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Attica Riot: Rights and Responsibilities

The document summarizes a student project about the 1971 Attica Prison riot for a National History Day competition. The students chose the topic because of its relevance to the theme of rights and responsibilities. They conducted research at local libraries and interviewed the recently retired warden of Attica Prison. The students created a website to present their findings about how prisoners' rights were violated during the riot and its impact on prisoners' rights today.

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7 views2 pages

Attica Riot: Rights and Responsibilities

The document summarizes a student project about the 1971 Attica Prison riot for a National History Day competition. The students chose the topic because of its relevance to the theme of rights and responsibilities. They conducted research at local libraries and interviewed the recently retired warden of Attica Prison. The students created a website to present their findings about how prisoners' rights were violated during the riot and its impact on prisoners' rights today.

Uploaded by

historyfair1
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Attica Riot: Loss of Rights Loss of Life

Rachael Holappa and Sarah Passaretti Senior Division Website

Our passion for treating people properly no matter the circumstance coupled with this years theme of Rights and Responsibilities led us to choose Attica Loss of Rights Loss of Life as our project. Although the culture of that era led to the mistreatment of minorities, it was still wrong and the events that took place at Attica Penitentiary have had an impact on how prisoners rights are handled today. After settling on a topic we started to conduct our research. We went to our town library of Hamilton Wenham and found a few books on Attica but we hoped for more. Failing that, we then took a day trip to the Boston Public library where we found many sources both primary and secondary that helped us with our topic. One valuable primary source was Tom Wickers A Time To Die. The book was very helpful regarding events during the riot and during the negotiations as he was involved in them both. We were also able to use the interview between Governor Rockefeller and a legal strategist which Wicker included in his book to help us with the idea of responsibility of the State of New York. Next, we interviewed the recently retired warden of Attica State Penitentiary, Jim Conway, whose father and uncle were both guards during the riot. He provided a lot of information on how Attica functioned and his fathers and uncles experiences as guards at Attica. He gave us insight on the viewpoint of someone other than a prisoner which made our site more balanced. Choosing the presentation category was one of the easiest parts of the project. We wanted to work in a group and neither of us wanted to act. This quickly eliminated the research paper and performance as potential mediums. Furthermore we knew we werent that good at technology and thus a documentary would have been a struggle for us. That left a display or a website. We decided that instead of purchasing a board and all the materials necessary, we would try something different and make a website since we found that Weebly was very easy to use even if you are not tech savvy. We also liked the idea of adding audio and video to our project which would not be possible on a board. The theme for the National History Day competition this year is Rights and Responsibilities. The rights of the prisoners were denied and ignored causing the prisoners to revolt for change which the state government and prison itself failed in its responsibility to end the riot peacefully. Although the inmates are in prison, they still have basic rights that the state did not uphold and ignored when grievances were brought to their attention.

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