Strike Protested. Stiff Discipline

'Coal Company' Keyed Pen Riot

COLUMBUS Nobody wants to talk about it, but it is no secret inside the walls of Ohio Penitentiary.

Two incidents last week at the pen telegraphed the punch that came Monday in scattered fires and wholesale rioting by inmates.

Warden E. L. Maxwell yesterday admitted to The Plain Dealer that both incidents last week had “homosexual overtones."

INVOLVED IN both were members of the elite "coal company," an all Negro work detail which shovels coal at the prison power plant.

Members of the coal detail are physical giants, described by a prison employe as "Black Nationalist militants.” The coal shoveling

brigade is not integrated like most work companies, chiefly because its members like it the way it is.

The coal shovelers like the outside work, the extra food and privileges they get for their strenuous labors.

ON JUNE 17, a week before Monday's riot and fires, members of the coal company ́staged a sitdown strike. It was in protest against a 10 day sentence in a correctional cell for a stoker who had been in a homosexual incident.

The usual sentence for such activity is three days in correction, insiders say.

Fifteen convicts involved in the sitdown strike drew sentences ranging from 5 to 10 days in correction. Sev-

eral were transferred out of the coal company.

ANOTHER protest came last Thursday, when four members of the coal detail armed themselves with clubs and climbed atop the water tower. They were removed by guards. They received 10 days in correction and transfers out of the coal company.

A number of the stokers sent to correction for both incidents were released Sun-

day...