Biography
Frank Big Black Smith was a 300-pound African-American prisoner at Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York who became the principal internal security organizer of the September 9-13, 1971 Attica prison rebellion — still the bloodiest prison uprising in U.S. history. With 1,281 of Atticas approximately 2,200 prisoners, he took control of the prison and held 42 prison staff as hostages over four days, demanding political and human-rights reforms. After negotiations broke down, New York State Police retook the prison on Governor Nelson Rockefellers orders on September 13, 1971; 43 people died — 10 prison staff and 33 prisoners — almost all by state-police gunfire.
In the immediate aftermath he was singled out for retaliatory torture by guards: he was stripped naked, forced to lie on a table for hours with a football placed under his chin and was told that if he dropped the football he would be killed. He was burned with cigarettes and beaten. He was held in solitary confinement for six months. He was released on parole in 1973 after 8.5 years of a 10-15 year sentence for an unrelated New York City dice-game robbery. After his release he became a longtime substance-abuse counselor and the lead plaintiff in the 26-year class-action civil-rights lawsuit by Attica survivors that eventually settled for $12 million in 2000. He died in 2004, age 70.
Frank Smith identified his prison number as 22747 in a February 1972 interview. He gave a firsthand account of being stripped, burned and forced to balance a football under his throat under threat of shooting, followed by further beatings in the hospital and two days naked in a cell. He said destruction of his legal papers impeded his appeal and described political-study exchanges among segregated prisoners. These are attributed firsthand allegations. His stated weight of 250 pounds is historical interview testimony and is not used to overwrite other retrospective descriptions. Source: We Are Attica, PDF pages 18-19, 25-26, 28-32, https://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC510_scans/Prisons_Attica/510.we.are.attica.pdf
The March 1973 Attica News roster prints Frank Smith (Big Black) among the uprising prisoner defendants, linked to indictment 5, 15: 34 first-degree kidnapping counts; coercion and unlawful imprisonment. The table lists maximum statutory exposure, not sentences actually imposed or time served; no custody dates or duration are inferred. Source: https://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC510_scans/Attica/510.Prisons.AtticaNewsVol1No1.pdf#page=6
The primer reproduces Smith’s 1972 testimony identifying a ten-to-fifteen-year underlying assault, robbery and larceny sentence, with seven years served at interview time. He describes retaliatory torture after the September 13 retaking, a football held under his throat, burns, beatings, threats and later segregation. The seven-year statement belongs to the historical interview, not the 2011 publication date or his complete eventual term. Pages 6 and 18 also reproduce his account of low-paid laundry work and the silent fast after George Jackson’s death.
Attica Prison Uprising 101: A Short Primer (Project NIA, September 2011), PDF page 34.
