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During the 1971 uprising at Attica State Prison, prisoners wearing cloaks and football helmets, some of them with makeshift weapons, waited to negotiate their demands with state officials. Bob Schutz/Associated Press
Updated 5:20 p.m. EDT
09.14.2021
Looking Back

Revisiting the Attica Riot in Real-Time 50 Years Later

The infamous 1971 prison revolt ended with a bloody police siege. We retell the story, minute-by-minute.

On the morning of Sept. 13, 1971, New York state troopers raided the rural upstate Attica prison where prisoners had taken control four days earlier, holding dozens of guards and other employees hostage and demanding reforms. By the time order was restored, 10 hostages and 29 prisoners had been killed by police gunfire. Scores more were wounded. Four others — one guard and three prisoners — were killed by the prisoners earlier in the rebellion.

The Marshall Project has written about the tensions and brutality that still pervade Attica today and the many books that explore the conditions that made Attica ripe for revolt and the investigations that followed.

To mark the 50th anniversary of this seminal moment in American criminal justice history, The Marshall Project told the story of the uprising from beginning to end. As we did five years ago for the 45th anniversary, we used Twitter to walk through the events that led up to the riot, the days of negotiations for the release of the hostages and finally, the violent state police siege that ended the stalemate.

Each tweet went out at roughly the same date and time as the events 50 years earlier. Here, we've collected the entire updated storyline from @atticasghosts.

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Tags: →Attica Correctional Facility →Attica →Prison Riot →Prison Reform

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