January morning was Opie G. Miller, aretired Army man and a reputed ex-pert with the .30 caliber semi-automatic which he held in his hands.

Miller, 51, had joined the Soledadguard staff in August 1962, a year af-ter he retired from the Army as a non-com with 20 years service. A short,stocky man with an oval face andslightly receding cropped hair, Millerwas a product of Woden, Texas, asmall agricultural town that is ex-cluded from most atlases. As a guard,Miller had a reputation among pris-oners and staff of being sullen and se-vere. That was probably the reason hewas often assigned to standing watchesin gun towers, where he would havelittle, if any, direct contact with in-mates. Two days before the opening ofthe yard, Miller was "checked out" inthe use of the .30 caliber rifle. As inthe past, he performed well.

T he releas: for yard exercise be-

gan at 8.45 A.M., when W. L.

Nolen's cell door was opened bya switch in the officers' area. "Preparefor yard release," a guard yelled downthe max row corridor. Nolen steppedout of his cell and walked down thecorridor to the cage like sally port. Asdirected by the mimeographed sheethanded out by Sergeant Maddix twoweeks earlier, Nolen carried his cloth-ing and a towel under his arms. Insidethe sally port, he handed a guard thetowel and his clothes; which consistedof coveralls, foam rubber showershoes, a T -shirt, shorts and socks. While

the clothes were being examined forshanks and razor blades by one guard,a second officer conducted a skinsearch, looking for concealed weaponsin the prisoner's mouth, under histongue, in his hair, in and behind hisears, under his armpits, between histoes, under his feet and in and aroundhis rectum and genitals. The skinsearch is routine for all prisoners enter-ing and leaving the maximum securitycell area. "Spread 'em," a guard or-dered. Nolen grabbed his buttocks andleaned forward. The other officerhanded Nolen his clothing and the in-mate dressed to enter the yard.

Nolen was the first prisoner re-leased into the yard. As he stepped on-to the concrete pavement in the quietgray moments of that Monterey win-ter's morning, he could look back

over his right shoulder and see thearmed guard, Opie Miller, above andbehind him some 30 feet away. Nolenwalked away from the gun, steppingacross puddles of rain water towardthe handball area at the north end.

Two white inmates-a lanky, lean-faced Chicano named Joseph ("Colo-rado") Ariaz and Howard ("Smiley")Hoyle~entered the yard after Nolen.The make-sheet on Ariaz describedhim as "assaultive" and noted that theChicano "boasts about disliking nig-gers and considers them less than hu-man." Hoyle was a racist himself. Justmonths earlier, he had stabbed a blackprisoner in another wing of the prison.

Minutes later, Richard ("Ca~tus")Ferguson, "Hawaiian John" Faneneand Billie ("Buzzard") Harris joinedthese two near the hospital fence. Fer-guson, 22, was doing three to life.Fanene, 24, was of Samoan ancestry .Soledad officials said he was "not nec-essarily a racist, but identified withwhites." Harris was a white su-premacist, a member of the so-calledAryan Brotherhood.

By the time the white trio joinedtheir comrades at the hospital fence,three other black inmates-EarlSatcher, Ed Whiteside and John

Earl Satcher

Randolph-were in the yard and hadjoined Nolen at the far north end. ...The four blacks took a few steps tothe center of the handball court andbegan warming up, slapping the hand-ball against the cinderblock-backstop.Nolen and Randolph played for a

while but the ball sailed over the fenceand they stopped. When someonethrew the ball back over the high

fence, Whiteside took Nolen's place.Satcher, both hands hanging onto theends of a white towel around his neck,laughed and joked and acted as a sortof greeter to"'other black prisoners asthey entered the yard.

Raymond Guerrerb, 29, a white in-mate doing six months to ten years fornarcotics possession, was another vete-ran of racial brawls. Soledad officialssaid Guerrero had, just two months be-fore this date, been in a fight in whicha black was badly beaten. Guerrerowas the eleventh man into the yard.While he was joining the whites at thesouth end, Hawaiian John Fanene leftthe group, walked to the heavy punch-

ing bag along the O-wing wall and be-gan pounding it. Between jabbing com-binations, Fanene looked toward thegun tower. He said Miller, the gunguard, held the rifle "poised," as ifready to fire. This worried Fanene be-cause he had been wounded in theyard at San Quentin and still carriedthe scars. Fanene stopped working onthe heavy bag and moved over to thespeed-punching bag, where he keptwatching the toweI as he punched. Hewas watching when Miller aimed andfired the first shot.

When Thomas Meneweather en-tered the yard, he "automatically"glanced up toward the gun tower andfound himself "looking into the muz-zle of 0. G.'s carbine." Meneweather,Soledad officials said, had a "seriousdisciplinary record." He made zip gunsand bombs and furnished them toother blacks on max row. When he en-tered the yard, Miller motioned him tothe north end with a wave of the gunbarrel. Meneweather challenged Ran-dolph to a game of handball.

While Fanene punched the speedbag and glanced nervously at the guntower, another white racist was clearedfor yard exercise. Ronnie Dean ("Har-po") Harper was a close friend of thewhites responsible for ClarenceCausey's death, thus having earned aspecial hatred from the blacks, whowanted to "tattoo some knuckles ontothe man's face." Harpo Harper joinedthe whites near the hospital fence.

The last two blacks to enter theyard were Cleveland Edwards and Al-vin ("Jug") Miller. Edwards, twenty,

RAMPARTS 37

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called to Meneweather, who had beenhelping Nolen with his court petitionsagainst the prison, and suggested thatthey punch the heavy bag. Nolenworked with the heavy bag whileMeneweather held it and watched.Meneweather had also been anxiousabout the gun tower. He noticed thatthe gun guard had his aim on them asthey approached the bag and kept therifle leveled at them while Nolenpunched it.

