TEARS OF THE ESCHATOLOGIST

“It is hard for one white man to take off his shirt to be flogged by another.”-Henry Wyatt The Report of the Trial of Henry Wyatt

     My brother Bird thinks my writing Fancestor was a way I invented to try to alleviate my white guilt. I respectfully disagree. I’ve never been racked with any sense of “generational stain” on my boots. I didn’t know my family history, so I didn’t care one way or another. Ask anybody. We’re all guilty (white, black or Indian) to a degree. My Dutch and English ancestors rightfully shoulder more than their share of the blame. If my ancient blood were slaveowners and Indian killers so be it. Like that cracker Mitch McConnell said, ”President Obama and I both descend from slaveholders.” Only Mitch seems proud of it. Now that I know for sure how bad it was with my family, my guilt is no greater or less than the next white man. I’m just better informed. 

    It’s the everyday shit that gets to me—all the black people on the same bench at a white party—even if they don’t know one another. Generational distrust. Our weird rundown uneasiness with each other. A lack of empathy. The one-eyed judge who kills two local boys with his car; then is allowed to keep his license and given a ride home by the cops. Caged babies in space blankets. State induced trauma. Genocide. Bad business as usual. Alex Acosta, R. Kelly and Jeffrey Epstein. The unfairness. The victims. The Hassidic guy who almost kills me, when his S.U.V. cuts me off; then hangs his head in shame as I dress him down in the camp’s driveway. “You know it’s a cliche…a stereotype,” I scream at the man in white shirt and black pants, “…that you (I hammer his chest with my finger) when I say “you” I mean THE HASSIDIC can’t drive…. a shanda!” He promised to do better. I’m not optimistic. Racism, anti-semitism, lies, rampant corruption, rich guy sex-trafficking, bad public safety on the roads…..that’s what gets to me. I wish writing Fancestor alleviated that. A little white guilt I can live with.           

    

    In 1959, a century after Austin Reed wrote his memoir at Auburn Prison, an eighteen year old black man was arrested and accused of stealing $70 from an L.A. gas station. Because he already had a record for two minor offenses, the young man was encouraged by his public defender to cop a plea and plead guilty to a crime he was innocent of. The unlucky con received an indeterminate sentence, (popular at the time in California) of one year to life. If he did his time quietly, with good behavior, he’d be back on the streets in a matter of months. This was not a man who took to following orders, or doing time “quietly.” 

   Ten years later that con, George Jackson, having spent over seven years of his “indeterminate” sentence in solitary confinement, was a hardened convict, an avowed revolutionary, black militant and a best selling author; with a new charge of “life” stretching out in front of him.

      The dedication of George Jackson’s book of prison letters, Soledad Brother, starts with a  heartfelt tribute to his younger brother, the “Man-Child,” Jonathan Peter Jackson, who was killed by police outside the Marin County Courthouse on August 7, 1970, while George sat in his cell at San Quentin. George also mentions his mom Georgia Bea and his revolutionary soulmate, “Angela Y. Davis, my tender experience…” His brother Jonathan was a year younger than I.   

    I lived in Mill Valley in 1975, and many times visited the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Marin County Courthouse, where the second act of the Jackson family bloody drama unfolded. San Quentin in 1971, would be the final act. The connection to this family tree is purely by place—San Quentin, S.F.A.I. and the Marin County Courthouse— where I went for food stamps.

    After dropping out of school, getting married and divorced in four years, I re-entered art school at The San Francisco Art Institute in the Fall of 1977. This was seven years after graduating high school; seven years after Jonathan Jackson was killed in a shootout at the Marin courthouse. Angela Davis, having been implicated in the conspiracy to free George Jackson by his brother, that ended in so much bloodshed, went on the run. According to authorities Angela Davis helped Jonathan P. Jackson procure the guns he used in Marin. Eventually she was arrested, charged with kidnapping, conspiracy and homicide. William Kuntsler was her lawyer. Luckily, the lawyers and the times were on her side.

     Angela Davis was acquitted on all charges involved in the Jonathan P. Jackson affair. A brilliant scholar, once freed, she got multiple teaching offers. One was a job teaching in Ray Mondini’s art history department at The San Francisco Art Institute. I didn’t have any classes with her, but once in a while I’d sit in on her lectures, just to soak up the revolutionary celebrity vibe. I was ignorant; only knowing the bare bones of the Jackson/Davis connection, but was pleasantly floored by Angela Davis’ charisma and grasp on contemporary politics. Nobody dared make a peep when Angela held the mic. I regret my naivety. At 25 years old I should’ve paid more attention. We never met, but I always was (and still am) inspired by her unwavering commitment to the global revolutionary struggle and her sense of survival. No wonder people still chant her name: Angela. 

      Plenty has been written about the Jacksons and Angela Davis. I’m nowhere near qualified to broach the subject. It’s a rabbit hole I’ll barely stick my nose in. But it does relate to Austin Reed. George Jackson’s prison letters, Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice and Malcolm X’s autobiography are all highly regarded examples of prison literature; mentioned in the editor’s introduction to Austin Reed’s book. Reed, who some now consider the pioneer of African American prison writing, poetically stands shoulder to shoulder with these more modern giants of the genre—black witnesses to state sponsored, stochastic punishment, and mass incarceration. Someday, even Austin Reed may get his due.

    The “white man” so incensed at being flogged by other white men, Henry Wyatt, had no claim to fame other than his crimes, and possibly being a stage driver for a circus. He was a smart, mean, wiry, killer sent to Auburn on a burglary charge (most likely of a horse). He received ten years; a lifetime at Auburn. Like almost every inmate (except Jack Hodges) Wyatt found the system’s rules literally impossible to obey and tried vainly to accept his routine punishment without complaint. But the tough outlaw was having a difficult time at Auburn. His time was going by excruciatingly slow and the constant punishment for the most minor infractions was driving him nuts. Henry Wyatt, hard convict, was starting to come unhinged, broken by the system. 

   In the prison ledger Henry Wyatt’s race is listed as “dark” as opposed to “colored”, “negro”, “mulatto” or “white.” It’s unclear what his race or ethnicity was. Like everyone, he bled red. In his response to the cat, he screamed for the keepers to show mercy and stop, that he was a “white man” undeserving of such treatment. He sounds white….and racist. We know he thought of himself as “a white man.” Mr. Love Torture had his way with Henry Wyatt one too many times. Something eventually snapped. The next person Henry Wyatt saw he swore he was going to kill. The next man turned out to be the suspected snitch, another white man—James Gordon.