The Black Scholar Journal of Black Studies and Research ISSN: 0006-4246 (Print) 2162-5387 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtbs20 Book Reviews Joy James, John Woodford & Michael Nash To cite this article: Joy James, John Woodford & Michael Nash (2002) Book Reviews, The Black Scholar, 32:1, 52-57, DOI: 10.1080/00064246.2002.11431170 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00064246.2002.11431170 Published online: 14 Apr 2015. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 14 Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rtbs20 THEBLACKSCHOLAR BOOK REVIEWS THE MORNING BREAKS: THE TRIAL OF HERE ARE MANY INTERESTING STORIES woven into ANGELA DAVIS, by Bettina Aptheker. (lthaca, T The Morning Breaks. Aptheker recalls the NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 294 pp., adverse impact the trial had on her family. (Just as $16.95, paper. Reviewed ffyjay]ames Davis had seen her UCLA contract as an Assistant Professor in philosophy terminated because of FTEN, CONVENTIONAL ACCOUNTS of democratic her open membership in the Communist Party, O struggle sweep the most violent and unsa­ Aptheker's then-husband Jack Kurzweil would be vory aspects of U .S. history under the rug. At denied tenure at San Francisco State because of times, though, important works that deepen our the couple's highly visible role in Davis's defense understanding of contemporary battles for social team-a court later reversed the termination). justice in the United States surface. Providing a There are accounts of courage, venality, tragedy corrective to political amnesia, Bettina Aptheker and eventually triumph surrounding one of the offers a provocative and incisive narrative in The most massive and successful campaigns in twenti­ Morning Breaks. eth-century radicalism. The book documents the Aptheker and Angela Davis are professors at the complex activism and analyses of women and University of California at Santa Cruz, respectively men who helped to create the conditions for a in the Women's Studies and History of Conscious­ fair trial. (In the thirteen photographs repro­ ness programs. They became friends in the 1950s duced, readers will see the faces of some of the as teenage activists in New York. As young intellec­ most effective, daring and desperate organizers of tuals and radicals, they reconnected a decade later that era.) during the dangerous years in which reactionaries, Covering more than the trial itself, The Morn­ police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation ing Breaks critiques the racism of the late 1960s (FBI) targeted radicals. Aptheker's book gives a and early 1970s, black liberation, and the roles of brilliant account of these antidemocratic elements black, chicana, and white women in challenging in U.S. society. Combining personal testimony, his­ state violence and repression. Aptheker relates torical documentation of battles against racist vio­ her own story as an antiracist white feminist along lence, and nuanced descriptions of the lives of pris­ with the stories of activists Kendra and Franklin oner leaders terrorized by guards, she highlights Alexander, Victoria Mercado and jury forewoman political figures and circumstances often dimin­ Mary M. Timothy who would later befriend her­ ished in hazy memory. the book is dedicated to their memory-as well as The Morning Breaks remained out of print Fania Davis and Sallye B. Davis, respectively sister until this year, when it was reissued by Cornell Uni­ and mother of the defendant, attorney Margaret versity Press, with a new introduction and after­ Burnham (a childhood friend of both Aptheker's word. The first edition was published by Interna­ and Davis's, currently a professor at MIT) and tional Publishers in 1975, one year after Random Charlene Mitchell, the former CPUSA leader who House, under the guidance of Davis's editor at the moved to California to coordinate the National time, Toni Morrison, released Angela Davis: An United Committee to Free Angela Davis. Autobiography. Davis's autobiography introduced many to the events that led to her political incar­ HE PROLOGUE RELATES HOW DAVIS, while ceration and development as an influential social T defending her right to teach at UCLA, began critic. The Morning Breaks, though, provides a narra­ working in a mass defense for the Soledad Broth­ tive with a richly detailed context about the trial ers-George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John not found in Davis's memoir (which also focuses Clutchette-African-American leaders in the Cali­ on her childhood and youth). It relates specific fornia prisoners' rights movement who were events leading up to the trial and the trial itself charged in January 1970 with killing a guard by