University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations Fall 2010 "We Are the Revolutionaries": Visibility, Protest, and Racial Formation in 1970s Prison Radicalism Dan Berger University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the African American Studies Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Ethnic Studies Commons, Intellectual History Commons, Other American Studies Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons, Social History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Berger, Dan, ""We Are the Revolutionaries": Visibility, Protest, and Racial Formation in 1970s Prison Radicalism" (2010). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 250. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/250 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/250 For more information, please contact [email protected]. "We Are the Revolutionaries": Visibility, Protest, and Racial Formation in 1970s Prison Radicalism Abstract This dissertation analyzes black and Puerto Rican prison protest in the 1970s. I argue that prisoners elucidated a nationalist philosophy of racial formation that saw racism as a site of confinement but acialr identity as a vehicle for emancipation. Trying to force the country to see its sites of punishment as discriminatory locations of repression, prisoners used spectacular confrontation to dramatize their conditions of confinement as epitomizing American inequality. I investigate this radicalism as an effort to secure visibility, understood here as a metric of collective consciousness. In documenting the ways prisoners were symbols and spokespeople of 1970s racial protest, this dissertation argues that the prison served as metaphor and metonym in the process of racial formation. A concept and an institution, the prison was embodied in protest, hidden in punishment, represented in media, and known in ideas. This dissertation examines the multifaceted mechanisms by which social movements attempt to effect change through creating new ways of knowing. I examine prison visibility through two extended case studies. First, I study a coterie of radical black prisoners centered in California and revolving around militant prisoner author George Jackson. Through appeals to revolutionary action as racial authenticity, this grouping—which included Angela Davis, Ruchell Magee, and the San Quentin 6, as well as the Black Panther Party and others—described black prisoners as slaves rebelling against the confinement of American society writ large. The second case study addresses the successful decade-long campaign to free five Puerto Rican Nationalists imprisoned for spectacular attacks on U.S. authority in the 1950s. Understanding colonialism as a prison, U.S.-based Puerto Rican nationalists in the 1970s (including the Young Lords, the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional, the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional and others) defined the freedom of these prisoners as a necessary step toward national independence. Through strategies of visibility, black and Puerto Rican prison radicals used collective memory to overcome the spatial barriers of confinement. Such memories were recalled through a wide range of tactics, from bombs to bombast, from alternative media to community organizing, as prison radicals fought to control the terms of their visibility. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Communication First Advisor Barbie Zelizer Second Advisor John Jackson Third Advisor Michael Delli Carpini Keywords Black Power, Puerto Rican independence, revolutionary nationalism, spectacle, George Jackson, Lolita Lebron Subject Categories African American Studies | Critical and Cultural Studies | Ethnic Studies | Intellectual History | Other American Studies | Politics and Social Change | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies | Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance | Social History | United States History This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/250 “WE ARE THE REVOLUTIONARIES”: VISIBILITY, PROTEST AND RACIAL FORMATION IN 1970s PRISON RADICALISM Dan Berger A DISSERTATION in Communication Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of the Doctor of Philosophy 2010 ____________________ Barbie Zelizer, Raymond Williams Professor of Communication, Dissertation Supervisor ____________________ Katherine Sender, Associate Professor of Communication, Graduate Group Chairperson Dissertation Committee: Michael X. Delli Carpini, Walter H. Annenberg Dean and Professor of Communication John Jackson, Richard Perry University Professor of Communication and Anthropology