Volume 21, Number 19 · November 28, 1974
George Jackson and His Legend
By Francis Carney
Angela Davis: An Autobiography
by Angela Davis
Random House, 400 pp., $8.95
Comrade George
by Eric Mann
Harper and Row, 204 pp., $1.95 (paper)
"The Dragon Has Come"
by Gregory Armstrong
Harper and Row, 238 pp., $8.95
He was the revolutionary warrior sans peur et sans reproche; fierce to his enemies, gentle to those he loved and to all of the oppressed. He was gifted, handsome, powerful of body; fighter, poet, critic, philosopher, lover, brother, son. He was the baddest black man in any 'joint' that tried to confine him and break his spirit. He was a symbol of resistance to the cruelty and injustice dealt by the social, legal, and political systems to all underdogs but especially to blacks. Finally, he was the victim of that very injustice and cruelty. He entered the California prison system when he was eighteen years old. He left it ten years later, dead, his brain smashed by a bullet fired by a guard at San Quentin. The bullet entered his back, coursed upward, and blew off the top of his head. The crime for which he was sentenced by the state was a marginal 'participation' in an armed robbery of a Los Angeles gas station; the robbery netted seventy dollars. These are the barest essentials of the legend of George Jackson.
Review, 3032 words
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