The prisoners filling the cells of New York's Attica prison in 1971 faced inhumane conditions. They earned 56 cents per day for manual labor in searing workshops, were only allowed one bar of soap a month and could only shower once every two weeks. They were not allowed to read what they wanted to read and there was no due process in parole hearings. The prison population was largely black and Hispanic, controlled by an all-white guard staff. After years of agitation by civil rights activists and the black power movement, the authorities across America were beginning to push back.

When tempers reached a boiling point on September 9, the prisoners erupted in a full-fledged rebellion, taking over the prison and holding it for four days, along with several guards who had been taken hostage. But when the negotiations broke down over the point of amnesty for violence conducted during the take-over of the complex, the mood in and outside the prison soured. By the time state troopers and police forces had retaken Attica by force on the morning of September 13, ten hostages and twenty-nine inmates had died.

In this video produced by The Nation's Frank Reynolds and Liliana Segura, lawyer Elizabeth FInk, former national guardsman Tad Crawford and former Attica prisoners Carlos Roche and Joseph "Jazz" Hayden recount what happened during those days forty years ago, and the repercussions still being felt from the uprising.

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