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\"This book uses the landmark case Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union to examine the strategies of prison inmates using race and radicalism to inspire the formation of an inmate labor union. It thus rekindles the debate over the triumphs and troubles associated with the use of Black Power as a platform for influencing legal policy and effecting change for inmates. While the ideology of the prison rights movement was complex, it rested on the underlying principle that the right to organize, and engage in political dissidence, was not only a First Amendment right guaranteed to free blacks, but one that should be explicitly guaranteed to captive blacks--a point too often overlooked in previous analyses. Ultimately, this seminal case study not only illuminates the history of Black Power but that of the broader prisoners' rights movement as well\"-- Provided by publisher.

01 02 This book uses the landmark case Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union to examine the strategy, shape, and substance of prison inmates using race and radicalism to inspire the formation of an inmate labor union. It thus rekindles the debate over the triumphs and troubles associated with the use of Black Power as a platform for influencing legal policy and effecting change for inmates. While the ideology of the prison rights movement was complex, it rested on the underlying principle that the right to organize, and engage in political dissidence, was not only a First Amendment right guaranteed to free blacks, but one that should be explicitly guaranteed to captive blacks—a point too often overlooked in previous analyses. Ultimately, this seminal case study not only illuminates the history of Black Power but that of the broader prisoners' rights movement as well. 08 02 \"From Black Power to Prison Powerfeels stunningly new-a book about a prison union, which most of us know absolutely nothing about, even though their case traveled all the way to the United States Supreme Court in 1977. Donald F. Tibbs plumbs the deep history of black power, especially as it relates to criminal justice. He goes back decades before the North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union lawsuit to put it into the context of the emergence of black power, a movement of national and even global dimensions. Tibbs links black power to the movements for feminism, workers' rights, and Civil Rights and along the way joins radical literature, activism, and litigation in a way I have not seen before. Legal history has rarely been so exciting.\" -Alfred L. Brophy, Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill \"The plight of black men in prisons has too seldom troubled America, just as the plight of black people generally too often has gone unheeded except in the glare of violence or fear of violence such as conjured up in the raging cry of 'Black Power!' In From Black Power to Prison Power Donald F. Tibbs deftly exposes how racial fears joined anti-radical repression to entrench institutional law and order as a substitute for justice in the development and decision of the too little noticed 1977 US Supreme Court case of Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union.\" -Thomas J. Davis, PhD, JD, author of Race Relations in America \"Donald F. Tibbs has written one of the best examinations of the power of seemingly powerless people to organize, dissent, and secure their rights. This is an extraordinary book that should be read widely and regarded as a must read for anyone interested in the prisoners' rights movement.\" -Matthew Whitaker, ASU Foundation Professor of History and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, Arizona State University 02 02 This book uses the landmark case Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union to examine the strategies of prison inmates using race and radicalism to inspire the formation of an inmate labor union. 13 02 Donald F. Tibbsis an associate professor of Law at the Earle Mack School of Law, Drexel University. 19 02 1) NEW LOOK AT BLACK POWER: This adds an important new dimension to the story of Black Power, looking beyond the angry rhetoric so often associated with it to examine its effects on the Prison Rights Movement. 2) LEGAL PERSPECTIVE: Tibbs brings together legal and historical analysis, providing valuable insights for legal scholars who have not encountered the significant historical literature on Black Power. 3) SIGNIFICANT MOMENT: Jones is a seminal case in the history of the Prison Rights Movement. 04 02 PART I: FOUNDATIONS * At the Q * Negroes with Guns * The Trial of Huey P. Newton * PART II: FORMATIONS * Souls on Ice * A Crisis Erupts * From a Spark to a Raging Fire * PART III: LITIGATIONS * Coalitions * We Have a Union! * Won and Appealed * Anatomy of a Decision 31 02 Uses the landmark case Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union to examine the strategy, shape, and substance of prison inmates to inspire the formation of an inmate labor union

[...]that characterization misses the mark. Because white civil society in this country has \"long considered black people to be weapons of mass destruction,\"20 the increasing presence of Black men in prominent positions should indeed give us pause.

Early in the morning of August 7, 1970, a young slender Jonathan Peter Jackson walked quietly into the Marin County, California, courthouse carrying a small satchel.1 He entered a second-floor courtroom, where a trial was currently in progress for three San Quentin inmates: Ruchell Magee, William Christmas, and James McClain. At San Quentin, the guards threatened and tortured the three men for reporting police brutality.2 That morning, McClain was being tried for assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder for stabbing a San Quentin prison guard. Inmates Magee and Christmas were his defense witnesses. Although the stabbing was nonfatal, it carried severe penalties under the law, and possibly severe extralegal penalties from the prison guards. But, Jackson was no typical spectator. Rather, he was in the courtroom for a specific reason—he planned to free all three black prisoners.3

