[News] Death of Frank "Big Black" Smith

[News at freedomarchives.org]

Dear Friends,

Just  a short note to let you know that our beloved brother, Frank Big 
Black Smith, passed away last night, July 31, 2004, at the hospital in 
Kinston, North Carolina.

  More information on the funeral and other plans to follow as soon as 
available.

Attica is All of Us.

Michael E. Deutsch

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INTERVIEW WITH FRANK "BIG BLACK" SMITH From 2001

Why did Attica happen? What were prison conditions like in 1971?
Attica was about wants and needs. Attica was a lot about class and a lot 
about race. Let me give you an example. The 4th of July was a big day; the 
corrections officers opened up the four prison yards. Well, corrections had 
a "black ice time" and "white ice time." That meant that corrections called 
the white inmates to get ice for their Kool-Aid or their drinks, then 
they'd call the blacks. It wasn't just, "Alright, ice time!" Corrections 
had that kind of separation. The football teams had separation. The jobs, 
there was separation. Basically, the white inmates had the white-collar 
jobs: working in the package room, around the warden or assistant warden. 
The labor part of prison was basically for minority people in 1971. Then if 
corrections saw four or five blacks standing around talking, they'd make 
you bust up. But if it was four or five whites, corrections didn't say 
nothing to them. Basically, 80 to 90 percent of the people in Attica State 
Prison were, and are, coming out of the New York City area. You put that 
urban attitude and class of people with corrections officers and their 
upstate rural attitudes, class, and behavior, and you automatically create 
a conflict.

During Attica's four-day takeover, you were named chief of security. At the 
start, you were apolitical. What changed you?
There was a lot of change. Corrections brought in big-time educational 
programs and started going up on wages. Corrections started letting more 
religious practices into prison and started conjugal visits. You might have 
a little more time out of your cell, where you can breathe better. Even the 
medical things started changing.

But that's not enough to create a different value system and outlook in 
life. You need to address the human behavior thing, how you react and 
interact as a human being. You're not going to accomplish that if the 
corrections officers don't have any of that themselves, if all they do is 
look down on you with no humane concern and call you some form of an 
animal. So you can't have all the programs for the inmates and not have any 
kind of training for the keeper.

Society is so aggravated with crime and the punishment of crime, they don't 
see the revolving door. A person goes in, and he or she is going to come 
out. Something in between that has to be put in place. Rehabilitation and 
reform have to become a force, because prison doesn't know what to do. All 
they know is how to turn the key and lock the door. You have to do 
meaningful things while you're there: job training, rehabilitation, heavy 
drug treatment, broad educational programs. The average person who goes 
there doesn't have a high school diploma. It should be mandatory to get a 
high school diploma. If someone goes there and does drugs or some kind of 
addiction, it should be mandatory that they get into a program. It should 
be mandatory that when they come out that they continue the program. The 
court has got to set guidelines for this when it is issuing the sentence. 
If you had parole officers who really acted as helpers, instead of sitting 
around and just telling you to look for a job, that would help. They have 
work relief programs, but if you take someone from the city who's in Attica 
and let them out for work relief, they don't know anybody upstate. Their 
family's down here, and they're the folks who might help them get set up 
and start life again, maybe talk to someone about giving them a job. They 
should send those people to a downstate facility for work relief.

A lot of the reforms are gone now. There are no educational programs 
anymore, no life skill programs, or training for jobs. The Governor stopped 
all of those programs about a year ago. Cut backs. They figure it's better 
to have more prisons than more educational programs. You had 15 state 
prisons then, now you have 70 or 80 [in New York]. And they're still 
building. A lot of them have double bunks, and they have young kids in 
state prison with adults. That's a big problem.

Why should people care about Attica today?
Attica is not just an isolated prison. Attica is attitudes and behavior, 
crime and punishment, education. It's about communication, it's about 
alleviating racism as much as we can, it's about the criminal justice 
system. It's about how the police can do what they want to when they want 
to do it. It's about how court-sentencing guidelines should be different. 
People should learn from and remember Attica, just like they learned from 
Kent State and other such events. People need to see they are part of the 
problem and part of the solution. Attica is all of us.


The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
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