Larry “Luqmon” White was born in Bedford Stuyvesant in 1934. Larry and his sister were raised by their grandmother after their mother died during their early childhood. Larry survived the dire material circumstances of his youth by engaging in criminalized acts of survival.  Larry spent his formative years ensnared in city and state level carceral systems. He began stealing food during his early childhood and he gradually evolved to armed robbery during his adolescence. He was first imprisoned in 1947, as an adolescent. He subsequently spent four separate terms in the state prison system. His final incarceration for armed robbery and second-degree murder occurred in 1976, bringing a 25-year to life term. At the time Larry was 43 years old. 

Larry came of age as New York City received an influx in its Black population. Larry dropped out (got pushed out ) of school in the seventh grade. Larry never again pursued formal education. Yet, Larry continued to develop as a thinker and philosopher. For as far back as he can remember, Larry has had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and a ceaseless desire to understand how the material world operates and how it can be transformed. Larry recalls that, at a young age, he began to formulate an incipient analysis of economic and racial inequality. Larry recognized that inequality was unevenly distributed across geographies and he struggled to determine the mechanisms that made that possible. His method of analysis and theorization was based on his empirical observations and his desire to improve the conditions of his existence. The economic deprivation, geographic confinement and racial exclusion that characterized Larry’s childhood was common among the men who found themselves formerly imprisoned during the ensuing decades. This is why Black intellectuals such as Malcolm X, Kenneth Clark and George Jackson increasingly mobilized carceral metaphors – the prison and the colony – to describe Black urban life in the 20th century (Berger 2014; Blauner 1969). 

In the years to come, Larry’s capacity for analyzing situations and developing plans to resolve the contradictions inherent in a given situation would become widely acknowledged and celebrated within the captive population. Though he eventually came to recognize himself as a political prisoner, Larry did not initially situate his early forays into criminalized activities within a broader political framework that accounted for the state-sanctioned production of structural racism and economic scarcity. Rather, his activities were simply a means of  “getting his.” Larry had not engaged with or been substantively exposed to Marxist or Black radical political thought or praxis prior to his incarceration. His immersion into politics occurred while he was in prison, specifically during the explosion of revolutionary consciousness produced by the rebellions. Larry “Luqmon” White emerged as a key figure in the unfolding WAR within the NYS prison system and development of the 1970s Prison Rights’ Movement. In 1970, while confined in Auburn prison, Larry’s intellect and his capacity for organization propelled him into a leadership role in that rebellion. 

Larry and the Auburn rebels surrendered, but prison authorities did not honor their promise of no reprisals. Larry and dozens of other captives were held in ‘strip cells’ on the roof of the facility where they were subjected to prolonged isolation and torture. Larry and other rebels were eventually transferred to Green Haven Prison, in Stormville, New York. Months later, Attica erupted in rebellion. Larry described the lesson he learned from Attica in the following way. “The big thing about Attica, is not so much the killings, but the tone and the atmosphere that it set for prisoners to galvanize our thinking. It taught us that the state only had custody of our bodies” His statement reveals that Attica was a profoundly transformative event, even for captives who were not physically present in D-Yard during the occupation. It also provides further evidence that the state’s counterinsurgent pedagogy failed. The siege at Attica did not teach him that resistance was futile. It taught him that new strategies were needed; strategies that explicitly mobilized ideas. Larry “Luqmon” White is the Green Haven Think Tank’s founder, organizer and chief theoretician.

For Description Citation See Full Texts: Dr. Orisanmi Burton (2023) Tip of the spear: Black radicalism, prison repression, and the Long Attica Revolt. Univ of California Press & (2016). Attica is: Revolutionary consciousness, counterinsurgency and the deferred abolition of New York State prisons. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.