Bernstein. George Jackson and the Culture of American Prisons in the 1970s

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The Age of Jackson: George

Jackson and the Culture ofAmerican Prisons in the 1970s

Lee Bernstein

Between his first national exposure as a Sole-dad Brother in early 1970 and his violent death inAugust 1971, George Jackson achieved an almost

unprecedented level of celebrity for an incarcer-ated person. In that age of political extremes andradical chic, it is not altogether surprising that

Jackson achieve notoriety and acclaim. However,there has been little attention to the prison culturethat helped shape Jacksons consciousness. In ad-dition, the weeks and years that followed Jack-sons death saw a remarkable series of protestswhere prisoners specifically memorialized Jack-son. By placing Jacksons ideas, writings, and ac-tions in the popular, political, and prison contexts,

this article argues that Jackson was a key partic-ipant in debates over incarceration, colonialism,and racism. While he is often only rememberedfor the ideological extremes of his book of letters,Soledad Brother, and his violent tactics, George

Jackson has not been recognized for his partici-pation in an organized system of covert educationthat presaged theories of internal colonialism, hispopularization of arguments about the politicalqualities of incarceration, and insistence that pris-oners can contribute to movements for social

change as symbols, intellectuals, and leaders. It istelling that the largest and most visible prison re-bellion of the era occurred on the other side of thecountry only weeks after his death. While others

have noted the connection between Jackson andAttica, the specific tactics and demands of theAttica Brothers have been described as strange

or unrealistic. Once placed in the proper contextof the prison culture of the 1970s, their calls forunity, amnesty, and removal to a neutrali.e.postcolonial and Marxistcountry seem far fromoutlandish. Rather, they seem like a claim verymuch situated in the political culture and climateof American prisons of the 1970s.

George Jackson provided the inspiration for ageneration of incarcerated intellectuals and writ-ers to insist on the importance of their perspec-tives in shaping public debates over a host of key

issues. Though it would be hard to overestimatethe influence of Malcolm X and Angela Davis onthe cultural and intellectual output of incarceratedpeople during the 1970s, the brief, intense, anduncompromising revolutionary life of Jacksonmade him the icon for a range of critics of theprison system.

Jackson as Symbol

Bertold Brechts 1930 script for The Mothercalls for the set to be hung with placards contain-ing quotes by Marx and Lenin. In productions of

Lee Bernstein is Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is the author of The GreatestMenace: Organized Crime in Cold War America (2002).

310 The Journal of American Culture Volume 30, Number 3 September 2007

The Journal of American Culture, 30:3r2007, Copyright the AuthorsJournal compilation r2007, Blackwell Publishing, Inc.


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the play between 1973 and 1975, the San Francis-co Mime Troupe substituted quotes by George

Jackson and Richard Nixon, personifications ofthe extremes of 1970s-era political activism. TheTroupe, founded in 1959, had a well-earned rep-utation for antiwar, feminist, and anticapitalistsentiments. Even if the audience members wereunaware of the substitution, they would haveeasily seen the ideological and political messagethe Troupe sent. Where Brechts notes called for aprojection of Marxs Theory turns into a materialforce once the masses have understood it! TheMime Troupe projected Nixons Communism isevil because it defies God and denies man (Gor-don 101). Where Brecht included Lenins Provethat you can fight! the Mime Troupe substitutedLouis Farrakhans All of us are in prison. Thoselocked up are merely in solitary confinement.Where Brechts script called for a repetition ofLenins line later in the play, the Mime Troupeinvoked a letter George Jackson wrote to hismother: You are freeto starve. Written duringthe Great Depression, The Mother dramatizesthe political transformation of the mother of acommunist. At the plays opening, she is an an-tagonist of revolution. At its end, she is a revo-lutionary. In the program notes, the Mime Troupemade clear their belief that Depression-era callsfor revolution applied to the 1970s context: TheSan Francisco Mime Troupe decided to do TheMother because of the present crisis in America.Another Great Depression looms. A Rockefelleris chosen to share power with our first non-elect-ed president; and together they call on the Amer-ican people to make sacrifices. There is nopossible reconciliation between labor and man-agement. The people who do the work must have

the power. Revolutionary changes are necessary inAmerica, but they can only be made if we allwork like good small moles (Gordon 95).

Performers and writers outside of prison clear-ly recognized the role Jackson could play in pro-moting revolutionary politics. By the time the SanFrancisco Mime Troupe made use of the quotes,Nixon was out of office and Jackson shot dead bySan Quentin correctional officers. But by mid-decade it was already common to link the two

men in order to send a useful symbolic message.Walter Rodney, the radical Guyanese historianand politician, was perhaps the first to provide aconnection between Nixon and Jackson. In a 1971article, Rodney wrote, there is some considerableawareness that ever since the days of slavery theU.S.A. is nothing but a vast prison as far asAfrican descendants are concerned. Within thisprison, black life is cheap, so it should be no sur-prise that George Jackson was murdered by theSan Quentin prison authorities who are respon-sible to Americas chief prison warder, RichardNixon (Rodney 6; Lewis 177). In the same yearthat Walter Rodney referred to Richard Nixon asthe nations chief jailer, Bob Dylan performedhis latest composition, a ballad called George

Jackson:

Sometimes I think this whole worldIs one big prison yard.Some of us are prisonersThe rest of us are guards.Lord, Lord,They cut George Jackson down.Lord, Lord,They laid him in the ground. (Dylan)

Building on Rodneys image of the United Statesas a prison, Dylan muses that this whole worldcan be thought of as a division between keepersand convicts. Where Rodney names Nixon as thechief jailer, Dylan leaves it to his listeners to fillin the subject of the they who cut George

Jackson down. Jacksons iconic status would berepeated and amplified throughout the left of the1970s. Even before the San Francisco MimeTroupe replaced Lenins quotes with Jacksons,C. L. R. James compared Jacksons Soledad

Brother to the work of Lenin, writing shortlyafter Jacksons death that the letters are in myopinion the most remarkable political documentsthat have appeared inside or outside the UnitedStates since the death of Lenin ( James 54).

