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Fred Hampton was born on this day in 1948.
Hampton’s birthday joins several notable events in the long struggle for Black liberation that took place in August: the arrival of the first enslaved Africans at Jamestown colony in 1619, the onset of the Haitian Revolution in 1791, Nat Turner’s slave rebellion in 1831, and the March on Washington in 1963, among many others.
These events are collectively remembered and reflected upon in the observance of Black August.
This issue of The Dossier traces the origins of Black August, a tradition that began in the 1970s at San Quentin State Prison, the oldest prison in California.
📰 Toplines
CNBC: Another million applied for jobless benefits as coronavirus pandemic’s economic toll rises
Market Watch: Dow erases 2020 loss, S&P 500 and Nasdaq notch fresh records
Bloomberg: Why a Historic Eviction Wave Is Bearing Down on the U.S.
Black Enterprise: Black banks merge to create nation’s first Black-led bank with over $1 billion in assets
ESPN: Players in the NBA, WNBA, MLB, NHL, MLS and beyond chose to not play games and matches in protest of the shooting of Jacob Blake by police in Kenosha, Wis. and social injustice
Vox: Dry lightning, extreme heat, and Covid-19 are all shaping California’s efforts to contain massive, deadly blazes.
Monroe News-Star: Hurricane Laura's Louisiana death toll rises to 14; six parishes eligible for FEMA help
POLITICO: After Portland shooting, Trump and Biden allies trade blame for clashes across the country
Texas Public Radio: Law Enforcement Killing Of Damian Daniels Leads To Fierce Protests In San Antonio
COMPLEX: Hot 97 Fires Paddy Duke After Documentary Reveals Alleged Ties to Mob That Killed Yusuf Hawkins
🎧 Entrepreneur
Earlier this month, Pharrell and Jay-Z dropped the soundtrack for one way to observe Black August: buy from Black-owned businesses.
The two artists turned to Calmatic, the Los Angeles artist, filmmaker and historian, to bring their vision to life:
We had our producers put together a big list of Black-owned businesses around the world. With all the social justice stuff going on, there's all these lists going around of different Black florists, Black bakeries, and just a ton of Black resources. So within those lists, we tried to find the deeper stories within those companies. We have bigger names and people that represent bigger brands, like Beatrice who runs The Honey Pot, which is sold in Target. And then we have Honey’s Kettle Fried Chicken, that's a local chicken spot in L.A., but they have an amazing family story. We just searched for the people who had the most interesting story and represented a clear example of someone who went through something to get to where they are now.
🦠 COVID-19
As the United States approaches 6 million confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, the country’s death toll stands at more than 183,000.
Globally, there are just over 25 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 844,000 deaths.
BBC: Hong Kong reports 'first case' of virus reinfection
Reuters: First U.S. novel coronavirus reinfection case identified in Nevada study
Washington Post: Inside Trump’s pressure campaign on federal scientists over a covid-19 treatment
🔥 The Great Fire
The September issue of Vanity Fair is required reading. Anyone who is (secretly) disillusioned by the shallow, symbolic gestures of the present moment should pay special attention to Ava DuVernay’s illuminating interview with Angela Davis:
DuVernay: One of the things that you’ve talked about that I hold on to is about diversity and inclusion. In many industries, especially the entertainment industry where I work, those are buzzwords. But I see them in the way that you taught me during our conversation for 13th. These are reform tactics, not change tactics. The diversity and inclusion office of the studio, of the university, of whatever organization, is not the quick fix.
Davis: Absolutely. Virtually every institution seized upon that term, “diversity.” And I always ask, “Well, where is justice here?” Are you simply going to ask those who have been marginalized or subjugated to come inside of the institution and participate in the same process that led precisely to their marginalization? Diversity and inclusion without substantive change, without radical change, accomplishes nothing.
“Justice” is the key word. How do we begin to transform the institutions themselves? How do we change this society? We don’t want to be participants in the exploitation of capitalism. We don’t want to be participants in the marginalization of immigrants. And so there has to be a way to think about the connection among all of these issues and how we can begin to imagine a very different kind of society. That is what “defund the police” means. That is what “abolish the police” means.
