George Jackson
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- For other uses, see George Jackson (disambiguation).Missing image
Book_cover,_Soledad_Brother_by_George_Jackson.jpgCover of Soledad Brother
George Jackson (September 23, 1941–August 21, 1971) was a Black American militant who became a member of the Black Panther Party while in prison, where he spent the last 12 years of his life. He was one of the Soledad Brothers, and achieved fame due to a book of published letters.
Biography
Born in Chicago, his family moved to Los Angeles when he was 14. Several juvenile convictions resulted in spending time in the Youth Authority Corrections facility in Paso Robles. Jackson was convicted for stealing $71 from a gas station and was imprisoned as a felon for one year to life at age 18.
While at San Quentin State Prison in 1966, he founded the Black Guerilla Family, a Marxist revolutionary organization. The original goal of the group was to eradicate racism, to maintain dignity in prison and to overthrow the United States government.
On January 13, 1970, along with Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette, he was charged with killing a guard in retaliation for the killing of three black activists by a guard at the California's San Quentin prison (the San Quentin guard had been acquitted after the Grand Jury ruled the killings as justifiable homicide). He was incarcerated in the maximum-security cellblock at Soledad Prison. Jackson and the other two inmates became known as the "Soledad Brothers."
In August 7, 1970, George Jackson's 17-year-old brother Jonathan burst into a Marin County courtroom with a machine gun, freed three San Quentin prisoners and took Judge Harold Haley as a hostage to demand freedom for the three "Soledad Brothers." However, Haley, prisoners William Christmas and James McClain, and Jonathan Jackson were killed by police fire as they attempted to drive away from the courthouse. The case made national headlines.
Isolated in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, Jackson studied political economy and radical theory and wrote two books, Blood in My Eye and Soledad Brother, which became bestsellers and brought him world-wide attention.
On August 21, 1971, three days before he was to go on trial, Jackson was gunned down in the prison yard at San Quentin in what officials described as an escape attempt. The official report said that in his possession, Jackson had a 9mm automatic pistol alleged to have been smuggled into the prison by attorney Stephen Bingham (Bingham was acquitted of charges related to the incident in 1984). According to the Soledad guards, it was discarded after the alleged escape attempt, but no record was ever made of the weapon's destruction. Some other prisoners who witnessed the event claim that there was no weapon and that Jackson had not been planning any escape or rebellion. The official report also accuses Jackson of participating in a riot earlier that day, involving two dozen other prisoners, where three corrections officers and two inmates were tortured and killed.
Quote
George Jackson on the pacifism of Martin Luther King, Jr.:
- "The concept of nonviolence is a false ideal. It presupposes the existence of compassion and a sense of justice on the part of one's adversary. When this adversary has everything to lose and nothing to gain by exercising justice and compassion, his reaction can only be negative."
See further
- Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson (1970) ISBN 1556522304
- Blood In My Eye (1971) ISBN 0933121237