"Settle your quarrles, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that facism is already here, that people are dying who could be saved, that generations more will die or live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution. Pass on the torch. Join us, give up your life for the people."

-George Jackson

I was Born in Chicago, and was raised confused about the world around me, I love my mama. I had 3 siblings, Delora, Penelope (Penny), and Frances. Several juvenile convictions resulted in me spending time in the Youth Authority Corrections facility in Paso Robles. I was convicted for stealing $70 at gunpoint from a gas station and was imprisoned as a felon for one year to life at age 18.

While at San Quentin State Prison in 1966, I founded the Black Guerrilla Family, a Marxist prison gang with political objectives. The original goals of the group were to eradicate racism, to maintain dignity in prison and to overthrow the United States government.

On January 13, 1970, along with Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette, I was charged with murdering a guard in retaliation for the killing of three black activists by a guard at the California's Soledad prison (the San Quentin guard had been acquitted after the Grand Jury ruled the killings as justifiable homicide). I was incarcerated in the maximum-security cellblock at Soledad Prison. Me and the other two inmates became known as the "Soledad Brothers." There are reports of my taped confession, admitting to the killing of the cell guard.

Isolated in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, I studied political economy and radical theory and wrote two books, Blood in My Eye and Soledad Brother, which became bestsellers and brought me world-wide attention.

On August 21, 1971, three days before I was to go on trial, a guard gunned me down in the prison yard at San Quentin in what officials described as an escape attempt. That was my chance to get out of prison and help the fight on the home front, away from containment. Had I been released, who knows what could have happened. I was first shot in the ankle, which through me to the ground, then, in my own blood was shot again by a sniper in the prison yard...

Some observers look to the fact that me and Black Panthers founder Huey Newton were locked in a power struggle over the leadership of the organization at the time of my death as an explanation. Since Newton benefited from my death – I not only became the premier Black Panther martyr, but one of Newton's major rivals had been eliminated and the Black Panthers' treasury had been enriched by inheriting the profits from my best-selling book, "Soledad Brother" -- some have claimed that Newton somehow engineered the conflagration.

My own sister, Penny Jackson, was one person who believed that I had been assassinated by the Party. She made a trip to the Oakland headquarters of the Black Panthers to denounce them, holding the Party responsible for my death.

The Truth of the incident?

The official report said that in my possession I had a 9 mm automatic pistol, alleged to have been smuggled into the prison by attorney Stephen Bingham (Bingham was acquitted of charges related to the incident in 1984; he had spent 13 years abroad living under a false name). According to the Soledad guards, it was discarded after the alleged escape attempt, but no record was ever made of the weapon's destruction. Some other prisoners who witnessed the event claim that there was no weapon and that I had not been planning any escape or rebellion. The official report also accuses me of participating in a riot earlier that day, involving two dozen other prisoners, where three corrections officers and two inmates were tortured and killed.