Barbara D. Savage, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and History “We are the Revolutionaries”: Visibility, Protest, and Racial Formation in 1970s Prison Radicalism © 2010 Daniel Berger In memory of Marilyn Buck (1947-2010) and Lolita Lebrón (1919-2010) Humble heroines and historical giants For Claude, Donna, Laura, and Rob Giants of the heart, spirit, and intellect And for db The biggest giant of all iii Acknowledgments This project emerges from six years of graduate study, as well as more than a decade of political and intellectual engagement with the prison. In other words, my debts run deep. Barbie Zelizer read every word with care, precision and speed. She kept me focused on the big picture, helping me to write a dissertation I would not have been able to write otherwise. John Jackson was a constant and inspiring source of wisdom and good cheer. He makes it all look far too easy. Michael Delli Carpini ensures that the Annenberg School is conducive to top-quality research among both faculty and students. His generosity as a scholar helps makes that possible and pleasurable. Barbara Savage assured me of my place in history and Africana Studies. Her fierce intellect and keen humor made every meeting, in class or in her office, a treat. In addition to their mentorship, each of them displayed a commitment to minimizing or at least troubling the gap between the academy and what we study, for which I am grateful. Also at the University of Pennsylvania, I learned from the wisdom of professors Herman Beavers, Camille Charles, Marie Gottschalk, Marwan Kraidy, Carolyn Marvin, Adolph Reed, Katherine Sender, Rogers Smith, Deborah Thomas, and Tukufu Zuberi. Through the Annenberg Scholars Program in Culture and Communication, I benefited from conversations with James Curran, Peter Dahlgren, John Erni, Melani McAlister, Don Mitchell, and Slavko Splichal. Thanks are due here to Barbie Zelizer, director of the program, for the exciting vision of practical interdisciplinarity, and to Anjali Gallup-Diaz and Emily Plowman for making it run so smoothly. I also thank my colleagues at Penn, including the members of the 2007-2008 Africana Studies proseminar and my fellow iv Penn DCC Program Graduate Fellows in 2009-2010. During and between classes, Jasmine Cobb, Paul Falzone, Rob Goldberg, Che Gossett, Bill Herman, Nicole Maurantonio, Nicole Meyers-Turner, Moira O’Keeffe, Shaun Ossei-Owusu, Jessica Taylor Piotrowski, Lokman Tsui, Khadijah White, Brandon Wood, Robbie Wood, and, especially, Riley Snorton helped me get through graduate school smarter if not any saner. Brian Behnken, Lee Bernstein, Jordan Camp, Sundiata Cha-Jua, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Michael Flamm, Michael Foley, Tina Gerhardt, Larry Gross, Richard Iton, Joy James, Peniel Joseph, George Katsiaficas, Mark Lance, Sonia Lee, Toussaint Losier, John Macmillian, Ted Morgan, Ed Onaci, Margaret Power, Dylan Rodríguez, David Roediger, Ellen Scott, Zoharah Simmons, Andrea Smith, Rogers Smith, Riley Snorton, David Stein, Lorrin Thomas, Heather Thompson, Timothy Tyson, Akinyele Umoja, Jeremy Varon, and Natasha Zaretsky provided intellectual support and diverse mentorship. At the University of Michigan, Gina Morantz-Sanchez offered good food, stimulating conversation, and proof that it is a small world indeed; Matthew Countryman and Matt Lassiter proved equally hospitable. Louise Newman convinced me to go to graduate school. Years later, I still find myself returning to what I learned from her as an undergraduate at the University of Florida. My participation in the 2010 symposium on Puerto Ricans in U.S. History, which took place at Rutgers University, shaped my thinking on the current shape and future possibilities of Puerto Rican studies. Thanks to the other participants, from whom I learned a great deal, and especially to Sonia Lee for getting me invited. I am grateful as well to the participants and audience members of the various conferences panels where I v presented some of the ideas that appear in some form in this dissertation. Their feedback is stored in nooks and crannies throughout the project. Research for this project was made possible through the financial support of the Annenberg School for Communication and the Mellon Foundation/ Council of Library and Information Resources. Francisco Ortiz Santini graciously shared the National Security Council papers he uncovered in his own research, and Jonah Raskin sent me photocopies of a prison interview he did with Oscar Collazo in 1977. Thanks as well to the diligent librarians at the various collections I utilized, to the friends and friends of friends who allowed me access to and