“Bypassing city government, inmates also sought to engage the federal government. On 10 September, James Rhem, Robert Freely, Eugene Nixon and Leo Robinson initiated a federal class action on behalf of all those held at the Tombs, alleging that the treatment of detainees as well as physical conditions deprived them of their first, sixth, eighth and fourteenth amendment rights. Prepared with the assistance of the Legal Aid Society, it charged McGrath, Lindsay, Rockefeller, the Warden of the Tombs, the State Commissioner of Correctional Services, and the Presiding Justice of the Appellate Division, First Judicial Department, with responsibility for the overcrowding, guard brutality and unnecessarily restrictive security measures. Though it was years before a verdict was reached on this class action suit, its filing went on to have a significant impact on the future of the Tombs itself.
Branch Queens
Following their transfer to the Long Island Branch of the Queens House of Detention, Martinez and others who had helped to lay the foundation for the August rebellion continued to organise. This time, they sought to influence inmates throughout the whole jail, rather than just on one floor. ‘We had a local newspaper, the Inmates Forum, through which we spread propaganda, our plans, education activities, and political views’, Martinez offered. Prepared in secret,
the paper was printed by hand by men on the different tiers. We didn’t have a mimeograph machine or typewriter. Men would print in shifts. Somebody would have the job for the morning and somebody else would do it in the afternoon. Before we knew it, we had a circulation of 150 to 200 copies. The paper was bought in the commissary. The purchasing of paper and pencils was under the ministers of finance who were assigned to every floor.
The circulation of the Inmates Forum helped its writers to reach men throughout the facility, laying the groundwork for a jail-wide protest, rather than one confined to a portion of the six-storey facility. With a capacity for 196, Branch Queens held 335 men by the end of September, all but forty-one of whom were awaiting trial or sentencing. McGrath later acknowledged that roughly two-thirds of the overcrowded jail’s population had been in the Tombs in August. Branch Queens also housed nine defendants in the controversial New York 21 trial. Initially scattered across seven jails in four boroughs, the defendants had gained injunctive relief through a federal suit against McGrath that resulted in their being housed on the 6th floor of Branch Queens. Though held apart from the rest of the population and uninvolved in the planning, several of the Panthers played leadership roles in the ensuing rebellion.
At noon on 1 October, guards unlocked the cells of inmates held on the 4th floor for lunch in the dining hall. In an organised fashion, the prisoners seized the unarmed guards, took their keys, and raced to unlock all the cells in the 95-year old, six-storey jail. Taking control of the entire facility, the men captured six guards and a civilian cook, and released the nine Black Panther defendants. Though he had not been involved in the planning of the hostage-taking, Black Panther Kuwasi Balagoon was not surprised when it occurred. Rather, the rebellion was an ‘inevitable’ outcome of a broken justice system, ‘a people’s indictment of the corrupt city and state government’. Free from their cells, inmates swarmed through the prison, smashing windows and disconnecting telephones: ‘Everything that helped the jail to operate, that we did not have any use for, was put out of order.’ Just like the rebellion at the Tombs, inmates sought fresh air, in this instance, by using a wooden bench as a battering ram to knock the glass and bars out of the large 6th-floor window.
Inmates hung a Puerto Rican and a red, black and green Black Liberation flag, that had been dyed beforehand on bed sheets, from the large 6th floor window. On another floor, inmates displayed a sheet that read: ‘Equal justice! Stop oppression, exploitation and persecution. Power to the people.’ The correction officers were ‘put on the right side of the bars … the pig captain shook like a bowl full of clabber, although all captives were assured that no unprovoked attacks would be made’. That first day, Balagoon offers, could rightly be called ‘turnabout day’.
