On August 22, 1971, the day after his death, and the lack of response from authorities at the prison where he was shot.

This press conference at the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee was broadcast live. Questions are also asked of members of the Defense Committee, including George Jackson’s sister Penny, and Mrs. Jackson’s attorney Ed Bell, regarding their plans for pursuing justice regarding Jackson’s death.

[recording begins abruptly]

Georgia: Two of them left me in and imitated a Southern footballers to me. They don’t care who dies so long as they keep control of that prison and the money that comes into it is money that’s the only thing it is. Like everything else in America. 

Reporter: You were talking earlier about the possibilities of your son having a gun when he left the cell can talk about that?

Georgia: I don’t see how you could possibly get out of the cell with a gun when you searched – by the time he steps out they search him for example watched it many times myself. They search him no matter who’s visited him no matter how many visitors he has they search him. After each visit. Put the curves and chains on him and take him back. Make you go out and then bring him back in for the next visitor. After that visitor leaves they do the same thing. There is no way possible for him to have a gun on him about them finding it –  is impossible.

Reporter: Do you have any idea at all about the chronology of events yesterday. You’ve been able to find out anything? 

Georgia: Only thing I know is what I heard on the radio. I haven’t even been informed that he was there to officially they don’t see fit to do that, they don’t consider me worth it. 

Reporter: How do you think the other prisoners died?

Georgia: What?

Reporter: How do you think the other prisoners died?

Georgia: I don’t know how the other prisoners died!because it seems farfetched to me the way they tell it they tell it differently every time. They don’t stick to no one story is always changing. And when you go back the next time they’ll have a different story to tell you. 

Reporter: When did you first contact the prison and what did they say to you?

Georgia: Last night. I called them last night several times trying to get some information but I was told they didn’t want to talk to me. And that I couldn’t have his body until they were finished with it. And I couldn’t have his personal possessions until they were finished with those. And I don’t see why they need his personal possessions. His papers and his writings and he says anything that he has in there belongs to me. 

Reporter: Have they now given you any indication of when you’re going to be able to get his body and get his personal possessions?

Georgia: Mr. Thomas called a few minutes ago and said that he could come that I could come now. I guess they gave him an autopsy to see that they shot him. You know that I thought an autopsy was for when you didn’t know the cause of death then know the cause of his death because they shot him. Now why did they have to give him one? Then they’ll embalm him and make him and make us pay for it.

Reporter: They didn’t have the decency to call you?

Georgia: They didn’t call me. They didn’t call at all to tell me he was dead.

Reporter: How did you hear?

Georgia: On the radio. I heard it on the radio.

Reporter: You were sitting at home with your husband and?

Georgia: I was at home – my daughter turn the radio on and that’s what we heard on Channel. I don’t know. CBS I think it was. 

Reporter: You flew straight up here and your husband was still in L.A. right?

Georgia: Then I came up here to see what was going on but nobody will tell me anything there she said.

Reporter: Did they actually tell you they refuse to tell you anything or what? 

Georgia: That’s what he said. [Warden] Parks said he didn’t want to talk to me. He didn’t want to see me. You know that what I asked him because I thought he was the one in authority and he’s the one that should know what happened. I ask other people who answered the phone and they wouldn’t talk either. 

Reporter: The last time  you saw George was on Thursday, right?

Georgia: No, Thursday week [before last]... 

Reporter: How was he then and what did he say to you?

Georgia: He was all right except he was feared for his life. 

Reporter: What did he actually say?

Georgia: He said they’re trying to kill him. 

Reporter: What indications, specific indications did he have that they were trying to kill him?

Georgia: The guards passed by his door and make threats. The guard passed by his door and told me I only had two weeks to live. And they meant it – it was two weeks exactly almost. 

Reporter: This was no this thought I mean saw him was then two weeks ago?

Georgia: It was a week ago this past Thursday. 

Reporter: How long did you spend with him then?

