“We only seek the aid of sisters and brothers in the communities to fill the court and to aid in our struggle to maintain the right to privacy from the opposite sex. We call to all the revolutionary groups, anti-rape groups, Attica Brothers committee, the NOW organization, Assata Shakur and Joan Little committees, to aid in a cause that is most common to all. Let's stop fighting separate battles, learn to group together to fight against the oppressors collectively. Struggle on! “

- Crooksie

Carol Crooks

Bedford Hills Prison

While many have heard of the 1971 Attica prison uprising, the August Rebellion remains relatively unknown even in activist circles. Resistance Behind Bars is determined to challenge and change such oversights. As it examines daily struggles against appalling prison conditions and injustices, Resistance documents both collective organizing and individual resistance among women incarcerated in the U.S. Emphasizing women’s agency in resisting the conditions of their confinement through forming peer education groups, clandestinely arranging ways for children to visit mothers in distant prisons and raising public awareness about their lives, Resistance seeks to spark further discussion and research into the lives of incarcerated women and galvanize much-needed outside support for their struggles.

Women stage BEDFORD HILLS, N.Y. (UPI) - About 45 female ins at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility barricaded themselves and seven prison employes in n night, authorities a said. building for several hours Thursday A spokesman for the Correctional Services Department the inmates took keys to the building from said "one or more employes"…

Soon after dusk fell on August 29, 1974, a group of around 200 female prisoners seized control of two buildings and a recreation yard at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum-security state prison for women 45 miles north of New York City. The story of the August Rebellion begins and ends with Crooks, who was born October 12, 1947, in Brooklyn, New York.

Carol Jean Crooks was a Black dyke. Born October 12, 1946, she grew up on the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and died alone in early 2022. She worked and fought all her life in relative obscurity. Though most of her work wasn’t legal, her fights created a better and fairer world. If you knew her at all, you probably knew her as Crooksie…

Tip of the Spear boldly and compellingly argues that prisons are a domain of hidden warfare within US borders. With this book, Orisanmi Burton explores what he terms the Long Attica Revolt, a criminalized tradition of Black radicalism that propelled rebellions in New York prisons during the 1970s. The reaction to this revolt illuminates what Burton calls prison pacification: the coordinated tactics of violence, isolation, sexual terror, propaganda, reform, and white supremacist science and technology that state actors use to eliminate Black resistance within and beyond prison walls.

Opening with a letter from James Baldwin to Davis, and including contributions from numerous radicals such as Black Panthers George Jackson, Huey P. Newton, Boby Seale and Erica Huggins, this book is not only and account of Davis's incarceration and the struggles surrounding it, but also perhaps the most comprehensive and thorough analysis of the prison system of the United States.  

The August Rebellion was monumental, especially in light of the Attica prison uprising just three years earlier where inmates demanded better living conditions and political rights, and which catapulted prison uprisings into mainstream public consciousness. To this day, the August Rebellion protects women prisoners from arbitrary and excessive segregation in solitary confinement. In other places such as North Carolina in 1975, women held a sit-down demonstration for medical care and to close the prison laundry that escalated into an uprising when prison guards attacked them. Such prisoner-led uprisings continue to be critical moments in the resistance to a ruthless system that thrives on oppression.

Now, on the 50th anniversary of the Attica uprising, Emmy-winning director Stanley Nelson and producer and co-director Traci A. Curry will examine one of the most shocking incidents in the nation’s history in the extraordinary, in-depth documentary Attica. Through original interviews with former inmates, family members of the hostages, and those who witnessed it first-hand, Nelson bring us back to a moment that resonated for decades, utilizing hundreds of hours of footage and never-before-seen archival tapes from inside the prison. ATTICA captures the personalities, politics, emotions, and tragedy that stands as a wake-up call —then and now — about the need for prison reform and the responsibilities of justice.

The high-security Pelican Bay prison was designed for mass-scale solitary confinement, often for a decade or more, and with little due process. In 2013, 30,000 incarcerated people went on a hunger strike that spread into a feat of unity across California prisons. The Strike follows these solitary survivors who fought to abolish indefinite isolation.

In a six-part series, we look at how organizers can adapt lessons learned in twenty-five years of abolitionist organizing to their own political terrains, with examples from Appalachia, California, and Louisiana. With Lydia Pelot-Hobbs , Judah Schept , Craig Gilmore & Ruth Wilson Gilmore