Biography
Frank Lott was incarcerated at Attica in 1971 and helped establish the Attica Liberation Faction. The prisoners' manifesto named him as one of five representatives authorized to negotiate with state and prison officials. The group organized political education and demands for improved prison conditions.
This profile concerns political organizing during imprisonment. It does not establish that the original conviction was politically motivated. Exact custody boundaries and the later release history remain unresolved.
A 1971 federal decision records a fifty-years-to-life sentence imposed on June 5, 1962, after a guilty plea to second-degree murder. In later litigation Lott alleged that parole decisions penalized his legal work and involvement in the Attica manifesto. The 1979 court dismissed his habeas petition for failure to exhaust state remedies and allowed him an opportunity to replead a First Amendment retaliation claim; it did not find that retaliation had been proved.
Frank Lott identified himself as from New York City, serving fifty years to life with ten years and some months already served at his February 1972 interview. He described founding the five-man Attica Liberation Faction, becoming chairman, organizing law and political education and circulating donated literature despite censorship. He reported two days of keeplock after asking for medicine, then post-retaking beatings, a forced barefoot walk over glass, and being taken to a ditch and asked to beg for his life before being returned. These are attributed firsthand allegations; no new original custody date or completed sentence total is inferred. Source: We Are Attica, PDF pages 4, 12-14, 21-23, 26-29, https://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC510_scans/Prisons_Attica/510.we.are.attica.pdf
A statement issued by Attica survivors on September 22, 1971 identifies Lott as chairman of the Attica Liberation Faction. It says Commissioner Russell Oswald met him and other prisoners on or about September 2, when Lott called for removal of the warden and senior prison officials. The statement also names Lott, Donald Noble, Herbert Blyden, Peter Butler and Carl Jones-El as prisoners who taught fellow inmates English, mathematics and history.
The Black Panther, October 4, 1971, PDF page 3; The Black Panther, October 4, 1971, PDF page 17.
The reproduced interview reports nine years already served on a fifty-years-to-life sentence for killing a police officer, Lott’s challenge to the conviction and alleged appellate corruption. Lott describes being forced through a beating gauntlet after the retaking, threatened at gunpoint that night, and moved to Housing Block Z on September 14, 1971 because officials suspected him of rebellion leadership. He remained segregated at the interview. That specific segregation start is not his first lifetime admission; nine years is not his completed eventual term.
Attica Prison Uprising 101: A Short Primer (Project NIA, September 2011), PDF page 36.
