Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (50 page)

From the bridge-walkway to the
old Industrial Building, Willy Hart appeared. I'd known Willy since he first
came to San Quentin more than a dozen years earlier. He was an armed robber,
but certainly not the public's vision of an armed robber. If someone had said,
"No, I won't do that," and sat down with arms folded, Willy would
have shrugged and departed. In other words, he wasn't going to hurt anybody —
although if someone pulled a gun and started shooting at him, he would have
shot back, or shot first if he had to. This was his second time in for armed
robbery. He had never had a serious moment during a decade and a half in San
Quentin and Folsom. "Hey, Bunk, how the fuck ya doin' these days?" he
asked as he crossed the road to the yard office. He counted here, as did
another convict, the Lead Man of the night yard crew. The moment the count
cleared, the rest of the yard crew were unlocked. While the lines of convicts
filed into the mess halls, the night yard crew used big fire hoses with bay
water to wash away the phlegm and cigarette butts and the thousands of pieces
of orange peel if oranges had been served. It was one of the better job
assignments in San Quentin. The Lead Man was a holdover from the days when San
Quentin functioned with con bosses.

As for Willy Hart, he'd first
come to San Quentin on a transfer from a youth prison at Tracy, which had
replaced Lancaster and filled the same niche: youthful felons from age eighteen
to twenty-five. My first memory of him was his last night back then in
Lancaster. He was in the showers with the rest of his tier. "Yeah . . .
yeah," he proclaimed. "I escaped all these perverts. Nobody got my
bung hole." His banter was boisterous and funny. He had one of the fastest
mouths in the Department of Corrections, and it occasionally got him into
trouble.

"Where you going?" he
asked.

I replied with a gesture of
eating. "Mess hall."

Just then the sallyport opened.
There were two guards, with George Jackson between them. He was returning from
the visiting room to the adjustment center, the door to which was fifteen feet
from where we stood. He wore handcuffs. We watched him approach. I'd read
Soledad Brother.
It had been very successful
without saying anything new. Eldridge Cleaver had covered the same terrain
better in
Soul On Ice,
which was a few essays from
Ramparts
and more letters. Both books took a Marxist position
on America, calling for armed revolution and a communist state. I think that
George Jackson was introduced to Marxist rhetoric when he was discovered by
white Bay Area Marxists, with Fay Stender being first and foremost. Until then
he simply hated whites. I was already a veteran when he first came to prison,
and was in a nearby cell. I heard him say that he didn't want equality; he
wanted vengeance on the European race. This, however, was the first time I'd
seen him for longer than a glance when he'd pass my cell. By any standards he
was a handsome young man. I estimate he was 6' or 6'1" and weighed 200
pounds, and he had the swagger of a warrior. He could see the two white
convicts standing within a few feet of where he would pass. As he went by, he
looked at us and made a head gesture that could be acknowledgement or
challenge. I stared without expression. I could not acknowledge a man who
killed people for no reason except that they were white, nor was it my style to
say anything to him.

Not Willy though, for just as
George Jackson went by and the escort rang the entry bell at the adjustment
center, a US Air Force Phantom went by with a sonic boom. "That's mighty
Whitey up there," Willy said, pointing to the sky.

I did not laugh, but I could not
suppress a grin. Just before stepping through the door, George Jackson looked
back with pure hate. When the door closed, Willy danced around and put up a
hand for a high five. "I got off a good one, didn't I?"

"Yeah, I gotta give you a gold star for that
one."

I finished my sixth novel, and
using a teacher who had befriended a partner of mine, I had it smuggled out and
maded to my agents, Armitage (Mike) Watkins and Gloria Loomis. Within a couple
of weeks, Mike wrote back that he hoped and believed that he could get it
published. It was only a hope, but it was still the best news I'd had in years.
Indeed, it was the first letter I'd received in years.

One morning I was over by the
garden chapel when I saw two blacks taken out of the adjustment center in
chains. One of them I recognized: Willie Christmas. He had tried to stab a
guard in the North Mess Hall. Now he was going to court in Marin County.

I thought nothing of it. Inmates
were going to court in Marin County all the time. A few hours later I saw the
Captain run out of the custody office on his way to the sallyport, followed a
moment later by a couple of lieutenants. Although it wasn't time for me to
work, I went to the Yard Office to find out what was going on.

Big Brown was on the phone. The
prison's "tactical squad" (or "goon squad") was being
called out. Brown was so excited that he stuttered.

"What's up?" I asked
when he hung up.

"Christmas and that other
nigger, they took over the courtroom."

"Took over the
courtroom?"

"Guns! They've got guns and
they've got hostages."

