Полная история «Биг Мака»: самая опасная тюрьма Оклахомы и бунт 1973 года, который её уничтожил

On July 27, 1973, the hottest day of the year, inmates seized control of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at McAlester. Within hours, 24 buildings were burning, over 20 hostages were trapped behind the walls, and the most destructive prison riot in American history was underway. This is the complete story of Big Mac. Built in 1908 on a design modeled after Leavenworth, the Oklahoma State Penitentiary was supposed to be a reform project. Kate Barnard, the first woman elected to statewide office in the United States, forced Oklahoma to bring its convicts home from Kansas after discovering they were being starved and worked to death in coal mines. The prison that rose from the Oklahoma prairie was a fortress, stone walls three feet thick, armed guard towers, radiating cellblocks fanning out from a central rotunda. Inmates built the whole thing with their own hands. For sixty-five years, Big Mac served as Oklahoma's death house, its maximum-security lockup, and the home of the famous Rodeo Behind the Walls. Old Sparky, the electric chair in the basement beneath the warden's office, executed 82 men between 1915 and 1966. The prison rodeo drew crowds of 65,000 at its peak. And every single year, the population inside kept climbing past the walls' capacity while the legislature looked the other way. By 1973, Big Mac was holding over 2,200 men in a facility designed for 1,100. Raw sewage backed into the cells. Convict bosses ran the tiers. Guards earned $390 a month and quit by the dozens. Nineteen inmates had been killed in stabbings and beatings in the three years before the riot. Every warden filed the warnings. Every legislature ignored them. This video reconstructs the full 72 hours of the July 1973 riot, the hostage crisis, the fires that turned $22 million in buildings to ash, and the federal takeover of Oklahoma's entire prison system that followed. From Kate Barnard's train ride to Kansas, to Old Sparky, to the Rodeo Behind the Walls, to the flames over McAlester, to the underground death row that sits beneath the prison today. 📌 REFERENCES & LINKS • Oklahoma Historical Society, "McAlester Prison Riot" - Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture https://www.okhistory.org/publication... • Oklahoma Historical Society, "Oklahoma State Penitentiary" - Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture https://www.okhistory.org/publication... • Claudia K. Bullard, "The Oklahoma National Guard and the 1973 McAlester Prison Riot," Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. 102, No. 1 (Spring 2024), pp. 4-29 • Harijit S. Sandhu, "History of Corrections in Oklahoma, 1908-1988" • Dan M. Reynolds, "The Riot of '73, Oklahoma State Penitentiary" • Battle v. Anderson, 376 F. Supp. 402 (E.D. Okla. 1974) • Oklahoma Watch, "Oklahoma Prison Struggles Continue Decades After Riot" (2013) • Tulsa World archives on OSP executions and the prison rodeo • Correctional Peace Officers Foundation, "Oklahoma State Prison - 1914" https://cpof.org/news/oklahoma-state-... #BigMac #OklahomaStatePenitentiary #McAlester #PrisonRiot #1973Riot #OldSparky #PrisonHistory #AmericanPrisons #DeathRow #SolitaryRedemption #TrueCrime #Documentary #ForgottenPrisons #BattleVAnderson #PrisonRodeo #KateBarnard #OklahomaHistory #MaximumSecurity #FederalTakeover #CriminalJustice