Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade

by Edward Bunker

  "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 waite
d 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.

  Suddenly there was sdence throughout the cell house except for the scrape of running feet. More than one man was breaking through the crowd to get away. The guard leveled his rifle, but was unable to shoot into the press of bodies. He tried to follow along the gunrad, still blasting his whistle in accusation, but his quarry disappeared down the rear stairs.

  Guards on the cell house floor were too late to reach the scene. The assailants got away.

  I decided to forgo my NCAA wager and get out of the cell house before the rotunda gate was locked. They might even ask me some questions. As I hurried back toward the front stairs, I looked down at the floor of the cell house. Four blacks were pushing a flatbed handcart used to move laundry hampers and metal trash barrels. Now it carried a "brother" who was being rushed toward the hospital. He was on his back, legs drawn up and head raised, his denim jacket open and a red stain spreading across his white tank top. The blacks who pushed the cart would have let a white man die, and a white convict who gave aid to a wounded black (unless the white was assigned to the hospital) would be ostracized by other whites, if not attacked. The first rumor was that he had been stabbed and thrown from the fourth tier. Looking down, that seemed unlikely. If he had been dropped forty feet to the concrete, bones would have been broken. He would have looked different.

  From the rows of tiers above, hundreds of convicts stared down at the exiting group. The question was, who had stabbed him. If it was another black, it was between assailant, victim and their partners. If it was a Chicano, so far that had not caused any widespread trouble, but if it was white on black, or black on white, there would most certainly be trouble.

  As I reached the rotunda door the building Sergeant was coming from another angle to lock it. In the background the public address system was crackling and bellowing "Lock up! Bay side lock up! Yard side lock up!" The Sergeant raised a hand of restraint, recognized me then let me slip out into the Big Yard night. Guards were coming on the double, holding their jangling key rings in one hand and batons in the other.

  I started back across the yard. It was an Edward Hopper study in light and shadow, with several figures working. One wielded the nozzle of a heavy canvas fire hose, while another dragged the weight along behind. Other convicts were sweeping up trash and shoveling it into wheelbarrows. The night yard crew were all friends of mine; they couldn't get assigned without my wink to the lieutenant. Paul Alle
n was approaching, waving his broom. From the yard at night you could see into the lighted cell house. "What happened in there?" he asked.

  "Some nigger got stabbed up on the fourth tier." I used the racial epithet, but it was without animus. Although I would not have used it with any black, even joking with a friend, if I used anything different with Paul, he would have commented.

  "We got another war kickin' off?"

  "I dunno who got him. He doesn't seem to be hurt bad."

  Through the yard gate came Lieutenant E.F. Ziemer, the third watch commander. A man in his mid-fifties, he had the gait of someone who has spent years on a rolling ship. In his case it had been a submarine. His hat was tilted rakishly to the side. He was sauntering toward the East Block rotunda. He was my boss and I gave him a half salute. He stopped. "Hey, Bunk," he called. "Keep yourself avadable. We're going to have reports to write tonight."

  "I'll be around, boss."

  "One other thing."

  "What's up, boss?"

  "They're supposed to gas Aaron Mitchell a week from Friday. It's pretty messy over there. I sent Willy Hart over to hit it with a mop. He wanted me to ask you to help him."

  "He would."

  "If you don't mind."

  "Sure. How do I get in?" Keys to the execution area were kept in #2 gun tower over the Big Yard gate.

  Just then a guard came out of the North Cell House rotunda, which provided entry to both the cell house through a steel door on the left and the overnight condemned cells through another steel door straight ahead. The guard was the runner, who picked up and delivered mail and memos and escorted convicts (say to the hospital) at night. He was heading toward #2 gun tower, obviously to return the key. Ziemer called his name and we walked over to meet him.