So, welcome everybody to this third lecture in our abbreviated class on feminism and social justice. Today, I'm going to talk about Free Angela, the politics, the trial, and the international movement, 1970, 1972. So, when I refer to Angela, I'm referring to Angela Davis, and was a very very famous case that the younger the younger generation will not probably remember but older generations will. It is a remarkable example of a more contemporary social justice movement, than what we've talked about before since we started in the 50s. So the dates I gave you are 1970 to 1972. It actually starts a little bit before that. It's complicated because there are a lot of different elements to this case, not simply the trial but everything that surrounded it. I will do my best to lay it out for you, so that you understand more or less what happened. I do want to say that the reason I'm picking this is two reasons, maybe three reasons. One is, this is a movement that was led by black women and men, but primarily women including of course Angela Davis herself. It was also a huge international mass movement. So, when you talk about social justice movement, this movement involved literally millions of people everywhere in the world. That was part of what influenced ultimately achieved an astonishing verdict in this trial. The third feature of this I think that's really important, is the kind of strategies that we used in order to accomplish her eventual freedom. In order to make that clear as possible, I need to give you background to put you back into what it was like in this country in 1969, 1970 as this case unfolded, because then you'll have more of a sense of what was actually taking place of how dire the situation was at the time that she was arrested. As summary, we'll tell you this; that the Angela Davis trial commenced on February 28th, 1972. It was held in San Jose, California, in the Superior Court, it lasted just over three months. The prosecution presented 104 witnesses, and introduced 203 items in evidence. This suggest the enormity of the case that was being presented. The defense when it was its turn presented 12 witnesses in two and a half days. A decision that was made, because we felt that the prosecution had not presented a convincing case to the jury, and we presented what we call a pinpoint defense. The jury returned a verdict after three days of deliberation on June 4th, 1972. It was 597 days after the arrest of Angela Davis. It was three days but it was 13 hours that the jury deliberated, and they returned a verdict of not guilty on all counts. What were the charges? The charges against Angela Davis were first degree murder, first degree kidnapping, and conspiracy to commit both. The penalty was either death. It was a death penalty in California at this time or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Who was Angela Davis? Well, she was probably at the time a very well-known black revolutionary member of the Communist Party, not a member of the Black Panther Party, but definitely someone who was an ally of the Black Panther Party. She lived in Los Angeles at the time that these events unfold, and she was a lecturer in the philosophy department at UCLA. While she completed a doctorate through UC San Diego under the auspices of a professor named Herbert Marcuse with whom she had previously worked when she was an undergraduate at Brandeis. That's another story, but Marcuse was also at the time an extremely prominent left intellectual, who was a refugee from Nazi Germany, who had made his home here in the United States. I have spoken in the first-person here, we or I, because I was friends with Angela Davis from childhood and was deeply involved in her defense. So, I'm speaking from both factual information based on the trial transcript and many other aspects of the case but also from firsthand knowledge of what took place. So, I have to start by saying these are the events that took place. This is what happened first. It took place on August 7th, 1970. The location was the Marin county courthouse. A young 17-year-old, black man entered the court room and sat down in the back. His name was Jonathan Jackson. I will explain who he was, but let me just give you, this is what happened. He was heavily armed. He had I believe three or four guns, and he entered that courtroom in the Marin county courthouse because a black prisoner from San Quentin whose name was John McLean was on trial in that courtroom. McLean was charged with attempted murder of a prison guard, which had happened a couple of years earlier. He had entered a plea of not guilty, this was his second trial. First trial had ended In a hung jury, he was defending himself. His witnesses were other San Quentin prisoners. When Jonathan Jackson entered the courtroom, a prisoner named William Christmas was on the witness stand. That's the setting. Okay. So, Jonathan stands up in the back of the courtroom, he says I'm taking over now gentlemen. He moves forward with his weapons, disarms the Bailiff who was in the room, and proceeds to take the judge as a hostage, the prosecuting district attorney as a hostage, his name was Gary Thomas, a juror as a hostage. It's very dramatic moments that happen in all of this. I won't go into all the details now, but some of these things that happened It was a great moment the way things were conducted. There were two other prisoners involved. Well, one other prisoner besides William