Fred was not alone in his reluctance, but perhaps that day in Will Rogers Park he almost was.

We talked about the Adjustment Center in San Quentin, and Fred explained how it was a prison inside a prison, enriched by its own wall that was manned by armed guards. Even if Jackson could have somehow scaled that first wall, he would only have made it back to the main yard and would still have another wall between himself and the free soil of Point San Quentin. "Two chances," Fred said, "Slim and none."

This was all that was known then: George Jackson had been killed, allegedly while trying to escape. None of the rest of the fantastic story' which the officials would weave was at this point revealed. All one had were the bare essentials, and from then on one had to decide whether George Jackson were capable of the futile irrationality with which he was being charged.

Fred did not think so, but perhaps Fred was wrong. Perhaps Jackson did come to share the belief that had driven his brother to attempting to kidnap a judge. Perhaps, Jackson had arranged to have the gun and wig smuggled in.

Yet if this was what did happen, what drove Jackson to it? If he did die in an escape effort, then his statement in a letter written two days after Jonathon died applies to himself as well:

I want people to wonder at what forces created him, terrible, vindictive, cold, calm man-child, courage in one hand, the machine gun in the other, scourge of the unrighteous--"an ox for the people to ride"!!

VI

Regardless of how he actually died, George Jackson's death did eventually evoke a response. The response did not come in Watts, but at Attica. There, men knew the pressures that had been applied to break Jackson, for they also lived with them. There, there was a man--perhaps several--who had written in his notebook the lines from Claude McKay's poem quoted above.

George Jackson's death proved the premise of "If We Must Die:" that is, that if they want to get you, they will. Perhaps for the men at Attica, that was one proof too many to be ignored.

Few men have probably been so misunderstood as George Jackson, and few events have been as misinterpreted as Attica. Partially, this stems from the complexity inherent in Jackson's own character and in the characters of the men at Attica. But much of the misunderstanding seems to come from the assumption that Jackson or the Attica revolt are novel combustions without historical precedent.

Characteristic of this assumption was a segment from Time Magazine's article on Attica. The segment said that the more militant prisoners at Attica "passed around clandestine writings of their own; among them was a poem written by an unknown prisoner, crude but touching in its would-be heroic style." In an insert, Time printed the first stanza of this "would-be heroic" find:

If we must die, let it not be like hogs.

Hunted and penned in an unglorious spot.

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs.

Making their mock at our accursed lot.

It all just tends to make a long time man feel bad.

Copyright 1971 by Anthony Hill