Georgia: About an hour. A little less. 

Reporter: Was he very worried about these threats to kill him, was that the main subject of your conversation?

Georgia: That’s what we talked about. I know last month he introduced me to a guard up there and told me that he was one person that he could say that was a good person because he kept him alive. He said you can think this man pretty even your son alive as long as he’s been alive because he helps me – but I can’t remember the

man’s name. 

Reporter: What do you plan to do now. Mr. Jackson? What do you on the some of the Soledad Defense Committee plan to do?

Georgia: I plan to try to let the public know that they’re lying and that this is not the first black man that they’ve killed up there and swept it under the rug they’ve been doing it ever since they had the prison. And getting away with it. Just because they’re black and nobody cares. 

Well, I care about my son. And I care about the other people who were killed also. I know that those people are grieving for their people just like I am for mine. 

I think that people should get together and find out what really goes on in these prisons and stop taking their word for it all the time because these people are in a position they have jobs that they want to keep and they lie about anything. They’ll try to frame anybody in order to keep their jobs. 

Reporter: Do you know visited  –  someone I think visted George yesterday?

Georgia: I guess who it was and they wouldn’t tell me. They pretended they didn’t know. And I know better than that because you have to sign your name at the at the main entrance. I always have to sign my name. And then when you go in they write your name down also in the waiting room desk. 

Reporter: One thing we heard was that it might have been an attorney. 

Georgia: I don’t know who it was because they wouldn’t tell me anything. They didn’t tell me anything at all. 

Reporter: The sequence of events.. I mean you know the prison is saying one way and you’re suggesting another way  –  what you’re saying is that you think the only way it could have happened was that they they just, what? went into his cell and shot him and then took his handcuffs off and threw him out into the yard?

Georgia: It’s been done – before they’ve killed people even more than that before.

Reporter: Is that what you’re suggesting here you think might have happened something like that?

Georgia: Yes. That’s what I think happened. Could you fire a gun if your hands were chained together? And could you run if you had chains on your legs? that’s the way he walks outside of his cell. He doesn’t get out of the cell and come down there without chains on. And he couldn’t possibly run with them on. So they had to take them off. 

Reporter: They’ll fixed up another good lie and tell – it’ll be altogether different the next time you talk to them. They’ll pretend like they found out new evidence. That goes on all of the time. 

New reporter enters: I didn’t hear your earlier version what what you believe happened?

Georgia: I believe they shot him and threw him in the yard and photographed him. Did they let any of you people go back there and look now? Well who took the photograph of him on the yard that they sent to the papers all over the United States? 

Reporter: That was in a helicopter as I understand – or shot from a helicopter... 

Georgia:...and then they proceeded to send it all around. To show what they do to niggers when they get smart. Is that it?

Reporter: Mrs. Jackson, what do you plan to do now?

Georgia: I don’t know what I’m going to do but I know one thing I’m not going to let them smear him, kill him, and cover it up and sweep it under the rug – I’m not going to let him get away with that. 

Reporter: I think there was some talk of some kind of commission – people’s commission can anyone expand on that at all?

Georgia: Yes – it’s been suggested by several prominent citizens that. An independent people’s committee be formed to investigate and attempt to discover the truth of the of the facts of the situation. At this point a meeting is currently being arranged of community peoples to discuss this idea and to prepare a demand to be made upon the Governor of this state for said commission to be appointed. 

Reporter: What kind of community peoples are involved?

Georgia: That remains open. 

Reporter: Has an attorney have you made any attempts to get into the prison?

Ed Bell (Georgia’s attourney): Yes I went with Mr. Jackson, Mrs. Jackson this morning to get out of the prison and secure the release of the personal effects of George and we had all the law on our side as usual. But they absolutely refused to even give us the courtesy of speaking to us. They refused his mother in her grief of any any modicum of decency. Alls we met was the steel hard, cold gates.