While many prisoners took advantage of their freedom by destroying parts of the jails, others erected barricades, put out fires on the 2nd and 3rd floors, and took up defensive positions in preparation for a police attack. Speaking at a press conference one week later, the COBA’s President recounted that the Branch Queens inmates operated ‘like a guerilla movement, with an organisation staff, lieutenants and security units’. Balagoon and others who had served in the US Army applied their military knowledge in securing the vulnerable sections of the jail:
The rest of the day was spent tightening up the defense, and the brotherhood. Everybody seemed to be flying. Messengers to carry out the word to and from every part of the building were appointed. All tiers had representatives, and guard posts and relief were set up. At least two security teams roamed the building at all times. The battle plan was mapped out.
Yet, it would be their brotherhood, more so than the barricades, which would be tested over the next few days. Following the election of a racially representative negotiation team – Martinez, a Puerto Rican, Kenneth Cender, a white inmate, Robert Drake, a Black Muslim, and three Black Panthers – they sought to build unity among the inmates. But rumours threatened to fracture any consensus and selfishness weakened this early practice of solidarity. ‘We were plagued by dishonesty the entire time of the siege’, recalls Balagoon, as a few shirked their guard duties and others took more than their share of a limited store of food. Over the next five days, the appeals to broad unity and selfless action would be undermined by similar dissension.
‘None of the men belonged in jail’: winning bail review
In the Branch Queens courtyard, the negotiators made headway. During their first meeting with correction officials in late afternoon, the six-member committee demanded to meet with city officials on live television that evening. Arriving at the jail in the early afternoon, mayoral aide Barry Gottehrer complained that the sets of demands presented were ‘far more political than those from the Tombs’, speculating that participation in the last rebellion had made some inmates even more militant. From 7 to 9pm, the Branch Queens inmates held a televised press conference in the visitors’ lounge. They released two hostages – one of whom was notorious for his harassment of inmates and had tried to hang himself in his cell – as a sign of good faith and pressed a number of demands. The three Black Panthers included on the committee had wrapped towels like a Muslim kufiya to conceal their identity and demanded the restoration of bail for fellow Black Panther Afeni Shakur and more black people on their jury. The rest of the negotiators requested that a number of prominent individuals come to the jail as independent observers, a list subsequently shortened to Representative Shirley Chisholm of Brooklyn, former Bronx Borough President Herman Badillo, and Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. Afterwards, Balagoon commented that ‘among the demands was that a judge from the so-called Supreme Court come to the jail and immediately begin hearings on bail reductions. The pigs tried to bypass the issues, saying that it was impossible to submit to anything so close to justice.’ Initially, city officials derided the demand for an immediate bail review hearing as part of ‘a new and more bizarre series of demands’, but events would soon overtake them and force the government’s hand.
The revolt spreads: the Tombs
As inmates in Branch Queens tightened their defences so as to be able to ‘match an undetermined amount of pig power against a determined amount of black, Puerto Rican, and white power’, inmates at other jails followed their example. On 2 October at 2.45pm, 235 inmates at the Tombs revolted, following a movie viewing on the 11th floor. As a group of inmates were making their way to the elevator to return to their floor, a small group broke off, seized the guards on the elevator, and placed them in the chaplain’s office. For BPP member Ricardo de Leon, the take-over of the floor was ‘executed perfectly, like clockwork. It was the complete surprise – a classic guerilla operation’. The rest of the group took the remaining clergy and guards hostage, capturing eighteen in total. One of the largest open areas in the jail, the 11th floor contained the chapel, library, commissary and medical facilities. Like those at Branch Queens, they quickly secured their floor, barricading the gate leading to the elevator and forming a broadly representative ‘revolutionary committee’ with the participation of those inmates from the 9th floor who had been involved in the first rebellion.
Similarly, Tombs inmates demanded full media coverage of negotiations as well as Lindsay’s and McGrath’s appearance at the jail to resolve immediately the grievances that had already been brought to their attention. In addition, they expressed ‘solidarity and complete support of all demands made by the brothers at Branch Queens House of Detention’. Though communication between facilities was limited by the conditions of their confinement, it was this sense of working in solidarity that connected the October inmate rebellion. As de Leon recalled in a Village Voice article a month later, what emerged was not a riot:
It was a political act of rebellion, brought about because of the oppressive and inhuman conditions prevalent in this dungeon, made in support of the rebellion of our brothers in Branch Queens House of Detention and to focus the people’s attention on the fact that Mayor Lindsay, the Department of Correction, and the New York state judiciary had refused to fulfill the promises made to us after the rebellions of August 10, 11, and 12.
