Prisoners at the Attica Correctional Facility give the black power salute while Commissioner R.G. Oswald negotiates with leaders of the takeover on September 10, 1971. (Photo: Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images)
Historian Heather Ann Thompson chronicles the 1971 Attica prison uprising and the ongoing search for justice for those massacred by the state of New York. The following excerpt is from the introduction, “State Secrets,” from Blood in the Water.
One might well wonder why it has taken forty-five years for a comprehen sive history of the Attica prison uprising of 1971 to be written. The answer is simple: the most important details of this story have been deliberately kept from the public. Literally thousands of boxes of documents relating to these events are sealed or next to impossible to access.
Some of these materials, such as scores of boxes related to the McKay Commission inquiry into Attica, were deemed off limits four decades ago — in this case at the request of the commission members who feared that state prosecutors would try to use the information to make cases against prisoners in a court of law. Other materials related to the Attica uprising, such as the last two volumes of the Meyer Report of 1976, were also sealed back in the 1970s. Members of law enforcement fought hard to prevent disclosure of this report in particular. Although a judge has recently ruled that these volumes can now be released to the public, the redaction process that they…