The Free Press -- Independent News Media

Sat Aug 30 2008

Departments
National Issues

The Lucasville Uprising, Overcoming Racism: The Lucasville Redemption
by Staughton Lynd
in Journal issue September-October 2004
September 21, 2004

The following is excerpted from Staughton Lynd’s forthcoming book, LUCASVILLE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF A PRISON UPRISING (Temple University Press).

One of the many ways that Attica lived on in the uprising at Lucasville had to do with race.

Tom Wicker’s memorable book on the Attica rebellion drew on the experience of a prisoner named Roger Champen.

“You’re always going to have a problem” with black-white relations, Champen believed. But in D-yard, “as days went by, food got scarce and the water began to be scarce, [blacks and whites] became more friendly. The issue about race became minimal. . . . Nothing means anything except the issue at hand.” When he made his first D-yard speech, Champ saw that “the whites had backed off and had a little, like, semi-circle off to the left.” He told them that the revolt was not a “racial thing,” that they had “one common enemy, the wall. The wall surrounds us all. So if you don’t like me, don’t like me, don’t like me after, but in the meantime, let’s work together.” That advice had prevailed . . ..

Pondering the totality of his own immersion in what happened on the Attica rec yard, Wicker thought again that there was little evidence of black-white antagonisms in D-yard in what the observers could see and hear. When black orators like Florence spoke of unity in the yard but coupled this with blasts against “The Man” or “Whitey,” white inmates seemed to be cheering with the rest. Similarly, Florence, Champ [Roger Champen], Brother Herb, and Brother Richard all seemed to accept white inmates as legitimately a part of the oppressed class.

Could he be seeing in D-yard, Wicker wondered, that class interest might overcome racial animosities? Was it possible that the dregs of the earth, in a citadel of the damned, somehow in the desperation of human need had cast aside all the ancient and encumbering trappings of racism to find in degradation the humanity they knew at last they shared?

This is a very different vision from the suggestion of some historians that white workers in the United States are incurably racist. These historians ask us to recognize that the racism of white workers is an aspect of their “class formation” and to a significant degree the product of their own “agency,” that is, their own will and desire. The making of the American working class, it is proposed, has been in part a process whereby immigrants from Ireland and Eastern Europe learned to “become white” so as to appropriate the “wages of whiteness,” both economic and psychological.

These historians accurately describe a good deal of observed behavior. One may nonetheless argue that the racist behavior of white workers, when and where it has occurred, is the product of specific historical circumstances rather than of something essential about white workers in the United States. When white workers have behaved in a racist manner it has typically occurred in one or more of the following circumstances:

1. Whites were a majority in the workplace and in the local union, if there was one;

2. The number of persons seeking work exceeded the number of available jobs, or the number of jobs was decreasing;

3. Employers, usually white males, deliberately pursued hiring policies that separated black and white workers and set them at each other’s throats.

Perhaps if the circumstances were different, whites (and blacks, who have often become strikebreakers) might behave differently. What if we could change the context? What if we could vary the variables? We might then have a method of analysis that could account both for racist behavior and for behavior that overcomes racism. It could account for the comradeship of Red and Andy in “The Shawshank Redemption”; and for the love between a black man, Othello, and his white wife, Desdemona, as well as for the acceptance of that love by the audiences who saw Shakespeare’s play at the Globe Theater in London at almost the same time that the first permanent English colony, Jamestown, was established in what became the United States.

Suppose many decisionmakers were black, competition between the races was not objectively demanded, and the numbers of minorities and whites were approximately equal. The United States military since World War II has moved in that direction. Prison may on occasion do so even more completely. Lucasville

African Americans were 57 per cent of the prison population at SOCF before the uprising. (Thus the Lucasville Five, three blacks and two whites, mirror the make-up of the prisoner body at SOCF at the time.) No one — administrators, guards, white prisoners, or black prisoners — had ever experienced this degree of numerical racial equality outside prison walls.

Both white and black prisoners found confinement at SOCF to be racially discriminatory. Whites emphasized the high percentage of African American prisoners, and the fact that the Warden, a Deputy Warden, and the Director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction were all black.

But black prisoners could make an even stronger case for racial discrimination. As the Cleveland Plain Dealer commented at the time of the uprising, 85 percent of the guards at SOCF were white, the town of Lucasville had no black residents, and for these reasons “the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility should not have been built in Lucasville.” The Mohr Report found that:

A review of use of force incidents at SOCF from January 1992 to the time of the disturbance not only reflects a very high rate but also indicates a disparity in use of force against black inmates. Specifically, 74% of all use of force cases involved black inmates compared to their percentage of the SOCF population being 57%. And although prisoners of both races were beaten by the guards, it appears that the only SOCF prisoners killed by guards in the years preceding the uprising were black.

How did interracial celling affect these dynamics? The Mohr Report says that interracial celling increased beginning in 1991 after the decision in a federal court case, White v. Morris. But there is reason to believe that what prisoners — black and white — most resented was forced celling with another prisoner, whether or not that prisoner was of the same race. “Little Rock” Reed asserts:

“Before Tate, wardens allowed prisoners to cell with each other if they asked to do so. Tate told people where to live and moved men who had lived in particular cell blocks for years.