Georgia: I don’t think a people’s committee will get anywhere in San Quentin. Soledad or anywhere else because they usually do their dirty and covered up very well. And for as the government’s concerned a guard at San Quentin told me last night if I wanted to know

anything about my son being murdered I could call Reagan and ask him. He could give me the information. So I don’t know.

Reporter: If this is what happened to your son, we still have the you know the three guards and two other inmates killed. Does anyone have any idea about how that happened?

Georgia: No, I don’t have any idea how that happened but I know one thing my son doesn’t it didn’t have four arms and forward legs he couldn’t kill all those people and run all at the same time. I know that. 

Unknown moderator: Does anybody have any any other questions? 

Reporter: Mrs. Jackson, I’m Sorry I arrived late. Could you just give your reaction to the whole violent incident?

Georgia: My reaction is that the prisoners are just – they’re treated just like they’re not human. They were always treated like that because the guards themselves they only treat them like animals that’s not me saying that that’s them saying that. They treat them like they’re animals. They have no human consideration form at all. And if a man doesn’t drag his feet and bow his head he’s considered in corrigible and can’t be helped. 

You really have to be an Uncle Tom foot dragging fool in order to get out of prison or else inform on somebody else or lie on somebody else. That’s the only way you ever get out of a prison in California. Unfortunately I didn’t have the CIA to rescue him in a helicopter. Maybe I should have had them. 

Reporter: When did you last visit George?

Georgia: Thursday before last.

Reporter: What did you talk about then?

Georgia: We talked about a lot of things. We always talk about a lot of things we reminisce and try to think of the future which we both knew that neither one of us have. 

George never quite gave up faith in the system as much as he said he did. He finally thought that the people would come around and force these people to do justice once in their life. He thought that – but he doesn’t know how fickle people are like I do. 

People only latch on to the latest happening – if he hadn’t been killed yesterday, nobody would even be in this office. We’ve been begging people to come around here for two months. Nobody would come. They all have some kind of little petty grievance that they have to take out on each other. This is the biggest crowd has ever been in here. People don’t like you when you’re honest and straight forward you have to be a crook for people to like you. That’s a reason why nobody come around – when the crookedness went out the situation people quit coming. 

Reporter: There are some other people in the room who just walked in and we’ll see if any of them would like to make a statement. Mrs. Jackson is there anything else you’d like to say?

Georgia: Yes, I’d like to say that the prison officials will never admit when they’re wrong. I talk to Warden Parks about two weeks ago. And he admitted to me he was wrong but he wouldn’t admit it to his guards. He tried to frame us into saying that we made our kids carry toy guns in the prison. And I asked him did I look like that I was that imbecilic to him that I would want my kid to carry a toy gun and hide it. I said what do you think we could do with a toy gun? Well nothing really but you know attempts have been made. I said not with a toy gun. I said nobody is THAT stupid. I said anyway do you think I’m so stupid that that I wouldn’t know that something metal would go up in the detector. 

You see the thing is that they don’t think that anybody that’s Black has a brain cell clicking – and my son has been in prison for 10 or 11 years. I have never once, since I’ve gone to that prison, carried myself with disrespect with those people. And I expect to be treated the way I carry myself – by everybody. Now if I had been if I had been going there that long and never attempt anything why would I be doing it now?

You see the things that they say and do don’t make any sense at all. That’s because they have all the authority and all the power – they think they can get away with anything. This is one black man they’re not going to murder and sweep under the rug – unless they murder me too. 

Reporter:Thank you Mr. Jackson. Is there anyone from the defense committee who who would like to say anything?

Georgia: We ARE the defense committee the solid defense committee consist of me my daughter and Derek Maxwell and a few other people who aren’t here. As I said before when you try to do things right people run there’s nobody in America likes right. They all like dirt. 

This is live on the radio is there anyone from the Defense Committee – anybody else who would like to make a statement?

Penny Jackson (George’s sister): No one from the defense committee is  here. Except my mother and I. Right now. 

