Black Cultural Association
   HOME
*





Black Cultural Association
The Black Cultural Association (BCA) was an African-American inmate group founded in 1968 at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville, a California state prison, and formally recognized by prison officials in 1969. The primary purpose of the BCA was to provide educational tutoring to inmates, which it did in conjunction with graduate college students from the nearby San Francisco Bay Area. Outsiders were allowed to attend meetings of the BCA, and tutors provided remedial and advanced courses in mathematics, reading, writing, art, history, political science, and sociology. In time, radical political organizations such as Venceremos infiltrated the BCA, giving rise to BCA factions such as Unisight, which eventually gave birth to the Symbionese Liberation Army. Origins The 1960s were famous for numerous social movements, including the Black Panther Party in California. This increase in racial tension across the nation fed to rising concerns about the African-American population. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Colston Westbrook
Colston Richard Westbrook (1937–1989) was an American teacher and linguist who worked in the fields of minority education and literacy. At the University of California, Berkeley, he established a program of prison outreach and approved students from the Bay Area to serve as volunteers. Some of the participants from Berkeley and two former prisoners at Vacaville Prison were among the founding members in 1973 of the radical leftist group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army. Westbrook had previously served with a contractor in Vietnam for the US Army that provided services to the CIA. After returning to the United States, he worked for the Los Angeles Police Department in its Criminal Conspiracy Section and the State of California's Criminal Identification and Investigation Unit. In 1970 he started graduate work at University of California, Berkeley and taught at the university after completing it. Early life Westbrook was born on September 14, 1937, in Chambersburg, Pennsylva ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Civil Rights Act Of 1968
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 () is a landmark law in the United States signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the King assassination riots. Titles II through VII comprise the Indian Civil Rights Act, which applies to the Native American tribes of the United States and makes many but not all of the guarantees of the U.S. Bill of Rights applicable within the tribes. (that Act appears today in Title 25, sections 1301 to 1303 of the United States Code). Titles VIII and IX are commonly known as the Fair Housing Act, which was meant as a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (this is different legislation than the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, which expanded housing funding programs). While the Civil Rights Act of 1866 prohibited discrimination in housing, there were no federal enforcement provisions. The 1968 act expanded on previous acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on rac ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Venceremos (political Organization)
Venceremos (Spanish for "We will be victorious") was an American far-left and primarily Chicano political group active in the Palo Alto, California area from 1969 to 1973. History Katerina Del Valle was its chairperson. In 1971 they were joined by a faction of the Maoist organization Revolutionary Union (RU), led by H. Bruce Franklin. Venceremos and Franklin favored a militant strategy based on protracted urban guerrilla warfare. According to Franklin, "... these collectives had been heavily involved in youth organizing within white proletarian communities, in factory organizing and in anti-imperialist struggles on the campuses. ..The new combined organization was multi-national, extremely diversified in its activities and base, and quite militant." Venceremos publicly advocated for armed self-defense by the citizenry, community control of the police, and reform of the prison system. To these ends, the group's members engaged in a number of legal activities, such as working ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Russell Little (Symbionese Liberation Army)
Russ Little may refer to: * Russ Little, musician and member of Lighthouse * Russ Little, political activist and member of the Symbionese Liberation Army The United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) was a small, American far-left organization active between 1973 and 1975; it claimed to be a vanguard movement. The FBI and American law enforcement considered the SLA to be the ...
{{Hndis, Little, Russ ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Angela Atwood
Angela DeAngelis Atwood (February 6, 1949 – May 17, 1974), also known as General Gelina, was a founding member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), an American terrorist group which kidnapped Patricia Hearst and robbed banks. She was killed, along with five other SLA members, in a nationally televised shootout with the Los Angeles Police Department. Background Angela DeAngelis grew up in the small New Jersey suburb of North Haledon near Paterson. The daughter of a local Teamsters official, DeAngelis was active in many student leadership groups and was captain of the cheerleading squad. She starred in many school musicals and quietly tutored and befriended classmates others ignored. She was voted Most School Spirit by her peers while attending Manchester Regional High School. At Indiana University Bloomington, she met leftwing activist, theatre student and future husband Gary Atwood. While at school she sang in the Kappa Pickers (a musical group in the Kappa Kappa Gam ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Emily Harris
Emily Harris (born February 11, 1947 as Emily Montague Schwartz) was, along with her husband William Harris (1945–), a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), an American left-wing terrorist group involved in murder, kidnapping, and bank robberies. In the 1970s, she was convicted of kidnapping Patty Hearst. In 2003, she was convicted of murder in the second degree for being the shooter in a 1975 slaying that occurred while she and other SLA members were robbing a bank in California. She was sentenced to eight years in prison for the murder. Early life Born in Baltimore, Maryland,ThFBI postergives some biographical details. Place of birth is given as Baltimore, Maryland, although with the note "not supported by birth records" and raised in Clarendon Hills, Illinois, Emily Montague Schwartz was the daughter of Frederick Schwartz, an engineer, and his wife, and had a middle-class upbringing. She graduated from Indiana University with a bachelor's degree in language arts ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Willie Wolfe