In short, George Jackson was a potent symbolof American racism, colonialism, and other formsof oppression. To the Mime Troupe, Dylan,

James, and Rodney, Jackson represented theprototypical African and African American

311The Age of Jackson Lee Bernstein


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experience in the United States. In the climate ofthe 1970s, the president was a warden and Jacksonattached to a long legacy of bondage. Eric Cum-minss The Rise and Fall of Californias RadicalPrison Movement details the attraction of George

Jackson to the movements of the New Left. Evenbefore publication of Soledad Brother, Cumminsargues, left-wing romanticism attached to theSoledad Brothers reached the dimensions of cultworship (169). The Soledad Brothers DefenseCommittee counted among its supporters a broadrange of political activists, celebrities, and writers,including Julian Bond, Pete Seeger, Allen Gins-berg, Tom Hayden, and Angela Davis.

This attraction remains a crucial element inJacksons cultural and historical importance, buthis writings and actions are not solely a product ofleftist cult worship. From the perspective ofthose living behind bars, Jacksons popularitycame from shared experiences, not what TomWolfe called radical chic (Wolfe 6). To prison-ers, Jackson was as much a teacher of radicalpolitical philosophy and spokesperson for a crisisbehind bars as symbol of oppression. His educa-tion behind bars and uncompromising politicswould come to serve as a model for prisoners. Asthese prisoners became interested in political andsocial change, Jacksons insights into black con-sciousness, the sociology of racism, and radicalpolitical philosophy served as a central counter-argument to Nixons law and order politics. Thiscounterargument had ideological and institutionalantecedents that help shed light on the place ofprisons and prisoners in US culture during the1970s. Jacksons words and actionslike those ofRichard Nixonsare best understood withinboth the history of prison reform movements

and concurrent debates over US culture and pol-itics inside and outside 1970s prisons.

Covert Education

Jacksons writings must be seen in relation tothe covertunofficial and strategically hiddenfrom authoritieseducation system that thrived

in American prisons in the late 1960s and early1970s. A Chicano prison gang, La Nuestra Fam-ilia, had an education department that sent guide-lines on instruction first to cell blocks in SanQuentin and eventually to other institutions inthe California Department of Corrections. To besure, much of this education served the needs ofan aggressive criminal organization seeking toprofit from drug sales and prostitution (Cummins139). But as more overtly political organizationsemerged, their curriculum would include politicaleducation classes with reading lists spanning thework of Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, MaoZedong, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara, and KarlMarx. Some works were contraband, but in 1971even George Jacksons Soledad Brother was avail-able for purchase in the prisons canteen (Cummins134). Jackson was part of a network of incarceratedpeople who read, agitated, and publicized.

The timing for the creation of this educationaland political network is crucial to understandingits meaning. It arose amid the disintegration of thereformist programs that were first created duringthe Progressive Era. In addition, it arose amidstartling and unprecedented valorization of incar-cerated people in American radical and youthcultures. This second factor led to a substantialmarket for works by and about incarcerated peo-ple like George Jackson. After detailing the ideo-logical content of Jacksons message as a productof the political education then taking place in co-vert inmate self-education programs, this essaywill detail the institutional, cultural, and commer-cial factors that help explain the dramatic impact

Jackson would have on American prison cultureduring the 1970s. Literacy, vocational, and othereducational programs had long been a central fea-

ture of inmate rehabilitation. Jacksons writingand its impact is representative of a shift in themeaning of these programs when Americanpenology largely abandoned its rehabilitativemission at precisely the moment when prisonerscalled into question the premise that it was theyand not American societythat were in need offundamental change.

Jacksons first entry into Californias adult cor-rectional system began with a robbery. In 1960,



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Jacksonthen a nineteen-year-old who alreadyserved a seven-month stint for burglary in an in-stitution run by the California Youth Authorityallegedly drove the getaway car in a gas-stationrobbery. Despite agreeing to cooperate with pros-ecutors in exchange for a light sentence, Jacksonreceived a sentence of from one year to life. Cal-ifornia sentencing guidelines were still ruled bythe practice of indeterminate sentences. He couldexpect to come before the parole board every yearto have his case reviewed. A federal lawtheIndeterminate Sentence Act of 1958allowedcorrections officials to parole inmates after theycompleted one-third of their sentences. Eligibilityfor this early release in many states centered onparticipation in group therapy or other socialwork sessions (Sullivan 75). Conversely, partici-pation in behavior deemed disruptive by correc-tions officials could result in what seem to becapriciously long sentences for minor crimes. Anappearance of compliance with the expectationsof correctional authorities would come to be acentral touchstone of this system and ultimatelybe a factor that led to the dismantling of indeter-minate sentences by many states in the 1980s.

Jackson was a case in point: the parole boardannually denied him parole as he grew from aleader of a prison gang into a political revolu-tionary. According to political philosopher Joy

James, Jackson was first introduced to radical po-litical thought by W. L. Nolen ( James 85). Jack-son, Nolen, and a circle of African Americaninmates began to read widely in African Americanhistory and radical political economy, includingthe works of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and MaoZedong. George Jacksons intellectual and polit-ical development marked his personal transfor-

mation. Because he was not the only incarceratedperson to experience this change George Jacksonwould soon become a martyred elder for theescalating number of politicized incarceratedpeople. Jacksons group, initially calling itself theblack guerrillas and later the Black GuerillaFamily after Jacksons death, included Nolen,

