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The Road to Hell: The True Story of George Jackson, Stephen Bingham and the San Quentin Massacre
During one of the bloodiest incidents in the history of the New Left, murder, politics, and power forged an inextricable link between George Jackson - inmate, author, and Black Panther field marshal - and white radical lawyer Stephen Bingham. On August 21, 1971, Jackson, armed with a 9mm automatic, led the infamous San Quentin massacre, which resulted in his death and the brutal slaying of three guards and two other prisoners. Two months later, Bingham was indicted for murder and conspiracy - for allegedly smuggling the gun to Jackson. He had already gone underground as a fugitive.
Award-winning author Paul Liberatore traces the chilling story of a young black man convicted of a $70 robbery who became a best-selling writer and a "revolutionary hero" of the counterculture and the young, white, Yale-educated civil rights activist turned Berkeley radical who became his lawyer. In telling this story, Liberatore plumbs the highly charged differences that indelibly marked the black and white wings of the radical New Left.
Liberatore's behind-the-scenes account - based on interviews and previously confidential records - unweaves the tangled facts of the Jackson's rise to sudden celebrity with the publication of his book Soledad Brother, his alliance with the Black Panthers, his torrid encounter with Angela Davis, Bingham's own attraction to the Panthers, his relocation to Paris after Jackson's death, and his eventual trial in California thirteen years later. The Road to Hell reveals many never-before published facts about this violent, mystery-shrouded episode and is essential for anyone interested in the social, racial, and political turbulence of the sixties and seventies.
Award-winning author Paul Liberatore traces the chilling story of a young black man convicted of a $70 robbery who became a best-selling writer and a "revolutionary hero" of the counterculture and the young, white, Yale-educated civil rights activist turned Berkeley radical who became his lawyer. In telling this story, Liberatore plumbs the highly charged differences that indelibly marked the black and white wings of the radical New Left.
Liberatore's behind-the-scenes account - based on interviews and previously confidential records - unweaves the tangled facts of the Jackson's rise to sudden celebrity with the publication of his book Soledad Brother, his alliance with the Black Panthers, his torrid encounter with Angela Davis, Bingham's own attraction to the Panthers, his relocation to Paris after Jackson's death, and his eventual trial in California thirteen years later. The Road to Hell reveals many never-before published facts about this violent, mystery-shrouded episode and is essential for anyone interested in the social, racial, and political turbulence of the sixties and seventies.
270 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 25, 2021
Paul Liberatore's The Road to Hell revisits the life and controversial death of George Jackson, the Black Panther, career criminal and prison activist who died during a botched escape from San Quentin in August 1971. Like many figures of the '60s and '70s, Jackson tends to inspire one-dimensional caricatures: leftists lionized him as a uniquely pure, "authentic" radical while conservatives and mainstream liberals dismiss him as (in the words of an unfriendly historian) "a thug with a fountain pen." Neither does justice to this complicated figure, who is worthy of a more considered judgment, both for himself and the legacy he left behind.
Born to a poor Black family in Chicago and raised in San Francisco, Jackson drifted into crime early, receiving disproportionate prison sentences for minor crimes and failing to escape the cycle of abuse and punishment in the carcereal state. He became radicalized after an inmate introduced him to the writings of Marx, Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon. After unsucessfully trying to go straight, Jackson remade himself as a hardened criminal-spokesman, joining the Black Panthers, organizing the even more radical Black Guerrilla Family in jail and, through his classic book Soledad Brother, becoming an eloquent spokesman for prison reform and racial solidarity.
Beloved both of Black activists and white radicals, Jackson becomes a national figure as the mainstream Black power movement fragments through infighting and government oppression. His convictions are steeled when, during his stay at Soledad Prison, he witnesses a white guard murdering three Black inmates during a riot, without consequence. However, a series of killings and kidnappings by Jackson’s supporters, both in and outside of jail, stains his reputation, while his own rhetoric grows increasingly apocalyptic. This culminates in the San Quentin jailbreak, where Jackson is killed after he and his fellow inmates murder five prison guards, leaving his legacy clouded with blood.
Liberatore does his best to provide a nuanced portrait of the leading "Soledad Brother." His book makes clear that Jackson was an intelligent, charismatic man and a gifted writer who suffered from his background, struggled to overcome it and formed sincere, passionate convictions through his experiences. His accounts of the prison system's systemic racism and destruction of individual hope and character remain undeniably powerful. Dismissing him as a mere "thug,” which implies his life and writings don’t deserve examination, is neither fair nor accurate.
That said, it's hard to avoid concluding that Jackson's politics weren't terribly sophisticated. His ideology resembled a crude burlesque of Black Power suffused with Marxist foco theory; his second book, Blood in My Eye, comes close to advocating outright race war. However much we sympathize with Jackson's harrowing life, one can't excuse the murders he and his associates engineered: besides George's actions, his brother Jonathan was killed, along with two others, after kidnapping and murdering a judge to negotiate George's release. Whether Jackson's activism outweighs his crimes, or vice versa, is something a reader must decide for themselves.
The later chapters focus on Jackson's white attorney, Stephen Bingham, who was tried a decade later for conspiring in the prison break (supposedly, he smuggled in weapons for Jackson and his co-conspirators). His story isn’t uninteresting, but it is more typical than Jackson's - a white radical in over his head - and seems like an unnecessarily protracted post-script to the main narrative. Otherwise, Liberatore provides a fine recreation of a baleful episode in the Black Power Movement.