Christmas, another prisoner whose name was Ruchell Magee who was also in the events that took place. So, he said he was taking over now, and Ruchell was in the courtroom and we'll William Christmas, and James McClain. Jonathan Jackson had supplied the weapons. It took them more than 30 minutes to exit the courtroom, which became an important feature of the trial because it suggested that there had not been a lot of prior consultation about what was going on, and there was a lot of confusion about who was doing what and where people were going and so on and so forth. One of the prisoners and I don't remember which one tie a shotgun around the neck of the judge, and then they proceeded out of the room down an elevator and walked across the parking lot in the Marin County Courthouse to a waiting van that Jonathan had rented, was a Hertz rental van. They put everyone into the van, and they proceeded then to drive out. Jonathan was driving, McClain was in the passenger seat, and everyone else was in the back. Now, Marin County Sheriff's held their fire, but in that intervening 30 minutes or 35 minutes that it took them to get out of the courtroom, the San Quentin prison guards had arrived. They have orders to shoot to kill escaping prisoners regardless of hostages, and they opened fire on the van. There's a recording of it, nine seconds of gunfire. All the shots were fired into the van. The prisoners fired no shots. The Jonathan was killed. McClain was killed. The judge was killed. Ruchell Magee was very seriously wounded. Did I say Willie Christmas was killed? One of the jurors was slightly wounded. That's it. That was in terms of the hostages. Gary Thomas, who was the assistant district attorney, was gravely wounded. It was established later in the course of the trial ballistics and so forth that all, as I said, all of the shots came from outside of the van except for one. When the shotgun went off, it was believed that it went off when the judge was hit by a bullet from outside the van and then the shotgun went off. So, that was terrible. I mean, it was carnage. There was a tremendous sensation and who was Jonathan Jackson and why did this happen to them and so on and so forth. So, those are the events. So, I'm going to leave it there and I'm going to go on to the next element. I'll give you a picture of what took place. The next element is Jonathan Jackson was from Los Angeles. His brother George Jackson had been a prisoner in Soledad prison, which is a different. Soledad prison is in Monterey County about 120 miles from San Quentin. He had been a prisoner there along with two other black men. John Clutchette and Fleeta Drumgo. These three had become a very prominent case in California prior to the events in August 7th was called the Soledad Brothers, the Soledad Brothers' case. Very briefly, this is what happened there. So, on January 13th 1970, it doesn't matter if you remember the dates. This is months before August 7th, 1970, you see the point. January 30th 1970, three black prisoners were shot and killed by a prison guard at Soledad, drawing a fracas in the prison yard. The black prisoners contended that it was set up by the prison guards. Whatever the facts, three black prisoners were killed. A grand jury was convened, and they found that the white guard who had killed the prisoners had committed justifiable homicide, and so no charges were filed. Prison is seething, as you might imagine, after an incident like this. A half hour after the radio announcement of this decision, a white guard, who was not the guard that had killed the prisoners, his name was John Mills. This guard was found dying in the maximum security section of Soledad after being thrown from a third-floor tier. Investigation and three black prisoners were accused of his murder. George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, John Clutchette. That's the Soledad Brothers. That's their case. So, they maintained their innocence. They said they had not thrown the guard over the third floor from third-floor tier. They also insisted that the reason that they were selected was that they had been involved in efforts of prison reform inside the prison to try to improve conditions inside the prison. So, that's the Soledad Brothers' case. So far tracking what I'm talking about? Now, I want to say that all of this took place in 1970. Before we really, by we, I mean myself, Angela Davis, other folks really had an understanding of what we're now calling mass incarceration. There's a whole movement now for ending mass incarceration in prison reform and so forth. At the time, we knew that something was wrong because anyone who had an awareness of the police and their actions inside the ghettos, for example, in Los Angeles or in Oakland or in other large cities knew that young black people were being harassed, arrested at very young ages. In the case of John Clutchette and Fleeta Drumgo, for example, their first encounters with police in Los Angeles, they were all from LA, was when they were 13 and 14 years old. The reason they were in San Quentin was that each had been accused of a second-degree burglary, a minor offense which because they had prior experiences with the criminal justice system as children and had no money and were defended by a public defender and were told to basically cop a plea which means to plead guilty for, they were sentenced to, if you can believe this is the truth, six months to 15 years. Because in California