James Carr, and William Christmas ( James 85).1

In 1969, Jackson and Nolen were transferred toSoledad Prison. Racial tensions ran high in Sole-

dad. In the midst of a fight between AfricanAmerican and white inmates, Nolen and twoother African American inmates were shot todeath by a guard. After the killings were ruledjustifiable homicide, a white guard, John Mills,was killed on George Jacksons cellblock. Jacksonwas indicted for the murder of the guard, alongwith John Clutchette, and Fleeta Drumgo. Thesethree men would become nationally known as theSoledad Brothers. The Soledad Brothers artic-ulation of radical politics, personal stories ofinjustice, and a willingness to use violence againstwhat many activists perceived as a brutally racistprison regime made them compelling figures tothe activist left. Huey P. Newton, a founder of theBlack Panther Party (BPP), took note of theirplight. His lawyer, Fay Stender, soon became legalcounsel to George Jackson. She also helped foundthe Soledad Brothers Defense Committee ( James85). Jacksons political ideology reached a wideaudience with the publication of Soledad Brother,a collection of Jacksons letters to family, friends,and supporters. With the publication of this book,people in and out of the various social justicemovements of the day gained access to the polit-ical education and prison environment that led

Jackson toward his ideals and tactics. The lettersroutinely requested or recommended reading ma-terial. These requests detail a political philosophythat developed over time in relationship to thekey revolutionary texts of the era: Ramparts Mag-azine, Maos Little Red Book, The Autobiogra-

phy of Malcolm X, Malcolm Speaks, and, thoughhe critiqued them in some letters for being toonationalist, Robert Ardreys African Genesis andThe Territorial Imperative. Inspired by the anti-colonial liberation movements in Angola and the

Congo, Jackson turned toward revolutionary pol-itics in the mid-1960s. In a 1964 letter to hismother, Jackson wrote, I clearly understand thatmy future rests with the black people of theworld. I am trying in every way possible to adjustmy thinking habits so that their ways of life wontseem as strange and alien to me as these peopleover here would have it. After I am finished withmyself, an observer who could read my thoughtsand watch my actions would never believe that



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I was raised in the United States ( Jackson 38). Asthe decade wore on, Jackson continued reading,writing, and acting according to his growing sensethat violent revolution would be the only avenuetoward personal and collective liberation. Hissupport for the anticolonial struggles in Africa led

Jackson to see the United States as itself a colonialpower. He learned everything he could about theIndian wars in the United States in the nineteenthcentury, the struggles in the Philippines in the latenineteenth and early twentieth century, and theVietnam War. Writing to Fay Stender in March1970, Jackson argued, the people of the U.S. areheld in the throes of a form of colonialism. Con-trol of their subsistence and nearly every aspect ofthe circumstances surrounding their existence haspassed into the hands of a clearly distinct andalienated oligarchy.

As his view deepened that the United Statesshould be understood as a colonial power, Jacksonincreasingly understood African Americans as acolonized people. These philosophies led Jacksonto look toward successful anticolonial revolutionsin Asia, Africa, and Latin America for tacticalguidance. Jacksons views in this area drew on thework of Ernesto Che Guevara, the Argentin-ean-born revolutionary and architect of the Cu-ban revolution, over that of Fidel Castro. To onecorrespondent, Jackson noted, Im more identi-fiable with Ernesto than with Fidel. When this isover I immediately go under ( Jackson 208). Inaddition to Che, Jackson made clear the broadrange of revolutionary thought that shaped hisphilosophy. In the late 1960s, the Chinese Revo-lution served as an inspiration to anti-imperialiststruggles throughout Asia, Africa, and LatinAmerica. In addition to the example set by the

victory of his forces in the Chinese civil war of194549, Mao Zedongs writings on revolutionaryphilosophy and tactics circulated widely amongAmerican radicals of the 1960s and 1970s. Quo-tations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, popularlyknown as the Little Red Book was first issuedin China during the Cultural Revolution of thelate 1960s and early 1970s where it inspired theRed Guard, made up of high school and collegestudents intensely devoted to Mao and the

Communist Party. In the United States it becamea kind of talisman to committed revolutionariesand student activists, particularly on the westcoast. An inmate in Soledad at the same time as

Jackson recalled that there were several copies ofthe Red Book circulating among Soledad in-mates in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Cummins138). Lin Biaos preface to the second editionmade clear that the sound bite quality of thetext was an intentional effort to help the masseslearn Mao Tse-Tungs thought more effectively(Cheek 172). Perhaps the most famous quote tocome from this book, political power grows outof the barrel of a gun, was a clear influence on

Jacksons thinking. Mao saw the use of armedforce as among the most important elements of arevolutionary movement: Revolutionary war isan antitoxin, Mao wrote, which not only elim-inates the enemys poison but also purges us ofour own filth (Mao 60). War quite literallyclears the way for a new form of government; asit does so, it simultaneously transforms the mindof the revolutionary. In giving oneself over tocollective struggle, the revolutionary simulta-neously claims and legitimizes his or her power.

As the Little Red Book migrated acrossthe Pacific, Maos writings also spoke directly tothe United States as an imperialist power. In the1960s, with revolutions in Vietnam and the Congomaking strides toward eventual victory, the USmilitary and intelligence agencies intervened onbehalf of leaders who promised continued US in-fluence. US involvement in thwarting anti-impe-rialist struggles in Asia, Africa, and Latin Americawas a cornerstone of Cold War foreign policy.This involvement, however, enabled Mao tolegitimately link the United States to the exploit-

ative imperialist regimes its policies, money, andmilitary aided. In an essay that appeared in theUnited States in 1969, Mao charged the UnitedStates with murdering Congolese-leader PatriceLumumba and suppressing his liberation move-ment (Cheek 16768). He argued that US inter-vention in the Congo, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia,Malaysia, Cuba, and all Latin America repre-sented a form of neocolonialism. But Mao offeredan alternative vision: U.S. imperialism and the



