Word: attica
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...chaos of the Attica uprising last September, one of the most extraordinary characters to emerge as a convict leader was a scarred but eloquent West Indian named Herbert X. Blyden. Last week his lawyers appeared in a Manhattan federal court for a new round in Blyden's long battle to overturn his 1965 robbery conviction. TIME'S James Willwerth visited him in prison and reported Blyden's tale of his continuing war with...
...Thomas in 1936. His family was "lower middle class," he says, and it came apart when he was three. An aunt raised him, along with 13 of his cousins, and he turned into a troublemaker. "I was sent to a house-you know, for incorrigible boys. Evidently they saw Attica in advance. But they didn't cure...
...Sent to Attica, Blyden began to study law furiously. He wrote his own petition for a rehearing, and after it was granted, he was transferred to New York's hideously overcrowded Tombs. When the Tombs erupted in the fall of 1970, Blyden performed a mediating role and spoke directly to Mayor John Lindsay on the telephone ("Promises, promises," he remembers scornfully). Blyden and six others were later indicted, however, on 72 counts of kidnaping, rioting and other charges...
...Back to Attica, and then another rebellion. "We were at war. We were in a mental battle with these people, man!" Of the final attack by troopers, Blyden says: "Eerie was the word for it. You see the mist and gas. You say, 'Hey -what's that?' and then they are shooting all over the place. You put your hands on your head and go to the wall if you don't get shot. Guys are retching in front of you and going into convulsions. If they go into convulsions, they get shot for moving...
...festooning of Professor Herrnstein's classroom with placards calling him a racist and a fascist, badgering him in class on at least one occasion with irrelevant and ad hominem questions (e.g. "is that why you think Attica prisoners should have been murdered?"), and of reading a long and disruptive statement in class...