Ebook: Letters from Attica

In June, 1970, Sam Melville pleaded guilty to a series of politically motivated bombings in New York City and was sentenced to from 13 to 18 years in jail. His prison odyssey took him from the Federal House of Detention to the Tombs to Sing Sing, and finally to Attica, where he helped lead the massive rebellion of September 9, 1971, and where, four days later, he was shot to death by state police.

Those who knew Sam before he was jailed and his brothers in prison found him a man of extraordinary courage and determination, who rather than accede or submit to injustice and racism chose to fight against them. Some have compared him to John Brown.

During nearly two years in prison, Sam wrote letters to his friends, his attorneys, his former wife, his young son. Collected after his death, these letters were not written for publication. To read them is to eavesdrop on a man's soul. Determinedly honest and deeply moving, they reveal much about Sam and evoke sharply the suffering of prisoners in America.

The letters are introduced by two profiles of Sam. Both offer explanations of who Sam was and why he chose to live—and die— as he did. Jane Alpert, who was living with Sam when both were arrested on bombing charges, writes of Sam's background and personality; Jane jumped bail to avoid imprisonment and is now a fugitive. John Cohen, a close friend who visited Sam in jail until Sam's death, describes how Sam changed during his prison years. Cohen, basing his analysis on information gathered by investigators who talked with prisoners, charges that Sam was deliberately executed by the state.

Sam's prison letters begin with despair but end in hope and defiance. He became a leader of the prisoners' struggle for justice and human treatment. At Attica he fought against and was a victim of the state's brutality. And it was there that he died.