This month black food bryant terry all about resistance and celebrating our political prisoners and using all of the faculties that we have to free people who are in prison, let me say, unjustly. For Jonathan Peter Jackson, a direct relative of two prominent members of the Black Panther Party, revolutionary thought and family history have always been intertwined, particularly in August. That’s the month in 1971 when his uncle, the famed Panther George Jackson, was killed during an uprising at San Quentin State Prison in California. A revolutionary whose words resonated inside and out of the prison walls, he was a published author, activist and radical thought leader.
To many, February is the month dedicated to celebrating Black Americans’ contributions to a country where they were once enslaved. But Black History Month has an alternative: It’s called Black August. First celebrated in 1979, Black August was created to commemorate Jackson’s fight for Black liberation. Fifty-one years since his death, Black August is now a monthlong awareness campaign and celebration dedicated to Black freedom fighters, revolutionaries, radicals and political prisoners, both living and deceased.
The annual commemorations have been embraced by activists in the global Black Lives Matter movement, many of whom draw inspiration from freedom fighters like Jackson and his contemporaries. Jonathan Jackson, 51, of Fair Hill, Maryland. George Jackson was 18 when he was arrested for robbing a gas station in Los Angeles in 1960. He was convicted and given an indeterminate sentence of one year to life and spent the next decade at California’s Soledad and San Quentin prisons, much of it in solitary confinement.
While incarcerated, Jackson began studying the words of revolutionary theoreticians such as Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, who advocated class awareness, challenging institutions and overturning capitalism through revolution. Founding leaders of the Panthers, including Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, were also inspired by Marx, Lenin and Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung. Jackson became a leader in the prisoner rights movement.
Inspired by his words and frustrated with his situation, George’s younger brother, Jonathan, initiated a takeover at the Marin County Superior Court in California in 1970. He freed three inmates and held several courthouse staff hostage, in an attempt to demand the release of his brother and two other inmates, known as the Soledad Brothers, who were accused of killing a correctional officer. 21, 1971, during a prison uprising. Inmates at San Quentin prison began formally commemorating his death in 1979, and from there, Black August was born. 90s, shortly after graduating from college. Monifa Bandele, a leader in the Movement for Black Lives, a national coalition of BLM groups, says Black August is about learning the vast history of Black revolutionary leaders.