at this time, they had something called the indeterminate sentencing law, and it allowed judges this discretion. George Jackson was imprisoned. Again, the same kind of thing having been arrested as a juvenile and told that there was no chance that he could mount a defense because he was a passenger in a car in which the driver committed a robbery in a gas station for $70. He was sentenced, and I think it was 15 years to life for that offense. So, those are the cases. Now, you know that if these had been young white boys or white young men, first of all, they wouldn't been arrested in the first place when they were 13 and 14 years old, and they would never have been incarcerated for these kind of offenses of burglaries. In both cases, in Fleeta's case and in John Clutchette's case, they both said they had not stolen anything, but they never had a trial. So, you understand that. So, that's the situation. So, Jonathan is 17 years old and his brother George Jackson had been in prison for 11 years, seven of them in solitary confinement. So, this youngster is growing up with his brother whom he admired greatly in these conditions and circumstances in Los Angeles. That's the Soledad Brothers' case. Now, I want to tell you one other piece of this because I think it's significant, and I hope it doesn't confuse things too much, but why was James McClain accused of attempting to murder a prison guard, which he had claimed he did not do? Because in San Quentin prison, now different prison, San Quentin prison on February 25th 1970, a prisoner named Fred Billingsley, who was known to be emotionally ill was killed by prison guards in his cell. Basically, he was teargassed to death and beaten. James McClain, Ruchell Magee, William Christmas and another prisoner named David Johnson witnessed this murder. David Johnson wrote and signed an affidavit swearing to the above account of Billingsley's murder, which I've abbreviated, but that is essentially what happened. Michelle Magee, William Christmas, and James McLain, wrote letters to their families and friends detailing these events. Five days after David Johnson had filed this affidavit, James McLain was arrested by correctional officers inside San Quentin and charged with attempted murder. So, if you look at that case, you might be suspicious that maybe he didn't do anything, which is why the first jury hung in his case and it was all white jury, in a very wealthy community of Marin County. At the time of the second trial that I described the events that took place with Jonathan Jackson, James McLain was on trial second time, as I've said, the presiding judge was Harold Haley, the prosecutor Gary Thomas, was married to Judge Haley's niece. Someone should have recused themselves. So, you can see that this was not going to be any kind of fair proceeding or fair trial. That's the situation, that's the Billingsley murder in San Quentin, and were McLain and Christmas and M were in the courtroom to begin with, and why David Johnson had filed that affidavit? Then, you have the Soledad brothers case, with the murder of a guard as a apparent reprisal for the killing of black prisoners earlier, and you have the Soledad brothers, that's the background. Now, how did Angela Davis get involved in all of this? All right. So, I've already told you that Angela was teaching at UCLA. One of Angela's best friends was a black woman whose name was Kendra Alexander. Kendra had gone to high school with John Clutchette, and knew Mrs. Doris Maxwell who was John Clutchette's mother. Mrs. Maxwell knew that Kendra was very involved in the civil rights movement and in radical politics and went to her for help, and that is how this case began. So, Kendra was married to a man named Franklin Alexander. So, these are key players in the defense, so that's why I'm telling you who they were. In addition to that, another leading figure in the defense was Fania Davis, Angela's sister, younger by two years, and Charlene Mitchell, who was Franklin's sister, quite a bit older, and became the chair of a National United Committee to free Angela Davis and all political prisoners. So, that was the umbrella organization that we organized after. But now the question is, why was Angela Davis? You understand why she was involved in the Soledad brothers, because she knew Kendra and they were very good friends. Angela already had considerable prominence in Los Angeles. Why was that? Well, she was supposed to teach at UCLA and she had been hired to teach as a lecturer as I said in the philosophy department. Someone wrote a letter to the student newspaper "The Daily Bruin" and announced that Angela Davis was a member of the Communist Party, and the regents promptly fired her, this was in 1969. She filed a grievance, she won the grievance, because you can't fire someone, that's fairly obvious. There's something about the first amendment embedded in here. She won the grievance and was back to teaching. Her first class in the fall of 1969, 2,000 students showed up. Her first lecture it was on the philosophy of a black abolitionist Frederick Douglas. I'm smiling as I'm recounting this, because there's nothing like firing somebody to guarantee that thousands of students who come to hear the lecture, it's like so counterproductive if you're trying to not have the students hear somebody speak. All right. Was that sort of set it up? Now, one other story, who was Ruchell Magee? Because Ruchell Magee survived August 