Attica Correctional Facility: “It’s Basically a Black Thing”

In May 1971, New York’s commissioner of correctional services, Russell G. Oswald, informed Rockefeller he was concerned about a “tight budget” and the potential for “prison unrest.” Even though he admitted material concerns, he attributed the problem to the prisoners’ “revolutionary politics.”⁶ In early July, Attica Correctional Facility inmates communicated their frustrations to Oswald and the governor in a petition sent by five inmates who referred to themselves as the Attica Liberation Faction. “We, the inmates of Attica Prison,” stated the letter, “say to you, the sincere people of society, the prison system of which your courts have rendered unto, is without question the authoritative fangs of a coward in power.” The five authors, who were housed in New York’s maximum-security prison located in rural upstate Wyoming County, made twenty-eight demands including better clothing and food allotments, improved medical treatment, greater political and religious freedom, and an end to “the escalating practice of physical brutality.” The eight-page letter also referred to inmates enduring “brutal, dehumanized” conditions and included demands for corrections officers to be subject to prosecution for cruel and unusual acts of punishment and the right to be able to join or form labor unions. Oswald and the Attica Liberation Faction exchanged letters throughout the summer with little progress; as tension continued to grow in the prison, Oswald recorded a message to the prisoners that was played over the loudspeakers promising changes on September 2.⁷

Attica, which housed 2,243 inmates, reflected numerous problems and racially driven conflicts that plagued the state prison system. The overcrowded prison—its superintendent Vincent R. Mancuzi concluded that the facility was not secure if its population exceeded 1,600—had a disproportionately high percentage of racial minorities in the general prison population. Attica’s racial demographic was 54 percent African American, 9 percent Latino, and 37 percent white.⁸ Its location in Attica, New York, which in 1971 was a conservative nearly all-white rural town, only made the inner workings of the institution more fraught. The town had an uneasy relationship with the prison that employed half of its population in some capacity. About five years earlier when the percentage of Black and Latino prisoners increased, residents of the town of approximately six thousand, who once took in boarders in town to visit inmates, “closed their doors when visitors turned out to be black.”⁹ According to historian Heather Ann Thompson, Attica prisoners faced daily hardships including a sixty-three-cents-per-prisoner-per-day allotment for food that did not meet the minimum dietary standards set by the federal government and one shower a week. Every month, prisoners received one bar of soap and one roll of toilet paper and two quarts of water per day, their sole allotment for washing their clothes, performing personal hygiene, and cleaning their cells. In addition to inadequate supplies, prisoners faced medical malpractice, lack of funding for training programs, and racial discrimination that resulted in African American and Puerto Rican inmates receiving lower pay and harsher treatment. Breaking a myriad of rules such as talking while walking to the mess hall could result in being locked in your cell for twenty-four hours a day for an undetermined amount of time, which made life within the institution grim and capriciously punitive.¹⁰

After weeks of tension building in the underfunded and understaffed facility, a fight in the prison yard resulted in prisoners taking thirty-nine corrections officers and civilian employees hostage on September 9, 1971. During the initial wave of violence, a guard, William Quinn, suffered a skull fracture in two places after he was beaten and trampled. Although prisoners ensured that he and a few other injured guards were turned over to authorities that day, Quinn died at the hospital two days later. The rebelling prisoners participated in four days of negotiations with Rockefeller’s representatives in hopes of gaining the reforms they had requested earlier in the summer.¹¹ During the negotiations, Oswald agreed to twenty-eight of the thirty demands the prisoners made as a condition for releasing the twenty-eight guards and eleven civilian employees who were held hostage, a tacit concession that the leadership of the state prisons agreed that change was needed. The prisoners refused to surrender, however, because the state rejected their request for amnesty, which they feared would leave them without protection from physical and legal reprisals for the rebellion. Without amnesty, they believed the concessions they won, including religious freedom and access to adequate food, water, and shelter for all inmates, would fail to improve conditions.¹²

Despite pleas for the governor to visit the prison from the inmates and a range of observers and negotiators that the prisoners had requested to help broker a peaceful conclusion to the standoff, Rockefeller refused. Instead, Oswald, after consulting with Rockefeller, ordered law enforcement to end the rebellion and retake the prison on September 13, 1971. The result was a horrifying melee where a force of one thousand state troopers, National Guard troops, sheriff’s deputies, corrections officers—many of whom were armed with personal weapons with scopes—and local police officers stormed the prison yard after tear gas had been dropped from above by a New York National Guard CH-34 Choctaw helicopter. The 1,128 prisoners, who were armed with homemade weapons such as knives, scissors, and baseball bats, and their thirty-nine hostages faced a barrage of at least 2,200 lethal projectiles, including “00” buckshot.¹³ The state police, many of whom had removed their badges and any identifying markers before they stormed the yard with the protection of gas masks, began to fire indiscriminately. Approximately half of the troopers involved in the retaking did not fire their weapons. The result was that a relatively small group of men fired the large number of bullets at prisoners and hostages who were largely lying on the ground, arms outstretched, overcome by tear gas.¹⁴ Once law enforcement’s guns quieted at 9:52 a.m., ten hostages and twenty-nine prisoners were dead or dying due to gunshots, three hostages and eighty-five inmates suffered nonlethal gunshot wounds, and one state trooper “suffered leg and shoulder wounds from shotguns fired by troopers trying to protect him.”¹⁵ Amid the dead and dying strewn across the yard, the corrections officers reclaimed their dominance, free to strip search, beat, torture, and sodomize the prisoners who had temporarily wrested control of a corner of the prison. Tom Wicker, who had served as an observer, reported systematic beatings; inmates being stripped of eyeglasses, false teeth, and religious medals, in addition to clothes; and the regular use of racial epithets by corrections officers.¹⁶ National Guardsmen on the scene to evacuate the wounded testified that they watched corrections officers, state troopers, and sheriff’s deputies beat the naked prisoners with their nightsticks. One guardsman who helped carry out an inmate who had been shot in the groin, observed troopers beat the injured man. In response to his screams of agony, one trooper replied, “Fuck you, nigger. You should have gotten it in the head.”¹⁷

