On August 21, 1971, California correctional officers shot and killed twenty-nine-year-old George Jackson in the yard of San Quentin prison, in the course of an event that killed two other incarcerated people and three correctional officers. Jackson, who had been locked up since the age of twenty-one, was one of the most recognized political leaders in the California prison system at the time.

The struggle between imprisoned black militants and prison authorities intensified dramatically in the early 1970s. As sociologist Brittany Friedman’s research shows, George Jackson and others had founded the Black Guerilla Family, a revolutionary cadre-building organization that aimed to be the prison arm of the Black Power movement, just the year before, following the killing of the imprisoned black militant W. L. Nolen on January 13, 1970.

Nolen, widely respected by other prisoners for his intelligence and political leadership, had been gunned down in the yard at Soledad State Prison after correctional officers engineered a confrontation with Nazi prisoners. A few months later, the officers responsible were acquitted by a grand jury, and a different Soledad officer was killed in apparent retaliation. Jackson and two other black militants were charged with the officer’s murder, despite a dearth of evidence against them.