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reactionaries of all countries are paper tigers. Thestruggle of the Chinese people proved this. Thestruggle of the Vietnamese people is now provingit. The struggle of the Congolese people will cer-tainly prove it too. Strengthening national unityand persevering in protracted struggle, the Con-golese people will certainly be victorious, andU.S. imperialism will certainly be defeated. Peo-ple of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. ag-gressors and all their running dogs! (Cheek 168).In the end, Mao did more than provide an his-torical lesson in the victory of a peoples struggle.Maos writings described a link between US pol-icies and imperialism at the same time that theChinese government provided material support torevolutionary movements around the world. AsGeorge Jackson and other African American ac-tivists became interested in anticolonial strugglesin Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America,Maos thinking increasingly influenced their pol-itics and tactics. For example, in a letter to AngelaDavis later included in Soledad Brother, Jacksonprecisely echoes Maos sentiment: Its notpossible for anyone to still think that Westernmechanized warfare is absolute, not after the ex-periences of the Third World since World War II.The French had tanks in Algeria, the US had themin Cuba. Everything, I mean every trick and gad-get in the manual of Western arms has beenthrown at the VC [Viet Cong], and they havethrown them back, twisted and ruined; and theyhave written books and pamphlets telling us howwe could do the same ( Jackson 221).

The writings of Franz Fanon served as a keysupplement to Maos vision of the eventual vic-tory of anti-imperialist struggles. Although Fanondied in 1961, translations of his three most im-

portant books, A Dying Colonialism, The Wretch-ed of the Earth, and Black Face White Mask, firstreached the American reading public in mass-market paperbacks only after his death. Althoughthey would be confiscated from Jacksons cell in

January 1970, he continued to recommend themto new acquaintances when asked for readingsuggestions ( Jackson 22526). These works didnot merely mimic Maos rhetoric; by focusingon the racist component of imperialism, Fanon

provided a crucial element for US-based leftiststhat had been missing from Maos writings: therelationship between colonialism and racism. In a1956 speech before the First Congress of NegroWriters and Artists, Fanon, though a psychologistby training, urged his Paris audience to thinkabout the cultural components of racism. In an-swer to his own question, How does an op-pressing people behave? Fanon replied,

We witness the destruction of cultural val-ues, of ways of life. Language, dress, tech-niques, are devalorized. How can oneaccount for this constant? Psychologists,who tend to explain everything by move-ments of the psyche, claim to discover thisbehavior on the level of contacts betweenindividuals: the criticism of an original hat,of a way of speaking, of walking. Such at-tempts deliberately leave out of account thespecial character of the colonial situation. Inreality the nations that undertake a colonialwar have no concern for the confrontationsof cultures. War is a gigantic business andevery approach must be governed by thedatum. The enslavement, the strictest sense,of the native population is the prime neces-sity. For this its systems of reference have tobe broken. Expropriation, spoliation, raids,

objective murder, are matched by the sack-ing of cultural patterns, or at least conditionsuch sacking. The social panorama isdestructured; values are flaunted, crushed,emptied.(Fanon, Toward the African Revolution 33)

The process of colonization, according to Fanon,relies on denigration of the physical and culturalattributes of the colonized people. The culturalwork of racism also serves to mirror the milita-

rized destruction of opposition and the exploita-tion of any possible economic resources. It doesso by breaking the systems of referencethevalues, kinship systems, religious beliefs, languag-es, and the likethat provide an oppositionalframework for colonized people.

In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon moredirectly identified the police and the military asthe key upholders of colonialism; it is they whoare empowered to break the natives: In the



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colonial countries, the policemen and the soldier,by their immediate presence and their frequentand direct action maintain contact with the nativeand advise him by means of rifle butts and napalmnot to budge. It is obvious here that the agents ofgovernment speak the language of pure force. Theintermediary does not lighten the oppression, norseek to hide the domination; He shows them upand puts them into practice with the clear con-science of an upholder of the peace; yet he is thebringer of violence into the home and into themind of the native (38). The linking of racism,colonialism, and police power provided theessential backdrop for those like Jackson whoexperienced policing and incarceration firsthand.Fanonlike Maoshowed that resistance wasnot only possible; it was the only option for thosewho rejected a position of submission. Accordingto Fanonand a whole generation of what wouldcome to be called cultural nationalists, a revo-lution can occur when colonized people come todevalue the culture of their oppressor and em-brace a new culture that valorizes decolonizedways of life. In A Dying Colonialism, Fanon de-scribed the comprehensive quality of this reversal:The same time that the colonized man braceshimself to reject oppression, a radical transforma-tion takes place within him which makes any at-tempt to maintain the colonial system impossibleand shocking (179).

Once this transformation took place in GeorgeJackson, the correctional officers who controlledmuch of his daily life began to take on a differentsignificance. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanondescribed this change in a different context: thesymbols of social orderthe police, the buglecalls in the barracks, military parades and the

waving flagsare at one and the same time in-hibitory and stimulating: for they do not conveythe message Dont dare to budge; rather, theycry out Get ready to attack (53). Jackson wasready. His writings convey the assurance that thecolonialism of African America would be over-turned by the power of the peoples struggle. Hesaw clear and positive evidence of this success inthe revolutions in China, Cuba, and Vietnam.Furthermore, he was uninterested in using the

avenues of electoral politics to achieve change:Peoples war, class struggle, war of liberationmeans armedstruggle. Men like Hoover, Reagan,Hunt, Agnew, Johnson, Helms, Westmoreland,Abrams, Campbell, Carswell, are dangerous menwho believe that they are the rightful fu hrers ofthe worlds people. They must be dealt with now.Can men like these be converted? he asked rhe-torically, Will they allow anyone to maneuverthem out of their positions of power while theystill live? Would Nixon accept a peoples govern-ment, a peoples economy? ( Jackson 169). Jack-son and a growing number of incarceratedrevolutionaries felt strongly that the time foranalysis and negotiation had passed. As C. L. R.