Born to a poor Black family in Chicago and raised in San Francisco, Jackson drifted into crime early, receiving disproportionate prison sentences for minor crimes and failing to escape the cycle of abuse and punishment in the carcereal state. He became radicalized after an inmate introduced him to the writings of Marx, Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon. After unsucessfully trying to go straight, Jackson remade himself as a hardened criminal-spokesman, joining the Black Panthers, organizing the even more radical Black Guerrilla Family in jail and, through his classic book Soledad Brother, becoming an eloquent spokesman for prison reform and racial solidarity.
Beloved both of Black activists and white radicals, Jackson becomes a national figure as the mainstream Black power movement fragments through infighting and government oppression. His convictions are steeled when, during his stay at Soledad Prison, he witnesses a white guard murdering three Black inmates during a riot, without consequence. However, a series of killings and kidnappings by Jackson’s supporters, both in and outside of jail, stains his reputation, while his own rhetoric grows increasingly apocalyptic. This culminates in the San Quentin jailbreak, where Jackson is killed after he and his fellow inmates murder five prison guards, leaving his legacy clouded with blood.
Liberatore does his best to provide a nuanced portrait of the leading "Soledad Brother." His book makes clear that Jackson was an intelligent, charismatic man and a gifted writer who suffered from his background, struggled to overcome it and formed sincere, passionate convictions through his experiences. His accounts of the prison system's systemic racism and destruction of individual hope and character remain undeniably powerful. Dismissing him as a mere "thug,” which implies his life and writings don’t deserve examination, is neither fair nor accurate.
That said, it's hard to avoid concluding that Jackson's politics weren't terribly sophisticated. His ideology resembled a crude burlesque of Black Power suffused with Marxist foco theory; his second book, Blood in My Eye, comes close to advocating outright race war. However much we sympathize with Jackson's harrowing life, one can't excuse the murders he and his associates engineered: besides George's actions, his brother Jonathan was killed, along with two others, after kidnapping and murdering a judge to negotiate George's release. Whether Jackson's activism outweighs his crimes, or vice versa, is something a reader must decide for themselves.
The later chapters focus on Jackson's white attorney, Stephen Bingham, who was tried a decade later for conspiring in the prison break (supposedly, he smuggled in weapons for Jackson and his co-conspirators). His story isn’t uninteresting, but it is more typical than Jackson's - a white radical in over his head - and seems like an unnecessarily protracted post-script to the main narrative. Otherwise, Liberatore provides a fine recreation of a baleful episode in the Black Power Movement.
October 31, 2020
I read this book on the advice of a Black friend in prison, shortly after reading Soledad Brother (letters written by Black liberation leader George Jackson). This book filled in a lot of the blanks in my mind after reading Jackson's letters, and imo the author did a fairly good job of telling the stories of Jackson and one of his lawyers, Stephen Bingham, in a nuanced, balanced fashion.
My only complaint is about the section that describes Jackson's attempt to break out of prison. He tells it in graphic, first-person detail, but it is not clear whose version of the story he is telling. Later in the book, other accounts of what actually happened are shared, so the reader is left a bit confused.
The question of how George actually got his gun is never resolved. My personal conclusion is that Vanita Anderson was an FBI plant and smuggled the gun to George to set him (and Stephen) up.
My only complaint is about the section that describes Jackson's attempt to break out of prison. He tells it in graphic, first-person detail, but it is not clear whose version of the story he is telling. Later in the book, other accounts of what actually happened are shared, so the reader is left a bit confused.
The question of how George actually got his gun is never resolved. My personal conclusion is that Vanita Anderson was an FBI plant and smuggled the gun to George to set him (and Stephen) up.
January 6, 2017
The Black Panthers are perhaps one of America's most controversial group in the eyes of historians and current day politics. Some consider them to be intellectuals who helped liberate a race while others consider them to be violent thugs who committed acts of terrorism. Paul Liberatore does a good job finding a balance between the juxtaposition of emotions that the Black Panthers inspire. He highlights the oppression that Black people faced at the time, but at the same time he did not hold back from calling out the violence that the Black Panthers committed.
Each chapter is for the most part centered around a character or a group. The majority of the chapters features either George Jackson and/or Stephen Bingham. This change 0f pace keeps the story flowing and the reader interested, but the biggest problem is that Bingham just isn't all that interesting in comparison to Jackson or most of the other characters... He comes across as an over-privileged white kid (which is something he acknowledges) but in a cringe-worthy Che Guevara-wannabe way that is running rampant on modern day college campuses.
Jackson's story on the other hand will keep readers interested the entire time. While his upbringing may not have been as bad off as some of his fellow Black Panthers, his path from childhood, to radicalization, and ultimately to death at a young age makes the reader both empathize and despise him.
Each chapter is for the most part centered around a character or a group. The majority of the chapters features either George Jackson and/or Stephen Bingham. This change 0f pace keeps the story flowing and the reader interested, but the biggest problem is that Bingham just isn't all that interesting in comparison to Jackson or most of the other characters... He comes across as an over-privileged white kid (which is something he acknowledges) but in a cringe-worthy Che Guevara-wannabe way that is running rampant on modern day college campuses.
Jackson's story on the other hand will keep readers interested the entire time. While his upbringing may not have been as bad off as some of his fellow Black Panthers, his path from childhood, to radicalization, and ultimately to death at a young age makes the reader both empathize and despise him.
August 14, 2016
An amazing story told with historical references that give context to the times. Seems even more timely right now. It was the Book of the Times and there is an option for a movie. Hope they make it. http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/02/boo...
February 1, 2016
If you want to read a book written by a hard-left activist where criminals are regarded as do-no-wrong, law enforcement officials (and their subsequent murders) are labeled as worthless, and the bad guy gets off scot-free, THIS is the book for you.
Absolute CRAP.
Absolute CRAP.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews