The Marin County courthouse shootout turned Angela Davis into a fugitive.

Evidence

On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson walked into a courtroom in California’s Marin County, holding three guns, and took the judge, the prosecutor, and three jurors hostage. Aided by three inmates, whom he freed in the courtroom, the seventeen-year-old younger brother of George Jackson led the hostages at gunpoint to a van parked outside. Police opened fire. The shootout took the lives of Jackson, the judge, and two inmates. Police traced the ownership of one of Jackson’s guns to Angela Davis. A week later, Davis was charged with murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy, and a warrant was issued for her arrest. Still grieving Jackson’s death, she saw the political repression on the wall—a death sentence if found guilty. She fled the massive womanhunt, a fugitive trying to avoid slavery or worse, like so many of her political peers and ancestors had done before her. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1036

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘fugitive trying to avoid slavery’ framing echoes the reader’s broader interest in how the state criminalizes Black political resistance — placeable alongside the Soledad Brothers material as evidence of carceral policy producing rather than following ideology.