“The entire time I was in Lucasville prior to Tate’s administration [1984 to 1990], at least a third of the cells were racially integrated on a volunteer basis. Tate believed that this quota was a constitutional requirement. But he intended to fill his quota with blacks and whites who hated each other. He wanted the inevitable explosion to be between blacks and whites, rather than between prisoners and the administration.”

During the uprising, black and white prisoners alike demanded that the policy of forced integrated celling should be rescinded. At the trial of George Skatzes, the State’s principal investigator testified that “many” SOCF prisoners objected to racially-integrated celling. He was asked, “Black and white?” and answered, “Yes, sir.”

Consider what happened to a black prisoner, as narrated by “Little Rock” Reed.

One day an 18-year-old black kid named William, who weighed no more than 125 pounds, arrived at Lucasville and was ordered to room with a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. The AB proclaimed that if they placed a “nigger” in his cell, he would kill him.

The little black guy was terrified. He turned to the guards who were escorting him and pleaded for help. They made it clear that if he didn’t step into the cell, they would beat him themselves.

William had barely entered the cell when the white man hammered him in the face with a padlock inside a sock. He ran down the cell block crying for help. He was placed in the hole for disobeying a direct order when he ran from the cell.

When William returned to the cell block, he agreed to let me file a law suit on his behalf. Attached to the law suit were affidavits from prisoners and two criminologists which stated that Tate’s policy of forced integration would result in a riot if we didn’t obtain an injunction. I also wrote to Warden Tate asking him if he was trying to start a riot. Unfortunately, the court, the governor, the prison director, the chief inspector of the prison system, and every one else with authority to intervene, ignored our pleas.

Forming A Convict Race

Once the uprising began, the overriding problem for the prisoners in rebellion was the possibility that what had begun as a protest against the authorities might turn into a race riot among prisoners. All of the prisoners killed during the first hours of the Lucasville uprising were white, and all but one of the guards taken hostage were white. A war of race against race in L block could easily have come about. Toward the end of that first afternoon, many of the insurgent prisoners gathered in the L block gym, whites in the bleachers, blacks on the other side. The atmosphere was tense.

According to an eye witness, two black men — one of them named Cecil Allen — approached George Skatzes.

[They] said, “George. Would you please be a spokesman? This thing has gotten out of hand, and we need some help. . . . [George Skatzes] was a little reluctant at first because he didn’t know what was happening. . . . But then, as he looked around, he said sure. If I can help in some way, I will do that. . . .

“Mr. Allen . . . said, tell them that this is not a race thing. This is not a race war. It is a war against the administration, against Arthur Tate.”

Another African American previously unknown to Skatzes, Little Willie, said, “George, come over to the gym. The whites are all on one side, the blacks on the other.”

As Skatzes remembers it, he went to the gym and stood facing his fellow whites in the bleachers, with Little Willie beside him. George recalls that he had never been a public speaker, but that a kind of power came into him at this moment. He put his arm around Little Willie’s shoulders and said words to this effect:

“This is against the administration. We are all in this together. They are against every one in here who’s blue [the color of the prisoners’ uniforms]. . . . Don’t be paranoid. Mix it up. . . . This is no time for you to be calling me “honky” or me to be calling you “nigger.” If they come in here, they’re going to kill all of us. They’re going to kill this man and me, no matter what color we are. . . . Is everybody in agreement?”

Skatzes remembers that one of the Aryan leaders in the bleachers was visibly uncomfortable with his remarks.

The prospect of a race war abated. Several later incidents required mediation. But when Skatzes went out on the yard as a spokesperson for the prisoners on April 15 he announced:

“We are oppressed people, we have come together as one. We are brothers. . . . We are a unit here, they try to make this a racial issue. It is not a racial issue. Black and white alike have joined hands in SOCF and become one strong unit.”

After the prisoners surrendered and the Ohio State Highway Patrol entered L block, they found a variety of graffitti on the walls. Some expressed the ideology of the different groups involved in the takeover. These included a crescent moon, which the authorities understood to represent the Islamic community; a six-pointed star, said to be associated with the Black Gangster Disciples; and swastikas and lightning bolts together with the words “Honor,” “Aryan Brotherhood Forever,” and “Supreme White Power.”

But a greater number of graffitti testified in substantially similar words to something quite different. Sergeant Hudson identified a photograph taken in the L corridor.

Q. On the wall on the right there appears to be something written?
A. Says, “Black and White Together.”
Q. Did you find that or similar slogans in many places in L block.
A. Yes, we did, throughout the corridor, in the L block.
Q. Including banners that the inmates produced?
A. Yes, sir.
Further:
Q. [What is photograph] 260?
A. 260, the words, “Convict unity,” written on the walls of L corridor.
Q. Did you find the message of unity throughout L block?
A. Yes. . . .
Q. Next photo?
A. 261 is another photograph in L corridor that depicts the words, “Convict race.”

Evidently the cultural creation of racial identity can work in more than one way. At Lucasville, the process operated not to create separation of the races, but to overcome racism.

Email this article to a friend