James observed shortly after Jacksons death: It isquite obvious that where [W.E.B.] DuBois andmyself were observing a situation, taking part,organizationally in our various ways, but guidedby theoretically, that is to say intellectual devel-opment, the generation to which Jackson be-longed has arrived at the profound conclusionthat the only way of life possible to them is thecomplete intellectual, physical, moral commit-ment to the revolutionary struggle against capi-talism ( James 56). Jacksons Soledad Brother,then, provides more than a window into a cur-riculum of covert prison education, but, increas-ingly, into the covert action of a growing group ofpeople who saw themselves, in Jacksons words,as the vanguard, catalyst, in any meaningfulchange ( Jackson 216).

By the last months of Jacksons life, the ex-plicitly revolutionary aims of his violence clearlyescalated. According to Luis Talamantez, a tiertender at the Adjustment Center in San Quentinat the time that it held Jackson, even that highest

security unit had books by Marx, Mao, Lenin,Fanon, Hegel, Trotsky, Ho Chi Minh, GeneralGiap, Nkrumah, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, andother revolutionary authors going around (Cum-mins 196). Jackson may have been uniquely sit-uated to read an unusually broad range ofrevolutionary literature, Talamentez believes, be-cause of legal support and oversight provided bythe Soledad Brothers Defense Committee. Nev-ertheless, once on the tier, these works circulated



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extensively among inmates. Contraband bookswould be copied by hand and passed among thetiers. One former inmate recalled reading TheCommunist Manifesto after release from prisonand realizing that he had read a hand copied ver-sion of the workwith no visible reference to theauthor or titlebehind bars (Cummins 138).

Jackson and others grew to believe that they werein the vanguard of a revolution that they wouldinstigate.

Rebellion and Prison Culture

In a dramatic and violent attempt to seek therelease of the Soledad Brothers, Jacksons youngerbrother Jonathan entered the Marin County, Cal-ifornia courthouse, armed three prisoners in acourtroom, and took as hostages a judge, an as-sistant district attorney and three jurors. Jonathanmay have believed that San Quentins infamousno negotiation policyin which prison author-ities refused to negotiate for the release of hos-tages under any circumstanceswould not beobserved in the courtroom. He was mistaken.Guards opened fire on Jonathan, the inmates, andthe hostages. Prison authorities shot and killed thejudge, two of the three inmates, and Jonathan

Jackson.Even before his national celebrity, George

Jackson achieved the rank of Field Marshall inthe BPP when in Soledad Prison. Huey P. New-ton assigned this rank to him while he was in theCalifornia Penal Colony facing murder charges(Newton). Jacksons task was to recruit andeducate new members for the BPP. Founded in

Oakland, California in 1966, the BPP placed acritique of the criminal justice system on the civilrights agenda much more than previous activists.The Panthers are often understood as representinga key break from the earlier nonviolent strategiesof boycotts, sit-ins, and mass demonstrations ex-emplified by the Southern Christian LeadershipConference, the Student Non-Violent Coordinat-ing Committee, and the Congress of RacialEquality. It is important to remember, however,

that a critique of the criminal justice system wascentral to those organizations as well. For exam-ple, Martin Luther King, Jr.s 1963 Letter from aBirmingham Jail explains the moral justificationfor breaking unjust laws: A law is unjust if it isinflicted on a minority that, as a result of beingdenied the right to vote, had no part in enacting ordevising the law (King 83). Disobeying the lawalso had a tactical appeal to King. By filling thejails with civil rights protestors, King hoped toraise the cost of segregation so high that it wouldlose its practical appeal to municipalities. Withthe founding of the Panthers, the critique of thecriminal justice system expanded to include adiscussionin line with the thinking of FranzFanonthat the system represented a primarymeans to oppress African American communities.Three of the points in their 1966 Ten Point Pro-gram concerned the criminal justice system; theycalled for an end to police brutality, release of allblack men from jails and prisons, and a jury trialmade up of black people for black defendants.This manifesto brought extraordinary police scru-tiny, but also attracted the attention of incarcer-ated people.

Incarcerated African Americans were close ob-servers of the civil rights movement long beforethe Panthers, but without specific attention to therelationship between the criminal justice systemand racial inequality, they had few avenues to di-rectly participate in the movement. This is not tosay that they did nothing. For example, the DeuelVocational Institution in California experiencedtwo major racial conflicts per year during theearly 1960s. Riots coincided with and were in-spired by racial conflicts occurring outside theprison, including the boxing victories of aging

welterweight Sugar Ray Robinson and anticolo-nial rioting in the Congo in 1959 and 1960(Rudoff 164; Useem and Kimball 9293).2 It isimportant to point out, however, that the riotingin Deuel was between incarcerated groups ofdifferent racial identities rather than against pris-on administrators. As expressions of racial prideand antagonism, they reacted to national and in-ternational conflicts but did not explicitly artic-ulate local grievances or the structural critique of



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the late 1960s and 1970s. Incarcerated people in-creasingly embraced the philosophies of Marx,Mao, and Fanon, but made clear that the criminaljustice system and correctional officers would bea primary target for their activism. The coverteducation and inmate discussion groups wouldserve as the initial conduit for this activism.

Eldridge Cleaver became active in the BPPand its Minister of Information shortly afterhis release from San Quentin. Furthermore, theBPPs scrutiny of the Oakland Police and dra-matic display of weapons at the State Capitolbuilding in Sacramento in the spring of 1967 at-tracted additional attention. In October of 1967,Huey Newton, one of the two founders of theParty and its most visible spokesperson, wascharged with murdering a police officer. In Marchof 1968, a second shootout with the police result-ed in the death of young Panther Bobby Huttonand the arrest of seven Panthers. Several othersfled the country to avoid arrest (Cleaver andLinfield 183). Newton beat those charges intime to be present at the funeral for Jonathan

Jackson and William Christmas, where his eulogypushed Kings analysis of the relationship be-tween racial oppression and civil disobedience ofunjust laws: There are no laws that the oppressormakes that the oppressed are bound to respect(Heath 32233).

