George Lester Jackson (September 23, 1941 – August 21, 1971) was an American author, activist and prisoner. While serving an
indeterminate sentence for the armed robbery of a gas station in 1961, Jackson became involved in revolutionary activity and co-founded the
prison gang Black Guerrilla Family.
In 1970, he was charged, along with two other
Soledad Brothers, with the murder of Correctional Officer John Vincent Mills in the aftermath of a prison fight. The same year, he published ''Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson'', a combination of autobiography and manifesto addressed to an African-American audience. The book became a bestseller and earned Jackson personal fame.
Jackson was killed during an attempted prison escape in 1971. Jackson and other prisoners took hostages during the attempt and five hostages were found dead in Jackson's cell after the incident.
Biography
Born in
Chicago, Illinois, Jackson was the second son of Lester and Georgia Bea Jackson's five children. He spent time in the California Youth Authority Corrections facility in
Paso Robles due to several juvenile convictions including armed robbery, assault, and burglary.
In 1961, he was convicted of armed robbery – for stealing $70
($ in current dollar terms) at gunpoint from a gas station – and sentenced to
one year to life in prison.
During his first years at
San Quentin State Prison
San Quentin State Prison (SQ) is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County.
Opened in July 1852, San Quentin is the ...
, Jackson became involved in revolutionary activity. He was described by prison officials as
egocentric and
anti-social. In 1966, Jackson met and befriended W. L. Nolen, who introduced him to
Marxist
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
and
Maoist ideology. The two founded the
Black Guerrilla Family in 1966 based on Marxist and Maoist political thought. In speaking of his ideological transformation, Jackson remarked: "I met
Marx,
Lenin,
Trotsky,
Engels, and
Mao
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC), ...
when I entered prison and they redeemed me."
As Jackson's disciplinary infractions grew he spent more time in solitary confinement, where he studied
political economy and radical theory. He also wrote many letters to friends and supporters, which would later be edited and compiled into the books ''Soledad Brother'' and ''Blood in My Eye'', bestsellers that brought him a great deal of attention from leftist organizers and intellectuals in the U.S. and Western Europe. He amassed a following of inmates, including whites and Latinos, and most enthusiastically with other black inmates.
In January 1969, Jackson and Nolen were transferred from San Quentin to
Soledad Prison. On January 13, 1970, corrections officer Opie G. Miller shot Nolen and two other black prisoners (Cleveland Edwards and Alvin Miller) during a yard riot with members of the
Aryan Brotherhood, killing all three. Following Nolen's death, Jackson became increasingly confrontational with corrections officials and spoke often about the need to protect fellow inmates and take revenge on correction officers, employing what Jackson called "selective retaliatory violence".
On January 17, 1970, Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette were charged with murdering a corrections officer, John V. Mills, who was beaten and thrown from the third floor of Soledad's Y wing. This was a
capital offense and a successful conviction would have put Jackson in the
gas chamber. Mills was purportedly killed in retaliation for the shooting deaths of three inmates by Miller the previous year. Miller had not been charged with any crime, as a
grand jury
A grand jury is a jury—a group of citizens—empowered by law to conduct legal proceedings, investigate potential criminal conduct, and determine whether criminal charges should be brought. A grand jury may subpoena physical evidence or a pe ...
ruled his actions during the prison fight
justifiable homicide.
[Archived a]
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and th
Wayback Machine
Marin County courthouse incident
On August 7, 1970, George Jackson's 17-year-old brother
Jonathan P. Jackson burst into a
Marin County
Marin County is a county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and largest city is San Rafael. Marin County is acros ...
courtroom with an
automatic weapon
An automatic firearm is an auto-loading firearm that continuously chambers and fires rounds when the trigger mechanism is actuated. The action of an automatic firearm is capable of harvesting the excess energy released from a previous discharge ...
, freed prisoners
James McClain,
William A. Christmas and
Ruchell Magee
The Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, California, United States was the target of two related domestic terrorist attacks in 1970, tied to escalating racial tensions in the state's criminal justice system. On August 7, 17-year-old Jonathan ...
, and took Judge
Harold Haley, Deputy District Attorney Gary Thomas, and three jurors hostage to demand the release of the "Soledad Brothers". Police killed Haley, Jackson, Christmas and McClain as they attempted to drive away from the courthouse. Eyewitness testimony suggests Haley was hit by fire discharged from a
sawed-off shotgun that had been fastened to his neck with adhesive tape by the abductors. Thomas, Magee and one of the jurors were wounded.
