On October 11, 1972, cellmates Frank Gorham, Jr. and Otis Wilkerson lured the guards in their D.C. jail to check on them. Gorham pulled a gun. Quickly, they freed 50 other incarcerated men and took 12 hostages, including D.C.’s corrections director. Storming the cell block, they chanted, “Attica!” Rep. Shirley Chisholm had helped negotiate an end to the Attica uprising the year before. So, when these rebels asked to meet with her, she agreed.
“This isn’t a riot,” the liberators warned. “It’s a revolution.” Chisholm listened to a story that brought her to tears. Sixteen-year-old “babies” were being held with older men. 900 people were crammed into a facility designed for 550. Medical attention was scarce. Some people, locked in solitary, showered only twice a week.
They told Chisholm they were willing to die, and she believed them. So, she negotiated. A judge agreed to separate children from adults and order an inspection. The commissioner promised no court retaliation -- but not release.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office indicted 14 rebels a year later. The commissioner was replaced. The false narrative that the rebellion was just an escape attempt stuck. In 1976, D.C. built a new jail. Today, its population is over 95% Black.
Conditions are bleak. But in 1972, a handful of people, hellbent on liberating themselves, erupted in solidarity after years of dissent. In a future free of prisons, we will remember this uprising as the beginning of our newly won freedom.