OK. A number of other media have just walked into the room and some TV cameras apparently but they’re about to do an interview I’m sure which will probably. Duplicate some of what’s just been done. 

I’m listening to a portable radio, is there’s anyone back at the station? Do you want to indicate back at the station what you want to do? Well there doesn’t seem to be anyone there right now so we’ll continue with Mrs. Jackson as she’s interviewed for KR1 TV. 

[mumbled voices]

Georgia: Who said that? 

Reporter: You know that’s the implication is..

Georgia: that he committed suicide? I haven’t heard anything. You see they don’t think that they can tell me anything. I’ve called out their all last night I went out there this morning but I was told that they didn’t want to see me they didn’t want to talk to me. Last night a guard told me if I wanted to know what happened to my son I should ask Ronald Reagan, he would tell me.

Reporter: do you have any idea then what happened in the adjustment?

Georgia: I don’t have any idea the only thing I know is what they tell the reporters. They don’t tell me anything. They didn’t even tell me he was dead. I have found that out on the radio.

Reporter: From what they do say, they say that George ran for the gate with a gun in his hand. That sounds a lot like – 

Georgia: That doesn’t say anyting! Where would you get a gun?

Reporter: That’s my question why would he get a gun and why would he run at the gate?

Georgia: Where would you get a gun and why would he run to the gate where you knew you couldn’t get out. They’re trying to say he was crazy, is that what they’re thinking? Why don’t they say they killed him and threw him in the yard. That’s what I believe. I believe they killed him and threw him in the yard!

I know one thing I feel sorry for them too. I feel sorry for anybody who loses their life, because when it comes down to it no matter how much money you have the only thing you really have is your life. 

Penny: I have something to say about that. Just something brief. The way I think that it happened was that as soon as he stepped out into the open there was a guard – like when W. L. Nolan was killed in solidarity last year – I believe that, the guard from the tower they say he was 60 to 75 feet you yards –

Georgia: it didn’t happen like that! No it didn’t! they killed him and threw him in the yard! That’s what they did. Yeah, how do you get a step in the yard? He doesn’t get to step in anywhere without somebody with him.

Penny: Well that’s what I mean. They’ve missed the Guard – they missed the guard and they missed everybody they just shot him –

Georgia: you know he can’t step anywhere unless a guard is with him that’s a bunch of lies! They make us sit there three and a half hours in the room telling us if you can’t come without an escort. So why would he be anywhere without one?

Penny: He had the escort I believe that the guard armed – when they killed W.L. Nolan – was a marksman. And when he stepped out or he might have even been pushed out by the guard. You see, pushed into the open by the guard. Or brought to the door and shoved. You see.  Or something like that. You see. And then they killed him that way. 

Reporter: What do you think happened with the other three guards or with the three guards were killed?

Georgia: We don’t know what was going on in that prison – people, we don’t know what was going on in the prison. We don’t ever know what goes on in the prison – they didn’t even call me and telling me he was dead. So how would we know? But I do know that he has sense enough not to run for a place that he couldn’t get out. 

He wasn’t crazy. And that doesn’t all make sense. I don’t have to say is that I accidentally shot him and get away with it they don’t have to make up all these fantastic lies. They have the power. They have the authority to do what they want to do. Now they don’t need to make up fantastic lies. They could just say he was accidentally killed and it would be nothing done – like there would be nothing done now – we know that. We’re used to being treated like that is not new. We treated like there from the time we were born. Nobody cares and I can’t help it hurts people’s feelings it’s the truth. 

Reporter: You think there was a marksman waiting there and he was then pushed out?

Georgia: anybody who has jobs like that are marksman. Don’t make no big thing about them being marksman. They have a place right over there about a quarter of a mile away where they practice every day. Why wouldn’t they be a marksman? You see that’s the whole point. They make a big if it’s as if they see a black man with a gun. That’s that’s what you don’t understand – we’re not supposed to own guns. 

