The Baltimore riots reminded me of a passage I read last eve from Richard Norton Smith’s excellent new Nelson Rockefeller biography about the 1971 Attica prison riot.
About 1000 prisoners took over the New York prison, taking 42 security guard hostages, threatening their execution. An immediate effort by security forces to retake the prison was pressed only halfheartedly, ultimately withdrawing into a siege. The inmates demanded and received on site representation by Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, ACLU radical lawyer William Kuenstler and New York Times journalist Tom Wicker.
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