Biography
George Lester Jackson was a Black revolutionary, author, and Field Marshal of the Black Panther Party — and the most influential Black political prisoner of his generation. Sentenced in 1961 at age 18 to one year to life for his alleged role in a $70 gas station robbery, he served the remaining ten years of his life behind bars, much of it in solitary confinement at Soledad and San Quentin. From inside, he co-founded the Black Guerrilla Family in 1966 and became a Field Marshal of the BPP in 1970. His prison letters, published in 1970 as Soledad Brother, became one of the foundational texts of the Black liberation movement, selling hundreds of thousands of copies and translated worldwide. His second book, Blood in My Eye, was completed days before his death and published posthumously in 1972.
In January 1970, after a white guard at Soledad shot and killed three Black prisoners during a yard fight, another guard, John Mills, was beaten to death and thrown from a tier. Jackson, along with Fleeta Drumgo and John Cluchette — known as the Soledad Brothers — were charged with the killing despite no physical evidence connecting them to it. The case became an international cause. On August 7, 1970, Jacksons 17-year-old brother Jonathan Jackson stormed the Marin County Courthouse in an attempt to free his brother, taking a judge and three jurors hostage; Jonathan, the judge, and two prisoners died in the resulting shootout.
On August 21, 1971, three days before he was scheduled to stand trial for the Mills killing, George Jackson was killed by guards at San Quentin in an alleged escape attempt that has been widely disputed in the decades since. He was 29 years old. The killing triggered the Attica prison rebellion three weeks later. Drumgo and Cluchette were acquitted at trial in 1972.
