
Frank "Big Black" Smith (11 September 1933-2004) was a leader of the Attica Prison riot in 1971.
Biography[]
Frank Smith was born in Bennettville, South Carolina on 11 September 1933 to African-American cotton farmers; his mother was the daughter of a slave. At the age of 5, he moved to Brooklyn, New York City with his mother, and he regularly got into trouble as a child, and he later went to prison for robbing an illegal after-hours dice game. He was later sent to the overcrowded Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York, where he was disgusted by its overcrowding and its poor infrastructure; the prison gave inmates just one roll of toilet paper a month. He worked as head of the prison's laundry and as coach of the prison football team before the Attica Prison riot erupted in 1971, after which he was placed in charge of the prison's security, using his football team members as guards. After the revolt was suppressed, he was sexually abused by the state troopers. In 1974, he became a paralegal, and he later successfully sued the state for miscarriage of justice. He went on to volunteer as a substance abuse counselor and a suicide prevention counselor, and he died in Kinston, North Carolina in 2004 at the age of 71.