Native-American Protest: Radio Free Alcatraz Broadcasts
Native-Americans civil rights activists occupied Alcatraz Island on November 20, 1969, and held it for 18 months, until June 1971. One month after the occupation began, on this day, the protesters launched a pirate radio station called Radio Free Alcatraz.
Alcatraz Island had been the home of a federal penitentiary until President John Kennedy ordered it closed in 1963. At that point, Native-American activists argued that it was traditional Native-American land and launched several protests around it. The island became a national park in 1972.
Read about the Alcatraz occupation: Kent Blansett, A Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes and the Red Power Movement (2018)
Learn more: Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior, Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee (1996)
Watch the PBS documentary: Alcatraz is Not an Island (2001)
Learn more about Radio Free Alcatraz: http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=File:Radio-free-alcatraz.jpg
Buy 40 reels of tape recordings (800 minutes) of Radio Free Alcatraz broadcasts from Pacific Radio Archives.