Heather Ann Thompson Discusses Her Book "Blood in the Water: the Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy"

When

Monday January 23, 2017: 7:00pm to 8:30pm  Add to Calendar /   Add to Google Calendar

Where

Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room

Description

Award-winning U-M historian Heather Ann Thompson discusses her critically-acclaimed book Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. This groundbreaking book is the first definitive account of the infamous 1971 Attica prison uprising, the state’s violent response, and the victims’ decades-long quest for justice.

Published to coincide with the forty-fifth anniversary of the uprising, "Blood in the Water"finally reveals the full story of what really happened at Attica and will completely reshape our understanding of this historic event. Heather Ann Thompson sheds new light on one of the most important civil rights stories of the last century, exploring every aspect of the uprising and its legacy from the perspectives of all of those involved in this long fight for justice: the prisoners, the state officials, the lawyers on both sides, the state troopers and corrections officers, and the families of the slain men.

Despite facing resistance from New York State officials, Thompson spent over ten years researching Attica, working her way through oral histories, letters, newspaper articles, memoirs, and extensive interviews. As a result the book reveals, for the first time, the crimes committed during the uprising and its aftermath, who committed them, and how they were covered up.

Heather Ann Thompson is an award-winning historian at the University of Michigan. She has written on the history of mass incarceration, as well as its current impact, for The New York Times, Time, The Atlantic, Salon, Dissent, New Labor Forum, and The Huffington Post. Thompson is also the author of Whose Detroit?: Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City.

This event includes a book signing and books will be for sale courtesy of Literati Bookstore.