It was not an infrequent occurrence for mem-bers of the BPP to be in prison. In addition toCleaver and Newton, founder Bobby Seale was infederal prison stemming from charges in theChicago 8 conspiracy trial of 196970. Fifteenmembers of the Detroit organizing committee ofthe Black Panthers were arrested after an alterca-tion with the police. In 1969, the east coast lead-

ership of the BPP was arrested on conspiracycharges and not acquitted until May 1971. Inaddition to the incarceration of Panther leaders,people incarcerated for other crimes formed Pan-ther chapters behind bars. In Louisianas notori-ous Angola State Prison, Albert Woodfox andHerman Wallace founded a chapter in 1970,where they would be confined to single-cellsolitary confinement (Morris). Other chapterswere founded at San Quentin, Walla Walla State

Penitentiary in Washington, and Attica (BlackPanther; Mark Cook).3

One year after the death of Jonathan Jackson, acorrections officer shot and killed George Jack-son. The Department of Corrections explainedthe shooting death of George Jackson as resultingfrom an escape attempt. Their theory posited thatStephen Bingham, his attorney, smuggled in a gunwhich Jackson hid in his hair. With gun in hand,

Jackson forced the opening of thirty of the onehundred cells of the Adjustment Center. Some ofthese inmates used razor blades to kill threeguards and two white prisoners who worked inthe Adjustment Center. Jackson then fled fromthe center and ran toward a twenty-foot stonewall topped with barbed wire. A guard then firedon Jackson from a tower (Lamott 216; Durden-Smith; Mann).4 The story stretched the limits ofmany peoples imaginations. Georgia Jackson,

Jacksons mother, felt that her son was set up:They killed him and set him out in the yard andphotographed him and then said he tried toescape (Wicker, Death of a Brother 37). WhileTom Wicker of the New York Times stoppedshort of this theory, he acknowledged in a columnthat, many persons would not believe the officialexplanation of George Jacksons death (Wicker,Surface and Core).

Alternative explanations seemed much moreplausible, given the continuous pattern of policeviolence. In February 1968, the South CarolinaHighway Patrol shot and killed three studentsfrom South Carolina State University in Orange-burg (Bass and Nelson). In December 1969, theChicago Police Department shot into the head-quarters of the Illinois BPP at 4:45 a.m., killingFred Hampton and Mark Clark while they slept

(Wilkins and Clark). In May 1970, the Ohio Na-tional Guard opened fire on a peaceful protest atKent State University, killing four students andwounding eleven. Two more students were killedat Jackson State in Mississippi ten days later. Thismounting pattern of violence shocked manyAmericans, including those behind bars. How-ever, it was the particular impact of the killing ofGeorge Jackson that confirmed for many incar-cerated people that time for collective action had



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come. There were memorial services, work stop-pages and silent protests at prisons around thecountry, but the most dramatic response to Jack-sons death occurred at Attica State Prison inwestern New York.

The official McKay Commission report foundthat the Attica riot was not preplanned, but theyalso found ample evidence of a radicalized inmatepopulation. As at prisons across the country, dis-cussion groups led by the Nation of Islam, theBlack Panthers, the Five Percenters, the YoungLords, and white radicals like Sam Melville dis-cussed the social and political issues of the day.These discussion groups filled the gap left by thelack of an official education program. Whereasfourteen hundred inmates performed some formof institutional maintenance, the education de-partment enrolled fewer than three hundred in-mates in basic skills, high school equivalency, andpublic speaking classes (New York State SpecialCommission on Attica 4041). This led those in-mates seeking more intellectually challenging orsocially conscious content to turn to one another.Several formed an inmate-led sociology class inthe summer of 1971 (New York State SpecialCommission on Attica 107). According to theMcKay Commission, these classes, discussiongroups, and informal debates led to a series oforganized protests that summer. Despite thesestrides, politically active inmates found it verydifficult to unify people from different racial,religious, and ideological backgrounds. Althoughthey had worked hard to establish a broad base ofsupport and claimed to represent all races andsocial segments of the prison, it is telling thatonly five inmates constituted the Attica Libera-tion Faction (ALF) in July. These fiveFrank

Lott, Herbert X. Blyden, Donald Noble, CarlJones-El, and Peter Butlerwere among the mostexperienced activists in Attica. Blyden had par-ticipated in a rebellion at the Tombs prison inNew York City the previous year, helping towrite their list of demands. Others had been in-volved in a sit-down strike at Auburn prison(Useem and Kimball 113). It is Blyden who iscredited with demanding that the prisoners betransported to nonimperialist country as a condi-

tion of ending the takeover. While deemed im-practical by one of the outside observers, thisdemand grew logically from the political educa-tion many inmates received while in prison(Wicker, A Time to Die 185). Blyden and Joneswould later serve on the negotiating committeeduring the takeover.

The presence of people currently or formerlyassociated with the Black MuslimsBlyden and

Jonesprovides one key insight into the organi-zational and ideological power of the Atticarebellion. The relationship between Islam andAfrican Americans is historically linked to thepan-African movement of the late nineteenth andearly twentieth century (Aidi 37). In the earlytwentieth century, several Islamic societies andtemples took root in Detroits African Americancommunity, preaching solidarity among people ofcolor across the world. One adherent of Detroit-based Fard Muhammads Temple of Islam, ElijahMuhammad, would go on to found the Nation ofIslam, which initially advocated a theology thatemphasized historical and cultural bonds betweenAfrican Americans and the economic develop-ment of black communities. Elijah Muhammadalso developed a theology that emphasized theracist underpinnings of inequality and exploita-tion, leading to strong political stands andgovernment attention. During World War II,Muhammad was jailed for sedition after voicinghis support for Japan. After Muhammads release,he would continue to focus on the spiritual andpolitical development of incarcerated AfricanAmericans. Most notably, Muhammad corre-sponded with future civil rights leader MalcolmX. In 1964, Clarence 13X, a member of the Har-lem Mosque of the Nation of Islam, parted ways

with the Nation of Islam and founded the FivePercent Nation of Gods and Earths, or the FivePercent Nation. Five Percenters and members ofthe Nation of Islam continued to disagree on ma-jor theological questions, but both groups playedkey roles in the political life of Attica (Aidi 40).

