Research Catalog

Title

The rise and fall of California's radical prison movement / Eric Cummins.

Author

Cummins, Eric, 1949-

Publication

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 1994.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xi, 319 : ill.; 24 cm.

Summary

This is a history of the California prison movement from 1950 to 1980, focusing on the San Francisco Bay Area's San Quentin State Prison and highlighting the role that prison reading and writing played in the creation of radical inmate ideology in those years. The book begins with the Caryl Chessman years (1948-60) and closes with the trial of the San Quentin Six (1975-76) and the passage of California's Determinate Sentencing Law (1977). This was an extraordinary era in the California prisons, one that saw the emergence of a highly developed radical convict resistance movement inside prison walls. This inmate groundswell was fueled at times by remarkable individual prisoners, at other times by groups like the Black Muslims or the San Quentin chapter of the Black Panther Party. But most often resistance grew from much wider sources and in quiet corners: from dozens of political study groups throughout the prison; from an underground San Quentin newspaper; and from covert attempts to organize a prisoners' union. The book traces the rise and fall of the prisoners' movement, ending with the inevitably bloody confrontation between prisoners and the state and the subsequent prison administration crackdown. The author examines the efforts of prison staff to augment other methods of inmate management by attempting to modify convict ideology by means of "bibliotherapy" and communication control, and describes convict resistance to these attempts as control. He also discusses how Bay Area political activists became intensely involved in San Quentin and how such writings as Chessman's Cell 2455, Cleaver's Soul on Ice, and Jackson's Soledad Brother reached far beyond prison walls to influence opinion, events, and policy.

Subject

• California State Prison at San Quentin
• Prisoners > California
• Prisoners' writings > California
• Prison riots > California
• Prison sentences > California
• Prisons > California
• Prisoners' writings, American > California

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [303]-311) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

1. The Gates Open Up and the Experts Pour In -- 2. Bibliotherapy and Civil Death -- 3. Caryl Chessman and the Roots of Convict Resistance -- 4. Taking the Yard, Freeing the Mind: The Black Muslims -- 5. Eldridge Cleaver and the Celebration of Crime -- 6. Crime Fetishism in the Radical Left -- 7. The Construction of George Jackson -- 8. Prisoner Unions and the "Imprisoned Class" -- 9. "Foco" Terrorism in the SLA -- 10. The Force of Imprisoned Words.

ISBN

• 0804722315 (cloth : acid-free paper) :
• 0804722323 (pbk. : acid-free paper) :

LCCN

^^^93017831^

OCLC

• 28112851
• SCSB-10370285

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library