📚 One year to life
In 1960, at the age of 18, George Jackson was sentenced one year to life for armed robbery of a gas station in Los Angeles.
The amount: $71.
(Jackson had had previous run-ins with the law as a juvenile. The judge was making a point.)
George Jackson became radicalized while incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison. “For the first four years,” he wrote in Soledad Brother, “I studied nothing but economics and military ideas.”
By 1966, Jackson emerged as a political leader not only within California’s prison system, but among Black radicals outside the prison walls. Jackson’s revolutionary Black Power militancy landed him in San Quentin’s notorious Adjustment Center.
In an interview with Jacobin, sociologist Brittany Friedman describes how the state of California used Adjustment Centers as a tool of political repression:
The disproportionate use of solitary confinement is key. It was the main formal strategy the Department of Corrections used, and it became a site of torture for those who were sent there for their political beliefs—significantly, prior to any major disturbances that we would associate with threat identification. In the 1950s and ’60s, the Adjustment Center became a catchall for everyone labeled a political threat, and this allowed for layers upon layers of violence.
Jackson and his incarcerated brethren were locked in an endless struggle with white supremacy and the state. The white prison guards collaborated with white inmates in their continuous attacks on Black inmates, especially those who espoused the Black Power ethos sweeping across the country.
On January 13, 1970, the conflict boiled over when prison guards shot and killed Jackson’s close friend and collaborator, W.L. Nolen, along with two other Black inmates, during an outbreak of violence in the yard at Soledad State Prison. (Jackson and Nolen had been transferred to Soledad the year before.)
Four days later, George Jackson and two other inmates were charged with murdering a corrections officer in retaliation. (Hence the moniker “Soledad Brothers.”)
Over the years George Jackson had been sending letters and writings to the world outside. One of Jackson’s most devoted students was his little brother, Jonathan, who served as a bodyguard to Angela Y. Davis, the radical activist and scholar.
“I am being tried in court right now with two other brothers, John Clutchette and Fleeta Drumgo, for the alleged slaying of a prison guard,” wrote Jackson. “This charge carries an automatic death penalty for me. I can't get life. I already have it.”
🏛 A courthouse raid
Fearing for his brother’s life, and all too aware that his brother may be targeted for an extrajudicial execution, Jonathan Jackson, devised a plan.
On the morning of Aug. 7, young Jackson walked into the Marin County Courthouse carrying a satchel that contained several pistols and wearing [a] coat that concealed a carbine.
At the time, Judge Harold J. Haley was hearing a case involving James D. McClain, 37, a black convict who was on trial for the stabbing of a San Quentin guard.Also in the courtroom were several other black convicts from San Quentin, including William A. Christmas and Ruchell Magee. They were there as witnesses along with two other black inmates.
Young Jackson jumped up, uncovered his carbine and ordered court attendants against the wall and the black prisoners freed. McClain, Christmas and Magee went along. The two other inmates, who were also black, refused. Using Judge Haley, an assistant district attorney and three jurors as hostages, the blacks attempted their getaway.
They entered a rented van parked outside and began to leave the area of the court house when gunfire erupted. The judge, McClain, Christmas and the Jackson youth all were killed. Magee and the assistant district attorney were seriously wounded.
Before he left the courtroom with the hostages, young Jack son was quoted as having said: “We want the Soledad brothers freed by 12:30.”
Jonathan Jackson was 17.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover put Angela Davis on America’s Ten Most Wanted List in connection with the courthouse raid.
✊🏿 Black August
One year later, on August 17, 1971, San Quentin corrections officers killed George Jackson. (Whether it was the result of a failed escape attempt or an outright assassination at the hands of corrections officers is a subject of much speculation.)
In the 1970s, Black inmates at San Quentin began to observe Black August by fasting and refusing television and radio. They engaged in the discipline of intense physical exercise and focused study of history and economics, resistance and revolution.
By 1979, the observance of Black August had made its way beyond the prison walls.
Today, for better or worse, Black August is all but mainstream.
It is worth noting that George Jackson, 29, was being held at San Quentin’s Adjustment Center at the time of his death. He had spent more than seven of his ten years of incarceration in a program of torture and abuse designed to break his spirit.
But George Jackson never adjusted.
And neither should we.
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