Soul Power: Culture, Radicalism, and the Making of a U.S. Third World Left by Cynthia A. Young

Author:Cynthia A. Young [Young, Cynthia A.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
Tags: Social Science, African American & Black Studies, History & Theory, General, United States, American, Political Science, Ethnic Studies, History
ISBN: 9780822336792
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2006-11-01T15:06:42.837574+00:00

5. Attica prisoners corralled by police. Still from Teach Our Children provided courtesy of Third World Newsreel.

Even a wholly symbolic statement of political or cultural independence—such as the flag held by the slain inmate—must be swiftly and violently eradicated.

The surviving inmates tell of troopers who murdered or brutally punished inmates as they surrendered, accounts that are supported by mainstream media accounts of the incident. Unlike those reports, though, the prisoner’s testimony crackles with righteous indignation and anger. As one of the leaders recalls, he and fifty-nine other inmates were stripped, marked with an X, and made to crawl around the muddy perimeter during a downpour. As he describes this episode, the film juxtaposes footage of the Attica aftermath with still photography of World War II concentration camp victims and drawings of enslaved Africans on Southern plantations.

With this extreme juxtaposition, Attica is elevated to the level of a historic tragedy comparable, in the filmmakers’ discourse, to Hitler’s crusade against the Jews and every bit as central to a community’s collective memory. Claiming Attica’s parity with the Holocaust is both politically loaded and audacious considering white Americans have historically resisted any attempt to compare their treatment of enslaved Africans and the Nazi’s treatment of the Jews.

Though it is clearly inaccurate to compare Attica and the Jewish Holocaust—

on the level of scale and sheer horror the Jewish Holocaust far surpasses Attica—the comparison highlights the insu≈cient value placed on black American life. It also labels enslavement a genocidal practice. In addition, the film asks the viewer to consider how valuable prisoner lives are, and if they are indeed valuable, then what is civil society’s responsibility in preventing future T H I R D W O R L D N E W S R E E L

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Atticas. The comparison forces the viewer to confront the everyday forms of racist state violence that go unmarked and unresisted by its beneficiaries and raises the hope that future generations may view Attica in terms no less harshly than they do the Jewish Holocaust. This is, of course, wishful thinking as race and class oppression militate against the memorializing of the black and Latino victims of Attica.

However bloody the suppression of the Attica rebellion was, Teach Our Children refuses to dwell on the rebellion’s defeat. Instead, the film alludes to the militant action Attica may ultimately inspire in urban communities around the United States. To the upbeat, soul-inflected gospel anthem ‘‘Let Us Sing This Simple Song for Freedom,’’ Teach Our Children argues that the spirit of Attica thrives in individual and collective memory. Shots of inmates pump-ing iron in U.S. jails alternate with shots of massing guerrilla armies in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The voices of women and children intone,

‘‘We the people here don’t want no more,’’ while Malcolm X’s voice excoriates U.S. imperialism: ‘‘They are violent when their interests are at stake, all that violence that they display at the international level. When you and I want a little bit of freedom, we’re supposed to be nonviolent.

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