While guards at Attica meted out their revenge, Rockefeller and his staff began a campaign to delegitimize the uprising and justify the state’s use of lethal force. Although Rockefeller circumvented the press the day of the retaking, he released a statement blaming the “tragedy” on the “highly organized, revolutionary tactics of militants who rejected all efforts at a peaceful settlement, forced a confrontation and carried out cold-blooded killings they had threatened from the outset.” The statement praised the armed forces who retook the prison for their “skill and courage” and “restraint,” which held down “casualties among prisoners as well.” He also ordered an investigation into the factors that led to the uprising, which he said were influenced by “outside forces.” When asked to elaborate on the “outside forces,” Rockefeller’s press secretary, Ronald Maiorana, refused to explain while attempting to disassociate Rockefeller from the decision to retake the facility. He insisted that “people at the scene” made the final decision to send in troops. Nixon’s office denied it, but Rockefeller’s press secretary claimed the president called Rockefeller to offer his support.¹⁸

While Rockefeller sought to shift the blame to the prisoners and unnamed “outside forces,” prison officials, such as Walter Dunbar, who was promoted to state probation director less than two years later, falsely told the press that all of the hostages were killed by the inmates, who cut their throats and castrated two of the hostages. Later in the day, Dunbar took legislators on a tour of the prison where they saw a prisoner being abused. Dunbar explained that the inmate had castrated a hostage and that the act had been filmed from a helicopter. None of this was true. At 5:00 p.m. on Monday, Dunbar told the press that some of the hostages had died from slashed throats and were killed before the assault; this was also untrue. Evidence would soon disprove his claims, but in the meantime, he took his imagination to the extreme and claimed that two of the hostages had their throats slit, testicles cut off, and shoved in their mouths.¹⁹ Two days after the retaking, the medical examiner, Dr. John Edland, who performed eight of the nine autopsies on the hostages who died during the retaking reported that their throats had not been slit; instead, they were each “shot once, some as many as five, ten, twelve times … with two types of missiles, buckshot and large caliber missiles” by their colleagues who had been sent in to save them. Oswald announced the hostages had died of bullet wounds the night of September 14, 1971 in a “long, rambling statement.”²⁰ His press aide, Gerald Houlihan, later said that initial reports were not “meant to be a factual account as to the cause of death.”²¹ After declining requests to meet with the press for two days, Rockefeller granted a press conference on September 15.²² He defended the state’s actions, including his refusal to visit the prison or continue negotiations, and the use of lethal force that resulted in the death of hostages. Rockefeller also argued that the prisoners’ request for amnesty and passage to a “nonimperialistic country” proved that they were motivated by politics rather than prison reform. Ultimately, the governor said that by rejecting the prisoners’ demands, he chose to “preserve a free society in which people could have any sense of security.”²³ Rockefeller’s statements revealed that he had not prioritized the humanity of the prisoners or the safety of the hostages.

Rockefeller and his staff defended the state’s actions vigorously. His emphasis on the politics of the prisoners suggested a self-conscious effort to prevent public outrage over the state-sanctioned massacre by othering the inmates and downplaying the issues at Attica, which were endemic. After two failed attempts to reach President Nixon by phone to update him on the retaking of Attica, Rockefeller spoke to the president at 1:31 p.m. on September 13. Rockefeller assured Nixon that the state troopers “did a fabulous job” and misrepresented the death toll. He said the raid resulted in the deaths of only thirty-two prisoners because the inmates killed the seven hostages who died prior to the raid. Rockefeller explained that the “beautiful operation” was a success because he thought all thirty-nine hostages and two hundred to three hundred prisoners would be killed when he approved armed law enforcement to enter the prison. Nixon asked if the revolt was led by African Americans primarily, to which Rockefeller replied, “Oh yes, the whole thing was led by the blacks.” The president also asked if all of the inmates who were killed were Black. Rockefeller said he was unsure, but he believed they were and defended the state’s actions by saying they only killed the inmates “when they were in the process of murdering the guards or when they were attacking our people as they came in to get the guards.” Nixon believed the race of everyone involved would shape how the public interpreted the state’s actions. His perspective became clearer that evening when Nixon learned from his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, that NBC News’s coverage of Attica not only failed to, in his words, “give Rockefeller any credit,” but it described the retaking as a tragedy and interviewed Tom Wicker and William Kunstler, who had advocated for the inmates. Nixon was predictably critical of the press, but his concern about the public’s response was also evident. He told Haldeman, “If they get out the fact that it’s basically a black thing that’s going to turn people off awfully damn fast. And that the guards were white. Right?”²⁴ The same day that Rockefeller broke his public silence, Nixon reiterated his support for the governor. Nixon told the press that Rockefeller was “a very good man and a very progressive man.” He also expressed support for Rockefeller’s decision not to give in to demands for ransom and said he believed that Rockefeller would have only retaken the facility in the manner he did if it were the last available option and that public figures should not give in to demands for ransom.²⁵ A Nixon staffer summed up the Attica retaking in simple terms: “Morally it was disgraceful but we’re talking about politics, not morals, and politically he did what our people wanted.”²⁶