At 4.30pm, inmates allowed Chaplain Gibney to take a note written by one of the correction officers to the officials on the 1st floor. The note sought ‘to certify that none of my officers have been harmed or misused in any inhuman manner. I hope that they will be released promptly.’ They emphasised that their hostages would be well treated, as long as there was no attempt to attack or forcibly retake the floor. This was tested when McGrath gambled on having a police task force storm the floor through a back stairway. That night, armed police made a move and inmates fell back to their defensive positions, handcuffing some of their hostages to the front of the stairs. They had a captain radio his superiors to explain how police actions endangered their lives and urging them to listen to inmate grievances.
Kew Gardens
As the independent observers arrived to meet the Branch Queens inmates on the evening of 2 October, more than 900 men at the Queens House of Detention at Kew Gardens refused to return to their cells. Beginning at 9pm, they overpowered guards and took control of the entire facility. Though no hostages were taken, the men smashed furniture, water pipes and the building’s small glass bricks. At 4am on Saturday morning, a group of rioters tried to escape through a hole in the side of the jail’s wall, but police smoke bombs forced them to retreat. Gottehrer later observed in his memoir that by Friday night ‘the epidemic had spread’ to roughly 1,400 inmates holding twenty-three hostages in three prisons.
The rebellions that broke out at the Tombs and Kew Gardens on the second day had a direct bearing on the negotiations at Branch Queens. Arriving there on the afternoon of the second day, Badillo and the other civilian observers were allowed inside to check on the condition of inmates and hostages. That evening, they worked around the clock to meet the demand of bail review. Gottehrer recalled, ‘we were being asked late on a Friday night to set a legal precedent that was logistically impossible and probably illegal’. Badillo and Haynes were more sympathetic, recalling that prisoners ‘argued that there was no reason for many of them to be confined; that unreasonably high bail had been set; and that if a judge were to come and review the situation, most of them would be released’. Though judges initially rejected the proposal, they relented only after Badillo gained Governor Rockefeller’s support for the bail review after midnight. With rebellion spreading through the city’s jails, city and state officials had been forced to make further concessions.
Three judges arrived at the Queens branch for a bail review hearing at 9am. Setting up in an anteroom by the Warden’s office, they heard thirteen cases, paroling nine inmates outright, reducing bail for four others, and denying bail to another. Translating for several Puerto Rican inmates, Badillo and Haynes found that
the proceedings were becoming embarrassing: had the judges dismissed thirteen out of thirteen cases, it would have been obvious to everyone that none of the men belonged in jail at all – that they were in jail simply because they were poor. Any decent legal advice would have won them immediate freedom. Over two-thirds of them were being held for less than $1,000 bail. Any middle class person can put up that kind of bail, but many of these men were welfare clients, and the welfare department did not authorize bail costs.
Forced upon city and state officials by inmates, the day’s bail review dramatically exposed the deep inequalities in NYC’s criminal justice system. For Balagoon, the hearing had even greater significance; for ‘a precedent was set; never before in the history of this racist empire had judges been summoned to hold court’. In response, inmates released two more hostages. Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam delivered bean pies at dinner, which, like access to the commissary on the first day, quickly became a point of contention, as men who had been carrying out guard duty took more than their share.
Disunity also proved to be a problem among inmates on the eleventh floor of the Tombs. In part, the space was too small for the several hundred inmates and the closeness contributed to the confusion. From the outset, de Leon noted that ‘on the internal front, our major problem was maintaining unity and discipline; there were a number of disruptive and anarchistic elements, whose sole concern
was creating confusion, looting and dropping pills’. These inmates had been able to get access to medicine in the infirmary and tried to get high. Attempts by de Leon and others to confiscate the pills provoked a resentment that would continue to fester: ‘when we started to impose some discipline over the disorder and chaos, there was mumbling and the sowing of the seeds of dissension and disunity, promoted by those individuals who were totally unconcerned with the collective and solely interested in “doing their own thing”.’