William Lawton Wolfe (February 17, 1951 – May 17, 1974) was one of the founding members in 1972 of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), an American radical group based near Oakland, California. While in the group, he adopted the name "Kahjoh", though the media misspelled this as "Cujo". Born and raised in an upper middle-class family in Connecticut, Wolfe had come west and enrolled at University of California, Berkeley, studying anthropology. He got involved with a prisoner outreach project, through which he was recruited by inmate Donald DeFreeze to the group that formed the SLA. He and six other members died in Los Angeles during a law enforcement shootout and fire in the house where they were staying. His father had commissioned an investigation of the SLA. Discussed at a press conference shortly before the fire and Wolfe's death, it suggested from strong evidence that DeFreeze was a police informant and agent provocateur. Early life Wolfe was raised in Connecticut in an u ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Correctional Training Facility
Correctional Training Facility (CTF), commonly referenced as Soledad State Prison, is a state prison located on U.S. Route 101, north of Soledad, California, adjacent to Salinas Valley State Prison. Facilities The institution is divided into three facilities: North Facility, Central Facility, and South Facility. All offer their own programs to the inmate/prisoner population. In March 2012, the facility's total population was 5,684, or more than 171.6 percent of its design capacity of 3,312. As of July 31, 2022, Soledad was incarcerating people at 123.0% of its design capacity, with 4,761 occupants. The South Facility dates back to 1946, when it was used as "Camp Center" and administered by San Quentin State Prison. In 1951, the Central Facility opened, and in 1958 the Northern Facility opened. By 1984, an additional dormitory was added to the Central Facility. Three more dormitories were added in 1996, two more to the Northern Facility and one to the Southern Facility. The ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Donald DeFreeze
Donald David DeFreeze (November 16, 1943 – May 17, 1974), also known as Cinque Mtume and using the nom de guerre "General Field Marshal Cinque", was known as the "spokesman" of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a small, American far-left group that formed in Oakland, California in 1973. Some analysts suggested he was a figurehead; others said he was the leader. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, he dropped out of high school and was involved from the age of 14 in frequent brushes with the criminal justice system. He received generous probation in the late 1960s, leading some sources to suggest he was serving as a police informant to the Los Angeles Police Department. He and several white allies began to make plans for armed action that they believed would arouse the black community and attract more recruits. Three SLA "soldiers" fatally shot Marcus Foster, the Superintendent of Public Schools in Oakland, the first black superintendent of any major public school system, and ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Lake Headley
Lake Wellington Headley (August 31, 1930 – May 15, 1992) was a private detective and writer who made a name for himself by being hired to investigate high-profile crimes. Crimes included the Wounded Knee incident, Patty Hearst kidnapping, court-martial of Clayton Lonetree, the murder of Vicki Morgan, and the Don Bolles car bombing. In a series of true crime books, Headley wrote about his investigations. Early life and career Lake Headley was born in Indiana. He attended Goshen High School in Indiana. In the yearbook for 1948, at around age 16, he stated in that he wished to be a lawyer. He began his career as a police officer in Las Vegas, but his killing of a suspect when a young officer prompted him to quit policing and become a p.i. In 1962, he left the force, where he was a detective, to become one of the first private detectives in Las Vegas. He went on to work for thirty years in the field, and was considered one of the best. Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi called ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Mary Alice Siem
Mary Alice Siem was a student at the University of California, Berkeley when she became involved in 1973 with a prisoner outreach program at Vacaville Prison. She became the girlfriend of Thero Wheeler, an inmate who escaped in August 1973. He was a founding member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), an extremist group based in Oakland that was classified as terrorist by law enforcement. It was known for murders, armed robberies and the kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst after Wheeler and Siem left the group in October 1973. Vacaville Prison and Symbionese Liberation Army Siem participated in the prisoner outreach program organized for student volunteers by Berkeley professor Colston Westbrook at Vacaville Prison and other sites. At Vacaville, she met inmates Donald DeFreeze and Thero Wheeler through events of the Black Cultural Association. She became Wheeler's girlfriendBurrough, Bryan, Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revoluti ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Patty Hearst
Patricia Campbell Hearst (born February 20, 1954) is the granddaughter of American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. She first became known for the events following her 1974 kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army. She was found and arrested 19 months after being abducted, by which time she was a fugitive wanted for serious crimes committed with members of the group. She was held in custody, and there was speculation before trial that her family's resources would enable her to avoid time in prison. At her trial, the prosecution suggested that Hearst had joined the Symbionese Liberation Army of her own volition. However, she testified that she had been raped and threatened with death while held captive. In 1976, she was convicted for the crime of bank robbery and sentenced to 35 years in prison, later reduced to 7 years. Her sentence was Commutation (law), commuted by President Jimmy Carter, and she was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton. Background Family H ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]