UB Professor to Be Guest On The History Channel

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Bruce Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of English and Samuel P. Capen Chair of American Culture at the University at Buffalo, will be the guest of journalist Sander Vanocur when the History Channel series "Movies in Time" presents "Against the Wall," a feature film about the 1971 Attica prison uprising starring Kyle McLachlan, Samuel Jackson and Clarence Williams III.

The film and an interview with Jackson, who has written extensively on the subject, will be broadcast at 9 p.m. on Friday, March 7, and at 1 a.m. on Saturday, March 8.

Jackson will discuss the film's depiction of the violent, four-day uprising in New York State's Attica Prison that resulted in the deaths of 39 prisoners and guards and serious injury to 89 others.

He also will discuss the Attica felony and civil rights trials that followed the uprising, then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller's presidential ambitions at the time of the riot and how these may have influenced his response to the riot.