Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

Book

excellent book

read the oriniginal a few years back and was delighted to have been able to buy this version with johnaton jackson junior, so glad that its back in print everyone should read it a very real and moveing account and easy to read. it was so much more than advertised

This is actually an extremely important book, although it was written within the 1960s-1970s.George Jackson was kept within prison after being initially wrongly accused it seems, according to Jackson's letters and others. Once in there, he was not released due to his political statements and aims. Of relevance he writes of entrepreneurs dictating the lives of the majority which does not only apply to people of a different colour or race. He also speaks of people being encouraged to turn against others which applies to people today considering the work ethic and lower classes for example.Even schools do not teach people the truth, writes Jackson, which especially concerns history. Jackson was alleged to have murdered a prison guard once in prison but this is disputed. Anybody outspoken today is either accused of something, locked away or blocked.Of note- the book is discouraged within certain prisons in the USA. Do we ever get the truth?

Quick delivery, quality of book not great but as 2nd hand and the book is old was half expected

reviews for this book all seem to admit salient facts, and yet concentrate on others. Was Jackson railroaded into prison with an unduly harsh sentence ?, the answer is yes. Was the Prison system in the US a hellish place - undoubtedly and it still is. Jackson was, without doubt, an intelligent man, he was also without doubt subjected to racism and brutality. Yet does that excuse an intelligent reasoned man for the murder of a prison guard ?. Whilst it is said the murder was in retaliation for the murder of black prisoners by said guard - should that really be glossed over in some kind of politically correct revising of history. Jackson would himself later be killed whilst attempting to escape, or so it is claimed. The balance of probablities would suggest he was murdered, and the same probabilities would also suggest he was murdered in retaliation for the murder of the prison guards. The cycle of violence came full circle for Jackson. I do not doubt nor question the power of this book, and the brutal honesty of it leaps from the pages and goes straight for the throat - it is a "must read". Yet the revisionism on display by ommission of some of Jacksons actions in reviews are breathtakingly disingenuos, a man is made by his words and his deeds. Jackson is an enigma to me, an man with genuine grievance, and an intelligent man, who resorted to stereotype and due to this enabled his own murder to be whitewashed - and so continued the cycle. The intelligent man and the fool are two sides of the same coin. Taking the guards and murdering them meant Jackson became a murderer, with cold hard choice and precision - there is no justification for that. Dr King and Ghandi practiced revolution, Ghandi sought independence for his country, and to a very large degree brought it about himself. King did the same, and we all know of his fate. Americas societal problems are root deep, King showed the way. You do not change the world by murdering prison guards no matter how aggrieved you are. You merely entrench the positions and continue the cycle. Jackson did not attempt to break the circle of violence, he shouted to us from the inside, but once he murdered someone, cold bloodedly, his voice became lost, becoming just another teller of brutality and oppression and became a feature player in it himself, and that truly is the tragedy.

This is one of the seminal works of the Black Liberation Struggle in the United States. It stands alongside Bobby Seale’s “Seize the Time” or the works of Eldridge Cleaver. It is a series of letters written from prison by George Jackson from the mid-sixties until the death of his brother Jonathan in 1970. Jonathan was killed when he tried to take over a courtroom by force. George was killed the next year in an attempted prison breakout. At least that is the official story and I now cannot remember whether or not people believed it at the time. It does have a certain convenience to it, as did the stories of people committing suicide in apartheid prisons at the same time. There are difficulties in reading this book 50 years after I first did so. My copy is now old and yellowing and foxed, but the punch that is delivered is still extraordinary. There can be no doubt that it is a powerful book. It was written by a man who was imprisoned as a teenager because he was involved in a store hold-up. He was given a prison sentence that effectively meant life because he could not be released until a parole board decided that it was safe to do so. I cannot imagine that a white teenager would have received such a sentence and, if he did, would not have been released within a few years. It is difficult to read this book int eh aftermath of the George Floyd killing and the Black Lives Matter campaign without being angry. It is 50 years since the events of this book and we are still in the same place. Another difficulty is that we only have the letters that George Jackson wrote himself. We di not have the replies so we cannot see how the conversation developed and what arguments, if any, persuaded him to change his mind. At the time that the book was published, I assume that the prison authorities refused to release the replies that had been received. I expect that the letters are no longer available, but they may be in a prison library archive somewhere in California. The most shocking thing about the book is Jackson’s incredible misogyny. He actually writes that his sister Penelope should not take part in political discussion, but should sit there quietly listening to the wisdom of her menfolk. Of course, this was written in the late sixties and he was a man of his time. This was written before the second wave of feminism began to have any influence on left-wing political thought. It is the case that when he comes into contact with women like Angela Davis and Fay Stender, his lawyer, that his views change considerably. This is one of the reasons why it is frustrating not to have the replies to his letters because we do not know why he changed his mind. We can make the assumption that their examples had a huge impact on his thinking, but we do not have the evidence. What we do know is that when in prison he read a huge amount of political writing ranging from Che Guevara to Malcolm X. We also know that he was very aware of events taking place at the time, such as the Vietnam War. We know that he formed very clear political ideas. For instance, he was dismissive of the non-violent ideology of Martin Luther King because of the sheer scale of the violence that the racists unleashed on the Civil Rights Movement. We know that he was in awe of Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese people in their refusal to be defeated by the most powerful military state in the world. We know that he believed in the devastating legacy of slavery on Black Americans; how it had intimidated the men and terrorised the women. We know that he believed that the USA was a fascist state as far as black people were concerned. The fact that he spelled the name of his country Amerika, in a direct reference to the swastika, is something that cannot be overlooked. We can also guess that if George Jackson was alive today, he would be leading the Black Lives Matter campaign. Like Joe Hill, he never died.

It’s one of the most powerful revolutionary books I’ve read. Raw, real and unfiltered. Underrated writer to say the least! A must read.

Bom Livro. Contundente e atemporal. Vale o esforço no inglês.

I enjoyed reading this letters George Jackson wrote to various family members, friends and the people who tried to help him get out of prison. He couldn't give "detailed accounts" of what was going on, but you can imagine from some of the things he was able to write about, what he and others were going through. It's unfortunate that they never proved him guilty of the money theft, and so very unfortunate that he was given one year to "life" for stealing! As he clearly states, so many brothers were in jail during that time who, initially were "not guilty", but by the time a parole came up, he was guilty of "something" that was brought on by mere survival in prison. All the disappointments he went through with every parole hearing denials, lies and manipulations! Had I not read the book on the life of Angela Davis first, I would have been hopeful he was going to get out of prison while reading, "they said If I don't get in any trouble in six months (3 months, a year), I can have a parole hearing", only to be disappointed to read there was a new panel and they made no such promises were made or they did something to provoke him so he WOULD get in trouble and his hearing was denied. I recommend this reading to as many young men should starting at the age of 14 - give them a BETTER perspective on what it's like to be in prison and hopefully deter them from going down that path!

This is an important book to help understand the horrors of incarceration. The service was really superb.

Sad, proud, emotional and just so angry are all the things I felt while reading this book. George didn’t get to live as I or most people. He could only image it. His relationship with his family saddened me. This book should be read by all. This book is only one of many that sheds some light on our so called American Justice system that suppose to be blind. It’s unfortunate he didn’t get to live beyond 1971.