Badillo later recalled that, if all the detainees in the Branch Queens had been given a bail hearing, only a handful would have remained. Yet, this opportunity never arrived as the judges ‘completed’ the bail review after just thirteen cases and did not return. By this point, communication between the city and Branch Queens inmates had broken down. According to city officials and civilian negotiators, inmates had promised to release their hostages once some of the cases had been reviewed. ‘But in fact the agreement was if we see some signs of justice, then we would release two more’, wrote Balagoon. ‘And all our prisoners would be released after all the bail hearings were held.’ Only a handful of the cases had been reviewed, ‘a token gesture, not a sign of justice’. In contrast, Badillo and Gottehrer believed the men had been carried away with their own success, demanding a continuation of the bail review rather than releasing the remaining hostages.
Brooklyn and Rikers
That same day, two more rebellions broke out. At noon on 3 October, inmates at the Brooklyn House of Detention for Men, the most crowded facility in the city’s system, seized four hostages and seven of nine floors. The jail had a capacity of 960 men, but 1,591 were confined there. As at the beginning of rebellions in other jails, men broke windows and threw out debris. As police and firefighters set up a barbed wire perimeter and unloaded firehoses to prevent a mass escape, a crowd of sympathisers began to gather. Within hours, some 3,000 were outside the police perimeter. Towards the evening, when police and correction officials began to move on the facility, around 200 threw bricks, bottles and other garbage at the police.
The fifth and last rebellion began at 3pm on Rikers Island. An unspecified number of youths in the Adolescent Remand Shelter were outside their cells, watching television, when they suddenly overpowered three guards and a captain. The rebellion, however, lasted only half an hour as policemen and correction officers quickly stormed the facility, freeing the hostages and forcing the youths back into their cells.
Over the first three days, the rebellions spread without any direct communication between the different facilities. Some had shared plans for the rebellions beginning on 1 October. Weeks later, one guard claimed that while he was held hostage, inmate leaders at the Brooklyn jail told him that they knew in advance of plans to take over the Tombs and Branch Queens. As Martinez explained, there were ways for inmates to communicate with each other when confined in different jails: ‘you have to go to court at some time. You can see a lot of people in different courts. If you’re taken to the Tombs bullpen you’re gonna see people there from all over.’ When brought to court in the morning, inmates would be held for most of the day in these bullpens, generally large cages in the basement of courthouses. Though notoriously crowded and unsanitary, the bullpens somehow facilitated the exchange of plots and rumours, a crossroads within the criminal justice system where messages could be passed from one jail to another.
As the rebellions moved in stages from jail to jail, inmates followed radio news coverage over personal battery-operated transistor radios. In addition to television and print, radio stations covered the rebellions extensively, spreading news of the revolt. In his account of the Branch Queens rebellion, Balagoon recalled, ‘over the radio, we heard about all the other uprisings in other jails and the support we were getting from the outside’. In particular, the WBAI, New York’s Pacifica radio station, suspended regular programming, a regular practice during newsworthy crises. Beginning on 2 October, the station interviewed former prisoners in the studio and sent reporters to the different prisons to speak to inmates and officials. The following day, a station employee spent an hour calling the 11th floor of the Tombs until an inmate answered. Soon, men began calling the station themselves to explain their situation to the public. When officials at the Tombs closed their phone lines, inmates set up loudspeakers in the windows facing the street, describing their situation to the crowds below in English and Spanish.”
- Toussaint Losier, “Against ‘law and order’ lockup: the 1970 NYC jail rebellions.” Race & Class, Institute of Race Relations, 2017, Vol. 59 (1). pp. 15-21