Despite abundant evidence of problems in the state prison system ranging from inadequate food to systemic racism, of which Rockefeller was aware, he undermined and misrepresented prisoners’ demands for reforms at Attica. A New York Times investigation during the standoff, for example, concluded that the rebellion was the result of a charged atmosphere made worse by inadequate food, poor recreational facilities, and administrative mistreatment.²⁷ Two years before the unrest at Attica, the president of the Ulster County Branch of the NAACP sent a letter to Rockefeller that was circulated among his staff reporting abuses at the Catskill Reformatory in Napanoch, New York. Everett Hodge reported a poorly run facility where African Americans and Puerto Ricans were discriminated against within a state prison system that perpetuated racial inequality. Hodge was particularly concerned because over two-thirds of the 700 inmates were nonwhite, but only three of the 221 employees were nonwhite and requested the governor investigate the state’s correctional system, which had similar discrepancies throughout the state. Hodge reported, “The kind of discriminatory treatment non-whites are subjected to daily by individual white employees who are free to exercise their own racial prejudices and who are supported in these acts by discriminatory policies which permeate the whole prison structure and preclude the possibility of rehabilitation for Negro and Puerto Rican inmates.” He also recounted abuses such as African American and Puerto Rican inmates being denied the ability to write their common-law spouses and mothers of their children, while white inmates were allowed to write their girlfriends. Similarly, Puerto Rican inmates who only knew Spanish were prohibited from writing letters in their native language. He also reported an incident where a nonwhite prisoner was beaten on his way to a segregated holding cell as punishment for being found with stolen property. Hodge also noted discriminatory hiring practices for employees and inmates. Despite Rockefeller’s claim that the prisoners were motivated by politics rather than a desire for institutional reform, Hodge’s complaints were similar to those reported by the inmates at Attica two years later and highlighted systemic problems that were exacerbated by racial inequality and discrimination.²⁸

Initially, it seemed like the long-standing abuses and lethal force at Attica would lead to change as the public became aware of the state of New York’s prisons, but the initial shock and desire for change faded before significant reforms were implemented. The New York State Special Commission on Attica led by New York University Law School dean Robert B. McKay was an independent citizen committee that began interviewing people who were involved in the incident just weeks after the armed retaking. After conducting public hearings in the spring of 1972, the commission concluded that the state’s failures in the field of corrections led to the uprising and loss of life. The McKay Commission described Attica as “one of those forgotten institutions” with an emphasis on confinement rather than security. It was short of trained personnel, had “no meaningful program of education,” and housed twenty-two hundred inmates who had relationships with personnel that were “characterized by fear, hostility, and mistrust, nurtured by racism.” In its published findings, the same commission found that “the Attica uprising was neither a long-planned revolutionary plot nor a proletarian revolution against the capitalist system.” Instead, the commission concluded that “the Attica uprising was the product of frustrated homes and unfulfilled expectations, after efforts to bring about meaningful change had failed.”²⁹ Despite an initial flurry of proposals to reform New York’s prisons during the 1972 legislative session and the devastating findings of the McKay Commission, the state continued its relentless pursuit to charge prisoners for the death of William Quinn and participation in the uprising. Once again, the fears of the prisoners were confirmed as the state refused to take responsibility for the retaking.

A few days after the public became aware of the state’s role in the stunning loss of life at Attica, columnist Mary McGrory observed, “The governor has the President’s praise. He will never walk in Harlem again.”³⁰ Rockefeller’s role in and lack of stewardship over Attica confirmed for many a change that they had perceived in Rockefeller for years. On December 11, 1972, Rockefeller found himself defending his deeds at Attica during a town meeting in Binghamton, New York. The episode at Roberson Memorial, which the governor later described as “real Marxist stuff,” was the eleventh and final meeting intended to give the governor an opportunity to reconnect to his constituents and respond to their concerns on a range of issues. The meetings were often dominated by protesters who opposed New York’s liberalized abortion law and Rockefeller’s decision to veto the state legislature’s attempt to overturn the law during that year’s legislative session. However, the Binghamton meeting, and the previous one in Hauppauge, Long Island, gave students at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook and SUNY at Binghamton (formerly Harpur College) an opportunity to fervently express their anger over the governor’s role in the retaking of Attica. Gone were the days of 1963 and 1968 when Rockefeller could almost guarantee an enthusiastic welcome on university campuses; in fact, when organizing the meetings, his staff was instructed to find “neutral locations” that excluded college campuses and any location “near a campus.”³¹ Such precautions did not prevent students, however, from confronting Rockefeller on Attica, his support of Nixon’s “genocidal policies” in Vietnam, and his family’s economic interests in Latin America and South Africa. The Binghamton meeting, about 130 miles west of Attica, gave students a chance to condemn Rockefeller’s decision to retake the prison with state troopers. A young man in attendance was not only critical of Rockefeller’s lack of concern in September 1971 but also the continued plight of prisoners in Attica: “Last year you sent in state troopers who just massacred people who were fighting for … just improvement in their own living conditions, and you sent in Troopers that murdered everyone in their path. The prisoners are still fighting for the same thing … dismissals of two prison doctors they feel are racists.… They are also asking to shower daily.… Nothing has changed.… You were the person who murdered these people. Are they going to have to be murdered again?” Once heavy applause and yelling died down, Rockefeller reminded the audience that Attica housed murderers and other criminals. When that did not quiet his detractors, he said the hostages were being held at gun point—the same inaccuracy he made on previous occasions. Earlier in the year, for example, Rockefeller made a similar claim during an interview with John Hamilton on WNEW-TV. He said the inmates held the hostages at gun point because of political issues rather than prison reform.³² A member of the audience immediately reminded the governor that the inmates had no guns and that they treated the hostages with care. Unwilling to answer for his actions, Rockefeller demanded the next question.³³

What “Political Hysteria” Wrought

Soon after their enactment, Rockefeller heralded the drug laws as ushering in a new era for New York, but his assertions were unsubstantiated. In September 1973, a few weeks before the laws were to go into effect, the state launched a $500,000 advertising campaign, including full-page newspaper advertisements and television and radio commercials, warning against “getting caught holding the bag” to notify the public about the new drug sentencing guidelines.³⁴ A week after the laws took effect, Rockefeller made his first public assessment of their effectiveness before a national audience on NBC’s Today show. The governor optimistically reported that “heroin seems to be disappearing, drying up in the city.… This may be temporary; it may be permanent.” He also claimed that narcotics arrests had dropped in the past week because drug dealers’ clientele had been scared away. When Archibald Murray, New York’s administrator of criminal justice, was asked for the statistics that supported the governor’s claims, he said he did not have any data for arrests in the last week. Rockefeller presented a confident and optimistic face to the public when promoting the laws that so many speculated were motivated by his presidential aspirations. However, within a matter of days, Rockefeller began to temper his tone. During the swearing-in ceremony for the sixteen court of claims judges who would hear narcotics cases, Rockefeller acknowledged that it would take at least a year to determine “if the law really acts as a deterrent.” The New York Times observed that Rockefeller’s admission surprised some after he had boasted that the laws had already begun to drive heroin off the streets. When asked to clarify his initial claim, a spokesman cited the police department, but Rockefeller’s statement had annoyed police officials because they had been reporting a decline in the quantity and quality of heroin on the streets for the past year, which they credited to law enforcement efforts and the “changing tastes” of illegal drug users who had begun to prefer cocaine or other non-narcotic drugs. Police officers were said to be taking a wait-and-see approach to the drug laws as noted by Lieutenant Stephen Herer who observed, “In a way we’re waiting to see what happens under the law, just like the junkies are waiting to see what happens.”³⁵ Rockefeller hoped the drug laws would prove he was a leader in the field of criminal justice and bolster his national reputation, but his window to make such claims was small.

