KILL ME ONCE

   “George Jewell kept a dog which was injurious to many of the neighbors. It was ordered that said Jewell should hang said dog. Oct. 29, 1705. This was the first capital punishment case on record in the County, and the court, by it’s decision, seemed to think there was no other way to kill a dog than by choking.”-  Samuel Eager History of Orange County

    In the summer of 1971, a stripped down 9mm pistol and two clips of ammunition were somehow smuggled into San Quentin Prison. About to go on trial for the killing of a prison guard at Soledad, George Jackson, and up to two dozen other inmates, overpowered the guards and went on a bloody rampage that left three corrections officers and two inmates (including Jackson) dead. George Jackson was gunned down by a prison guard with a high powered rifle as he ran across the yard, pistol in hand. The bullet entered his lower back (as he stumbled) and exited the top of his skull. Jackson was dead before he hit the ground. 

    Whoever smuggled the gun into Jackson, it could never be proven. Many say it was one of his lawyers. Conspiracy theories abound on just what exactly took place at San Quentin, on my birthday Aug. 21, 1971. The next day inmates at the upstate New York prison at Attica (white and black) held a silent vigil in remembrance of George Jackson. Smaller vigils took place at Auburn, Sing-Sing and Clinton Correctional; as well as other prisons across America. The killing of George Jackson touched many, regardless of race. This was a very dangerous situation for the authorities. Extreme racism is encouraged within all penal institutions to this day, in the form of segregated gangs, divided by race and ethnicity, separated as a matter of policy. This harkens back to the original “divide and control” tactic of the colonial elites. By indulging in this “gang-centric” behavior, the inmates play right into the Institution’s hands. If the whites, hispanics and blacks came together and identified the common enemy as the institution….who knows what could happen. 

   On September 9, 1971 Attica inmates overpowered guards (killing one) and occupied the yard of the prison for almost five days; when, after wide press coverage, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller ordered in the heavily-armed State Police. When it was all over 33 prisoners and 10 corrections officers lay dead, with many wounded. All but four individuals were killed or wounded by police bullets. The massacre at Attica was the result of the killing of George Jackson.     

     James Baldwin was quoted as saying, “No black will ever believe that George Jackson died the way they tell us he did.” As a white, I tend to believe Baldwin. Books and investigative documentaries vary in scope and point of view regarding Jackson’s death. George’s nephew, Jonathan P. Jackson’s son, Jonathan Jackson, Jr., who wrote the foreword to the 1994 edition of his late uncle’s letters, calls it a “ruthless murder by prison guards.” Others see it as a justified killing of a dangerous black militant, deserving of extra-judicial execution. Whatever the truth is, most would agree that Jackson’s killing by a prison guard was politically motivated, both sides deserving of ownership.

     In a closed rumor mill like Auburn Prison politics were dangerous. A story got started that Henry Wyatt had escaped arrest for killing a sheriff in Ohio and the authorities were closing in. Inmate James Gordon, was supposedly the snitch spreading the rumor. According to William Arpey in his book, The William Freeman Trial, Insanity, Politics and Race:  

“The principal Keeper at Auburn Prison had, in fact, been informed by an attorney from Ohio that Wyatt was implicated in a murder in that state. Whether Gordon had any role in implicating Wyatt remains unclear.”  

      

     Wyatt let drop half a pair of sharpened tailor shears out his shirt sleeve, point first, into his right hand. Grasping the scissor’s handle with a steady grip, he swiftly thrust  it into James Gordon’s belly; “two inches to the side of the navel.” It was a Sunday and the men were on the way from their cells to Sabbath-School. The mortally wounded Gordon fell back, bounced off the walls, groaning, spewing blood from his mouth and side. Then he took off on an adrenaline fueled sprint. Gordon would not run far. Collapsing in a pool of blood, the keepers took the mortally wounded man to the infirmary, where he died from sepsis within a few very painful hours.    

   You couldn’t run a prison wood shop without chisels, a smithy without iron, or cut cloth without shears. The State Prison in the 19th century was a fully stocked arsenal, just waiting for any handy assassin wishing to take his pick of weaponry. After stabbing James Gordon in the belly, Henry Wyatt tossed the crude dagger into another man’s cell and calmly walked past the keepers, closing the door of his cell behind him. In no time Henry Wyatt was on trial for his life. His lawyer? The ex-governor of the State of New York, Hon. William H. Seward.

     Henry Seward immediately challenged the murder charge against Wyatt with John Van Buren’s own radical “positive” defense—temporary insanity.

     At trial Auburn’s keepers readily testified to the repeated floggings Henry Wyatt received, portraying him as a noncompliant, weak complainer, who basically asked for the lash. They testified to Wyatt’s dramatic, unwarranted screaming and histrionics. “You will kill me,” he would plead. They testified under oath that he was always “making much ado,” as they stripped and flogged him in front of “not more than 20 men.” They swore they didn’t hear him say “Kill me at once, and not kill me by piece meal.” They assured the judge and jury that they did not hear him utter “Remember I am a man as well as you.” They pledged they “didn’t see any blood. Can’t tell how he was removed. Don’t know that he was locked in the basement.” Nobody saw a thing. These keepers were not cooperative witnesses.

     The only thing of interest to any of the sworn corrections officers was the fact that Wyatt threw himself to the floor and kept crying, “I’m a white man. I’m a white man.” They thought that this was particularly hilarious. The Auburn keepers, who prided themselves in being completely color blind in regard to flogging, did not think Wyatt was white. But if he was white, they told him, “They’d beat a white man just as raw as they’d beat a black, or an Indian.” Each raised their right hand and swore to that fact on the bible, “So help me God.”