Tip of the Spear

Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt

By: Orisanmi Burton

Narrated by: Leon Nixon

Tip of the Spear boldly and compellingly argues that prisons are a domain of hidden warfare within US borders. With this book, Orisanmi Burton explores what he terms the Long Attica Revolt, a criminalized tradition of Black radicalism that propelled rebellions in New York prisons during the 1970s. The reaction to this revolt illuminates what Burton calls prison pacification: the coordinated tactics of violence, isolation, sexual terror, propaganda, reform, and white supremacist science and technology that state actors use to eliminate Black resistance within and beyond prison walls.

Burton goes beyond the state records that other histories have relied on for the story of Attica and expands that archive, drawing on oral history and applying Black radical theory in ways that center the intellectual and political goals of the incarcerated people who led the struggle. Packed with little-known insights from the prison movement, the Black Panther Party, and the Black Liberation Army, Tip of the Spear promises to transform our understanding of prisons—not only as sites of race war and class war, of counterinsurgency and genocide, but also as sources of defiant Black life, revolutionary consciousness, and abolitionist possibility.

©2023 Orisanmi Burton (P)2024 Tantor Media

Long Live the Attica Rebellion

Man!!! Orisanmi Burton does a SPLENDID job describing in fine detail the ideology, praxis, and organization that went into prison rebellions like Attica. Mainstream media likes to depict prisoners as mindless savages with no heart. This book dispels that myth and goes on to describe the intellect, planning, organization, study, and, dare I say, love that prisoners had for one another. A revolutionary love that saw their struggle as well as the struggle of all oppressed people as one unified front. They weren’t only concerned about improving the conditions of the prison but the conditions of the world.

Mr. Nixon excels in delivering Dr. Burton’s peerless analysis

Mr. Nixon masterfully articulates Dr. Burton’s tremendous and pertinent insights with style and grace. Essential listening for all those who wish to have carceral systems demystified.