Whatever optimism the drug laws had generated soon dissipated, but Rockefeller would not face the fallout. In November 1974, the New York Times, which had maintained its opposition to the drug laws, calling them “political hysteria,” reported that felony arrests in New York City and in upstate New York were on the rise again and approaching previous levels.³⁶ Several of the initial 209 people sentenced to life sentences for felonies in the first fourteen months appealed the decisions, but New York appellate courts rejected the cases. Rockefeller did not have to answer for his new program for long, however, because he submitted his resignation on December 18, 1973 to chair both the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans, which he had founded earlier in the year, and the National Commission on Water Quality. The Commission on Critical Choices, which Nixon encouraged Rockefeller to make national in scope, planned to release numerous reports over a two-year period, reminiscent of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund report that the governor oversaw in 1958. The panel included thirty-five participants from across the political spectrum in business, politics, and government such as Secretary of the Treasury George Schultz, Daniel P. Moynihan, former Atlanta mayor Ivan Allen Jr., historian Daniel J. Boorstin, agronomist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Norman E. Borlaugh, chairman of CBS William S. Paley, and publisher of the New York Amsterdam News Clarence B. Jones. The new commission was as wide ranging as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund reports, but its charge was more modest with the goal of helping America deal with coming crises in an era of contracting finances, energy, and other resources.³⁷ Media outlets reported that the commission was the unofficial launch of what would become Rockefeller’s fourth presidential campaign in 1976.

Rockefeller’s resignation as governor meant that he could benefit politically from the drug laws’ passage without having to answer fully for the inequities of the criminal justice system. Shortly after Rockefeller proposed his drug reforms, he testified before the joint legislative codes committee to defend his program. During a contentious exchange with Assemblyman Eve of the Bronx, Rockefeller argued that his proposals—contrary to the findings of studies from the period—would rid the judicial system of inequality and the selectivity that gave preferential treatment to whites and the wealthy. Rockefeller admitted that up until that point, the judicial system had been administered unequally; his plan would remove plea bargaining and rid the system of bias because as Rockefeller said to Eve, “You and I know if you come from a group in the suburbs or upstate, you got the right connections somehow there is a suspended sentence or something happens.… It’s a tragedy and a travesty of justice.” Eve, who had expressed concern that the Rockefeller drug laws would target Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and poor whites, countered Rockefeller by saying that his plan would not address biased arresting officers or district attorneys. Rockefeller, who had long defended and extended the powers of the police, said he would fire anyone who he found to be targeting specific groups unfairly. Rockefeller’s pledge was improbable, but if he had been sincere, he did not stay in office long enough to make good on his promise.³⁸ Ultimately, Eve’s concerns were justifiable. The plan that the governor argued would rid the system of bias only made it more difficult for those underserved by public defenders—in particular, racial minorities, young people, and the poor—to find the relief they once did from the reduced sentences of the past. Initially, members of the criminal justice system resisted imposing the Rockefeller drug laws’ severe sentences, but it was a temporary reprieve. By the 1980s, increased political pressure resulted in the application of the mandatory minimum sentences Rockefeller had promoted before national audiences.

From the Periphery to the Center

Less than a year after his resignation as governor, whatever presidential aspirations Rockefeller may have had were upended by the Watergate scandal. The extraordinary crisis catapulted Rockefeller to the center of his party after President Nixon resigned under threat of an impending impeachment vote. On August 20, 1974, President Gerald Ford, who had been sworn in as president only a week and a half before, presented Rockefeller to Congress as his nominee for vice president. During the subsequent four months of public scrutiny and congressional hearings, the nation learned about the wealthy’s ability to dodge taxes—thanks to a searching Watergate-emboldened press—and contemplated potential conflict-of-interest issues for a wealthy and infinitely well-connected member of the Rockefeller family.³⁹ Embarrassing revelations abounded, such as Rockefeller funding a disparaging biography of his 1970 gubernatorial challenger, Arthur Goldberg. The public also learned about Rockefeller’s habit of lavishing huge sums of money on advisers and associates. The practice skirted state laws including a 1967 anti-tipping statute Rockefeller signed into law prohibiting state employees from soliciting, accepting, or receiving gifts over $25. William J. Ronan, a longtime Rockefeller adviser who became the first chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 1968, for example, accepted gifts and loans totaling $625,000.⁴⁰ Although the nomination process resulted in Rockefeller facing a level of suspicion about his wealth that he had never before experienced, the fall of 1974 also dredged up more familiar questions about the former governor’s ideology and place within a Republican Party transformed by increasingly doctrinaire conservatives.

