Attica Prison

Press release:

What: Genesee Community College's 50th Anniversary Convocation and Special Lecture with Heather Ann Thompson, Ph.D.

When: Tuesday, Sept. 12

• Convocation: 1 p.m. (Stuart Steiner Theatre)
• Lecture: 7 p.m. (T102)

Where: Genesee Community College, One College Road, Batavia

Who: College Community, Special Guests and Visitors

Background:

• Convocation / 1 p.m., Genesee Center for the Art in the Stuart Steiner Theatre

​This formal academic ceremony marks another milestone in the life of Genesee Community College. Afternoon classes will be cancelled allowing more than 100 current or retired GCC faculty and staff members, and many other honored guests and community members to join in the solemn ceremony that recognizes the College's 50th Anniversary and also its promising future.

The keynote address will be given by the Honorable Charles Zambito, Genesee County Court judge, whose father Anthony T. Zambito served as a College Trustee from 1966-2000. A reception with light refreshments and a viewing of the "GCC Timeline: 50 Years" follows the Convocation in the William W. Stuart Forum. GCC's last convocation was in 2006 recognizing the College's 40th Anniversary.

• Presentation and Lecture by Heather Ann Thompson, Ph.D. / 7 p.m., Conable Technology Building, T102

​As part of the Historical Horizons lecture series, Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize winning author Heather Ann Thompson, Ph.D., will cap off the College's special Convocation Day, delivering a presentation, "Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy," based on her award-winning book.

Attica State Prison is part of GCC's history with inmate education, a part of its programming in the 1980s. Thompson's book provides a definitive account of the prison uprising in 1971. She used sources available to no other researchers to write a reliable tome that upends the myths and exposes cover-ups of that violent event that captured international attention.