ATTICA, N.Y. — Fifty years after the uprising at Attica Correctional Facility, the community surrounding the prison still feels the effects of the deadly riot.

What You Need To Know

  • Fifty years after the uprising at Attica Correctional Facility, the community surrounding the prison is still healing
  • The Attica Prison Preservation Foundation and Museum educates people about the prison and the riot during tours of its museum
  • Ten hostages and 29 inmates were killed, with 89 others seriously injured

The rural community of Attica is located in Wyoming County. The Village of Attica within the town is quaint and patriotic, and surrounded by farmland.

But oftentimes, when people from other parts hear the word Attica, what they envision is not quaint. It is a prison — a prison that is home to the bloodiest prison riot in United States history.

It took place at Attica Correctional Facility over a five-day span in September 1971.

“It was violent. There was a violent takeover. They sent a helicopter over the wall with a chemical agent," said former correction officer Pat Gallaway, the founder of the Attica Prison Preservation Foundation and Museum, which educates people about the prison and the riot during tours of its museum.

“When you get someone from out of town, the first thing they want to know … They’ll come in and it’s like, ‘tell me about ‘71,’" said Gallaway.

Back in the day, Gallaway says the community generally welcomed the prison when it was built in 1929, surrounded by a 30-foot wall and bringing hundreds of jobs.

“The facility operated for 40 years before the uprising, before the Attica riot took place,” said Gallaway. “And until then, it was just a place to go to work. It was, I work on a farm during the day and then I go to the prison at night or in the afternoon.”

But when inmates took 39 prison guards and employees hostage on September 9, 50 years ago, Attica would forever be changed.

“Everybody knew if you worked in the prison, you probably lived next door to someone else who worked in the prison, or someone's dad was killed in the riot, that you went to school with if you were younger," said Gallaway.

In the end, after troopers were ordered to storm the prison, “There was confusion. There was a lot of anger, and it kind of took the small community, and kind of open them up to the world," said Gallaway.

Hundreds of people from Attica and the surrounding communities continue to go to work inside those prison walls each day. Gallaway says, though, there's still trauma.

“Absolutely … There's lasting effects from it,” he says. “From that point, those five days, I would compare it to any soldier who's been in a firefight, who's been in a battle."

It was a dark time for a community that continues to heal, five decades later.

“It’s something that's always going to be remembered,” said Gallaway. “I believe, in this community anyway, it'll always be remembered as September 13, was the day of the riot. The riot ended on September 13.”