On the surface, Rockefeller’s nomination seemed to reflect his continued standing within the nation’s political center, but the hearings revealed that Rockefeller was more than ever a political misfit in the era’s reshuffled partisan politics. Republican legislators praised Rockefeller for his years of public service, but some conservatives made it clear that their support was limited to this singular moment when they sought to present a unified front after the turmoil of Watergate. Republican House Judiciary Committee member David Dennis of Nebraska, who identified himself as a small-government midwestern conservative, for example, informed Rockefeller during his testimony that he was “not my choice for this nomination and still less, may I say, were you the choice of my constituency.” Dennis concluded that although it would be unlikely that he would support Rockefeller at a presidential nominating convention because of their “philosophical differences,” the hearings had reinforced his long-held belief that Rockefeller was a “man of wide experience and great ability” and would therefore support his nomination. Conservative Republican and House minority leader John J. Rhodes of Arizona was less reserved in his praise of Rockefeller, who he said had few equals, but he also reported that his constituents questioned the former governor’s nomination because of his spending record in New York. In a prepared statement before the committee, Rhodes sought to put Rockefeller’s reputation as a “big spender” in context by noting that even though New York’s budget increased more than the national average for states between 1960 and 1972—New York’s expenditures increased 300 percent in comparison to the 245 percent average—the state distributed more than half of the money collected to local governments who then spent the money on “schools, roads, public safety and other local needs.” Rhodes reasoned that New York being first in state aid to local governments contradicted the perception that Rockefeller was “fiscally irresponsible in the sense that some of his detractors suggest.”⁴¹ The reservations and even support for the nominee expressed by Republican legislators revealed that Rockefeller remained a polarizing figure in his party because of his liberal reputation and advocacy for active government.

Although Rockefeller’s allegiance to the Republican Party had been contested most of his career, the hearings before both houses of Congress demonstrated that Rockefeller’s once clear standing as an ally of African Americans and advocate of civil rights was now equally disputed. Rockefeller received endorsements from Black Democratic members of Congress such as Charles Rangel and Shirley Chisholm, New York’s two African American members of the House, and Massachusetts senator and fellow moderate Republican Ed Brooke, but there were signs that Rockefeller’s final years in office had undermined the multiracial and bipartisan base he had labored to create at the start of his career. Despite their endorsements, both Rangel and Chisholm criticized Rockefeller’s actions in relation to Attica, while the former condemned the governor’s drug policies. Rangel, who was a close ally of Rockefeller and had worked with the governor since his days as a member of the New York Assembly, introduced one of Rockefeller’s most vocal critics, New York Assemblyman Eve, to the House Judiciary Committee to give a scathing account of the governor’s final years in office.⁴² Eve said that after the election of Nixon, Rockefeller illustrated a “contempt” for the poor and the elderly by cutting medical assistance, devising an incentive program for families to earn back, through so-called good behavior, drastically cut welfare benefits, and decontrolling rents in New York City. For Eve, Rockefeller’s support for a one-year public assistance residency requirement was his most objectionable decision of his final years in office because he advocated for it despite knowing it was likely unconstitutional. The assemblyman reasoned that Rockefeller lacked integrity because he, for the sake of political theater, further polarized New York’s politics by feeding “hatred” and “resentment” toward African Americans and Puerto Ricans. He concluded that Rockefeller’s attempts to appease a rightward-moving constituency made him “somewhat more dangerous than a consistent conservative because he has to go overboard in doing very outlandish things to prove to this new constituency that he has dropped that former label.” At a later point in the hearings when Rangel asked Rockefeller about the work incentive or brownie point program, Rockefeller denied having ever heard of it. Eve, who had served as a civilian negotiator at Attica, also condemned the governor’s handling of the uprising and recounted his efforts to impeach Rockefeller on those grounds in 1972.⁴³

The most positive appraisals of Rockefeller from African Americans who testified came from Black Republicans who presented the governor as an unchanged champion of the Black community. In near identical statements read before the Senate and House, representatives of the Council of 100, which historian Leah Wright Rigueur describes as “a small elite lobbyist group with a liberal agenda,” enumerated Rockefeller’s support for initiatives including fair housing legislation, urban education programs, and the hiring of minorities in state government.⁴⁴ Although the statements read by Samuel C. Jackson, former assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Ethel D. Allen, the first Black woman elected to Philadelphia’s city council, praised Rockefeller for his efforts to reverse urban problems, they made sure to disavow Rockefeller’s handling of Attica while lauding him for his “sincere concern” for people enmeshed in the criminal justice system.⁴⁵ These claims were a far cry from the testimony of Black witnesses who cited Attica and Rockefeller’s final years in office as being particularly harmful to African Americans. Rockefeller’s support of Ford pardoning Nixon, while refusing similar consideration to the prisoners of Attica, argued Angela Davis, evidenced Rockefeller’s support for an inequitable justice system.⁴⁶ Unsurprisingly, members of the Council of 100 made no mention of Rockefeller’s efforts to empower police officers through measures like stop and frisk and increase prison sentences for crimes associated with urban communities, which both contributed greatly to unequal outcomes in the criminal justice system. Jackson and Allen demonstrated that Rockefeller could still find support in pockets of the African American community, but that support was increasingly limited to elite political circles.

An exchange with House Judiciary Committee member Congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Texas underscored that Rockefeller’s traditional association with Black causes failed to prove he was an ally of African Americans. While following up on previous testimony about Rockefeller’s willingness to put his fortune in a blind trust, Jordan asked Rockefeller what he could say to allay the fears of her constituents who distrusted the wealthy. Rockefeller responded by detailing the “four generations” of his family who had contributed to African American causes dating back to his great-grandmother’s station on the underground railroad in Cleveland, Ohio and the “substantial sums” his grandfather gave to “every Negro college in the United States.” Jordan interrupted, “I am familiar with those facts. The people that I am talking about now do not recall the underground railroad.” She went on to explain that the people she represented were concerned about their food stamps and other federal programs being cut. This was in response to Rockefeller’s previous day’s statement that federal spending was the primary cause of inflation and that cuts would need to be made. Rockefeller countered Jordan by saying that he was in support of trying innovative solutions such as tying benefits such as welfare and Medicaid to the inflation rate, as had been adopted in other countries, to ensure people could adjust to cost-of-living increases. He also said, however, that “there is no such thing as a free lunch” and that the federal government relied on free enterprise to pay for such programs. Statements that contributed to the notion that underprivileged Americans who received direct payments from the federal government were separate from and foreign to the rest of society. In her final seconds of questioning, Jordan asked Rockefeller if he supported the extension of the Voting Rights Act. The former champion of federal civil and voting rights protections replied, “I am not sure I know.… I thought everybody could vote.” Moderate Republican Pete McCloskey of California picked up where Jordan left off to note that he had supported the extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1970 despite the objections of the Nixon administration and that the issue remained a “very crucial matter.” Later in the day, Jordan returned to the issue and said that despite Rockefeller’s seeming unawareness, the Voting Rights Act was still needed by and of keen concern to African Americans. In response, Rockefeller affirmed his support, but his initial rejoinder was diametrically opposed to his once vociferous support for such legislation. This relatively brief exchange with Jordan was perhaps the best indicator that Rockefeller had forfeited his effort to recommit the Republican Party to defending African American freedom in the civil rights era. Rockefeller Republicanism had long ago lost much of its character after it was shoved to the margins of the GOP, but Rockefeller completed its transformation into a farce as he jettisoned much of what was left of its principles once he was elevated to national office.⁴⁷

