Heather Ann Thompson

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Heather Ann Thompson
Born
Lawrence, Kansas, United States
Education University of Michigan (B.A.)
University of Michigan (M.A.)
Princeton University (Ph.D.)
Occupation(s)Historian, author
Website www.heatherannthompson.com

Heather Ann Thompson is an American historian, author, activist, professor, and speaker from Detroit, Michigan. Thompson won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for History, the 2016 Bancroft Prize, and other awards for her work Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy .

Contents

Early life

Thompson was born in Lawrence, Kansas. Her parents, Ann Curry Thompson, a labor lawyer in Detroit, and Frank Wilson Thompson Jr., a professor of economics at the University of Michigan and Summer School lecturer at Harvard University. Heather Ann's sister is Saskia Thompson, the current executive director of the Detroit Land Bank. Thompson's early childhood was spent in Bloomington, Indiana, and Oxford, England, but in her teen years the family moved to the North Rosedale Park neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan. Thompson graduated from Cass Technical High School.

Career

Thompson earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Michigan and completed her PhD at Princeton University. Thompson was a faculty member at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, from 1997 to 2009, and then was a faculty member of Temple University in Philadelphia from 2009 to 2015. In 2015. Thompson returned to the Detroit area when she and her husband (historian Jonathan Daniel Wells), accepted faculty positions at the University of Michigan. Thompson writes about the history and current crises of mass incarceration for numerous publications. Her work has been featured in The New York Times , Newsweek , The Washington Post , Jacobin , NBC, Time , The Atlantic , Salon , Huffington Post , and Dissent . She has also appeared on NPR, Sirius Radio, and various television news programs in the U.S. and abroad. Several of Thompson's scholarly pieces, including "Why Mass Incarceration Matters", have won best article awards, and her popular piece in The Atlantic, "How Prisons Change the Balance of Power in America", [1] was named a finalist for the Best Media Award given by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. [2] Thompson was a Soros justice fellow, [3] she founded the Carceral State Project and Documenting Criminalization and Confinement research initiative at the University or Michigan, she sits on the board of numerous organizations, and is a member of the standing Committee in Law and Justice at the National Academies.[ citation needed ] She served on a National Academy of Sciences blue-ribbon panel to study causes and consequences of incarceration in the U.S. [4] Thompson's books include: Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Rebellion of 1971 and its Legacy (Pantheon Books, August 2016); Whose Detroit: Politics, Labor and Race in a Modern American City (2001, new edition 2017); and the edited collection, Speaking Out: Protest and Activism in the 1960s and 1970s. Thompson was also named a distinguished lecturer by the Organization of American Historians. [4]

The Attica uprising of 1971

The culmination of more than a decade of research, Blood in the Water offers the first definitive account of the 1971 Attica Prison riot. The book was released in August 2016 to coincide with the forty-fifth anniversary of the country's largest prison rebellion. The book sheds new light on the riot, the state's violent response, and the decades-long implications of Attica for those involved as well as America's criminal justice system. Thompson's research for the book included interviews with former Attica prisoners, hostages, families of victims, lawyers, judges, law enforcement, and state officials, as well as significant amount of material never before released to the public. Blood in the Water was winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2017. [5] Thompson also served as the lead historical consultant for the documentary Attica , released by Showtime in 2021. [6]

History of Detroit and the present-day motor city

Thompson's 2001 book, Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor and Race in a Modern American City is a regularly cited account of the history of Detroit during the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s. It is a comprehensive account of police brutality against marginalized groups, and the black political reaction to it in this period, as well as the underlying reasons for why Detroit became such a crucial site of black political activism and black political power after 1973. The book was published by Cornell University Press and a new edition was published in 2017 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Detroit riot of 1967. This updated edition addresses issues currently facing Detroit as well as the city's recent bankruptcy and the current challenges the city faces thanks to record rates of incarceration.

Publications [7]

Books

Articles

Awards and recognition

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Attica Prison riot</span> 1971 prisoner rebellion in New York

The Attica Prison Riot, also known as the Attica Prison Rebellion, the Attica Uprising, or the Attica Prison Massacre, took place at the state prison in Attica, New York; it started on September 9, 1971, and ended on September 13 with the highest number of fatalities in the history of United States prison uprisings. Of the 43 men who died, all but one guard and three inmates were killed by law enforcement gunfire when the state retook control of the prison on the final day of the uprising. The Attica Uprising has been described as a historic event in the prisoners' rights movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Attica Correctional Facility</span> Maximum-security state prison in New York

Attica Correctional Facility is a maximum security campus New York State prison in the Town of Attica, New York, operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. It was constructed in the 1930s in response to earlier riots within the New York state prisons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography</span> American photojournalism award

The Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography is one of the American Pulitzer Prizes annually awarded for journalism. It recognizes a distinguished example of feature photography in black and white or color, which may consist of a photograph or photographs, a sequence or an album.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Bidart</span> American poet

Frank Bidart is an American academic and poet, and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

The following are the Pulitzer Prizes for 1972.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Book Foundation</span> American nonprofit organization

The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established, "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America." Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc., the foundation is the administrator and sponsor of the National Book Awards, a changing set of literary awards inaugurated in 1936 and continuous from 1950. It also organizes and sponsors public and educational programs.

