ABSTRACT
In the early morning hours of October 9, 1970, a small bomb tucked behind a telephone booth exploded inside the Long Island City Courthouse. No one was hurt in the bombing, which caused enough damage that the building was closed until it could be rehabbed. In February 1968, several prisoners at California's San Quentin circulated calls for a strike. Writing in an underground newspaper called The Outlaw, they outlined their grievances: parole reform, better food and living conditions, increased wages for labor, and moving people convicted of sexual offenses against children to mental institutions. Eight antiwar activists, including Black Panther cofounder Bobby Seale, were indicted in March 1969 for organizing protests against the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which descended into what a government report called a "police riot". In California, the decade opened with a bloody racist attack that anticipated several years of violence in the state's prison system.