7th. He was gravely wounded but he survived. He was also a prisoner in San Quentin. He had also witnessed the Billingsley killing, which we have already said. He was originally from Louisiana. I will not tell you everything about his story, but he had been arrested as a teenager in Louisiana, and charged with attempted rape of a white woman. If those of you listening to this know something about the history of lynching in the south and accusations against black teens and men. You know that at least that was a suspicious charge, and it was an attempted rape. He was nevertheless found guilty not through trial, but by a judge after again being advised not to contest the play. He was sentenced to Angola State Penitentiary, which is one of the most notorious state penitentiary in the country. He served, I think it was eight years, and because he had gone in as a minor which was also if you think about putting a minor in Angola State Penitentiary, I mean, the whole thing is but that's what was done. He was released after eight years on the condition that he leave Louisiana, and his parents arranged for him to go to Los Angeles, because he had an aunt and uncle living in Los Angeles. He was in LA living with them, got into an altercation with somebody about a $10 debt. The car rolled while they were arguing, and Rochelle was arrested and charged with kidnapping. If you find this extraordinary, I'm telling you the truth, It’s in the court transcripts. Convicted again, he tried to plead not guilty in this case, and as a consequence, anyway, the end result was he was sentenced to life in prison. That's why he was in San Quentin. When Michelle was interviewed as to why he participated with Jonathan Jackson on August 7th, he said he was being illegally held, he was a slave, and he was claiming his freedom, that's was his motive. That's what he said. So, that's a very abbreviated edition of his life. On February 20th, 1970 having gained considerable prominence in Los Angeles, and actually in California, and part of the country as well, because of her firing and being reinstated to UCLA, Angela Davis called a press conference February 20th, 1970 in Los Angeles to announce the formation of the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee. With her at the press conference were members of George and Jonathan Jackson's family, Mr. Mrs. Jackson, sister Penny Jackson, and brother Jonathan. After the events that took place that I've described at Marin County, and once the guns were recovered and so on and so forth, at first, it was announced that there was a mysterious woman thought to be involved in the case. That was first announcement from the police. Then, a Marin County grand jury indicted Angela Davis on the charges I've already told you because the guns were registered legally in her name. So, of course, the question is how did Jonathan get the guns and whether or not she knowingly gave him the guns? I can either tell you now or maybe wait to the drama of the thing, but the point was that the guns were bought as part of a defense in what was called Soledad House in Los Angeles, because there had been so many death threats. First against Angela, most of the guns were bought years before and it was because of death threats against her. Then, they were housed in the Soledad Brothers house that was used as a headquarters for organizing the Soledad Brothers defense. The cabinet in which they were kept was not locked. So, we can say that that was a mistake, that they should have been locked, that they shouldn't have been just accessible like that, but that is what happened. But their weapons were all bought legally. Okay. So, other background I think to think about because again, generationally, you may not put all the dates together in your mind, Richard Nixon is in the White House. This is before Watergate which is 73. J. Edgar Hoover is Director of the FBI. There's been enough now written about Hoover, you probably have some idea of who he was. I want to situate the Angela Davis arrest. It came 18 months after the assassination of Martin Luther King. Three months after the killing of students by the national guard in an anti-war protests at Kent State. Kent State should maybe spark our memory. There was an anti-war protest and the National Guard opened fire on totally unarmed students, and most of the students killed and wounded weren't even part of the protest. Then, a few days later, police in Mississippi highway patrol open fire on black students at Jackson State University in Mississippi. Two were killed and 12 were wounded. There was later a presidential commission on student unrest, that's the title of it, that concluded at the 28-second fusillade at Jackson State, was unreasonable and unjustifiable overreaction, and no indictments were ever returned however in the deaths of the students there were killed there at Jackson State. May fourth, 1970 at Kent State, national guardsmen opened fire on white students gathered to protest against the war in Vietnam. They fired 67 rounds in 13 seconds and they killed four students and wounded nine. No indictments were ever returned there either, but the commission also found that this was totally unreasonable. Actually, they never figured out, I don't think they ever really figured out why somebody gave a command to open fire, I don't think they ever figured out why that happened. So, you can see that there was considerable violence, protests happening