In addition, to the Panthers, the Five PercentNation, and the Nation of Islam, the Young Lordsmaintained an active presence in Attica. TheYoung Lords held many similar views to the



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BPP, situating them within the specific context ofPuerto Rican politics (Morales 215).5 The YoungLords were founded as a Chicago street gang inthe 1950s, but became a revolutionary politicalorganization after Young Lord Jose Cha Cha

Jimenez met Fred Hampton when both were inprison in 1968 (Morales 212). Hampton, the char-ismatic leader of the Chicago branch of the BPP,forged an alliance with the Young Lords and theYoung Patriots, a group of white working-classradicals. Puerto Rican activists in New York tooknote of the new political orientation of the YoungLords and formed a satellite chapter. The NewYork chapter modeled their Thirteen-Point Pro-gram on the Panthers Ten-Point Program. TheYoung Lords called for the freeing of all PuertoRican prisoners, an end to military presence inPuerto Rico, and self-determination. Soon after itstransition to a militant political organization, theYoung Lords combined militant tactics with cru-cial services in poor communities. For example,they provided free breakfast and clothing in ElBarrioNew Yorks East Harlemand occupieda church when it refused to provide space(Morales 214). Their explicit calls for armedstruggle and reproductive rights, however, werenot part of the Panthers Program (Nelson).

The ALF sent a list of demandsbased largelyon the Folsom Prisoners Manifestoto Commis-sioner of Corrections Russell Oswald and Gov-ernor Nelson Rockefeller, including calls forimproved medical care, food, clothing, and work-ing conditions. They wrote to Oswald that theywere determined to do this in a democratic man-ner (Wicker, A Time to Die 135). Oswald ac-knowledged receipt of the demands, but had notacted on them other than to refuse Attica Super-

intendent Vincent Mancusis request to transferthe five. Mancusi responded by increasing thefrequency of cell searches, censoring all referencesto prison conditions from news sources, and an-nouncing that there would be no prizes awardedto the winners of the upcoming Labor Day sport-ing competitions (Wicker, A Time to Die 137).Although angered by these developments, themajor organized groups at Atticaincludingthe Five Percenters, Young Lords, the Nation of

Islam, and the Black Panthersremained dividedin their priorities for change, tactical approach,and basic beliefs.

After recalling how difficult it had been toconvince people to work through their differencesto establish a unified front in working towardmuch-needed reforms, Donald Noble, a memberof the ALF and a signatory of the July 2 list ofdemands, recalled that the situation changed dra-matically and immediately upon the news of

Jacksons death: What really solidified things wasGeorge Jacksons death. This had a reaction on thepeople, one that we were trying to accomplish allalong, to bring the people together. We thought,How can we pay tribute to George Jackson?because a lot of us idolized him and things that hewas doing and things that he was exposing aboutthe system. So, we decided that we would have asilent fast that whole day in honor of him. Wewould wear black armbands. No one was to eatanything that whole day. We noted that if thepeople could come together for this, than theycould come together for other things (Prisons on

Fire). Many inmates had only a peripheral knowl-edge of the political protest movements outside ofprison or of the activists in Attica before Jacksonsdeath, but became willing to join the movement.Frank Smith did not even know who Jackson wasbefore going to breakfast on the morning after

Jacksons death. I didnt know anything aboutGeorge Jackson. So, when we got to the mess hallthat morning, everything was quiet. No one wassaying nothing, and youre talking about five, six,seven hundred people! Inmates! So, I said to mybuddy, Whats up, man? (Prisons on Fire).6 Hisfriend then told him about Jackson, leading toSmiths decision not to eat as well. Smith would

go on to be a member of the negotiating com-mittee during the rebellion and was singled outfor torture after the prison was retaken by theDepartment of Corrections.

This peaceful protest was a turning point: mul-tiracial lines of inmates indicated their solidarityand mourning by wearing black armbands. Aftermarching single-file into breakfast, they sat si-lently and refused to eat. One correction officerdescribed his impression of the protest: I was



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scared shitless (New York State Special Com-mission on Attica 140). On August 30, three hun-dred inmates staged a second peaceful protest, thistime signing up for sick call and occupying thehospital area to dramatize the substandard healthfacilities. In just one week, inmate leaders man-aged to turn the unity of the Jackson memorialinto a protest with a clear goal. Where only thefive members of the Attica Liberation Front werewilling to state their demands the previous month,now there were hundreds. The atmosphere wasclearly tense at Attica, but the inmates remainedorganized and peaceful. Finally, on September 2,Commissioner Oswald recorded a message thatwas played over the prison public address system,warning inmates that it would take time to im-plement requested changes. The inmates inter-preted this as stonewalling, but it would notdirectly lead to the riot. As with many riots, aperception that the policeor in this case correc-tional officersused unnecessary force was theimmediate spark that touched off the riot. OnSeptember 8, there was an altercation betweencorrectional officers and two inmates. Later thatday, correctional officers led two inmates whothey believed to be responsible to Housing BlockZ (HBZ), the disciplinary housing unit where in-mates were locked down for twenty-three hoursper day (New York State Special Commission onAttica 76). Ray Lamorie, one of the two, had notbeen involved in the altercation. Observers sawofficers strike Leroy Dewer, the other inmate,while taking him to HBZ. In addition, inmatesbelieved that HBZ was a site of routine, brutalbeatings by correctional officers. Correctionalofficers actively encouraged these rumors in anattempt, according to one correctional officer,

to try and keep the inmates in line (New YorkState Special Commission on Attica 149). Thefollowing day, September 9, inmates subduedLieutenant Robert Curtis in a tunnel that divid-ed the prison yard into quarters. A group of fif-teen to twenty-five inmates eventually subduedfour guards and locked them in cells. The uprisingquickly spread to the other cellblocks, with overtwelve hundred inmates congregating in CellBlock D.