The case made national headlines.
Angela Davis, who owned the weapons used in the hostage taking, was later acquitted of conspiracy, kidnapping, and murder. A possible explanation for the gun connection is that Jonathan Jackson was her bodyguard. Magee, the sole survivor among the attackers, eventually pleaded guilty to aggravated kidnapping and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975.
Magee is currently imprisoned in
Corcoran State Prison
California State Prison, Corcoran (COR) is a male-only state prison located in the city of Corcoran, in Kings County, California. It is also known as Corcoran State Prison, CSP-C, CSP-COR, CSP-Corcoran, and Corcoran I. The facility is just north ...
and has lost numerous bids for parole.
Prison escape and death
On August 21, 1971, Jackson met with attorney
Stephen Bingham
Stephen Mitchell Bingham (born April 23, 1942) is an American legal services and civil rights attorney who was tried and acquitted in 1986 for his alleged role in Black Panther George Jackson's attempted escape fifteen years earlier from San Qu ...
at San Quentin prison to discuss a civil lawsuit that Jackson had filed against the
California Department of Corrections
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is the penal law enforcement agency of the government of California responsible for the operation of the California state prison and parole systems. Its headquarters are in Sacrame ...
. After the meeting, Jackson was being escorted by officer Urbano Rubiaco back to his cell when Rubiaco noticed a metallic object in Jackson's hair, later revealed to be a wig, and ordered him to remove it. Jackson then pulled a Spanish
Astra
Astra may refer to:
People
* Astra (name)
Places
* Astra, Chubut, a village in Argentina
* Astra (Isauria), a town of ancient Isauria, now in Turkey
* Astra, one suggested name for a hypothetical fifth planet that became the asteroid belt
Ent ...
9 mm pistol from beneath the wig and said: "Gentlemen, the dragon has come"—a reference to
Ho Chi Minh. It is not clear how Jackson obtained the gun. Bingham, who lived for 13 years as a fugitive before returning to the United States to face trial, was acquitted of charges that he smuggled a gun to Jackson.
Jackson ordered Rubiaco to open all the cells and along with several other inmates, he overpowered the remaining correction officers and took them, along with two inmates, hostage. Five other hostages, officers Jere Graham, Frank DeLeon and Paul Krasnes, along with two white prisoners, were killed and found in Jackson's cell. Three other officers, Rubiaco, Kenneth McCray, and Charles Breckenridge, were also shot and stabbed, but survived. After finding the keys for the Adjustment Center's exit, Jackson along with fellow inmate and close friend Johnny Spain escaped to the yard where Jackson was shot dead from a tower and Spain surrendered.
Three inmates were acquitted and three (David Johnson, Johnny Spain and
Hugo Pinell) were convicted for the murders. The six became known as the "
San Quentin Six".
There is some evidence that Jackson and his supporters on the outside had planned the escape for several weeks. Three days before the escape attempt, Jackson rewrote his will, leaving all royalties as well as control of his legal defense fund to the Black Panther Party.
Jackson's funeral was held at St. Augustine's Episcopal Church in
Oakland, California, on August 28, 1971.
In popular culture
Several notable artists and entertainers have dedicated their work to Jackson's memory or created works based on his life. The avant-garde jazz group
Art Ensemble of Chicago, affiliates of the
Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, recorded and released the album ''
A Jackson in Your House'' in Paris, France, in 1969. A non-album single was released by
Bob Dylan, "
George Jackson", about the life and death of Jackson. The song made the American charts peaking at No. 33 in January 1972. The ninth track of the 2011
Blue Scholars album ''
Cinemetropolis'' is named for Jackson and references the
Soledad Brothers.
Jackson and his attempted prison escape are the subjects of the first verse of the
Joan Baez parody song, "Pull the Tregroes," on National Lampoon's 1972 album, ''
Radio Dinner''.
Steel Pulse, an English reggae band from
Birmingham wrote a song named "Uncle George" that contains a chorus of "Soledad Brother". The song comes from the band's album ''Tribute To The Martyrs'', which also honours other black civil rights activists including
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (; ; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist who served as the President of South Africa, first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1 ...
,
Martin Luther King Jr. and
Steve Biko
Bantu Stephen Biko (18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977) was a South African anti-apartheid activist. Ideologically an African nationalist and African socialist, he was at the forefront of a grassroots anti-apartheid campaign known ...
