Black Rage Confronts the Law. Paul Harris
society—authority and property—rather than against white persons” (emphasis in original).
In 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had gone to support sanitation workers in their quest for better working conditions and higher wages. Integration into white society, melting into white America, would never again be the overwhelming focus of black politics.
In 1970 a book was published that had a transformative impact on millions of people of all races. Its title was Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson. This was a book about the raw, ugly, brutal experience of prison. It was also about the strength, rage, and courage of one young black man. When he was eighteen years old, George Jackson had pled guilty to robbing a gas station of seventy dollars. He was sentenced to one year to life under California’s indeterminate sentencing law. He spent over seven years in solitary confinement. He became a symbol of resistance for prisoners throughout the country. In his letters we find words that could just as easily have expressed the anguish of William Freeman in Auburn State Prison:
If I leave here alive, I’ll leave nothing behind. They’ll never count me among the broken men, but I can’t say that I’m normal either. I’ve been hungry too long, I’ve gotten angry too often. I’ve been lied to and insulted too many times. They’ve pushed me over the line from which there can be no retreat. I know that they will not be satisfied until they’ve pushed me out of this existence altogether. I’ve been the victim of so many racist attacks that I could never relax again. . . . I can still smile now, after ten years of blocking knife thrusts, and the pick handles of faceless sadistic pigs, of anticipating and reacting for ten years, seven of them in solitary. I can still smile sometimes, but by the time this thing is over I may not be a nice person.
Seething anger in the prisons, on the streets. The anger has always been there, since the first young African man and woman were ripped from their families, kidnapped, and forced to cut cotton without pay. Resentment, bitterness, hostility, vehemence, and madness had been there for hundreds of years. Now, white America was for the first time forced to listen to this anger in its purest form—BLACK RAGE.
In the midst of these changes, on July 15, 1970, a workday like any other, black autoworker James Johnson walked into the dirty, hazardous Eldon Avenue Gear and Axle Plant in Detroit, Michigan. He walked strangely, hindered by the M-i carbine he had hidden in the pant leg of his overalls. He stepped over the oil slicks on the plant floor, the deafening noise from the machinery hammering in his head. Stalking the black foreman who had illegally suspended him earlier that day, he raised the M-i and fired. As the foreman fell and then struggled to get up Johnson stood over him firing again and again. Johnson then began to look for Jim Rhoades, the general foreman who had called him “boy” and had told the gate guard to take away the badge that allowed Johnson to come into the plant. Unable to find Rhoades he entered a room and began firing. When the M-i ran out of bullets two white men, a foreman and a job setter, lay dead. As Johnson walked out of the plant two union stewards approached him. He gave one of them his empty rifle. A few minutes later, he quietly gave up to the police.
Six months later, Steven Robinson, a twenty-nine-year-old black man, walked into a bank in the Fillmore district of San Francisco and pulled an unloaded .22 caliber derringer out of his overalls. He lined up the four women tellers against the wall and emptied each cash drawer into a striped laundry bag. As he went from drawer to drawer, two police officers, Jordan and Johnson, responding to the bank’s silent alarm, arrived on the scene. Officer Jordan slowly moved into the bank, aimed his service revolver at Robinson, and ordered him to drop his gun. After Robinson dropped his gun, the police began to handcuff him. The six-foot Robinson suddenly turned and grabbed the officer. The three men punched and kicked each other until finally one of the policemen got his baton against Robinson’s neck and choked the bank robber briefly into unconsciousness.
As they walked out the front door, a large crowd of black people from the neighborhood gathered around. Robinson, his hands cuffed behind his back, his nose streaming blood, stopped suddenly and held his head high. The two officers who were holding his arms came to an abrupt halt. Looking at the crowd, Steven Robinson shouted in a loud voice, “Why are black people without jobs or homes when there is so much money in America’s banks?” Many of the people in the crowd shouted their agreement and a few even began to applaud. The police hurriedly shoved Robinson into the squad car.
James Johnson and Steven Robinson went to trial, respectively, in the spring and summer of 1971. In both trials the political reality of what it means to be black in America became an essential part of the defense. These trials marked the modern development of the black rage defense.
“Black rage” is the term commentators and the media have used to describe a defense strategy that attempts to bring a very particular social reality into the courtroom. But while the term evokes violent, aggressive images, the black rage defense encompasses a broader view of African American life than just rage and violence. It includes pride in one’s heritage. It explains hopelessness and sheds light on the darkness of fear and abuse. Most of all, it says to the American legal system: You cannot convict me without hearing who I am and what shaped me. I was not born with an M-1 carbine in my hands. My childhood dreams did not include robbing a bank.
The black rage defense raises fundamental issues regarding crime, race, and justice. It forces us to grapple with questions the criminal justice system does not want to hear. Why does a person commit a crime? What is society’s responsibility for shaping the person who commits a crime? These and many other questions that lie festering in the juncture between race and the law will be addressed in the following pages. But first we need to get a grasp on the black rage defense. Therefore, let us look in depth at the Steven Robinson case. (The James Johnson case is discussed in chapter 4.)
San Francisco is a city divided up into distinct neighborhoods. After World War II, the city had two primarily black neighborhoods. One was Hunter’s Point, a remote district that was home to the Naval shipyards. The other, near the heart of the city, was called the Fillmore. Running through its heart was Fillmore Street. At one time Fillmore Street had been a thriving business and cultural section. But then urban redevelopment came along and much of the Fillmore ended up being divided into real estate parcels as many black people were moved out. April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, marked the death knell for the Fillmore. There was an uprising of black people who as in other cities, burned what was nearest to them. They burned down building after building along Fillmore Street, and for years afterwards the economics of the free market resulted in nothing new being built.
In 1969, among the rubble and vacant lots, a small community school was started. It was called the Malcolm X School, and the teachers taught the children black history and black culture along with a standard curriculum. They tried to instill in the children respect for each other and pride in themselves. Steven Robinson was music director at the school. He loved teaching even though there was no money to pay him.
The school was housed in the back of a church on Fillmore Street, but the church was slated to be torn down and the school needed financial help. Many of the children came to school without breakfast, and the staff could not always provide hot lunches. Steven watched the children trying to learn, reaching out for a better life. He cherished running the music program, integrating traditional African music into the curriculum and making jazz accessible to young minds.
Since the Malcolm X School could not put Steven on salary, he looked elsewhere for employment. Having been trained as a draftsman, he went to many job interviews at architectural firms. But there seemed to be no place for a black draftsman. After a number of failed attempts he sought out the help of the Bay Area Urban League. The League’s veterans’ affairs coordinator thought highly of Steven and was able to obtain a position for him. The work situation turned out to be difficult. He was not accepted by the white employees, and when the firm’s business slowed down he was let go. He got another draftsman’s job, but again he was laid off. In early 1970 he was without work and unable to find a job. He continued his volunteer position at the Malcolm X School, but he became more and more frustrated as he watched the young, gifted black teachers confronting the overwhelming problems of poverty and dislocation.
Fortunately,