Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising

By Staughton Lynd

Book Overview

Lucasville tells the story of one of the longest prison uprisings in U.S. history. At the maximum-security Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, prisoners seized a major area of the prison on Easter Sunday, 1993. More than 400 prisoners held L block for eleven days. Nine prisoners alleged to have been informants, or "snitches," and one hostage correctional officer, were murdered. There was a negotiated surrender. Thereafter, almost wholly on the basis of testimony by prisoner informants who received deals in exchange, five spokespersons or leaders were tried and sentenced to death, and more than a dozen others received long sentences.

Lucasville examines the causes of the disturbance, what happened during the eleven days, and the fairness of the trials. Particular emphasis is placed on the interracial character of the action, as evidenced in the slogans that were found painted on walls after the surrender: "Black and White Together," "Convict Unity," and "Convict Race."

An eloquent Foreword by Mumia Abu-Jamal underlines these themes. He states, as does the book, that the men later sentenced to death "sought to minimize violence, and indeed, according to substantial evidence, saved the lives of several men, prisoner and guard alike." Of the five men, three black and two white, who were sentenced to death, Mumia declares, "They rose above their status as prisoners, and became, for a few days in April 1993, what rebels in Attica had demanded a generation before them: men. As such, they did not betray each other; they did not dishonor each other; they reached beyond their prison 'tribes' to reach commonality."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1604862246
• ISBN13: 9781604862249
• Release Date: March 2011
• Publisher: PM Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A defense for the defenseless...

This book is an absolutely stunning insight into the world of Lucasville. It brings the reader an extremely interesting narrative, laced with important facts and context, which provide an easy yet piercing read. Lynd challenges those who believe those young men circulating in our prison system are simply "thugs," "criminals," and are unworthy of human dignity. He explains the racial character of the riot and the overcoming of these tensions in the face of a common oppression shared by all those "in blue." Lucasville is a sad, yet fantastic story and should be read by anyone who believes that the white working class is inevitably racist and racism is impossible to be overcome. The prison "tribes" were broken down and Aryan Brothers, Muslims, and "Black Gangster Disciples" stood up to collectively show their power, despite some initial tension. More importantly, Lynd shows how draconian prison conditions, the stripping away of rehabilitation services, racial profiling, slave labor, brutality, and a host of other issues can culminate into prisoners fighting back. The role of the state, in a larger picture, should also be taken into account; building a prison where you plan to hire a majority of whites, suffering from the decently paid industrial job loss due to outsourcing and neoliberalism, to guard a largely black prison population can only create tension and hostility. Read this book, you will not be disappointed.

Read it, then decide

I have read this book, and I found it to be a careful documentation of what happened based on court and other government documents, as well as independent interviews with the people who were there. Those who suggest that this book has an agenda are correct - it is an agenda that seeks the full truth and nothing less. Justice, and nothing less. Read it and decide for yourself. --abe Abraham J. Bonowitz