amid an international struggle to free a woman, prison officials attempting to destroy their move­ who would become in the 1970s, the most promi­ ment. Through the Soledad Brothers' Defense nent political prisoner in the United States. Committee, Davis became close to George Jack- Page 52 THE BLACK SCHOLAR VOLUME 32, NO. 1 son's mother Georgina and younger brother Given that the death penalty had not been abol­ Jonathan. She would eventually meet and become ished at the time of her imprisonment-Califor­ the intimate of George Jackson. nia Governor Ronald Reagan was actively cam­ In August 1970, out of concern for the safety paigning for her execution-the fight for Davis's of his older brother, and seeking to publicize state release was painfully intense. Aptheker relays abuses against the Soledad Brothers and dehu­ much of the tortuous struggle. With the (tempo­ manizing prison conditions, Jonathan attempted rary) abolition of California's death penalty, Davis to free from a Marin County Courthouse three was released in 1971. Progressives had faced prisoners-William Christmas, James McClain tremendous opposition from the police, courts, and Ruchell Magee-African American men who and media but garnered support from diverse had been tortured and threatened by guards for sources. Aptheker informs us that Davis's acquit­ reporting guard brutality. Jonathan Jackson had tal was partly, if not largely, won outside of the access to the home in which Angela Davis's guns courtroom and depended upon the mobilization were stored (Davis had received death threats and oflocal coalitions and mass, international protest. had legally purchased weapons for protection). Aptheker describes how, over the defense He carried weapons registered in her name into team's strenuous objections, the prosecutor the Marin County courtroom, arming McClain, Albert Harris introduced Davis's prison love let­ Christmas, and Magee. The four took as hostages ters to Jackson; the letters were taken from Jack­ Judge Harold Haley, his son-in-law and prosecutor son's cell after he was executed by a prison guard Gary Thomas and other jurors, and retreated to a in 1971. Reading the letters (a mixture of political van in the parking lot. San Quentin guards fired theory and self-reflection) to the jury, the state on the parked vehicle-standard California presented Davis as a woman "crazed" with frustrat­ prison policy was for guards to prevent escapes ed passion. Aptheker writes how Harris was forced regardless of the consequences-killing Haley, to abandon a political argument and "shrouded" Jackson, McClain, Christmas and seriously wound­ Davis in racial-sexual stereotypes. ing Thomas and Magee. Harris ... had intended to argue that Angela, Although she was not in northern California at driven by a political fanaticism (as evidenced by the time, because the guns were registered in her her speeches) and an irresistible passion (as evi­ name, and more importantly because she had denced by her June 1970 letters to George Jack­ been targeted for her political activities, Davis was son) had committed herself to this reckless crimi­ designated as an accomplice. Maintaining that nal enterprise. she did not know of Jackson's plans, Davis went underground, initiating one of the largest "man­ By the time the case finally came to trial, how­ hunts" in U.S. history. She was listed on the FBI's ever, the political situation in the country had Ten Most Wanted List until her capture in Man­ changed. In the wake of the Attica Uprising [the hattan several months later and her subsequent 1971 prison revolt sparked by Jackson 's assassina­ extradition to California to stand trial on charges tion] especially, there was a growing popular of murder, conspiracy, and kidnapping. awareness of the racism and brutality of the prison system. Angela's early denunciations PTHEKER DOES A THOROUGH JOB of explaining might now seem not only reasonable and just, A the government's sometimes deadly repres­ but prophetic. (166) sion of radicals and the immense difficulties in securing just trials for radicals: Prior to the June NGELA DAVIS WAS ACQUITTED on June 4, 1972, 1970 tragedy, the National Guard had killed A months after the surviving Soledad Brothers unarmed students at Kent State, while the FBI's and their supporters relished their own exonera­ illegal counterintelligence program, COINTEL­ tions in court and nearly two years after an PRO, created a covert policy of police executions exhaustive, nerve-wracking campaign to free her. and the framing of black revolutionaries. Aptheker writes "In the wake of the worldwide Notwithstanding the book's subtitle, its movement to free Angela, millions of people were detailed documentation in two chapters, "The made aware of prison conditions