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Bizarre Transport
Now Oswald decided to talk to the prisoners in person. Although that tactic was later to be criticized, his personal courage could not be. While police sharpshooters kept watch from prison walls, Oswald and Herman Schwartz, a reform-minded attorney trusted by the convict leaders, walked into the midst of the rebels. The prisoners had created an extremely efficient paramilitary organization. The leaders had commandeered a megaphone, and they dictated a list of demands, which had been neatly typed by inmates seated at a long bench. The hostages were encircled and carefully guarded—both against escape and from any harm by more hostile inmates—by a ring of grim convicts, standing with arms interlocked. Some wore football helmets; others were masked by towels and rags.
Initially, Oswald intended to discuss the men's grievances only after the hostages were released—a cardinal rule of most prison officials. He did demand their release, but he also listened to the inmate ultimatum and found it unalarming. The prisoners wanted "religious freedom" (for Black Muslim worship), permission for political meetings "without intimidation," the end of mail censorship, the right to communicate with anyone they wished and regular grievance procedures. Only one demand, added to the list later, sounded bizarre: "Speedy and safe transportation out of confinement to a nonimperialist country."
Although that demand was subsequently seized upon by state officials as an example of the prisoners' dangerous radicalism, it was soon abandoned by the rebel leaders when other inmates pointed out how hopeless it was. Throughout the uprising, in fact, the inmates never quite lived up to their fierce rhetoric, although their threats to kill the hostages sounded credible enough. Underlying the bullying tone of their demands was an unmistakably genuine plea that even if they were convicted criminals, all they wanted was to be treated like human beings. "We are men," said the inmate statement. "We are not beasts, and do not intend to be beaten or driven. What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those oppressed."
Low Key Rockefeller
Oswald decided to negotiate. "My paramount concern was to save lives—hostages and inmates alike," he explained later. "We had to give the negotiations a chance." His first concession was to let into the compound a group of outsiders, chosen by the prisoners, to "oversee" the situation. They included New York Times Columnist Tom Wicker, Bronx Congressman Herman Badillo, Republican State Senator John R. Dunne and Clarence Jones, black publisher of Manhattan's Amsterdam News. But they also wanted Radical Lawyer William Kunstler and the Black Panthers' Bobby Seale. At one point there were as many as 30 mediators.
Governor Rockefeller was attending a Washington meeting of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board when aides telephoned him about the Attica uprising. He quickly agreed to all