We don’t teach our children to shoot when they’re 5 and 6. My son, my little grandson belong to a club in school. Every white kid in that club could shoot and hit targets but he couldn’t. He was a little black boy, he had been trying to use a gun. You see what I mean? 

There’s no need to whitewash in the stuff,  people came out and told the truth about it and I am tired of the people at the prison trying to hang some kind of dirty rap on me because I’ve always carried myself with dignity – in that prison and been treated like a dog. 

Every time I went up there you go to something their turn they head off like this and I answer you won’t even look at you to talk to you. Things like that are wrong. How long can people put up with these things? I’d rather see him dead than dragging his head and bowing his head, and crying, and sitting on the corner – old man 70 years old with no hope and nothing else. He’s better off dead if he died like that – like they – but I want them exposed. I want these people in the prisons to exposed. Because it’s time they were exposed. 

Reporter: Mrs. Jackson you’ve lost two sons under violent circumstances –

Georgia: that’s what the guard said to me last night we killed one of your sons last year, we got another one this year. You pretty soon won’t have any sons left – and laughed! At San Quentin on the phone last night.

Reporter: What is your reaction to yesterday’s tragedy?

Georgia: I think it’s the same thing that goes on in the prisons day in and day out. It’s not new. It just happened to be my son this time, instead of some other black woman’s  son – or some white woman’s son that they want to kill. 

Reporter: Do you blame anybody for what happened to your son?

Georgia: Yes! I blame the prison! I blame the people who run the prison I blame the governor, the state, and the  the United States government. I blame them all because they have the power to change these things and don’t want to. Can’t you understand? they don’t want to change them!

Reporter: The word is that a gun was smuggled in to your son –

Georgia: Impossible. Impossible. Everybody is searched when they go into prison. Anybody that’s a prisoner will tell you that – everybody is searched, they make no exceptions. Warden Park will tell you that himself. He told me.

Reporter: Then you apparently don’t believe your son had a gun?

Georgia: No I don’t believe it! That’s a buncha lies. 

Reporter: You believe there was a gun involved?

Georgia: I don’t know whether there was a the gun involved or not but I know he didn’t have one – wouldn’t be no way possible for him to have it – they search him every time anybody visits him. No exceptions. They do it every time. 

Reporter: In other words, you don’t believe that your son would try to attempt an escape?

Georgia: He had better sense than try to escape out of San Quentin – he wasn’t crazy. He knew that he couldn’t escape out of San Quentin with one hand gun. They’re trying to say he was crazy, demented, and wanted to commit suicide they’re lying and. They set up his murder just like they do everybody else that speaks out against them and they’ll probably do me the same way because I am going to speak every chance I get. 

These people have the power to do right. Why don’t they do right? There’s a man – I’m not saying I’m a racist. I don’t hate all white people. Ramsey Clark wrote a book – they could take a lot of the good suggestions out of his book – but they don’t want to do right. They just absolutely don’t want to. And I can imagine when the American public is going to wake up to the fact that the people who own and run this country don’t want to do right. 

They know they have everybody in this country afraid of them. People don’t love this country so much they are frightened what their own country will do to them. That’s the reason why they don’t say anything. They’re afraid. 

[end of clip 1 transcription]

[new press conference interview recording starts]

Georgia: ..this was Saturday afternoon about five minutes after five.. And at first I didn’t think it was George because he said George Johnson. So I went on with my sewing and then about three or four minutes later they said it was George Jackson, one of the so-called Soledad Brothers. Now nobody ever bothered to call me and tell me that he was dead. And it’s.. Well, for the past 10 or 11 years I’ve expected to hear that he was dead anyway. So although the shock was there from the radio? I still expected to hear it someday, but not from the radio. 

[disrupted recording]

Reporter: Do you believe that? Do you disbelieve that? And do you have any other possibilities? What do you think really happened? 

