It’s been nearly 46 years since the Attica prison riots, but for many, the story is not yet complete.
“Even today, it’s still a major, major fight, just to get the records,” notes Heather Ann Thompson, a historian, author, activist and professor of history at the University of Michigan.
Thompson, who spent many a summer in Iola as a child, has penned the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Blood In the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy,” the first full accounting of the notorious chapter in American prisons that resulted in the deaths of 39 prisoners and guards.
Thompson has zig-zagged across the globe virtually nonstop for the past year to talk about the book since its release last August. She was in Mexico City Wednesday, Paris earlier this month, and will be in New York in the coming days.
Thompson also will sneak in a stop in Iola next week. She’ll be at the Iola Public Library at 6 p.m. Thursday to speak about “Blood In the Water.”
“I’m sure I’ll have plenty of family members here to fill the library,” she laughed.
Thompson, 53, was born in Lawrence but spent much of her childhood growing up in Detroit. She’s the granddaughter of the late Frank and Helen Thompson of Iola and Donna Curry and the late Jack Curry. She’s the niece of Iolans Larry and Gary Curry, and cousin of Clyde Toland.
She is the daughter of Frank Thompson, lecturer emeritus in economics at the University of MIchigan, and Ann Curry Thompson, a labor lawyer in Detroit. Both were Iola High School graduates.
Following Thursday’s presentation, Thompson will sign copies of her book — they’ll be for sale at the program — and will stick around a few days to visit with old acquaintances, and catch a much-needed respite from her break-neck schedule.
“Iola’s a special part of my childhood. I spent many summers swimming at the Iola pool,” she told the Register in a telephone interview from Seattle, her latest tour stop.
“BLOOD IN The Water” tells the riveting story that preceded the Sept. 9, 1971, takeover of Attica, an act of protest of what inmates contended was brutal prison conditions and mistreatment rooted in systemic racism; how four days of negotiations with authorities for a peaceful resolution eventually failed; and the subsequent retaking by New York state troopers through a volley of bullets and tear gas.
Thompson’s treatise then goes into great detail how New York officials responded to the riots, first by spreading misinformation about the prisoners’ actions during the uprising, then by going to great lengths to prevent the records of the uprising by being made public.
“I first decided I wanted to do a book about the history of the event thinking of it as a civil rights story, which of course it is,” Thompson said, “but I had no idea how involved it was going to be, how much the records were going to be off limits.”
In her prologue, Thompson recounts two breaks she received in her extended search for Attica prison records.
The first occurred in 2006, when she found a cache of Attica documents in the Erie County Courthouse in Buffalo, N.Y., filled with depositions, personal letters and memos.
Mixed among the thousands of files was information from the state’s own investigation into whether crimes had been committed during the rebellion and the retaking.
