Originally from Chicago, Ill, George L. Jackson grew up in California. In 1961, a young Jackson convicted of armed robbery for allegedly stealing $70 from a gas station. Outrageously, Jackson was sentenced to one year to life, despite assurances from his attorney of a favorable deal if he plead guilty.
Jackson would experience the racist injustice of the U.S. system at the height of the global liberation movements of the era, which couldn’t help but bleed into the rapidly expanding U.S. prison system. Jackson’s political radicalization and activism did not occur until he was imprisoned, which was not uncommon. In A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn comments that, “there had always been political prisoners—people sent to jail for belonging to radical movements, for opposing war. But now a new kind of political prisoner appeared, the person convicted of an ordinary crime, who, in prison, became awakened politically”
Read the full article here: https://www.liberationschool.org/george-jackson-blood-in-my-eye/