Georgia: No, I don’t believe that, because I don’t think my son was mad and I don’t think he was an idiot. And I don’t think that he would do the things that they said he did. You know, these people have for years gotten away with saying anything that they want to say because they have absolute power over those men. Those men can’t even sneeze unless they want them to. They can say anything that they want to say and we have to take it. You know that. Did they let any of you go in there and find out and talk to the people what happened? You only took their word for what happened, and that’s the way it’s always been. 

Reporter: What do you think happened?

I think they expected me to go and sit in the corner and cry and not really look at George, but I did. I looked at him. I saw everything that happened to him. He was shot more than once. In fact, his body was mutilated. George was a fine looking man. But you wouldn’t have been able to recognize him after they got through with him. It seemed as if they just did things to him for a vengeance, you know? And then when I talked on the phone to them about it, at San Quentin, they said everybody was glad he was dead. And you could tell if they were glad for what they did to his body. 

[disruption in recording]

Ed Bell (Georgia’s Attorney): You are free to change whatever you hear into the lies that you see. We have no misconception about how black people are treated in the penal institutions of this country. There’s a lady that sits beside me who has first hand knowledge of the way black people are treated in the penal institutions of this country. 

Georgia: I don’t know exactly what happened, but I do know that the guards were out to get him. I know that there was one guard there that treated him very well because he told me this man has kept me alive since they returned me to San Quentin. And I can’t. Unfortunately, I can’t remember his name. 

[indiscernible question]

Georgia: That since we can’t get justice from the state of California and we can’t get justice from America in general, that we need somebody to intercede for us to see that some justice is done in this country concerning the murder of my son and the murder of so many other men in prison. And it’s basically that. 

[indiscernible question]

Georgia: White lies along with black lies if it achieves what they’re after. In other words, no black voice can get too loud in this country. It’s always silenced. The minute somebody comes forward and tries to inform the masses of people, white and black, what’s going on. Because, you see, most people are selfish. They don’t bother to think about what’s happening to their fellow man, just so long as there’s surviving and they don’t care what happens to the next person. 

I don’t say that they’re cruel, but they just don’t stop to think about it. It’s like you people. You don’t stop to think about anything but getting the story because that’s your livelihood. You don’t care where I’m being repressed or murdered, because that’s not really on your mind. But once you stop to think about these things, you might be impressed to the fact that, say, we’re all Americans and these things that are happening to other Americans just possibly might happen to me. 

So, in order to keep this thought from ever reaching any of the so-called “good people” or the “silent majority” as they’re termed, these things are conducted in a way as to make prejudice against, you know. What’s going on? They do this. They frame all these little lies in the prisons. They keep people away from prisons, you know? They build them way out somewhere. When you’re poor like me, it takes you forever to get there. And if you get there, you spent some money that you need to exist on, in order to get there. They want to – first, they try to take your people away… 

He’s a political prisoner, even though he didn’t believe it. If he didn’t, hadn’t believed in socialism, if he hadn’t believed in that, he would still be a political prisoner. Because in this country the prisons are run by whatever political parties is in. This year it happens to be Republican, so Republicans are running it. Next year, if the Democrats get in, they’ll appoint their special little murderers to do their job, so it’s no difference. 

There’s a group in there that are Nazis and this group. They call themselves Nazis and this is the people who are hired, who are given special privileges by the guards to do their dirty work for them. 

Reporter: Where is his body now? 

Georgia: He’s buried in Mount Vernon, IL. 

Reporter: You say that nothing happened so far, now we’ve had Attica?

Georgia: I think society has to change also, I think people such as you, your attitude has changed towards people. You think because somebody is locked up in jail they cease to be a human being. They’re still human beings – no matter where they are. And driving through New York. It’s another example of inhumanity. 

The way people have to live, I mean not live, exist from day in and day out. Just like dogs, I mean this society, this country, is supposed to be the greatest country in the world. How can people who say they love this country? And will die for this country can walk down and look in Harlem. They can go on film or they can go in Watts. And every other ghetto in the United States and watch human beings live the way they have to live and say they love their country. 

