The Age of Jackson: George Jackson and the Culture of American Prisons in the 1970s

Between his first national exposure as a "Soledad Brother" in early 1970 and his violent death in August 1971, George Jackson achieved an almost unprecedented level of celebrity for an incarcerated person. In that age of political extremes and radical chic, it is not altogether surprising that Jackson achieve notoriety and acclaim. However, there has been little attention to the prison culture that helped shape Jackson's consciousness. In addition, the weeks and years that followed Jackson's death saw a remarkable series of protests where prisoners specifically memorialized Jackson. By placing Jackson's ideas, writings, and actions in the popular, political, and prison contexts, this article argues that Jackson was a key participant in debates over incarceration, colonialism, and racism. While he is often only remembered for the ideological extremes of his book of letters, Soledad Brother, and his violent tactics, George Jackson has not been recognized for his participation in an organized system of covert education that presaged theories of internal colonialism, his popularization of arguments about the political qualities of incarceration, and insistence that prisoners can contribute to movements for social change as symbols, intellectuals, and leaders. It is telling that the largest and most visible prison rebellion of the era occurred on the other side of the country only weeks after his death. While others have noted the connection between Jackson and Attica, the specific tactics and demands of the "Attica Brothers" have been described as strange or unrealistic. Once placed in the proper context of the prison culture of the 1970s, their calls for unity, amnesty, and removal to a neutral-i.e. postcolonial and Marxist-country seem far from outlandish. Rather, they seem like a claim very much situated in the political culture and climate of American prisons of the 1970s. George Jackson provided the inspiration for a generation of incarcerated intellectuals and writers to insist on the importance of their perspectives in shaping public debates over a host of key issues. Though it would be hard to overestimate the influence of Malcolm X and Angela Davis on the cultural and intellectual output of incarcerated people during the 1970s, the brief, intense, and uncompromising revolutionary life of Jackson made him the icon for a range of critics of the prison system. Jackson as Symbol Bertold Brecht's 1930 script for The Mother calls for the set to be hung with placards containing quotes by Marx and Lenin. In productions of the play between 1973 and 1975, the San Francisco Mime Troupe substituted quotes by George Jackson and Richard Nixon, personifications of the extremes of 1970s-era political activism. The Troupe, founded in 1959, had a well-earned reputation for antiwar, feminist, and anticapitalist sentiments. Even if the audience members were unaware of the substitution, they would have easily seen the ideological and political message the Troupe sent. Where Brecht's notes called for a projection of Marx's "Theory turns into a material force once the masses have understood it!" The Mime Troupe projected Nixon's "Communism is evil because it defies God and denies man" (Gordon 101). Where Brecht included Lenin's "Prove that you can fight!" the Mime Troupe substituted Louis Farrakhan's "All of us are in prison. Those locked up are merely in solitary confinement." Where Brecht's script called for a repetition of Lenin's line later in the play, the Mime Troupe invoked a letter George Jackson wrote to his mother: "You are free-to starve." Written during the Great Depression, "The Mother" dramatizes the political transformation of the mother of a communist. At the play's opening, she is an antagonist of revolution. At its end, she is a revolutionary. In the program notes, the Mime Troupe made clear their belief that Depression-era calls for revolution applied to the 1970s context: "The San Francisco Mime Troupe decided to do The Mother because of the present crisis in America. …