both in the black community and among students in the anti-war movement, the assassination of Dr. King, all of these things within a very condensed period of time, within an 18 month period of time. Then, the events on August seventh, and Jonathan Jackson, and the Soledad Brothers. So, I'm just trying to show you that there's a context in which all of these took place. The other context that's really important here is the continual assaults by police and federal authorities against members of the Black Panther Party. So, 1969, December fourth, two leading members of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, were killed by police in their apartment while they were asleep in a raid on the apartment. Fred Hampton was 19 years old, Mark Clark was 20 years old, and Fred Hampton was the chair of the Black Panther Party in Illinois. No one was ever indicted for these murders. They were asleep in the apartment when the police burst in. So, that also happen. So, again you see, all of these things are going on at the same time. So, when Angela Davis was indicted, she made herself, one might say, unavailable, or she had gone underground. There was a funeral for Jonathan Jackson that was held in Oakland, I was there. There were thousands, literally thousands of young black people in the streets for the funeral. I think my husband and I were probably among the few white people there. I couldn't get anywhere near the church. It was little ramshackle white church. You could see the building, you could see the white building down below us. People dressed in their Sunday best, and I remember seeing Mrs. Jackson led out of the church. I could see that far cradled in the arms of family bent over with grief. That tells you something about this moment. If thousands and thousands of people come out for this funeral, it tells you something about this moment and how people were feeling. I think that was a great chasm, a great gap and consciousness between these young black people in the community and what Jonathan Jackson had attempted to do, and how they understood it, and the way in which probably the vast majority of white people, except maybe more radical students, white people that had been involved in political movements, or Civil Rights Movement had an understanding of what had taken place. Angela went underground. I can tell you personally the FBI came to visit me, asked me if I knew where she was. I didn't. I actually had no idea. But I had a certain bravado when they intercepted me at my home. I was just coming home from taking my son to daycare and I said, "Even if I knew I wouldn't tell you." Then they said, "Well, if we find out that you knew and didn't tell us, we'll put you in jail for 20 years." So, it was all very dramatic, TV material. Then the kids down the street, there were some kids down the street who are playing on the sidewalk and they came rushing over to me after the FBI drove off and they said, "Was that the police?" I said, "Yes." I told them. They said, "Hey, we're just like on TV." So, sometimes you think you're living in a certain surreal like this is happening, but it is surreal at the same time. Eventually, Angela Davis was captured by the FBI on October 13th, 1970 in New York City and incarcerated at the New York Women's House of Detention. I flew to New York, I think the next day. When she was captured, President Nixon got on national television when he was at FBI headquarters for some ceremonial and congratulated the FBI on capturing the dangerous terrorist, Angela Davis. He used that word. I'm not making that up. He used the word terrorist. This is 1970. That's on national television. So, there must be a definite presumption of guilt here. Of course, bail is denied. She's in the New York Women's Detention Center in Manhattan. Well, it looked very grim. It looked really impossible how to free her, what to do. First step was to fight extradition to California. That failed. But it didn't fail in the courts. It failed because in the middle of the night, the guards came to her cell, lied to her and said her attorney was waiting to see her, and instead whisked her off into a car and off to the airport, the Hamilton Air Force Base in New Jersey, where she said there were National Guardsmen with bayonets surrounding a plane that was on the runway. She thought that if she sneezed or stumbled, she would be shot and put on a plane and extradited unceremoniously to California. Well, that's how the extradition was accomplished. When she was arrested, probably the leading black novelist writer of the time, late 20th century was James Baldwin. He wrote an open letter. It was published in the New York Review of Books and then widely disseminated. It was an open letter to Angela. It started, "Dear sister, one might have hoped that by this hour, the very sight of chains on black flesh, or the very sight of chains, would be so intolerable a sight for the American people, and so unbearable a memory, that they would themselves spontaneously rise up and strike off the manacles. But no, they appear to glory in their chains; now, more than ever they appear to measure their safety in chains and corpses. So, Newsweek, civilized defender of the indefensible, attempts to drown you in a sea of crocodile tears, 'It remains to be seen what sort of personal liberation she had achieved' and puts you on its cover, chained. You looked exceedingly alone, as alone, say, as the Jewish housewife in the boxcar