To me this is a reflection on the country. The way people have to exist day in and day out and be deprived of everything that any human being is supposed to have, just because all through the years they have not been allowed to achieve anything. And I think it’s time people stop passing the buck and stand up and realize what’s wrong with this country, that a certain few people want it all, no matter how much it is, and others have nothing. 

They don’t even want you to have welfare to exist. In other words, they want all black people and poor white people to die. They don’t even want us here. And when are you going to wake up to the fact that this is what really goes on and stop trying to white wash it?

Reporter: Has United Nations given any idea that it would be sympathetic to your issue when you bring it before them? 

Georgia: We haven’t approached the UN yet… I don’t think it’s a black liberation struggle. I think it’s every American’s in this country struggle. I mean, we’re all Americans. I’m not an African. I’m descendant from Africa, but I’m an American. Why should I should be treated differently than any other American? That’s what’s the trouble here. Now, people try to make this a racial issue. It’s not. It’s a human issue. It’s another human being being mistreated by another human being. And we are all Americans. So if one American can be treated right, why can’t all of us? I don’t hold any animosity towards people because they’re white. I hold it because they are repressors. The one that represses means the one I don’t like. 

Reporter: Do you see they’re struggle reaching new unity with people on the East Coast in Attica and the West Coast coast?

Georgia: Of course – anybody that’s repressed should be united. They should be, but I don’t know where they are or not. Everybody takes their own little sadness and hides with it, but I’m not hiding with mine. I want the people to know that I don’t like what’s been done to me and I want everybody to know it and want everybody to know that I’ve been sad and crying for 10 years for nothing. 

[momentary disruption]

Georgia: I felt like if George needed help, that this great country and this great state that we live in could help him. I went along with the state to try to help him. I had to find out for myself, just like you will have to find out for yourself that they didn’t want to help him. They wanted to kill him. They wanted to make him a bootlicking lacky like most other Black people in the country and he didn’t desire to be like that. 

Reporter: Do you feel that your son was railroaded into prison by society? 

Georgia: I feel like that he didn’t have a fair trial. I felt like that the lawyer stood there and sold him down the river. Because there was a witness who said that he didn’t take part in that particular thing he didn’t have anything to do with. We had a witness and he was white and they wouldn’t use him. 

[momentary disruption]

Georgia:  I took a plane and went to Oakland to try to find out what happened to my son. I called the prison. And I was told that nobody wanted to talk to me. I tried to get a hold of Warden Park. And I was also told nobody wanted to talk to me. The only way I got to talk to Warden Park is when I pretended I was a reporter from… the Sun reporter and he came to the phone. And when I asked him what happened to my son, I said, how did he get killed? What’s wrong? Can I come out and talk to you? He says, no, I don’t want to talk to you and I don’t wanna see you. 

So I kept calling and I told him I’d be out the next morning at 9:00 o’clock. And I wanted somebody to tell me what happened to my son, and I went to the prison the next morning, but they wouldn’t let me in. But they let reporters in. So all I know about what happened to my son is what I read in the papers. Nobody has bothered to tell me anything. Not even to notify me he was dead. 

This went on for two or three days and then finally we tried to get the corner to get his report on what happened to George. They refused to give us that. So we haven’t heard anything from any official about George’s death, the only thing we know is what we read in the newspaper. And I think this is wrong. 

I think when somebody is killed – I mean, after all, other people are notified when their people are killed. You don’t they don’t have to read about it in the newspaper or hear it on the radio. And at least he could have talked to me and told me that he died. Even if it was a lie, he could have told it to me. And I think this is wrong for him to be treated like this. And when I went to get his possessions, all they gave me, they wouldn’t even give these to me. They gave them to someone else. 

