This article accompanies our Liberation School study guide for George L. Jackson's Blood in my Eye. Originally from Chicago, Ill, George L. Jackson grew up in California. In 1961, a young Jackson was convicted of armed robbery for allegedly stealing $70 from a gas...
Attica: The making and significance of a heroic prison uprising
Revolutionary revolt etched in workers' consciousness "We the inmates of Attica Prison, have grown to recognize beyond the shadow of a doubt, that because of our posture as prisoners and branded characters as alleged criminals, the administration and prison employees...
Watts 1965: From spontaneous uprising to revolutionary force
With the 60th anniversary of the Watts rebellion upon us, many still point to the arrests of Marquette, Rena and Ronald Frye as the embers that set Watts ablaze in 1965. On Aug. 11, the police pulled over Marquette’s car supposedly responding to reports of drunk...
The long history of Black and Palestinian solidarity
International solidarity in the face of racism The acquittal of racist murderer George Zimmerman sparked outrage and demonstrations not only in the United States, but all around the world—including in Palestine. Many Palestinians circulated pictures of themselves...
“Get up, Stand Up!” Peter Tosh: A revolutionary life
On September 11, 1987, unidentified assailants ambushed and assassinated the Rasta musician and revolutionary Peter Tosh in Kingston, Jamaica. The very poverty and violence Tosh dedicated his life to speaking out against ultimately claimed his life. Armed with a...
50 years since the Panthers formed, Capitalism + Drugs still = Genocide
“Trapped in a vicious cycle of ignorance, poverty, disease, sickness and death, and there seems no way out. There seems to be no way of escape. And because there seems to be no hope, no way out, no means of escape, we turn to wine, we turn to whiskey, heroin,...
The racist history of police militarization and mass incarceration
The following is adapted from Puryear’s book “Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America” (Liberation Books, 2013) In August 1971, a lawyer for big tobacco in Richmond, Va., sent a memorandum to an acquaintance at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with...
When Native people in North Carolina drove out the KKK
Racists defeated in 1958 Battle of Hayes Pond In the 1950s, the movement for civil rights had gained serious momentum, shaking the system of Jim Crow white supremacy to its core and provoking a vicious response from its supporters. The most notorious group that fought...
Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Ed
What is the legacy of this historic civil rights victory? Nearly sixty years ago, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, declaring segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional, after an intense...