Rockefeller and the 1970s GOP

Shortly after Rockefeller’s swearing-in ceremony on December 19, 1974, conservatives continued to register their displeasure with Rockefeller, along with President Ford whom they deemed insufficiently conservative. One of the first major signs of trouble arose in mid-February during a meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) when approximately five hundred attendees from organizations including Young Americans for Freedom, the American Conservative Union, and the American Party made it clear that Alabama governor George Wallace was far more welcome in the GOP than Rockefeller. Any speaker who criticized the vice president was assured applause, while attendees discussed the possibility of a Reagan-Wallace presidential ticket. Ford and his administration were criticized for positions they deemed too liberal like pursuing détente, retaining advisers such as Henry Kissinger, and allowing a $52 billion budget deficit. Ford’s worst sin, however, was choosing Rockefeller. CPAC’s keynote speaker, Republican representative Robert E. Bauman of Maryland, drew a standing ovation when he called the vice president “the single most unacceptable nominee one might contemplate.” Meanwhile, M. Stanton Evans, chairman of the American Conservative Union, and Republican senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina contemplated a third-party conservative challenge. Evans hoped to appeal to traditional conservatives and the “new conservative constituency” that supported Wallace’s presidential candidacy.⁴⁸ A couple of weeks later, a group of prominent Republicans contemplated less drastic options in early March signaling that dissent among Republicans extended beyond the most right-wing activist organizations. Twenty-eight Republican politicians and financial contributors met under the leadership of US senator James L. Buckley of New York to further a conservative agenda for the party. The group considered a range of options from convincing Ford to accept more conservative ideas to replacing the president with a conservative such as Reagan who advocated for ideological purity in the GOP. The two major complaints of this group, which included members of Congress, governors, and consultants like F. Clifton White, were that Ford’s proposed budget and choice of vice president betrayed conservative principles.⁴⁹

Sandwiched between the two conservative gatherings was a Republican National Committee meeting where Ford failed to convince the party to be more inclusive. Despite Ford’s wishes, the committee rejected a proposal to revise the delegate-selection process to encourage more participation from women, racial minorities, and the elderly. Instead, moderates accepted a compromise that would leave such a change to the state organizations, stripping the national committee of its ability to intervene.⁵⁰ Ford was certain the Republican Party needed to seek a middle-of-the-road policy agenda to attract more voters, but conservatives like those who attended CPAC and Reagan rejected his approach in favor of an uncompromising conservatism in the fields of foreign policy, domestic spending, and social conservatism. Rockefeller’s presence gave conservatives a target for their ire, but they were also dissatisfied with Ford’s attempts at moderation as president, which for them negated his decades-long conservative record in Congress.⁵¹

Under growing pressure from doctrinaire conservatives and a looming Reagan challenge, Ford and Rockefeller sought southern strategies of their own in hopes of remaining atop the Republican ticket. Shortly after he announced his candidacy in June 1975, Ford responded to the Republican divide and the threat it posed to his desire to be elected president in his own right. Rather than select a campaign chairman with experience or a national reputation, Ford appointed secretary of the army, former one-term congressman from Georgia, and 1966 segregationist gubernatorial candidate Howard H. “Bo” Callaway. Callaway’s success as a Democrat-turned-Republican—inspired by Goldwater, he switched parties in 1964—represented the revitalization of the Republican Party in the South. His 1964 victory made him the first Republican to win a seat in Congress from Georgia since 1875.⁵² Ford hoped that choosing a southerner could slow the Reagan challenge, which was especially popular in the region. Earlier in the year, Clarke Reed, chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party and leader of the thirteen southern chairmen, told the press that Ford could not count on the delegates from the thirteen southern states if Reagan entered the race for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination. Reed attributed the universal rejection of Ford among southern leaders to his decision not to advocate for repealing the Voting Rights Act or proposing it be applied to all fifty states as Nixon had done. The day after assuming his new role, Callaway told the press that Rockefeller was a liability to Ford’s nomination. Despite the press noting how unusual it was for a sitting president’s campaign to draw such a stark public distinction between the president and vice president and a private reprimand from Ford, Callaway followed up his comments a month later by calling Rockefeller Ford’s number one problem in the South. “I’m not authorized to say we’re going to dump Rockefeller. I’m not authorized to say we’re going to keep Rockefeller. I’m asking no delegates to support Rockefeller,” explained a candid Callaway.⁵³ Publicly, Rockefeller tried to convince the press that he was unconcerned by Callaway’s comments and that it was business as usual for the president’s number two, but privately, he expressed his anger to Ford. During a brief appearance in Atlanta in July, reporters asked Rockefeller how he would respond to Callaway’s comments and the possibility that he would not be Ford’s running mate. Rockefeller replied, “Have you ever heard of anyone running for Vice President?”⁵⁴ Despite his efforts to project confidence and a unified front with Ford, Rockefeller commenced what amounted to a campaign to prove his worthiness to southerners and a Republican Party whose center of gravity had shifted to the South and Southwest. In preparation for his southern tour, Rockefeller’s speech writer Joseph Persico consulted southern Republican leaders, who said it would be “especially helpful” if Rockefeller mentioned his welfare reforms and “tough drug law.”⁵⁵ Robert T. Hartmann, Ford counsel and cabinet member, recalled that Rockefeller, “with the president’s encouragement … threw himself into a vigorous stumping tour of the South” to prove he could be acceptable to southern Republicans. Hartmann concluded that Rockefeller’s “late conversion to conservatism” would never appease southerners who were still angry about his treatment of Goldwater, “their true Messiah in 1964.” Ford’s adviser may have thought Rockefeller’s switch was abrupt, but the vice president’s attempt to win over southern Republicans would only confirm a years-long retreat from the principles that had given Rockefeller the reputation of being left of mainstream Republicans.⁵⁶

