Born in
Chicago, Illinois, George was the second of five children of Robert Lester and Georgia Bea Jackson. In a letter written in June 1970, George recalled the following about his parents and early childhood: As a young teen, George 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. 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.
Incarceration at San Quentin On September 18, 1960, while still age 18, Jackson was arrested for participating with Robert Earl Young in the
armed robbery at gunpoint of $71 from a
Standard Oil service station in Los Angeles. In December 1960, Jackson pled guilty to
second-degree robbery. The judge pointed to Jackson's previous arrests as justification for the harsh sentence. He would remain in prison until his death. 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 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 ==