Join the Bail Fund Book Club on Saturday, August 29th, from 11am-1pm, at the Greenfield Public Library to discuss Blood in My Eye by George Jackson.
About the book: Blood in My Eye was finished days before he was killed by prison guards at San Quentin prison and was published in January 1972. It covers a wide array of topics and details his revolutionary theory and perspectives. It, along with his first book Soledad Brother, are considered essential reading for Black August.
About George Jackson from the Freedom Archives: In 1960, at the age of eighteen, George Jackson was accused of stealing $70 from a gas station in Los Angeles. Though there was evidence of his innocence, his court-appointed lawyer maintained that because Jackson had a record (two previous instances of petty crime), he should plead guilty in exchange for a light sentence in the county jail. He did, and received an indeterminate sentence of one year to life. Jackson spent the next ten years in Soledad Prison, seven and a half of them in solitary confinement. Instead of succumbing to the dehumanization of prison existence, he transformed himself into the leading theoretician of the prison movement and a brilliant writer. Soledad Brother, which contains the letters that he wrote from 1964 to 1970, is his testament.
Soledad Brother, which is dedicated to his brother Jonathan Jackson, was released to critical acclaim in France and the United States, with an introduction by the renowned French dramatist Jean Genet, in the fall of 1970. Less than a year later and just two days before the opening of his trial, George Jackson was shot to death by a tower guard inside San Quentin Prison in a purported escape attempt. "No Black person," wrote James Baldwin, "will ever believe that George Jackson died the way they tell us he did."
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We hope to see you there!
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