A couple of the goon squad
hurried by with somber faces. The Marin County courthouse was a few minutes
away. Would the law that forbade an escape from prison with hostages apply to
this situation? It was something we would find out very soon. Whde Brown was on
the telephone again, I headed toward the yard to share the news with my
partners.

It was mid-morning and the yard
had more birds than convicts. A few cons were going to the canteen and a couple
were pacing the length of the yard, scattering a flock of pigeons and a few
seagulls being fed breadcrumbs by a convict. "I hope they shit all over
you," I muttered as I went by. Over by the hot water spigot on the East
Cell House wall was a half-score of white and Chicano convicts gathered around
Danny Trejo. From his intensity and their rapt attention, it was obvious he
knew about the events transpiring at the courthouse. It was a running joke:
when anything happened, violent or scandalous, and anyone wanted the news, the
word was, "Ask Danny." He was San Quentin's resident gossip
columnist, and he was speaking as I walked up:

"...
some young rug stood up in the
courtroom with an Uzi and said, 'I'm taking over.' He had a shit load full of
guns and passed 'em out to those crazy motherfuckers. They got the judge, the
DA, the jury . . .
everybody
as a hostage. They might have God himself as a
hostage."

"If they was in the walls,
it wouldn't make no never mind. They'd blow 'em away faster'n God could get the
news."

"Check this . . . they got
a sawed-off shotgun cocked and wired around the judge's neck. If the dude
coughs, it'll blow his head off."

"Hey, Danny, you sure you
ain't tellin' another goddamn lie. You know how you are."

"Yeah, I tell a good He
from time to time,
ese,
but this is straight shit,
carnal."

"It's the truth," I
said. "I heard about it in four post. The goon squad went runnin' out the
gate."

"Damn," someone said.
"Them niggers is in trouble." Which elicited nods of general
agreement.

Willy Hart came through the gate
and started across the yard. Seeing us, he veered over and approached, fairly
vibrating with his excitement. "You guys hear what happened?"

"Yeah, we
heard ..."

"It's all over now. They
got out to the parking lot. I think the Sheriff's Department was backing off,
but a couple bulls from the joint showed up. They shot the shit out of them
fools. There's dead niggers and dead judges . . . there's bodies all over the
place."

"Dead niggers and dead
judges . . . how lucky can a peckerwood get?
Ha ... ha ... ha ...
ha!" I looked at the
commentator, Dean Lakey. He aspired to be among the bona-fide tough guys, would
go far, but there was something mushy down deep, and he folded up down the line
when he faced someone tough and preferred to lock up. Once he had crossed that
barrier and was forever stigmatized, it was easy for him to go all the way to
informant. He knew of several murders, including two where he was involved in a
minor way, like standing point while the killing went down. When he made the
aforementioned statement about niggers, judges and peckerwoods, it resonated
falsely. It was like someone trying to appear more racist and more
cold
than anyone could imagine who
is not of this milieu. It was one of those, "methinks thou dost protest
too much."

I wanted to know what had really
happened. I would read the newspapers and talk to a black man who had been
subpoenaed as a defense witness. When the madness broke out, they asked him if
he wanted to go, and he said thanks but no thanks. He had a parole date within
six months. He was doing what amounted to a drunk sentence. He was from the old
school, and much wiser.

What I learned really went down
was that the courtroom that day was nearly empty of spectators, and none of the
court personnel — judge, clerk, bailiff, deputy District Attorney - noticed
when Jonathon Jackson, George Jackson's seventeen- year-old brother, came in.
He walked down the aisle and turned into a row of spectator benches. He carried
a small duffel bag.

The only person who saw him was
the defendant, Willie Christmas.

The others noticed him when he
stood up with a pistol and said clearly, "All right, gentlemen, I'm taking
over." I must say after careful reflection, whatever else the statement
says, it has a certain
elan.
I think his brother had convinced him of the
revolution's imminence.

Jonathan quickly armed Willie
Christmas and disarmed the bailiff, plus took his keys and unlocked the
bullpen. Ruchell Magee was quick to arm himself. The convict I knew shook his
head and stayed. The others left and he watched through the crack in the door.
He couldn't see the whole courtroom, but he did see young Jackson put a wire
noose attached to a shotgun over the judge's head and down on his neck. The
primed shotgun was resting on his shoulder under his chin.

The convicts then gathered the
hostages around them and made their way to the parking lot where a yellow van
with sliding doors waited for them. The sheriff's squad moved with them, but
were afraid to take a shot.

