August 17, 2016
Greetings All:
This is the 37th anniversary of the origin of Black August, the
45th commemoration of the assassination of Soledad Brother George L.
Jackson on August 21, 1971, and the first anniversary of our Yogi Bear, Hugo
Pinell’s assassination on August 12, 2015.
This article was first written in 2000 and published in the
S.F. Bay View newspaper. The main changes herein are updates and the
transition of our comrade brother, Yogi, after 51 years in California gulags
including 45+ in solitary confinement. You can find more info at www.hugopinell.com.
Black August: A Story of African Freedom Fighters by Kiilu Nyasha (August 17, 2016)
Black August is a month of great significance for Africans
throughout the diaspora, but particularly here in the U.S. where it
originated. “August,” as Mumia Abu-Jamal noted, “is a month of meaning,,, of
repression and radical resistance, of injustice and divine justice; of
repression and righteous rebellion; of individual and collective efforts
to free the slaves and break the chains that bind us.”
On this 37th anniversary of Black August, first organized to
honor our fallen freedom fighters, George and Jonathan Jackson, Khatari
Gaulden, James McClain, William Christmas, and the sole survivor of the August
7, 1970 Courthouse Slave Rebellion, Ruchell Cinque Magee, it is still a
time to embrace the principles of unity, self-sacrifice, political
education, physical fitness and/or training in martial arts, resistance, and
spiritual renewal.
The concept, Black August, grew out of the need to expose to
the light of day the glorious and heroic deeds of those African women and
men who recognized and struggled against the injustices heaped upon people of
color on a daily basis in America.
One cannot tell the story of Black August without first
providing the reader with a brief glimpse of the “Black Movement” behind
California prison walls in the Sixties, led by George Jackson and W. L. Nolen,
among others.
As Jackson wrote: “...when I was accused of robbing a gas
station of $70, I accepted a deal...but when time came for sentencing,
they tossed me into the penitentiary with one to life. It was 1960. I was 18
years old.... I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and Mao when I entered
prison and they redeemed me. For the first four years I studied nothing
but economics and military ideas. I met black guerrillas, George ’Big Jake’
Lewis, and James Carr, W.L. Nolen, Bill Christmas, Tony Gibson, and many,
many others. We attempted to transform the Black criminal mentality into a
black revolutionary mentality. As a result, each of us has been subject to
years of the most vicious reactionary violence by the state. Our mortality
rate is almost what you would expect to find in a history of Dachau. Three
of us [Nolen, Sweet Jugs Miller, and Cleve Edwards) were murdered
several months ago [Jan. 13, 1969] by a pig shooting from thirty feet
above their heads with a military rifle.” (Soledad Brother: The Prison
Letters of George Jackson)
When the brothers first demanded the killer guard be tried
for murder, they were rebuffed. Upon their insistence, the administration
held a kangaroo court and three days later returned a verdict of
“justifiable homicide.”
Shortly afterward, a white guard was found beaten to death
and thrown from a tier. Six days later, three prisoners were accused of
murder, and became known as The Soledad Brothers.
“I am being tried in court right now with two other
brothers. John Clutchette and Fleeta Drumgo, for the alleged slaying of a
prison guard. This charge carries an automatic death penalty for me. I can’t
get life. I already have it.”
On August 7, 1970, just a few days after George was
transferred to San Quentin, his younger brother Jonathan Jackson, 17,
invaded Marin County Courthouse single-handed, with a satchel full of handguns,
an assault rifle and a shotgun hidden under his raincoat.
“Freeze,” he commanded as he tossed guns to William
Christmas, James McClain, and Ruchell Magee.
Magee was on the witness stand testifying for McClain, on
trial for assaulting a prison guard in the wake of an officer’s murder of
another Black prisoner, Fred Billingsley, beaten and tear-gassed to death
in his cell.
A jailhouse lawyer, Magee had deluged the courts with
petitions for seven years contesting his illegal conviction in ’63. The
courts had refused to listen, so Magee seized the hour and joined the
guerrillas as they took the judge, prosecutor and three jurors hostage to
a waiting van. To reporters gathering quickly outside the courthouse,
Jonathan shouted, “You can take our pictures. We are the
revolutionaries!”
Operating with courage and calm even their enemies had to
respect, the four Black freedom fighters commandeered their hostages out
of the courthouse without a hitch. The plan was to use the hostages to
take over a radio station to broadcast the racist, murderous prison
conditions and demand the immediate release of the Soledad Brothers.