It was a little envelope about 6 by 8. It had three or four 1960 check stubs in. His 1960 drivers license and a little chain or something they used to wear around his neck and old watch from 1960, nothing from 1960 to the present time. He had many photographs and books. And letters from people in his cell and none of these things they gave to me. They gave me no excuse except it’s evidence. 

Now, I don’t see how his books – his pictures of us and other friends could be evidence – but these things still are refused to us. And I think this since I can’t get any consideration from them, somebody has to say something. That’s the reason why we were trying to get a petition together to go to the UN. And this petition, we feel, will not only help George, but help a lot of other people too. Because these things not only happen to him, they happen to everybody who happens to be unlucky enough to be locked up. 

[momentary disruption]

Georgia: I mean you’d have to be directly involved with going there for so long to really know what goes on. I mean, you can’t go there, take a visit to… to go in for 20 minutes because when you go in they clean it up. Everything is nice when reporters or… Some organization goes in for a visit. Is very nice, and once a year they even have Chamber of Commerce “to do’s” – affairs at the prisons. And this way they can fool the public. They don’t want the public to really know what goes on. But this murder? This harassment. Goes on every day of the year, except maybe when somebody from the public is there. They don’t..

[momentary disruption] 

Georgia: My thoughts of George going to the youth authority is that somebody is going to try to help him if he needs help? But that was wrong. They don’t try to help anybody when they take him in prison. They take him only to punish him. And in punishing him in this way, they either make him a idiot. They make him crawl on the ground, or in some instance some people are strong enough not to become idiots. And I don’t care what anybody says. 

My son was not a Mad Dog. He wasn’t a Mad Dog killer and that’s what they couldn’t stand. They couldn’t stand that they had kept him there for 10 years and still hadn’t made him what they wanted him to be. A Lacky. A broken man… and somebody that they could just control – either that or stool pigeon or an informer, that’s all they try to make out of them. And in the prisons when they go in, they have this program. It’s not the program you think it is, it’s a program where they.. they have characters of what everybody who comes in the prison should be. 

I wish you could – some of you who are very interested could have been around and talked to somebody who’s brave enough to tell you what really goes on inside the prison. Because when you go there, most of the inmates are afraid to say anything. Because for eight or nine years, George was afraid to even tell us everything that went on. And many times there have been people there assigned to kill somebody else. But this is one thing I can say even about the Nazis. Most of them respected George. And the guards were never able to get any of them to set him up to be killed. That’s the reason why he stayed alive so long. He was the person that mostly everybody in the prison respected. 

And I’ve talked to a lot of people who’ve been on the parole –  both black and white. And they have told me the same thing. I have people names right now that will be a witness for me if I had any place to take the evidence too, but I don’t have any place to take it. So therefore I can’t put their name in jeopardy just to the general public. 

Back in 1970 when those three men were killed at Soledad. We were not informed about anything that went on. We didn’t know that George was going to trial for this until he had been going for a month, nearly. The only way we found out about it was the public defender wrote – called me on the phone and told me. Now he had been writing letters out to tell us what was going on, but they kept these letters. 

At one time we got about 9 letters that had been written over the past three or four weeks. And these letters told what had been going on, I got a letter from another inmate. Who told me that they were trying to frame George for the solid at murder of this guard. And. I mean to give somebody’s name like that to the authorities as evidence. 

These people have to live in this prison day in and day out, and they are afraid for their lives – But I don’t think that really that anybody can do anything about the prison system. I don’t think that you people. Alright, or anyone else can do anything until the people who have control – such as the governor and, well, maybe even the President or somebody like that – really wants the thing to change. 

We have all these rules. There’s been two or three senators from California who have tried to make Prison Reform, but these rules and these changes get bogged down and stay there for 15 to 20 years and nobody does anything about it. So, in order for things to be changed, the powers that be has to change them, and we know they don’t want them changed. 

Reporter: Mrs. Jackson what do you do with that petition to the UN? 

Georgia: Well, we hope to get enough signatures – take it to the new end and convince The People.

[end of recording]