President Trump wants Alcatraz. On May 4, he announced his order to reopen it as a prison for the first time since 1963. Trump isn’t the first to have the idea. Reagan was denied Alcatraz in 1981. And while Alcatraz became notorious for taking other prisons’ “most dangerous,” for decades it was also a site of civil rights struggle.
During World War I, Alcatraz held “conscientious objectors” like Robert Simmons, who was sentenced to 10 years of prison labor in 1918. But when Simmons refused military orders there too, he was thrown into a slimy, rat-infested dungeon and left there for two weeks. The ACLU eventually reported Alcatraz’s inhumane and unsafe conditions. Still, Simmons wouldn’t be freed until 1920.
The 50s and 60s brought other forms of resistance, like Robert Lipscomb’s. Lipscomb faced 25 years over $340 in counterfeit bills. While incarcerated elsewhere, he organized resistance to prison segregation, and taught himself about legal precedent in the process. That, plus escape attempts, landed him in Alcatraz. But Lipscomb didn’t stop, even writing to Attorney General Robert Kennedy to discuss prison segregation, earning a reputation as a “racial agitator” and being punished accordingly. In 1963, Alcatraz closed without ever desegregating.
Today, Alcatraz is one of California’s most popular tourist destinations. For it to be retrofitted as a prison, Congress would have to pass several environmental acts. So Trump is unlikely to get his way.
The conditions Lipscomb and Simmons faced are still timely, from the horror stories about Rikers Island and Angola Prison to anti-Black sentencing and prison punishments. Even if Alcatraz never reopens as a prison, there’s already more than enough systemic violence without it.