Rockefeller’s southern tour featured elements of his conservative turn as governor, including attacks on the poor and the programs that served them, paired with an apology for the style of active government that epitomized his national reputation. He began with an appearance at the lieutenant governors conference, which was held in Mobile, Alabama, and hosted in part by Governor Wallace in August 1975. The press release prepared by Rockefeller’s staff promoted a speech that would draw a distinction between worthwhile federal spending like that reserved for Social Security and direct aid like welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid, which were described as “hastily adopted social programs” that threatened the nation’s “economic strength, its moral foundations and its freedom.” Without acknowledging the rapidly mounting cost of Social Security, the press release emphasized that the direct aid programs’ costs were increasing too quickly and implied that those costs were due to the government’s inability to distinguish between people in genuine need and those with “questionable need.”⁵⁷ The speech Rockefeller delivered included all of the points in the release and sensationalized the idea of unjustified welfare spending by telling a colorful story about supposed governmental waste. Rather than focus on stories about southern states sending their poor North for public assistance, as he did as governor, Rockefeller recounted an incident he said he experienced when a bank president and board member of New York’s university system told him that his son had begun receiving food stamps while attending graduate school at New York University because “everybody is doing it.” After explaining that the bank president was “terribly upset, obviously,” Rockefeller attributed the rising cost of public assistance to it being advertised and made available to people, like bankers’ sons, who only qualified due to overly lenient eligibility requirements. Taking his anecdote at face value, Rockefeller portrayed the program, which often forced mothers to struggle to provide subsistence levels of food to their children, as an unnecessary expenditure ripe for abuse.⁵⁸ He also said “responsive politicians” like himself had forwarded overly expensive programs to win elections and meet the demands of a public whose desires were unrealistically inflated by the prosperity they saw others enjoy on television. For his appearances in South Carolina, which included a Republican fundraiser the next day, Rockefeller praised the South for its economic gains and pointed to school desegregation as proof that the region had “realistically and courageously” faced its race problems with no mention of the federal intervention that made change possible after years of recalcitrance. Rockefeller also blamed politicians like himself for getting “carried away” and “over-promising and under-delivering” services to Americans that resulted in budget deficits like the one New York City was experiencing—earlier in the year, the city had announced that it was on the verge of bankruptcy. He also included what had become his steady refrain that “cheats” had exploited the goodwill of leaders like himself.⁵⁹

Throughout his time in the South, which also included stops in Dallas, Texas and Charleston, West Virginia, Rockefeller exposed how far his aspirations for an inclusive civil rights–minded Republican Party had fallen. Rockefeller offered unreserved praise for politicians who gained national prominence as segregationists. In the case of Wallace, Rockefeller said the two “had a lot of fun” over the years despite differences of opinion because each one stood up for what they believed in. As for Thurmond, they “shared a very deep belief in States rights and States [sic] responsibilities,” according to Rockefeller. While such comments could be dismissed as mere pleasantries, Rockefeller’s uncritical statements about the South and politicians best known as segregationists showed that he had chosen party unity and electoral gains over principle, the transgression he chastised members of his party for over a decade before. Beyond the praise, however, Rockefeller’s anti-government statements reflected a substantive moment in the former governor’s career. At the start of his tour during a press conference in Mobile, a reporter asked Rockefeller if he agreed with Wallace’s statement that “big government is the enemy of the people.” Rockefeller did not agree outright, but he did say that government must reverse its mistakes that had weakened families and were a “deterrent to work.” His lack of a defense of government helped to legitimize Wallace’s position, which had been a pillar of his previous presidential campaigns. Wallace rose to prominence not only condemning the federal government for ending segregation but claiming that white Americans suffered because of federal initiatives that benefited undeserving African Americans.⁶⁰

I am always glad to be back in the South. In fact, Bo Callaway offered to help show me around. Anyway, I declined Bo’s very kind offer of help. I’m afraid that if I were a drowning man—Bo would throw me an anchor.

—Joke prepared for Rockefeller’s southern tour, Joseph Persico, August 19, 1975.

Rockefeller’s audiences were always cordial, but their reception made little material difference in terms of Rockefeller’s effort to prove himself conservative enough for southern white conservatives.⁶¹ Despite a warm welcome—Rockefeller signed autographs for forty-five minutes in South Carolina—the press reported that conservatives’ reactions to the prospect of Rockefeller remaining on the ticket ranged from resignation to outright rejection.⁶² Meanwhile, South Carolina’s Republican governor, James Edwards, told the press that Rockefeller’s discussion of welfare and social programs made him sound like southern conservatives like himself, Wallace, and Thurmond. Perry Hooper, Alabama’s national committeeman, said he no longer considered Rockefeller a liberal with a caveat: “But I don’t think he’s as conservative as most of the people of Alabama.”⁶³ The New York Times reported that “Mr. Rockefeller did everything but talk with a drawl to persuade skeptical Southerners … that he does not have ‘horns,’ to use his words.”⁶⁴ While many commentators attributed southerners’ continued rejection of Rockefeller to his big spender reputation and previous opposition to Goldwater, Louis Bean, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, attributed their position to his reputation as an advocate for African Americans. Like Henry Wallace in 1944, Bean reasoned that white southerners spurned Rockefeller for “some of the same reasons” they disliked Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president: “Wallace had spoken out for the abolition of the poll tax, for the right of blacks to education and job opportunities.”⁶⁵

