Riots, Strikes and the 1946 Battle of Alcatraz

Even in a prison designed to be quiet and orderly, tension built up. This page covers the ways inmates at Alcatraz protested, how the authorities responded, and the 1946 uprising that remains the most violent episode in the penitentiary’s history.

Strikes and hunger strikes

Most protests were fairly peaceful: work stoppages and hunger strikes. Warden Johnston took a philosophical view, remarking that some grumbling is natural in any prison and that it would be worrying if men were entirely content behind walls and bars.

Stopping work was the strongest tool available to prisoners of that era, and it carried extra weight on an island that was deliberately kept out of public view. Without workers, the Army’s laundry went unwashed and contract quotas for furniture, gloves, raincoats, brooms and mats were missed. Soon the warden would be fielding calls from his superiors in Washington. Hunger strikes worked in a similar way. Inmates who refused food were force-fed before their health suffered, but if news reached the press the questions and phone calls followed. The peak year was 1940, when most of the inmates stopped working and many also refused meals, first in spring and again in summer.

Other forms of protest

Some men chose the courts. With plenty of free time, a number of them filed legal petitions about conditions in federal district court, reasoning that the law which put them inside might get them out. Most of these filings were weak and were dismissed quickly.

Other protests were physical. A “stir crazy” prisoner might rampage in his cell, and the noise could spread through the cellhouse, with bunks slammed up and down on their chains, shouting, whistling and insults aimed at staff. Worse outbursts involved setting fires, wrecking toilets so that water flooded the floor, and throwing everything out of the cell. New Year’s Eve was a traditional date for this. On a few occasions an inmate with a grievance severed the tendons at the back of his ankles to disable himself and make a point.

How officials responded

The first move was usually to isolate the ringleaders in D Block and wait for things to settle. If men were still refusing to work after a cooling-off period, officials had another lever with short-timers, those with a year or less left to serve. They were warned that their “good time” credit would be forfeited, which could turn a few months into ten years or more. The threat generally brought them back to work.

The Battle of Alcatraz, May 1946

This event was intended as a breakout. Because no one ever left the cellhouse, the Bureau of Prisons formally treated it as a riot. It lasted three days.

How it began

On 2 May 1946, shortly after lunch, most inmates were out working. The only armed officer inside the cellhouse, Bert Burch, was in the west-end gun gallery watching D Block, behind a closed door that stopped him from seeing the rest. Cellhouse janitor Bernard Coy overpowered the only other officer on the floor, the unarmed William Miller, while accomplices tied Miller up and put him in a cell.

Coy had built a bar spreader that worked like a car jack and had dieted for months so he could squeeze through a narrow opening. He climbed the outside of the gun gallery, forced the bars apart, entered, burst into D Block and knocked Burch unconscious. With Burch’s weapons and keys, he returned the same way and released most of the men in D Block.

The takeover

Officers who walked in unaware, including Captain Weinhold and Lieutenant Simpson, were taken hostage by a group led by Coy, Sam Shockley, Marvin Hubbard, Joe Cretzer, Miran Thompson and Clarence Carnes. Another officer, hearing an unclear message about a disturbance, went in to investigate. Coy and Cretzer had by then put on guard uniforms, but he saw through the disguise and ran to the armory to raise the alarm. Warden Johnston had the prison boat sent away so it could not be used to flee and called in help from local law enforcement.

The escape stalled because the inmates could not find the key to the recreation yard door. Officer Miller had pocketed it instead of leaving it with Burch, against procedure, and that small lapse blocked the plan.

Violence and the end

Despite the siren and every route being closed, Coy, Cretzer and Hubbard refused to surrender. They fired into two cells holding nine officers. Miller, whose hidden key had spoiled the plan, was killed, and several others were badly wounded. The three men then retreated into the C Block utility corridor and fired at guards trying to pin them down. During the confusion Officer Harold Stites was shot and killed. Grenades were fired into the cellhouse and explosives were dropped through openings cut in the roof.

After nearly three days the guards regained control with help from other federal, state and local police, and from the Army, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines. The Marines bombarded the corridor where the three were hiding, and when it was over Coy, Hubbard and Cretzer were found dead.

Aftermath

Three other participants were tried and convicted of Miller’s murder. Shockley and Thompson were executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin. Carnes, the youngest inmate ever held at Alcatraz, received another life sentence on top of the life term and 99-year sentence he already had.

The riot is also a reference point for the escape history of the island, which you can read about on the page about escapes. For the daily regime that surrounded events like this, see maximum custody and solitary confinement.

Why the episode mattered

The Battle of Alcatraz became a turning point for security thinking. It showed how a single lapse, an officer’s key in the wrong pocket or a gallery door closed at the wrong moment, could affect a whole cellhouse. Afterwards the staff paid closer attention to procedures, and the years that followed were relatively calm until the escape attempts of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The incident also left a mark on the public image of the island, since it was one of the few times that armed force from the military services was needed to retake part of a federal prison.