George Lester Jackson (September 23, 1941 – August 21, 1971) was an American author, prisoner, and revolutionary. While serving an indeterminate sentence for stealing $71 at gunpoint from a gas station in 1960, Jackson became involved in the Black power movement and founded a far-left prison gang, the Black Guerrilla Family.
In 1970, he was one of three prisoners dubbed the Soledad Brothers. They were charged with the murder at Soledad Prison of corrections officer John V. Mills, allegedly in retaliation for the shooting deaths of three black inmates by a white prison guard several days prior. Also in 1970, Jackson published Soledad Brother, a collection of his letters that comprised a combination autobiography and manifesto addressed primarily to a Black American audience, but which was embraced by radicals around the world. The book was a bestseller and earned Jackson international fame.
In August 1971, Jackson was killed by prison guards during an escape attempt at San Quentin State Prison. During the attempt, Jackson and other inmates took three guards and two inmates hostage, who were later found dead in Jackson's cell. Three other guards were wounded but survived. Jackson never went to trial for the Mills murder.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Jackson was the second of five children of Robert Lester and Georgia Bea Jackson. In a letter written in June of 1970, he recalled the following about his parents and early childhood:My mother was a country girl from Harrisburg, Illinois. My father was born in East St. Louis, Illinois. They met in Chicago, and were living on Lake Street near Racine [Avenue] when I was born. It was in one of the oldest sections of Chicago, part ghetto residential, part factory. The el train passed a few yards from our front windows (the only windows really). There were factories across the street and garage shops on the bottom level of our flat. I felt right in the middle of things.
As a young teen, Jackson began getting into legal trouble while his family lived in the housing projects of Chicago. In the hope of placing his son in a better environment, Jackson's father transferred his U.S. Post Office job to Los Angeles in 1956. He and George drove cross-country and initially stayed in Watts, and then settled in Pasadena where the rest of the family joined them. The relocation to L.A. did not end George's clashes with the law. At age 15, he was sent to prison reformatory for driving without a license. He also had juvenile convictions for armed robbery, assault, and burglary, and spent two years in California Youth Authority correctional facilities.
On September 18, 1960, five days before his 19th birthday, Jackson was arrested for participating with Robert Earl Young in the armed robbery at gunpoint of $71 (equivalent to $800 in 2026) from a Standard Oil service station in Los Angeles. In December 1960, Jackson pled guilty to second-degree robbery. The following January he was sentenced to one year to life in prison. The judge pointed to Jackson's previous arrests as justification for the harsh sentence. He would remain in prison until his death.
During his first years at San Quentin State Prison, Jackson involved himself in revolutionary activity. He was characterized by prison officials as egocentric and anti-social. In 1966, he befriended fellow inmate W. L. Nolen, who introduced him to Marxist, Leninist and Maoist political thought, which would later form the ideological basis of the Black Guerrilla Family. In speaking of his ideological transformation, Jackson remarked: "I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me." In Blood in My Eye (1972), Jackson labeled himself a "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Fanonist".
As Jackson's disciplinary infractions grew, he spent more time in lock-up and solitary confinement. He developed into an autodidact who read extensively and studied political economy and radical theory. He also wrote many letters to family members, friends and supporters, which would later be edited and compiled into the books Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson, and the posthumously published Blood in My Eye. Soledad Brother was an instant bestseller and brought Jackson a great deal of attention from leftist organizers and intellectuals in the U.S. and Europe. He amassed prison followers, including some whites and Latinos in addition to other black inmates.
At the beginning of 1969, Jackson and Nolen were transferred from San Quentin to Soledad Prison. On January 13, 1970, corrections officer Opie G. Miller shot and killed Nolen and two other black prisoners (Cleveland Edwards and Alvin Miller) during a yard riot with members of the Aryan Brotherhood. Officer Miller, regarded as an expert marksman, was stationed in the guard tower overlooking the yard. His first three rifle shots killed the three black inmates; his fourth shot wounded a white inmate. After Nolen's death, Jackson became increasingly confrontational with corrections officials; he spoke often about the need to protect fellow inmates and take revenge on prison guards, employing what Jackson called "selective retaliatory violence".
On January 17, 1970, Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Clutchette were charged with murdering corrections officer John Vincent Mills, who was beaten and thrown from the third tier 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 recent shooting deaths by Officer Miller of the three black Soledad inmates, and for the fact that Miller was cleared earlier that day by a grand jury, which ruled that his actions during the prison fight constituted justifiable homicide.
Jackson, Drumgo, and Clutchette soon became known to the public as the "Soledad Brothers". Various political activists worked to exonerate the three men, who they viewed as political prisoners being punished based on their race. The activists also wanted to bring attention to the disproportionate rates at which people of color are incarcerated in the U.S., and to the socio-economic factors they felt had led to their imprisonment in the first place. Francis Carney describes how the fate of the Soledad Brothers grew into a leftist cause célèbre akin to the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930s:The state's case against them [Soledad Brothers] seemed flimsy, trumped-up. Jackson and another Brother, Fleeta Drumgo, had been spreading radical ideas in the prison, were becoming heroes there. Had the state, fearing revolt in the prisons, tried to frame the Brothers, pin a flimsy murder rap on them, and execute them to get them out of the way and cow the inmates with their example? Thousands believed that this was so.
The Soledad Brothers Defense Committee was formed by activist attorney Fay Stender, who had edited Soledad Brother and arranged for its publication. Many famous writers and celebrities expressed their support for the committee. Among them was radical activist Angela Davis, who became committee co-chairperson and a close friend of Jackson. They corresponded frequently, and he sent her his manuscript for Soledad Brother, asking her to read it and help him improve it.
Marin County courthouse incident
On August 7, 1970, George Jackson's 17-year-old brother Jonathan P. Jackson burst into a Marin County courtroom with an automatic weapon. He freed prisoners James McClain, William A. Christmas and Ruchell Magee, and took Judge Harold Haley, Deputy District Attorney Gary Thomas, and three jurors hostage to demand the release of the "Soledad Brothers". Police killed Jackson, Christmas and McClain as they attempted to drive away from the courthouse. Eyewitness testimony suggests Haley died as a result of a bullet discharged from a sawed-off shotgun, which 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 ownership 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. He was freed in 2023 under California's compassionate release law, which was expanded at the start of that year.