The Ridenhour Prizes are awards in four categories given annually in recognition of those "who persevere in acts of truth-telling that protect the public interest, promote social justice or illuminate a more just vision of society".

Samuel Joseph Melville, was the principal conspirator and bomb setter in the 1969 bombings of eight government and commercial office buildings in New York City. Melville cited his opposition to the Vietnam War and U.S. imperialism as the motivation for the bombings. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy and to bombing the Federal Office Building in lower Manhattan, as well as to assaulting a marshal in a failed escape attempt. A key figure in the 1971 Attica Prison riots, he was shot by the police and killed when the uprising was put down by force.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jerry Rosenberg</span> American criminal & convict (1937–2009)

Jerome "Jerry" Rosenberg was a New York State convict, mobster and jail house lawyer. He was incarcerated for 46 years, longer than any other prisoner in New York State history. Rosenberg was sentenced to death for his involvement in the 1962 double homicide of two New York City police officers. His sentence was commuted to life in prison in June 1965, after capital punishment was abolished in New York. Rosenberg went on to become the first New York State inmate to earn a law degree and in turn gave legal advice to several inmates, including the leaders of the Attica Prison riot. A book was written about Rosenberg and his time in prison which was adapted into a 1988, made-for-TV movie, Doing Life, starring Tony Danza.

Blood in the Water may refer to:

Robert B. McKay was a dean of New York University Law School, a former president of the New York City Bar Association, and the chair of McKay Commission, which investigated the 1971 Attica Prison riot.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Boncore</span> American political activist (1952–2013)

John Boncore, also known as John Pasquale Boncore, Dacajeweiah, John Boncore Hill, John B. Hill, and John Hill, was a political activist and actor who first garnered media attention for his role in the 1971 Attica Prison revolt in upstate New York.

<i>Blood in the Water</i> (Thompson book) 2016 book by Heather Ann Thompson

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy is a non-fiction book about the Attica Prison uprising of 1971 and details not only the events of the week-long uprising and its brutal ending, but also the protracted legal battles that persisted for decades after the event. It is the third book by University of Michigan historian Heather Ann Thompson. Blood in the Water provides a complete history of the incidents at Attica reflecting a decade of research, including information from interviews, government records, personal correspondence, and legal documents, much of which has never been made public before. Thompson argues that the Attica uprising and New York state's response represented shifting American approaches to incarceration and policy. The reverberations of this watershed event has continued to influence America's prison system.

Ronald B. Stafford was an American lawyer and politician from New York.

Marie Gottschalk is an American political scientist and professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, known for her work on mass incarceration in the United States. Gottschalk is the author of The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (2006) and Caught: the Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics (2016). Her research investigates the origins of the carceral state in the United States, the critiques of the scope and size of the carceral network, and the intersections of the carceral state with race and economic inequality.

Austin H. MacCormick was an American criminologist and prison reformer. In 1916 he received the Masters of Arts degree from Columbia University Teachers College. He served in the U.S. Naval reserve from 1917 to 1921. His senior officer at Portsmouth was Thomas Mott Osborne, a penologist who later employed MacCormick. In 1929 he was appointed Assistant Superintendent of the Federal Prisons in the Department of Justice. In 1930, the Federal Bureau of Prisons was established and MacCormick was named Assistant Director. From 1934 to 1940 he served as Commissioner of the New York Department of Corrections. In 1939 he was President of the American Correctional Association. MacCormick was special assistant to the Undersecretary of War from 1944 to 1947. From 1951 to 1960 MacCormick was professor of criminology at UC Berkeley in California.

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The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke is a 2018 biography of Alain LeRoy Locke written by historian Jeffrey C. Stewart. The biography examines the life of Locke, an African-American activist and scholar who mentored many African-American intellectuals and writers and whom many see as the "father" of the Harlem Renaissance. Published by Oxford University Press, The New Negro won the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction and the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

Nicole Eustace is an American historian who won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for History, for Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America and was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Reuben Jonathan Miller is an American writer, sociologist, criminologist and social worker from Chicago, Illinois. He teaches at the University of Chicago in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice and in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity. He is also a research professor at the American Bar Foundation.

References

  1. Thompson, Heather Ann (October 7, 2013). "How Prisons Change the Balance of Power in America". The Atlantic. Retrieved December 1, 2020.
  2. Prison Policy Initiative. "PPI Board Member Heather Thompson chosen as a 2014 Media for a Just Society Award Finalist".{{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  3. 1 2 "OSI Names Winners of 2006 Justice Fellowships". Open Society Foundations .
  4. 1 2 3 "OAH Distinguished Lecturer Profile | OAH". www.oah.org.
  5. "2017 Pulitzer Prizes". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved June 30, 2017.
  6. "Attica Official Trailer (2021)". Showtime Documentary Film. Retrieved May 13, 2023.
  7. "Dr. Heather Ann Thompson - Pulitzer Prize Winner | Author | Speaker | Consultant". Dr. Heather Ann Thompson.
  8. "Lukas Prizes: 2015 Winners - Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism". Archived from the original on March 15, 2016.
  9. http://www.nccdglobal.org/sites/default/files/content/mjs-finalists-2014.pdf [ bare URL PDF ]