Free Ruchell Magee
Black Power
Ruchell Magee was born in 1939. In 1963, Magee was convicted of aggravated kidnapping over a dispute involving $10 of marijuana. While in prison, Magee learned about African American history, the black liberation struggle and became politicized, joining the Black Panther Party.
While imprisoned during the 1960s, Magee dedicated much of his time to studying law and petitioning the court to challenge his conviction, stating the the U.S. criminal justice system “used fraud to hide fraud” to convict African Americans and other political activists. He was able to overturn his initial conviction and earn a new trial based on a falsified transcript. In essence, Magee argued that his conviction was based on fraudulent grounds, denying him his constitutional rights and holding him involuntarily, making him a slave. As such, he claimed, he and others had a legal right to do everything in their power to escape enslavement. “My fight is to expose the entire system, judicial and prison system, a system of slavery,” he wrote. “This will cause benefit not just to myself but to all those who at this time are being criminally oppressed or enslaved by this system.” During this period, Magee took the middle name “Cinque,” in honor of a slave who escaped the slave ship, Amistad, and won his freedom in a Connecticut court. Magee also hoped his case might draw attention to the broader injustices within the American legal system.
On August 7, 1970, just a few months before Magee was eligible for parole, 17-year old Jonathan Jackson, the younger brother of black radical, George Jackson, burst into the Marin County courtroom of Superior Court Judge Harold Haley, where James McClain was on trial for assaulting a guard in the wake of Black prisoner Fred Billingsley’s murder by prison officials in San Quentin Prison in February of 1970. Carrying three guns registered to Angela Davis, Jackson, with the help of McClain and Ruchell Cinque Magee, who was set to testify as a witness in McClain's trial, seized Judge Haley and ordered attorneys, jurors and court officials to lie on the floor. Magee freed another testifying witness, Black Panther William A. Christmas, who also aided in the escape attempt. In addition to their own freedom, the group sought a trade -- the release of Judge Haley for the “Soledad Brothers,” George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Clutchette, who were charged with killing a white prison guard at California’s Soledad Prison. During an effort to flee the courthouse in a van, a shoot-out with police took place, killing Jackson, McClain, Christmas and Judge Haley. Two other hostages, Prosecutor Gary Thomas and juror Maria Elena Graham, were also injured, but survived. Ruchell Magee was the only abductor to survive.
In the legal proceeding that followed the incident, prosecutors attempted to get Magee to testify against Angela Davis, but he refused. Ultimately, he pled guilty to aggravated kidnapping in exchange for the Attorney General requesting a charge of murder be dropped. Magee later tried to withdraw his guilty plea, but was unsuccessful. In 1975, he was sentenced to life in prison. Over the years, Magee has continued to petition the court for his release and to help other prisoners with legal challenges.
unknown
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. early-1970s
poster
Free the San Quentin 6
Prisoner's Rights Movement
The San Quentin 6 were six prisoners at the San Quentin State Prison in California - Hugo Pinell, Willie Tate, Johnny Larry Spain, David Johnson, Fleeta Drumgo and Luis Talamantez- accused of participating in the 1971 escape attempt that resulted in six deaths, including celebrated black radical, George Jackson, as well as three guards, Frank DeLeon, Paul Krasenes and Jere Graham, and two white inmates, John Lynn and Ronald L. Kane. After the longest trial in California history, a preceding that garnered widespread national publicity, the San Quentin 6 received a mixed verdict.
Jane Norling
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
ca. 1973
poster
The Black Panther, October 16, 1971
Black Power
Articles in this issue of The Black Panther, include: prison riots in Joliet, Illinois, Baltimore, Maryland, Alderson, West Virginia, New Orleans, Louisiana, Dallas, Texas, San Quentin, California and Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Attica, New York; the murder of Clarence Johnson; a boycott of Bill Boyette’s Liquor Store; extensive coverage of Huey Newton’s trip to China; an advertisement for a peoples tribunal aimed to indict New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and President Richard Nixon; criminal justice in Winston-Salem; a memorial poem devoted to fallen Panther George Jackson, who was shot during a prison escape attempt in San Quentin, California; and, artwork by Emory Douglas.
The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service
Roz Payne
Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
October 16, 1971
underground press