None of the members of the Attica LiberationFront participated in the initial rioting. However,they quickly took advantage of the opportunitythe riot provided to move the inmate populationtoward more explicit demands for change (Useemand Kimball 94). The inmates created a committeeto negotiate with Commissioner Oswald and de-manded that outside observers be present. Theseincluded elected officials, members of the press,prisoners rights organizations, leftist lawyers,

Juan Ortiz and Jose Paris of the Young Lords,Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, andBobby Seale of the Black Panthers. AlthoughFarrakhan had written about the plight of pris-oners in Muhammad Speaks he did not go to At-tica, reportedly on orders from Elijah Muhammad(New York State Special Commission on Attica234). Despite ongoing negotiations, GovernorNelson Rockefeller ordered the correctionalauthorities to retake the prison by force. This de-cision resulted in the killing of thirty-ninepeopleten hostages and twenty-nine inmates.

After the summer of 1971, some people arguedthat the connections between Jackson and Atticawent far beyond shared experiences, grievances,and education and that they resulted from a na-tional Marxist conspiracy. There does not appearto be evidence to support claims that there was anunderground network of radical prisoners. Nev-ertheless, such chargesand the evidence of on-going unrest in prisonswould be used to increasespending on repressive policing and corrections. Itwould also make prisons far more polarized thanthe united front of intellectuals and activists calledfor by George Jackson and the Attica brothers.The culture of American prisons would take a darkturn after the summer of 1971. While Bob Dylan

was performing his memorial to George Jackson,guards in San Quentins Adjustment Center sang,to the tune of John Browns Body:

George Jacksons body is rotting in thegrave.The revolutionary soldiers are rotting intheir grave. (Cummins 225)

As this lyric implies, in the wake of Attica andother prison uprisings of the 1970s, guards



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increasingly advocated white supremacy and Naziideology. One white inmate of San Quentin dur-ing this period believes that black inmates wereresponsible for the murders of twelve guards inthe California prison system within a few months.If [the white guards] had been secret bigots, herecalled, they now turned into outright racists(Bunker 265). It is particularly notable that in1971, no African Americans were employed ascorrectional officers in Attica at a time whenroughly fifty-four percent of the inmate popula-tion was black. One African American was em-ployed in the education department. There wasone Puerto Rican correctional officer comparedwith nine percent of the inmates. While many ofthese officers may not have harbored racist sen-timents, it is notable that upon retaking the facil-ity, one anonymous correctional officer scrawled32 dead niggers, gloating of what he surelyviewed as a notable accomplishment (New YorkState Special Commission on Attica).

This scrawl would not be the last word onGeorge Jackson and Attica. Long after Dylanstopped performing his ballad, Jackson would in-spire the British reggae group Steel Pulse, Texas-based punk band The Dicks, Rhythm and Bluessinger J. P. Robinson, and alternative-folk per-former Sonny Meadows. They would continue toinfluence the views and actions of American pris-oners. Most notably, women incarcerated at theFederal Reformatory for Women in Alderson,W. V., staged a work stoppage during a memorialservice for the people killed at Attica. Accordingto the New York Times, between 100 and 200women occupied the prisons former garment fac-tory for four days, refusing to report to their jobs.They presented prison officials with a list of for-

ty-two demands, which ranged from speedier ac-tion by parole boards to more vocational training,disinfectants for cottages and lower prices oncommissary items (A Womans Prison That Re-sembles a Campus 22). The covert education inradical politics and history that preceding theSoledad Brothers incident and Attica riot gavepeople like George Jackson, Richard X. Clark,L. D. Barkley, and countless others a new contextto understand their place in American society and

a strategy to transform it. The Attica prisonersproposedand the Department of Correctionsagreedto moderninze the inmate educationsystem (Wicker, A Time to Die 317).7 In 1975, agroup of colleges in Western New York formedthe Consortium of the Niagara Frontier in orderto administer a program of study leading to aBachelors of Arts program at three New Yorkcorrectional facilities, including Attica. Eightyprofessors taught courses to approximately 350students (Dippel). This was a far cry from thepaltry program of five teachers providing educa-tion in only basic skills before the rebellion.

Notes

1. The Black Guerrilla Family continues on in American prisons,including much of its political orientation as a Marxist revolutionarymovement. However, according to the US Department of Justice,members of the group also engage in the illegal drug trade and otherillicit activities (US Department of Justice 4).

2. In 1958, the Mexican Mafia was founded in Deuel with thegoal of monopolizing illicit activity within the prison (US Depart-ment of Justice 3).

3. There were surely many more Panther chapters, althoughwithout formal recognition.

4. Bingham stood trial for his part in the escape attempt in 1986and was acquitted. There are many contradictory versions of thisstory and I make no attempt to judge the accuracy of them here.

5. Although the Young Lords explicitly espoused Puerto Ricanliberation, Iris Morales estimates that twenty-five percent of itsmembership was African American and that it included Cubans,Dominicans, Mexicans, Panamanians, Columbians, and one JapaneseAmerican.

6. In fact, the McKay Commission put the number of inmatesparticipating in that silent protest at seven hundred, out of an inmatepopulation of 2,243. One thousand two hundred and eighty-one in-mates participated in the takeover (New York State Special Com-mission on Attica 187).

7. These were later expanded to thirty-three proposals, twenty-eight of which proved acceptable to Russell Oswald, Commissioner

of Corrections. They also asked for, and were granted, a Spanish-language library. A side-by-side comparison of the proposals andthose accepted by the Department of Corrections appears in theNew York State Special Commission on Attica 25157.

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Documents

Bernstein. George Jackson and the Culture of American Prisons in the 1970s