right.
Think of it!! Not one man flinched, not one man cried out, or fainted, or tried to tear the noose off! Each went to his death in a stoic, determined way: leaving to students of history to ponder their great moment: an example of such pure unadulterated courage straight from the heart that the rest of us can do aught but nod and say “Amen.”
There in that final moment was bravery so great that it outshone all exploits on the battlefield!
There was a message in that action: that justice remains justice regardless of skin color.
No matter how truth and justice are twisted and deformed, they have an inner resiliency of strength that will always reappear to oppose bigotry and ignorance time and time again!
Perhaps, along with the men from Attica Prison who sleep beneath the ground, we should add another “Rest in Peace” for these 39 Chippewa braves, dead now lo! all these many long years.
What did the Attica prisoners and the Sioux captured warriors have in common? They were victims of the same cruel economic and political system that has dominated the American landscape since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Ponder this view well before dismissing it! Men who are criminals often come from a disadvantaged class. They are men with the least amount of hope and the least chance of becoming successful through regular channels such as education, decent-paying jobs, and the like. They are misled by glamorous advertising into admiring only the material things of life and become obsessed with equating money and success.
When they do poorly in school the educational system responds by letting them fall farther and farther behind, while blindly promoting them to the next grade level. They make mistakes early in life: the excessive folly of the teenage years, the daring and impulsive acts of young adulthood, ill-advised but soon-to-be-punished as sternly as though they were inveterate hardened criminals.
They face a nameless society that covets the very homes they grew up in, always raising the rent to keep the family in dire straits. They can’t easily escape from this economic tangle. Their sons and daughters grow up hard, cynical, loud, disrespectful, preferring “out of bounds” to the drab life-style of wage slavery they are expected to embrace with open arms.
Fast action and fast living! Along the way values get twisted, life-styles become excessive, an unending series of poor choices to which they become habituated. They like to blow off steam and party hard. They take the workingman’s simple tradition of celebrating the end of the work-week with a beer or two and corrupt it into a nihilistic, hedonistic, and unrestrained life-style. Parties and festivals can end in sudden death for the unsuspecting target of an angry grudge or a trespasser caught in the middle of a turf war.
And those Sioux Indians of Minnesota involved in the Great Uprising of 1862? What chance did they have? Their weapons were greatly inferior to the military arms of the U.S. Army and settlers. The “newcomers” (polite for robbers and aggressors) were greedy to the point of being insatiable; they murdered Indian warriors with impunity. They killed Indian women and children and old people so sick and enfeebled they sometimes had to be left behind when camps or villages had to be moved suddenly in order to survive.
One might, of course, emphasize the difference in character between a convicted felon and an Indian warrior defending his people–with good reason. But when all is said and done, what is the difference in results? Just this: 39 prisoners at Attica lie dead beneath the sod and 39 Indians lie dead beneath the sod in another state, another century.
They are not buried together: that is the difference. I merely argue that there is indeed a corrupt system in this country which pursues policies that create the conditions that produce such hellacious events, bloody and murderous!
I submit this economic system is run by rich white men, millionaires and billionaires, who put their own selfish interests above the good of the country. However nameless and “impersonal” capitalism tries to make itself appear, there always exists a class of wealthy men who are virtually unrestrained and ruthless in their pursuit of acquiring ever greater wealth.
No one denies it–but we appear to have lost the healthy social habit of describing honestly just what these blood-suckers do to the rest of us. Are these words too strong? Tell it to the widows and fatherless children of those 39 men–either Sioux Indian or Attica prisoner!
Do you see a distinction in character between the two groups that others do not? Yea, verily, but what economic system produced even those differences in character, save capitalism? Can we praise the system with less ache of conscience, to realize it murdered 39 brave and honest Indians in the same way it murdered 39 convicted criminals?
In either case, the result is the same; it takes no Sherlock Holmes’ prodigious act of brilliant deductive reasoning to realize that the same economic system produced both tragedies.
The hindsight is easy; the hard part is foresight: the ability to predict what new tragedies capitalism has in store for us in the years yet to come!
Who, in 1862–at the time of the mass Indian executions–could have foreseen a prison massacre of equal numbers in the far-away year of 1971?
Thus to the question, “Do these Indians and these prisoners have anything in common?” I must answer yes. And something far beyond the mere coincidence of numbers; that which they truly have in common is something so tragic, so numbing, so shocking, that it is better to drop the subject and let this last thought, however truthful, pass unmentioned.
Roger E. Rosenberg
Ph.D. U.S. History
(Educated at the University of California Berkeley, San Jose State, and U.C. Santa Barbara)