headed for Dachau, or as any one of our ancestors, chained together in the name of Jesus, headed for a Christian land." The letter went on for some time and I can't quote the whole thing, but I will quote the end. "The enormous revolution in black consciousness which has occurred in this generation, my dear sister, means the beginning of the end of America. Some of us, white and black, know how great a price has already been paid, to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new people, an unprecedented nation. If we know and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name. If we know that we must fight for your life as though it were our own, which it is, and render impassable with our bodies, the corridor to the gas chamber. For if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night. Therefore, peace." Brother James. The first effort that we made following extradition was for her release on bail in California. But California had a statute, 1270 in the penal code, that a person accused of a capital offense, meaning facing the death penalty, could not be released on bail if the presumption of guilt was great. You heard the President of the United States, so bailed denied. We launched a huge international movement for Angela's released on bail. I want to emphasize this because it brought tens of thousands of white people into the movement for her defense, the bedrock of which was the black community because people appropriately believe in the Bill of Rights and in the right of a person to a fair and impartial trial. You could explain to people that this provision of the penal code, with a presumption of guilt, made a fair trial impossible. We went to unions, we went to PTAs, we went to churches. We went everywhere imaginable to communities. White and black, the Chicano, Latino, Asian-American, everywhere we could go. Native American, everywhere, and people signed this petition by the tens of thousands. We had no Internet. This is before the Internet. We had no cell phones. This before is before cell phones. We had none of that. We have maybe a graph machines, and printing presses, very old-fashioned, and we had telephones. That's how this was done. It was done not only in the United States but all over the world. I don't have time to go through all of the pretrial motions and so on and so on and so forth. One of the key motions was to move the trial from Marin County. Because we said there couldn't be a fair judge in Marin County, and that's where these events have taken place. We succeeded. We've got a new judge who was named Richard Arnason, who was from Contra Costa County, who was appointed by a special court, and he moved the trial to San Jose as a more impartial location. So, that's how that happened. That's how we ended up in San Jose. George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Clutchette also won a change of venue for their trial of the Soledad Brothers. They were moved to San Quentin because their trial was to be held in San Francisco. On August 21st, 1971, before their trial, George Jackson was killed in the prison yard at San Quentin. It was an astonishing claim that a lawyer who was visiting him, a white lawyer named Steve Bingham, had given him a small gun which he placed in a wig in his hair. I'm telling you the truth. He was shot in the prison yard once in the ankle, and then he fell, and a coup de grâce to the head. No one was ever prosecuted for his murder. It was devastating. We continue to fight for bail. Gloria Steinem, Coretta Scott King, Reverend Ralph David Abernathy, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, Dolores Huerta, Maya Angelou, Herbert Marcuse, Michel Foucault, Jean Genet, Roberta Flack, Quincy Jones, Sammy Davis Junior, Congressman John Connors, The Congressional Black Caucus and so on, all demanding bail. Aretha said she put up bail. She said, she put up $250,000 in bail if it was granted. Fania Davis traveled the world for rallies, for Angela's defense, 6,000 in Florence, 7,000 in Bologna, 4,000 in Frankfurt, 3,000 in Hanover, 60,000 in Paris. Just the international movement. Tens of thousands of letters sent to judge and to Angela, and just amazing international movement as well as in this country, with huge rallies being held. There were tens of thousands in Santiago Chile and "Free Angela" protests emerges all over Latin America and from South Africa, which at that time was still an apartheid, and Mozambique, and Nigeria, and Kenya. So, it became an enormous international movement. In it, said "Free Angela" but we say the instrument to freeing Angela was to grant bail. Bail was won. This is how very briefly, it was one because in a totally separate case, that we had nothing to do with, a lawyer had filed on behalf of a prisoner that was facing the death penalty in California, that the death penalty itself, violated the Eighth Amendment as being cruel and unusual punishment. The California State Supreme Court under the leadership of its chief justice at that time, a woman named Rose Bird, affirmed that decision. So, the death penalty was abolished in California. When the death penalty was abolished in California, we went to the judge and we said Section 1270 of the penal code no longer applies because there is no death penalty, we wish the bail be set. The prosecutor sputtered tremendously and the judge said, "No. I have noticed that this case has garnered enormous international and national interests" and