Editorials after the fact demonstrated at best the futility of Rockefeller’s trip and at worst an unconscionable betrayal of the racially liberal cornerstone of Rockefeller Republicanism. William F. Buckley and George Will mocked Rockefeller’s embrace of Wallace like he was a “fraternity brother,” and Will noted that everyone, including the Alabama governor, must have been surprised when Rockefeller said they were “old personal friends.” While Buckley accepted Rockefeller’s criticism of welfare as the former governor finally recognizing what he—a longtime critic of welfare—considered to be self-evident, Will was less impressed. He concluded that Rockefeller’s “most conspicuous feature is a finger that is perpetually chapped because it is perpetually wet and held to shifting winds.”⁶⁶ Rockefeller had long modulated his positions to remain in step with the Republican Party, but to do so in the 1970s required him to contradict his core political principles. While vice president, Rockefeller agreed to be interviewed by the journalists Michael Kramer and Sam Roberts, who planned to write a biography about him. During an interview to promote the book in June 1976, Roberts recalled an interview with Rockefeller when they rode with him from the Capitol to the White House down Pennsylvania Avenue. Roberts asked Rockefeller, whom he described as “a tragic figure … still sitting in Washington right now waiting, still wanting to be president,” if he still aspired to be president. Rockefeller’s response, as he recounted it, suggests that ambition had crowded out all other motivations. “He paused only a second and said, what do you think I’m doing here?” Roberts said the exchange revealed “what Nelson Rockefeller is all about at this point.”⁶⁷ His single-minded focus, however, had left him nearly unrecognizable.

The most searing critique of Rockefeller’s trip was a syndicated political cartoon that Newsday published alongside Buckley’s column. The cartoon, drawn by Pulitzer Prize–winning cartoonist Don Wright of the Miami News, depicted Rockefeller bounding out of a car to greet affectionately hooded Ku Klux Klan members gathered before a burning cross while flying a Confederate battle flag.⁶⁸ Rockefeller and Ford may have considered the southern tour political theater, free from substantive meaning, but that required ignoring the ways in which embracing their southern white peers’ demands would put out of reach their goal of an inclusive GOP.

Despite Rockefeller being a steadfast ally of Ford and prostrating himself before southern Republicans most of whom lacked his multigenerational ties to the party, he learned in October 1975 that he would not join Ford on the top of the Republican ticket. During his weekly meeting with the president, Ford told Rockefeller that he did not want him on the 1976 ticket because he hurt his nomination chances with conservatives. For years after that meeting, Ford denied that he requested Rockefeller to step aside, but various sources suggest he asked Rockefeller to say he volunteered to remove himself from contention on October 28. Days later, Rockefeller complied and released a letter saying he did not want to be considered for the number two spot. In his memoir, Ford claimed that Rockefeller suggested he withdraw due to the growing strength of the GOP’s right wing, and he did not stop him. He described the decision as a moment of cowardice because he did not stand up to the “ultraconservatives,” but interviews with others privy to the decision have shown that Ford asked Rockefeller to volunteer.⁶⁹ Hartmann, who always thought it was unwise to try to present Ford as being right of Reagan, questioned the likelihood of a Rockefeller-less ticket boosting Ford in any way.⁷⁰ He recalled telling the president, “I don’t think you’d win over Jesse Helms or Clarke Reed or any of those Reagan-lovers in the South if you personally pulled out the Vice President’s fingernails one by one with a pair of pliers. Don’t you see, it’s not Rocky they’re after—it’s you.” Furthermore, Hartmann reasoned that the move would alienate Rockefeller’s allies while failing to endear Ford to Republicans who preferred Reagan.⁷¹ To Hartmann’s point, Rockefeller remaining on the ticket may have benefited Ford when he campaigned in the northeast—the former governor did help the president secure New York’s delegation at the 1976 Republican National Convention—but the region was no longer indispensable. The news coverage of Rockefeller’s southern campaign, however, suggested that Rockefeller had little influence, whether that be among racial liberals, supporters of the welfare state, or GOP circles. A month after removing Rockefeller from the ticket, Ford received a call from Reagan who informed him that he was officially entering the race for the Republican presidential nomination. President Ford may have been reluctant or regretful when he left Rockefeller behind, but he was an accidental leader of the party, not its future.

The Republican Party rid itself of Nelson Rockefeller in 1975. Rockefeller’s attempts to remain on the 1976 ticket confirmed again the incompatibility of Rockefeller Republicanism and the GOP. Rockefeller’s attacks on welfare recipients and people with illegal narcotics addiction, paired with his dismissal of the demands of the prisoners at Attica, demonstrated that Rockefeller Republicanism was also irreconcilable with the African American freedom struggle of the late 1960s and 1970s. Black activism remained diverse after the rise of Black Power and Black nationalist movements. Numerous African American activists stayed committed to integrationist strategies, but Rockefeller’s unwillingness to acknowledge publicly the systemic inequality that inspired some to embrace Black radicalism revealed the fundamental failure of his vision for a modern civil rights–era Party of Lincoln. Although Rockefeller’s vision for the Republican Party may have always been a chimera, his ability to comprehend African Americans’ critique of the United States was not. Those close to Rockefeller rejected the idea that the governor had changed at his core. During an interview in 1980, his son Steven concluded, “This is one reason why in the case of minority groups Father’s heart was basically with their struggle. Whenever he didn’t extend himself in that direction as much as one group or another might have liked him to, it was for political reasons. However, his gut instinct was: if a group was trying to pull itself up by its own bootstraps and find its way, and was seeking to gain economic and political power and better educational opportunities, well, he identified with them.”⁷² To an extent, Rockefeller’s inner beliefs do not matter; his policies, rhetoric, and pursuit of viability in the GOP are what impacted the lives of the vulnerable people he pledged to help when he entered politics. Rockefeller’s evolving alignment with the politics of the day makes Rockefeller Republicanism a good measure of change within the GOP and US politics more broadly. His inability to revitalize the Party of Lincoln, however, became one more failure to realize the fairer and more equitable nation that was promised and never fulfilled by the party’s founders.