Word: attica
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Perhaps no other incident better symbolizes the division of American thought and feeling about the Attica tragedy than a dedication ceremony held last week for Georgetown University's new law center, a few blocks from the Supreme Court building. The guest speaker was Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. Preceding him, Alfred F. Ross, president of Georgetown's student bar association, reflected the somber mood of Burger's audience by making an impassioned reference to the prison riot and its aftermath. "What happened at Attica," he said, "was not merely a senseless and brutal massacre of men whose...
Burger rose impassively to deliver a sober and reflective speech. Where Ross had spoken of "human beings" locked in prisons, the Chief Justice-without specific reference to Attica-described convicts as the "delinquents and misfits" of society. He cautioned the students that law was not the path to social reform, although he admitted to being intrigued by the "alluring prospect that our world can be changed in the courts" rather than by legislators. It was a moderate enough speech by a man who cares deeply about prison reform, but the students were not in a frame of mind for moderation...
THEY had rebelled, the men of cell block D told prison officials and negotiators, to protest their anonymity, to rail against their status as faceless numbers. During the Attica uprising, a few of them fleetingly achieved that goal when they appeared on TV screens. Two of their stories...
...fall of 1970, Blyden was transferred from Attica to the Tombs, Manhattan's Men's House of Detention, to await a hearing on one of his appeals. In October, the Tombs exploded into a riot; Blyden was indicted as one of the leaders of the rebellion and was returned to Attica after the revolt collapsed...
...outside mediators at the meetings in cell block D. Ironically, the day that the rebels first met with the negotiators, a letter from Blyden to one of them, State Senator John Dunne, was floating unread through the mails. It contained a restrained appeal for an official inspection tour of Attica. "We have been trying to apprise the public and the news media of conditions for some time, to no avail. Your assistance in these most serious matters is urgently needed...