he set bail, $102,500. I was in charge of putting the money together. I tried to call Aretha Franklin, I reached her agent, she was in the West Indies, there was no way to access the money. I had one other person to call, his name was Roger McAfee. He was white, he was a farmer from Fresno, California. I called him, he said yes. He worked 24 set just right through the night to put together the paperwork to show that his farm was worth $300,000. He and his wife Dolores, enormous courage, had to defend their farm with armed guards, it was at dairy farm in Fresno, California. He came to San Jose. We met with the bail bondsmen just after judge Harris and granted bail and he put up his farm which was his entire life for bail. We raised $10,250 whatever it is that you have to have that cash to give the bondsmen that you lose but you give it to him and then he put up a farm as collateral. Done. Released on bail February 23rd, 1972, five days before the start of the trial. It changed everything, changed everything. So, very important last few points I want to make. Why was the prosecution's theory of crime? Angela was never accused of being there, she was not present in the courtroom. So, really what it hung on was a conspiracy charge that she conspired with Jonathan Jackson and that she knowingly supplied the weapons. But in California law and in many states, if you are convicted of conspiracy, they hold it and you are also then you are responsible for the primary act as well. Even though you didn't pull the trigger, even though you weren't present, right? So that's how we got first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping, and conspiracy to commit both. The prosecution's theory of the crime. I mean really, if you think about it, why would someone of this intelligence. I mean, she almost had a PhD in philosophy. Buy weapons in her own name and knowing, you see, so how are you going to justify, I mean, what are you going to say about this? Well, it is true that Angela Davis had a deep personal connection and love for George Jackson which developed after he was in prison and there are letters and it's absolutely true. So, Albert Harris, who was the prosecutor in his opening statement to the jury said, there will be evidence offered by- I'm quoting from the transcript, "There will be evidence offered by the prosecution of the exercise of the defendant." No. "There will be no evidence presented, the exercise of the defendant of her right of free speech or assembly under the First Amendment" See, their first charge was going to be that she had conspired and they were going to use evidence of a participation of the Soledad brother's defense. Then they decided to abandon that because that would have violated her first amendment rights. "The case of the prosecution does not rest in any degree upon the nature of the political views of the defendant. The claim that the defendant is a political prisoner is false and without foundation," I'm quoting. "Her own words will reveal that beneath the cool, the academic veneer as a woman fully capable of being moved to violence by passion. Our basic motive was not the free political prisoners, but to free the one prisoner she loved. The motive was not abstract, it was founded on an- it was not founded on any need, real or imagined for prison reform. It was founded simply on the passion she felt for George Jackson. A passion that knew no bounds. Her motive, Harris emphasized, time again, again and again was passion, simple human passion. A passion for George Jackson, the Soledad bother. A passion that knew no bounds, no limits, no respect for human life not even the life of George's younger brother." That was the case. He had to have a motive because there was no other way you are going to possibly prove this. So, where did all those witnesses come from? I said he had a 103 witnesses and all of these and so and so forth. They were all the people that testified about what happened in the court room, while we stipulated most of that. There wasn't even contest about that except that we were able to prove that they lied about the entrance and exit wounds of the people that had been shot and killed because they were trying to counter where the gunfire come from. But we were able to show that, that [inaudible] but that was what most of their witness, that was all their witnesses. Then they had a witness, a neighbor of Angela's in Los Angeles who had seen her with Jonathan Jackson. When did the neighbor see it? Well, Johnathan helped her move into her new apartment, and had the neighbor's scene Jonathan Jackson after that? No, she said. The next time I saw Jonathan Jackson was a picture of him on the newspaper after he had been killed. That was how the case was you see. That they had no... So, motive was everything that's the point I'm trying to make. Angela acted as co-counsel. This was another strategy that we had. And so she was able to deliver her opening statement to the jury. "Members of a jury," she said, quoting what the prosecutor has said. "This is utterly fantastic, this is utterly absurd, yet it is understandable that Mr. Harris would take advantage of the fact that I am a woman, and women in our society are supposed to act only in accordance with the dictates of their emotions and passions. This is a symptom of the male chauvinism which prevails in this society." I'm just…that’s a little excerpt from her opening statement. So, really what she