.
Ja Rule named his 2003 album after Jackson's book ''
Blood in My Eye''. Saxophone player
Archie Shepp dedicated most of his album ''
Attica Blues'' (1972) to the story of George Jackson ("Blues for Brother George Jackson") and the
Attica prison riots that followed.
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould (; September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Gould sp ...
wrote, in his 1981 book ''
The Mismeasure of Man'', of George Jackson's death in context of "statistically supported"
social Darwinism. Quoting Gould about the legacy of failed science which supported racial bigotry and
physiognomy, "George Jackson ... died under
Lombroso's legacy, trying to escape after eleven years (eight and a half in solitary) of an indeterminate one-year-to-life sentence for stealing seventy dollars from a gas station."
Jackson's life, beliefs and ultimate fate were the topic of one of the many audio tapes recorded at the
Jonestown commune in
Guyana
Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...
during 1978. In the tape in question, Jim Jones touches on several issues relating to Jackson, most notably Jones' firm belief that Jackson's death was a racist assassination. His admiration for the Black Panther activist on the tape is as clear as his disgust that one of his followers, Willie Malone, could think he was remotely in the same league as Jackson, and that "punks" like Malone had sold him out. Jim Jones could later be heard beating Willie Malone, who was 15 years old at the time.
Stanley Williams
Stanley Tookie Williams III (December 29, 1953 – December 13, 2005) was an American gang member and spree killer who co-founded and led the Crips gang in Los Angeles. He and Raymond Washington formed an alliance in 1971 that established the ...
dedicated his 1998 book ''Life in Prison'' in part to George Jackson. In Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian and American actor, film producer, businessman, retired professional bodybuilder and politician who served as the 38th governor of California between 2003 and 2011. ''Time'' ...
's response to Williams' appeal for
clemency, the governor claimed that this dedication was "a significant indicator that Williams is not reformed and that he still sees violence and lawlessness as a legitimate means to address societal problems."
"
Soulja's Story" is a song by rapper
2pac
Tupac Amaru Shakur ( ; born Lesane Parish Crooks, June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996), also known as 2Pac and Makaveli, was an American rapper. He is widely considered one of the most influential rappers of all time. Shakur is among the b ...
, released on the 1991 album ''
2pacalypse Now
''2Pacalypse Now'' is the debut studio album by American rapper 2Pac. It was released on November 12, 1991, by Interscope and Jive Records. ''2Pacalypse Now'' is Tupac's commentary on contemporary social issues facing American society, such as ra ...
'', which makes reference to the
Marin County Civic Center attacks
The Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, California, United States was the target of two related domestic terrorist attacks in 1970, tied to escalating racial tensions in the state's criminal justice system. On August 7, 17-year-old Jonath ...
.
The 2007 film ''
Black August'' is a retelling of the last 14 months of Jackson's life.
See also
*
Frantz Fanon
*
Fay Stender
Fay Abrahams Stender (March 29, 1932 – May 19, 1980) was an American lawyer from the San Francisco Bay Area, and a prisoner rights activist. Some of her better-known clients included Black Panther leader Huey Newton, and the Soledad Brothers, in ...
References
Further reading
* ''Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson'' (1970);
* ''Blood In My Eye'' (1971);
* Min S Yee. ''The Melancholy History of Soledad Prison; In Which a Utopian Scheme Turns Bedlam'' (1973);
* Eric Mann. ''Comrade George; An Investigation into the Life, Political Thought, and Assassination of George Jackson'' (1974);
* P. Collier and D. Horowitz; ''Destructive Generation'' (1996);
*
Jo Durden-Smith
Jo Durden-Smith (24 December 1941 – 10 May 2007) was a British documentary film maker. His work included '' The Doors Are Open'', ''The Stones in the Park'', '' Johnny Cash at St Quentin'', and, later, television work ''Russian Godfathers'' ...
. ''Who Killed George Jackson?'' (1976);
* d
"Black Lives, White Imaginaries"(2021), ''C O M P: An Interdisciplinary Journal''.
External links
FBI file on George Jackson
Writings, interviews and advocacy of his views
– online text of Jackson's 1970 book
– by Karen Wald, May and June 1971
– pro-Jackson article by
Walter Rodney, November 1971
A collection of George Jackson quotes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jackson, George
1941 births
1971 deaths
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