Before Jonathan could drive the van out of the parking lot,
the San Quentin guards arrived and opened fire. When the shooting stopped,
Jonathan, Christmas, McClain and the judge lay dead. Magee was wounded and
lay unconscious, the prosecutor was seriously wounded, and one juror suffered a
minor arm wound.
Magee survived his wounds and was tried originally with
co-defendant Angela Davis. Their trials were later severed and Davis was
eventually acquitted of all charges.
Magee was convicted of simple kidnap (acquitted of the more
serious kidnap for ransom charge) and remains in prison to date – 2016 --
53 years with no physical assaults on his record.
An incredible jailhouse lawyer, Magee has been
responsible for countless prisoners being released—the main reason he was kept
for nearly 20 years in one lockup after another. His expert lawyering got
himself out of the Pelican Bay SHU in 1994. He is currently at Lancaster, and remains
strong and determined to win his freedom and that of all oppressed
peoples.
In Jackson’s second book, Blood In My Eye, published
posthumously, George noted: “Reformism is an old story in Amerika. There
have been depressions and socio-economic political crises throughout the period
that marked the formation of the present upper-class ruling circle, and
their controlling elites. But the parties of the left were too committed
to reformism to exploit their revolutionary potential....Fascism has
temporarily succeeded under the guise of reform.”
Those words ring even truer today as we witness a form of
fascism that has replaced gas ovens with executions and torture chambers;
plantations with prison industrial complexes deployed in rural white
communities to perpetuate white supremacy and Black/Brown slavery.
The concentration of wealth at the top is worse than ever;
individuals are so rich their wealth exceeds the total budgets of numerous
nations—as they plunder the globe in the quest for more.
“The fascist must expand to live. Consequently he has pushed
his frontiers to the farthest lands and peoples.... I’m going to bust my
heart trying to stop these smug, degenerate, primitive, omnivorous, uncivil—and
anyone who would aid me, I embrace you.”
“International capitalism cannot be destroyed without the
extremes of struggle...We are the only ones...who can get at the monster’s
heart without subjecting the world to nuclear fire. We have a momentous
historical role to act out if we will. The whole world for all time in the
future will love us and remember us as the righteous people who made it
possible for the world to live on.... I don’t want to die and leave a few sad
songs and a hump in the ground as my only monument. I want to leave a
world that is liberated from trash, pollution, racism, nation-states,
nation-state wars and armies, from pomp, bigotry, parochialism, a thousand
different brands of untruth, and licentious, usurious economics.” (Soledad
Brother)
On August 21, 1971, after numerous failed attempts on his
life, the State finally succeeded in assassinating George Jackson, then
Field Marshall of the Black Panther Party, in what was described by prison
officials as an escape attempt in which Jackson allegedly smuggled a gun
into San Quentin in a wig. That feat was proven impossible, and evidence
subsequently suggested a setup designed by prison officials to eliminate
Jackson once and for all.
However, they didn’t count on losing any of their own in the
process. On that fateful day, three notoriously racist prison guards and
two inmate turnkeys were also killed. Jackson was shot and killed by
guards as he drew fire away from the other prisoners in the Adjustment Center
(lockup) of San Quentin.
Subsequently, six A/C prisoners were singled out and put on
trial -- wearing 30 lbs. of chains in Marin County courthouse—for various
charges of murder and assault: Fleeta Drumgo, David Johnson, Hugo L.A.
Pinell (Yogi), Luis Talamantez, Johnny Spain, and Willie Sundiata Tate.
Only one was convicted of murder, Johnny Spain. The
others were either acquitted or convicted of assault. Pinell was the only one
kept in prison for a total 0f 51 years, over 45 suffering prolonged torture in
lockups, the last 24 in Pelican
Bay’s SHU, a torture chamber if ever there was one.
A true warrior, Pinell would put his life on the line to
defend his fellow captives when he was in general population, would die
rather than betray a comrade, and was an incredible role model for fellow prisoners
He gave so much love to others, myself included.
As decades passed, our Black scholars, like Mumia Abu-Jamal,
shared their knowledge of other liberation moves that happened in Black
August.
E.g., the first and only armed revolution whereby Africans
freed themselves from chattel slavery commenced on August 21, 1791 in
Haiti. Nat Turner’s slave rebellion began on August 21, 1831, and Harriet
Tubman’s Underground Railroad started in August.
As Mumia stated, “Their sacrifice, their despair, their
determination and their blood has painted the month Black for all time.”
Let us honor our martyred freedom fighters this Black
August. As George Jackson counseled: “Settle your quarrels, come
together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism
is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that
generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do
what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution”
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