When Leroy Eldridge Cleaver walked through the ominous gates of San Quentin Prison in 1958; this was not his first encounter with the California penal system. A prodigy of the criminal streets, Cleaver was first incarcerated in 1947 at the age of twelve for burglary and vandalism in Los Angeles, California. For the next six years he was less than a model citizen. Between 1949 and 1953, he spent time at the Nelles School for Boys and the Preston School of Industry as a guest of the California Youth Authority. In 1954, when the rest of black America was rejoicing in the landmark Supreme Court victory in Brown v. Board of Education, Cleaver was, yet again, sitting before a judge, facing charges for possession of a large quantity of marijuana. He claimed, he “did not believe that [he] had even the vaguest idea of [Brown’s] importance or historical significance.” But that would soon change. The controversy surrounding dismantling the separate-but-equal doctrine established by the 1896 landmark decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, awakened him to his position in America, and he claimed he “began to form a concept of what it meant to be black in white America.”1 He was sentenced to two-and-a-half years to be served at California’s Soledad Prison.

While Ben Chavis, the Wilmington Ten, and the Charlotte Three continued to work on their appeals, prison inmates rallied around their cause. With the assistance of outside supporters, namely Angela Davis, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and a host of labor unions, congressmen, and grassroots organizers, the reputation of North Carolina’s criminal justice and prison system was at stake. But, outside work simply wouldn’t suffice. Like the prisoners’ rights organizations in Scandinavia, inmates would also need to work from the inside out. On March 14, 1973, inmates at Central Prison decided to advocate for change, but not using the old method of riots and disturbances. Instead, they decided to form the North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union (NCPLU). An inmate named Wayne Brooks was elected as the inaugural president.1

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Jones, substantive questions remained. Did the Court reach the correct conclusion in the Jones case; or did it use the oldest magic trick in the book: a slight of hand to focus our attention on the troubles associated with American prisons without recognizing the actual facts related to the North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union (NCPLU)? In popular vernacular, did the Court throw prison reform “under the bus” at the expense of judicial conservatism? Could it have helped prison reform by at least considering the possibility that prisons could actually serve as institutions for rehabilitation as opposed to solely doling out retributive punishment? And if yes, did overruling the district court’s decision in Jones forever alter the trajectory of the American punishment system, sending it spiraling downward to where it sits today: as one of the most internationally embarrassing institutions in the world? While we may never know if the Court was influenced by the social times, such as the rise of the Black Power Movement, the trials of Huey P. Newton, Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, or George Jackson, the shootout at Marin County, or the Attica prison rebellions. However, we cannot ignore that there was a significant social history buttressing the legal history leading up to the Jones case.

On March 18, 1975, Attorney Deborah Mailman entered the Terry Sanford Federal Building and Courthouse located on New Bern Avenue in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. In her leather briefcase, she held a complaint and preliminary injunction alleging a myriad of constitutional violations to be filed with the clerk of court. The North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union (NCPLU), Incorporated was named as the plaintiff.1 North Carolina secretary of corrections David L. Jones and North Carolina commissioner of corrections Ralph Edwards were named as the defendants. There was a great irony that the NCPLU’s complaint was being filed in a building named after Terry Sanford. Although his past career included successful bids a senator, governor, university dean, and presidential candidate, he was most known for establishing the North Carolina Fund, which aimed to lessen minority poverty and further the cause for civil rights in North Carolina during the 1960s.2 Even greater, the North Carolina Fund served as a catalyst for such national programs as Head Start, Community Action Movement, and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA): the former organization where black radicals Jim Grant and TJ Reddy volunteered before they were incarcerated in Raleigh’s Central Prison for their involvement in the Charlotte Three case.

On October 27, 1967, Huey Percy Newton was celebrating his last day on criminal probation.1 He spent the day delivering a speech at San Francisco State University (SFSU) as a special guest of the newly formed SFSU Black Student Union (BSU). The BSU requested his presence mainly because the Black Panther Party’s Sacramento protest boosted his personal reputation. Although Newton never participated in the protest, requests for more information on him and the Party were pouring in from all over California; and he was responding as quickly as he possibly could. He needed the money for bail. Bobby Seale was still serving time in the Sacramento jail on weapons charges for his role in the protest.2

The commitment to prison reform swelled during the early 1970s. While the West Coast was locked in a battle to transform it’s prisons, banner-waving contingents nationwide urged state legislatures to reconsider their position on incarceration. They argued that imprisonment was a capitalist endeavor: to capture America’s poor for the sole purpose of utilizing their labor. The political Left was transitioning itself, from late-1960s Vietnam antiwar rants and speeches beseeching American imperialism, into a movable social force within the national dialog about carceral reform. Universities sponsored prison “teach-ins,” and newspapers and books on prison conditions slowly peeled back the “iron curtain,” revealing to the public the atrocities of human rights violations occurring behind prison walls. Attorney groups also entered the fray. Fay Stender’s Prison Law Project, its later splinter organization the Prison Law Collective, and the National Lawyers Guild were receiving letters by the busload from inmates complaining of conditions and alleging unfair treatment from prisons all around the country.