showed, what she argued before the jury was that, she was being stereotyped both as a woman and as a black woman in particular. We've having these uncontrollable emotions and so on. So, three months later, there was a verdict it was an all white jury, eight women and four men. I will read you a little excerpt from my own writing about the verdict with which we’ll end today. The floor person on the jury was a woman named Mary Timothy. The jury was brought in, I looked at Ms. Timothy, she was ashing and so was Ralph Delange, who was another member of the jury, who we thought was quite sympathetic. The judge came and he said, "Ms. Timothy, has the jury reached the verdict?" Ms. Timothy said, "Yes, Your Honor. We have." The judge instructed her to hand the verdicts to the court clerk. She handed the clerk a sheet of papers, the clerk handed the papers to the judge. The judge read the verdicts to himself, his face betrayed no emotion. He shuffled the papers, handed them back to the clerk, he told the clerk to read the verdict. The clerk read in a loud clear voice. "In the case of the people of the state of California versus Angela Y. Davis case number 52613, kidnapping in the first degree. The jury finds the defendant Angela Y. Davis, not guilty." Angela put her head down. Franklin Alexander began to sob. The clerk continued. "Murder in the first degree. The jury finds the defendant not guilty." A single gasp filled the room then silence. There was one more count. The clerk continued the recitation, "In the case of the people versus Angela Y. Davis case number 52613, Conspiracy. The jury finds the defendant not guilty." A great triumphant roar surged across the room. Fania, Angela's sister leaped up in ecstasy crying. Angela and Kendra were holding onto each other laughing and sobbing. There was another roar. The judge banged his gavel demanding order and silence. There were a few moments, the judge thank the jurors, and he thanked the lawyers and the lawyers thanked that judge, and then the judge said the defendant is discharged and her bail is exonerated. This trial stands adjourned. The jury was being escorted out. They were smiling now, and some of them were crying. We didn't know what to do. Howard Moore who was one of our Council stood up, raised both fists, and shouted, "All power to the jury." We started to applaud louder and louder. That was the courtroom scene. Another piece of that courtroom scene was Angela's mother Mrs. Sally B. Davis who was in the courtroom, who had been in an emotional bedrock through the entire trial, and that was something to see Angela reach for her mother. Just as that verdict was concluded. When we talked to the jury afterwards, and we did. We had long conversations. I had long conversations with Mrs. Timothy. They said they never believed the motive. They didn't believe the motive and it was the weakest point in the trial, and the one thing they had asked to see again was all of the death threats that Angela had received for them to understand why she had purchased the weapons. We had quite a party with them after the trial was over at a friend's house and there was such pandemonium. They interrupted the San Francisco Giants game in San Francisco that was going on at the moment that the verdict was reached literally, and announced it over the loudspeaker system in the stadium. Apparently, I wasn't there obviously, I was outside the courthouse. There were roars of cheers at the verdict and people ran into the street especially the black communities that this had been accomplished. I think it shows the enormity of the power of social justice movements. It shows you the power of coalition because we brought people together even if they weren't convinced of her innocence, but believed in a fair trial. We believed in the constitution, we believed in the Bill of Rights. At the very few weeks later in June, a rally was held in Madison Square Garden in New York City with 20,000 people to celebrate the victory. Nina Simone sang and there were a few speeches. I think that was a moment of savoring the accomplishment of this mass movement which had saved a life, which then became quite a life afterwards and Angela really has become an icon. I think of revolutionary justice everywhere in the world. It was a very important moment because so much police violence had happened before it. As I showed you with Ken State and Jackson State in the murder of the Panthers. We thought maybe we had begun to turn the tide. It isn't the way it worked out, but it was a very important social justice and feminist movement when you think about her as a black woman defendant, and what the prosecution theory was of the case. It was one of my great personal experiences and privileges to have been alive, and be able to be involved in this movement to free Angela Davis. When it was over, new movement and the development of Angela spending the rest of her life really, which is still going on in defense of prisoners all over this country, and in campaigning for people's freedom in various forms. But building that movement of what's one of the prison movements is called Critical Resistance which she founded in Berkeley in 1998. To have people understand that the nature of the prison what's called the prison industrial complex in the United States, and really campaigning now for what she calls prison abolition until we redo the whole criminal justice system. Okay. So, that's the Angela Davis case.
