"Blackmen born in the U.S. and fortunate enough to live past the age of 18 are conditioned to accept the inevitability of prison. For most of us, it simply looms as the next phase in a sequence of humiliations."
(1941-1971)
Black Panther leader George Jackson was born on September 23, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois. At age 18, he was sentenced to serve an indeterminate term in San Quentin State Prison for a $70 gas station robbery. On August 21, 1971, the FBI, the state of California and other law enforcement agencies killed Jackson with multiple bullets to his chest, but they failed to kill the revolutionary struggle of Black and poor prison inmates that he was instrumental in organizing throughout this country.
Jackson educated himself behind prison bars to the point where his clear vision of historical and contemporary reality and his ability to communicate his perspective had frightened the U.S. power structure into physically liquidating him. Jackson’s survival for so many years in vicious jails, his self-education, and his publication of Soledad Brother were tremendous personal achievements.
His assassination sparked the September 13, 1971 rebellion at Attica State Prison in New York, prompting the bloodiest suppression of an inmate uprising in U.S. history.
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