Angela Yvonne Davis is an American Marxist and feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, and author; she is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). She writes extensively on class, gender, race, and the U.S. prison system.
Leroy Eldridge Cleaver was an American writer, political activist and convicted rapist who became an early leader of the political organization, Black Panther Party.
Huey Percy Newton was an African-American revolutionary and political activist. Newton was most notable for being a co-founder of the Black Panther Party where he operated the organization as the de facto leader. Newton crafted the Party's ten-point manifesto with Bobby Seale in 1966.
George Lester Jackson was an American author, activist and prisoner. While serving an indeterminate sentence for the armed robbery of a gas station in 1961, Jackson became involved in revolutionary activity and co-founded the prison gang Black Guerrilla Family.
San Quentin State Prison (SQ) is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County.
The Black Guerrilla Family is an African-American black power prison and street gang founded in 1966 by George Jackson, George "Big Jake" Lewis, and W. L. Nolen while they were incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, California.
Jonathan Peter Jackson was an American youth, who died of gunshot wounds suffered during his armed invasion of a California courthouse. At age 17, Jackson stormed the Marin County Courthouse with automatic weapons, kidnapping Superior Court Judge Harold Haley, prosecutor Gary Thomas, and three jurors.
The Marin County Civic Center, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is located in San Rafael, California, United States. Groundbreaking for the Civic Center Administration Building took place in 1960, after Wright's death and under the watch of Wright's protégé, Aaron Green; it was completed in 1962. The Hall of Justice was begun in 1966 and completed in 1969. Veterans Memorial Auditorium opened in 1971, and the Exhibit Hall opened in 1976.
Stephen Mitchell Bingham is an American legal services and civil rights attorney who was tried and acquitted in 1986 for his alleged role in Black Panther George Jackson's attempted escape fifteen years earlier from San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, California, in 1971.
The Soledad Brothers were three inmates charged with the murder of a prison guard, John Vincent Mills, at California's Soledad Prison on January 16, 1970. George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Clutchette were alleged to have murdered Mills in retaliation for the shooting deaths of three black prisoners during a prison fight in the exercise yard three days prior by another guard, Opie G. Miller. Clutchette and Drumgo were acquitted by a jury while Jackson was killed in a prison riot prior to trial.
"George Jackson" is a song by Bob Dylan, written in 1971, in tribute to the Black Panther leader George Jackson, who had been shot and killed by guards at San Quentin Prison during an attempted escape on August 21, 1971. The event indirectly provoked the Attica Prison riot.
The San Quentin Six were six inmates at San Quentin State Prison in the U.S. state of California who were charged with actions related to an August 21, 1971 escape attempt that resulted in six deaths and at least two persons seriously wounded. They were Fleeta Drumgo, David Johnson, Hugo Pinell, Johnny Larry Spain, Willie Tate, and Luis Talamantez. The dead included George Jackson, a co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family; two other inmates, and three guards.
Correctional Training Facility (CTF), commonly referenced as Soledad State Prison, is a state prison located on U.S. Route 101, 5 miles (8.0 km) north of Soledad, California, adjacent to Salinas Valley State Prison.
M. Gerald Schwartzbach is an American criminal defense attorney.
The Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, California, United States was the target of two related domestic terrorist attacks in 1970, tied to escalating racial tensions in the state's criminal justice system. On August 7, 17-year-old Jonathan P. Jackson attempted to coerce the release of the Soledad Brothers by kidnapping Superior Court judge Harold Haley from the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, California. As the kidnappers attempted to leave with five hostages by car, court officers shot at Jackson's retreating van, leaving four people dead, including Jonathan Jackson and Judge Haley. Three others were wounded. The event received intense media coverage, as did the subsequent manhunt and trial of Angela Davis, an ousted professor from UCLA with connections to George and Jonathan Jackson, and the Black Panthers. Davis owned the weapons used in the incident but stated that she had no knowledge of its happening. On October 8 of that year, the Weathermen detonated explosives in support of the earlier incident.
Fay Abrahams Stender was an American lawyer from the San Francisco Bay Area, and a prisoner rights activist. Some of her better-known clients included Black Panther leader Huey Newton, and the Soledad Brothers, including Black Guerrilla Family founder George Jackson.
Gary W. Thomas was a Marin County, California prosecutor and Superior Court judge. Thomas was primarily known for his role in the Marin County Civic Center shootout in which he was taken hostage in a courtroom, along with Judge Harold Haley and three female jurors, by Jonathan Jackson and three inmates from San Quentin State Prison in what is widely speculated to be a failed attempt to free his brother, George Jackson, and the other two Soledad Brothers. Haley, Jonathan Jackson, and two of the inmates were killed during the escape attempt, and Thomas was paralyzed from the waist down.
Brothers is a 1977 American drama film directed by Arthur Barron and produced by Edward Lewis and Mildred Lewis. It stars Bernie Casey, Vonetta McGee, Ron O'Neal, John Lehne, Stu Gilliam, Renny Roker, Owen Pace, Dwan Smith and Martin St. Judge in the lead roles.
If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance is a collection of writings about U.S. legal trials and prisons, edited by Angela Davis and published in 1971. Contributors included Black Panther Party members and the Soledad Brothers. As Davis' first book, it contains description of her experiences in prison. The book was positively received by African-American and communist media of the time.
Blood in My Eye is a book of political philosophy written by George Jackson, a co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family. Jackson finished writing the book only days before he was killed during an escape attempt from San Quentin State Prison on 21 August 1971. The book was first published on 1 January 1972.
