The Nation: Two Men From Cell Block D

THEY had rebelled, the men of cell block D told prison officials and negotiators, to protest their anonymity, to rail against their status as faceless numbers. During the Attica uprising, a few of them fleetingly achieved that goal when they appeared on TV screens. Two of their stories:

HERBERT X. BLYDEN. He is a big man, broad-shouldered, hard features, ugly scars on his cheek and neck from a prison slashing two years ago. He is also a voracious reader of history, politics and Black Muslim philosophy, a fan of football, boxing and modern jazz. Warm and articulate to close friends, he is known as a prisoner who will “go all the way” if crossed. His hatred of prison racism runs deep.

Blyden, 34, was born in the Virgin Islands; he moved to New York at the age of 16. At 20, he was convicted, along with his younger brother, of robbing a gas station of less than $100; for the theft, he spent five years in Elmira State Reformatory. In 1965, four years after his release, Blyden was convicted, on somewhat uncertain testimony, of robbing a Bronx car-rental agency. Blyden insisted that he was not guilty. After he was sentenced to a 15-to 20-year term, he began studying law in order to prepare briefs appealing his conviction.

In the fall of 1970, Blyden was transferred from Attica to the Tombs, Manhattan’s Men’s House of Detention, to await a hearing on one of his appeals. In October, the Tombs exploded into a riot; Blyden was indicted as one of the leaders of the rebellion and was returned to Attica after the revolt collapsed.

It was Blyden who read off the list of prisoners’ demands to the outside mediators at the meetings in cell block D. Ironically, the day that the rebels first met with the negotiators, a letter from Blyden to one of them, State Senator John Dunne, was floating unread through the mails. It contained a restrained appeal for an official inspection tour of Attica. “We have been trying to apprise the public and the news media of conditions for some time, to no avail. Your assistance in these most serious matters is urgently needed.”

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RICHARD CLARK. There seem to be two Richard Clarks. One of them is known to Attica as “Brother Richard,” the Black Muslim who spoke passionately about revolution when he addressed his fellow inmates in cell block D and with cold, unswerving conviction when he faced prison officials over the negotiating table. The other Richard Clark, to the best of his family’s knowledge, is no revolutionary but a quiet, amiable “homebody” who liked to halt neighbors on the sidewalk so they could admire his twin sons.

Clark’s parents gave him up to a New York City children’s home before he was two years old. He spent his childhood in foster homes in Queens and The Bronx. Tall and athletic, Clark was on the track team in high school. He joined the Navy after his senior year, served three years, and was honorably discharged. After leaving the Navy, he began taking drugs. Arrests followed quickly. In March 1969 he was accused of holding up a store with two other men; while out on bail, he robbed a Bronx storekeeper of three men’s shirts. He pleaded guilty to petty larceny. Last October Clark was transferred to Attica from a medium-security prison because authorities said that he had been advocating “the violent overthrow of the institution.”

His family sensed that Clark had begun to change during his years in prison. First, there were indications that his religious beliefs were changing, then letters complaining of the treatment in prison. “Feed the animals, feed the animals,” he told his wife once on a visit. “That’s what they treat us like here—animals.” Still, his family finds it difficult to believe that he would risk becoming a leader of the riot. “Would it have made sense for him to be violent?” a close relative asks. “He was supposed to come out in February.”