Talamantez of San Quentin Six
'Thousands of George Jacksons are in prison today'
By Brenda
Sandburg
San Francisco
Luis Talamantez, one of the San Quentin Six, gave a
stirring tribute to George Jackson at a Workers World Party
meeting here Aug. 26.
Thirty years ago, George Jackson was shot to death inside
San Quentin prison during a prison rebellion. Jackson's death
helped to fuel rebellions in dozens of prisons across the
country, including the uprising at Attica that took place the
next month.
On Aug. 21, 1971, Jackson was being returned to San
Quentin's Adjustment Center maximum-security unit when prison
officials claim they spotted a 9-millimeter gun in his Afro
wig. Jackson was able to overcome his captors and disarm
them. Someone then opened the unit's cell doors, freeing 26
prisoners.
The uprising lasted less than 30 minutes, during which
time three prison guards and two inmates were slain. Jackson
was shot in the back almost immediately after running out of
the Adjustment Center.
Jackson was a revolutionary and a prisoner leader who had
spoken out against the brutal conditions and racism inside
the prison walls. Many people believe that prison officials
planned to kill him in retaliation for the death of a Soledad
prison guard.
Two days after he died Jackson was to stand trial along
with two fellow "Soledad Brothers" for the death of a guard
thrown from the third tier of a prison wing a few weeks after
guards had killed three Black prisoners.
At the time of his death, Jackson had been in prison 11
years. When he was 19 he had been given a one-year-to-life
sentence for holding up a gas station. The law that permitted
this "indeterminate sentencing"--usually applied against
outspoken prisoners--was repealed shortly after Jackson's
death.
One year before George Jackson's death his 17-year-old
brother Jonathan had been killed while attempting to free the
Soledad Brothers.
Jonathan Jackson and several prisoners who had been
brought to the Marin County Courthouse took a group of
people, including a Superior Court judge, hostage. He had
planned to take the hostages to a local radio station to air
his demands to free the three Soledad brothers. But as they
left the Civic Center parking lot, prison guards opened fire,
killing Jonathan Jackson, the judge and two of the
prisoners.
The sole survivor was Ruchell "Cinque" Magee, who is still
in prison after 38 years.
The San Quentin Six
After George Jackson's death, prison officials charged six
prisoners--the so-called San Quentin Six--in a 97-count
indictment. Charges ranged from attempted murder, conspiracy,
escape and assault to the killing of the prison guards and
inmates.
Their trial, at the time the longest in California
history, lasted 17 months. Four days each week the six,
shackled and chained, were led into the Marin County
Courthouse under heavy security. Eventually, three were
acquitted and three were convicted of lesser charges.
Talamantez on Jackson
"Our trial showed that law enforcement and prison
officials had set in motion a conspiracy to kill Jackson and
then charged the prisoners with conspiracy," Luis Talamantez
told the meeting here. "A previous informant for the Los
Angeles Police Department's Black Radical Desk testified that
Jackson was to be killed before he went to trial, since he
might have been acquitted of all charges.
"George Jackson believed and died in revolutionary
struggle inside prison. He would have felt justified by what
he said in 'Blood in My Eye,' which he completed about the
time of his death. I actually watched him write much of his
manuscript during the last year of his life as I was the tier
tender where he was held. ...
"George Jackson was born in Chicago Sept. 23, 1942, and he
died just before his 30th birthday. And just before his 19th
birthday in 1960 he was arrested in a Bakersfield gas station
holdup for $70. He went to prison and never got out.
"He was a very personable, warm person, despite two
articles this month--in the Aug. 6 San Francisco Examiner and
the Aug. 19 San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Magazine--that are
very disturbing and distorted views of history, especially
for people who were there. They are an attempt to discredit
and defame Jackson and the prison struggle of the 1970s that
we helped wage. Prison officials are always going to try to
vilify revolutionary heroes who put their life on the
line.
"There has evolved a tradition known as Black August where
prisoners, usually Black, who've developed a reverence and
revolutionary consciousness, venerate and commemorate
Jackson's death. It also is intended to counter the phrase
officials coined at the time, calling the rebellion 'the
blackest day in San Quentin.'
Why did they use this phrase? Because of George Jackson's
death? No, because they said a lot of white guards and white
prisoners died--but they failed to mention they deliberately
killed George Jackson.
"Besides these two ugly newspaper accounts there is an
anniversary audiotape just put out by Freedom Archives that
is narrated by Jackson's nephew, Jonathan Jackson Jr. I would
encourage you to hear it so that you could pass on the
history of what happened to someone else because more and
more people are forgetting . ... I also would ask you to read
Jackson's 'Soledad Brother' and 'Blood in My Eye.' ...
"When his mother, Georgia, went to the San Quentin gate
the next day, Sunday the 22nd, officials told her, 'You can't
come in here.' She said, 'I want to know who killed my son.'
They told her, 'We killed one of your sons last year and we
killed one now and pretty soon you ain't going to have no
more sons.' ...
"The last of the San Quentin Six--Hugo Pinell--came to
this country at a very young age with his family during the
Somoza years in Nicaragua. He lived here in the Mission
[district of San Francisco] and at a very young age was swept
up in gang violence and sent to prison in 1965 in a
five-years-to-life sentence. He's been in for 37 years and
the only reason they have kept him in for so long is because
of George Jackson and Black August.
"They hold him as a last departmental trophy to the whole
history that officials are constantly trying to twist. And
they do so today by stating that 'there's no revolutionary
so-called political prisoners in here. They're all
criminals.' ...
"I was 23 when I went to prison and luckily I got out. I
also went in for a holdup, a very cheap holdup as far as
dollar returns go. It didn't work out good. How do you divide
$44 into 12 years? ...
"Today we pay homage to the revolutionary spirit inside
prisons. Everybody still looks up to George Jackson, who
since his death has continued to make people strong.
"Understand that there are thousands of other George
Jacksons in prison today just like him."
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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