ABSTRACT
‘And there is the ugliest, blackest [long pause] Negro gentleman I’ve ever seen in my life. Boy, when they painted him, they painted him dark’, a New York State Police (NYSP) sharpshooter alerted the marksman lying next to him on the cell block roof, their high-power rifles trained on the convicts below in D yard, Attica State Correctional Facility. 1 They had been deployed to retake a maximum-security prison, and they were impatient for the order to begin. If the officer also sounded contemptuous, it may have been because the prisoners were armed only with knives.