They were getting in the van
when one of the prison guards, using a big hunting rifle with scope sights
lined up the cross-hairs and squeezed the trigger. The first shot dropped one
convict. Then everyone else opened fire, the authorities pouring bullets
through the thin van walls, the convicts shooting hostages. The judge's head
was blown off, the deputy District Attorney had his spine severed. He lived as
a paraplegic and was later appointed to the bench of the Superior Court. The
only convict who survived was Ruchell Magee, who was wounded but recovered. He
was already doing a life sentence. That evening, the television news had film
of the convicts' bodies being dragged from the van with ropes, like carcasses
of beef. The authorities claimed a fear of booby traps, but I saw rage in their
gesture. It would forever change how San Quentin convicts were handled in the
courtrooms of Marin County.

It was revealed a few days later
that the weapons used in the courtroom belonged to Angela Davis, the black
communist professor. She fled before she could be arrested. A fugitive warrant
was issued, charging her with being an accessory. It was several months before
she was caught and brought back to America's most liberal city, San Francisco,
for trial. She was represented by Charles Garry, the best trial lawyer in
Northern California. His book on jury selection is a seminal work on the issue.
The jury not only acquitted Angela Davis but also gave her a party afterward. I
have no idea if she gave Jonathan Jackson the weapons or if he took them
without her knowledge, but I do believe that she was in love with George
Jackson. Big and handsome, he must have stirred deep feelings when she saw him
draped in the white man's chains. To her he was no murderer, no matter if or
who he killed. He was an enslaved black man in rebellion against his
oppressors, and therefore justified in all he did.

The Marin courthouse shootout
made nationwide headlines and network news. The Soledad Brothers became a
greater
cause celebre.
George
Jackson was made a field marshal in the Black Panther
Party. He was proud of his
seventeen-year-old baby brother, who was among those pulled from the van with
rope. Fay Stender realized that talking of armed revolution was a different
game than judges getting their heads shot off, convicts being slaughtered and a
deputy district attorney being made a paraplegic. She gave up the cause and
quit the case.

The Vietnam war rocked America's
college campuses. Bombs exploded, white radicals became revolutionaries and
robbed banks. Meanwhile the black ghettos in one American city after another
burned in "long, hot summers" to the chant of "Burn, baby,
burn." In Mississippi the Ku Klux Klan murdered civil rights workers, in
San Francisco a group of blacks prowled the night and killed whites they caught
alone. These were called the "Zebra Killings," and I thought it
likely that black ex-convicts were involved (I was right), for only in
California's prisons had I seen similar killings. Both sides did it, but George
Jackson was the first. As with everyone, he did no evil in his own mind. All
that matters is for the individual to justify himself in the mirror, and George
did so using 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow. Journalists came from around
the world to interview him and he spent more time in the visiting room than his
cell. Writers came from
Time
and
Newsweek,
from
Le Monde,
the London
Times
and The
New York Times.
It was Department of Corrections policy to allow such
interviews, and George got at least one, and sometimes several, every day of
the week. The guards hated him and the "commie pinko bastards who took a
hate-filled killer and made him a revolutionary hero." They didn't
appreciate being called pigs and fascists; none saw those when they looked in
their mirrors although a few would wink when queried about racism, especially
when guards started being killed.

White convicts also resented
being referred to as neo-Nazis and white supremacists, the villains of the
plot, as it were. There were several race wars behind San Quentin's walls, where
there was so much racial paranoia that real provocation was unnecessary to
evoke murder. Almost any excuse is enough to break out the shivs. One
particular war began with events just slightly related to race.

It was a spring evening after
chow and the 700 convicts in the

East Cell House straggled across
the Big Yard into the budding. The five tiers were crowded, with some men
waiting near their cells for the lockup while others roamed the tiers, trying
to hustle a paper of heroin, a tab of acid, a quart of home brew, or anything
to soften the reality of the long night ahead of them. I lived in the North
Cell House, but because of
ex officio
status, I roamed where I wanted. This evening I
wanted to make a bet on the NCAA Final Four.

I ran up the stairs, swung
around the rail and started down the third tier. A humming roar hung over
everything, a sound so common and pervasive in the cell house that you ceased
to notice it. It was the kind of noise that only attracts attention when it
stops or its rhythm changes.

The rhythm changed. From a lower
tier came the thud and grunt of struggling bodies, the bang as someone bumps
against a cell gate and it hits the frame. Convicts nearby froze and turned,
wary as animals at a sharp sound. Others on tiers above and below craned their
necks to see what was going on. Tension spread like electricity through
connected wires. Men forty yards away sensed within seconds that something had
happened.

The gunrad guard, a rookie, ran
back and forth, looking for the trouble. He saw a jumble of motion. His whistle
bleated, repeated itself and ended any trace of doubt that someone was being
stabbed. San Quentin's convicts gave up fistfighting long ago to settle
disputes. If it's not worth killing about, forget it. If you punch somebody in
the mouth and let him go, he's liable to brood about it for a month or two and
come back with a shiv.