Nolen, who had won most of theboxing matches he fought in prisontournaments, had just given the heavybag a few combinations when Wende-kier approached the drinking fountainalong the O-wing wall. As. Chukopassed near him, Nolen yelled at himand threw a quick right, slamming hisknuckles into the white con's fore-head. Wendekier retl,lrned threepunches, then decided that Nolen,with his boxing experience, was toobig and too fast to square off against.Chuko dove for Nolen's legs, grabbinghis blue denim trouser legs, trying topull Nolen down. Meanwhile, Fanene,who had walked up with Wendekier,was standing slightly behind Chuko.Fanene threw a few punches at Nolen,punches that whizzed past Wendekier'sear, but he missed. Fanene, his mindflashing quickly on the s~ar he stillbore from the San Quentin yard,turned once more to look at the gunguard. He watched as Opie G. Milleraimed and fired.

was doing a relatively lengthy sixmonths to ten years for struggling witha police officer. Soledad officialsdidn't like Edwards because he had a"negative attitude towards author-ity. ..." Twenty-three-year-old JugMiller, who would die within minutes,was serving five to life for robbery .

The last inmate to enter the yardbefore the shooting began was Robert("Chuko") Wendekier, 21, a white conwho was doing six months to fiveyears for possession of a weapon. Ac-cording to prison records, Wendekierwas noted for '..riotous behavior" andhad "assaulted a number of inmates."Prison officials said that Wendekier, aHawaiian, "goes with whites when

trouble starts."By now, 15 men had entered the

yard. Each had been skin-searched forweapons. Almost all were considered"racist" by pris"on officials. Almost allhad a prison record of racial fighting.All were aware of the racial score to besettled for the Causey killing. Sincethey were unarmed, no one expectedto get killed, but a free-swinging, knee-jabbing, foot-stomping melee wasanticipated as guards, inmates and pris-on staff awaited the beginning spark.It was like placing scorpions and blackwidow spiders in a shoebox. ...As O-wing administrator Eugene Petersonadmitted in a confidential memo toWarden Fitzharris, "Most of the men[in the yard] have been to the otherlock-ups [prisons] at one time oranother and know most of the inmatesin the other lock-ups. The hate or alli-ances go deep and many are of longyears standing, i.e., a friend of minewas stabbed by a friend of yours, soI'm going to have to stab you."

T he carnage began shortly after

Chuko Wendekier entered the

yard. Wendekier walked underthe basketbah hoop in the center ofthe yard and ambled over to the fence,where he began talking with Harper,Harris and Fanene, who had juststopped punching the speed bag. Thefour men laughed and joked about the"niggers" playing handball, about get-ting out on the yard for the first timein more than a year, about the antici-pated fistfight and about the gunguard pointing the rifle around.

When Fanene left the speed bag,W. L. Nolen began punching it. Nolen

ness saw Nolen sag to his knees, claphis hands behind his head, elbowsshaking, and fall forward, his foreheadslamming into the concrete. Wendekiersaid he kicked Nolen a few times, un-aware that Nolen was bleeding todeath.. Meneweather, who had let go ofthe bag he was holding for Nolen,started for Chuko to stop him fromkicking his black friend. He didn'treach Wendekier because Billie Harrisand Harpo Harper jumped him first.

"Watch out," Cleveland Edwardsyelled at Meneweather.

Meneweather, a powerfully builtman and a judo expert, turned to meetHarris and Harper. He caught Harris inmidair, letting the white con's mo-mentum carry him, and threw Harristo the pavement. Edwards called thathe would look after Nolen but as heran toward the fallen black leader thegun guard squeezed off another shot.Edwards grabbed his stomach and fellon his face. The shot went through Ed-wards and smashed into Mene-weather's left hand.

John Randolph and Ed Whitesidewere playing handball when theyheard the rifle shot.s. They spunaround and saw Edwards fall to theconcrete, holding his stomach. Ran-dolph started running, zig-zaggingtoward the fence near the hospital,then back toward the shower stalls. Heheard another shot. The bullet hit JugMiller in the gut as Miller was runningalong the O-wing wall toward the fightscene. Randolph, who was just a fewsteps away, tried to grab Jug Miller tostop him from falling but he couldn't.Miller was dead weight. He fell nearthe pull-up bar and speed bag as Ran-dolph let go and turned to face BillieHarris, who had got up from Mene-weather's judo throw. Randolph andHarris glared briefly at each other.Then, glancing at the carnage aroundhim, Harris decided to stop fighting.He walked a few steps, paused, andfelt a burning sensation in his groin.He had been shot in the testicles.

Satcher, who had been pacing backand forth in the northwest corner ofthe yard, also had headed for the fight.

By the time he got to the middle ofthe yard, at least three shots had beenfired. Satcher squared off against Cac-tus Ferguson, each feinting with leftjabs and threatening rights, but neitherlanded a punch. When the fourth bul-

Soledad, California

The first bullet tore into Nolen'schest, piercing his body just to theright of the breastbone. A white wit-

38 RAMPARTS

2

let was fired and both men noticedthat inmates had actually been shot,they put their hands down. Two of thewounded blacks moaned. Harris, a tes-ticle shot off, sat on the concrete pave-ment, loudly cursing the blacks andthe gun guard. Satcher cupped hishands to his mouth and yelled, "It's allover with."

"Well, it better be allover with,"Opie Miller, the gun guard, yelledback.

bund state."' Miller had a four-millimeter circular wound in the "epi-gastrium just below the xyphoid proc-ess," just below the middle chest,slightly above dead center on thestomach.

Cleveland Edwards was carried intothe prison hospital "bleeding profuselyfrom the left femoral area," a large ar-tery in the groin. Boone reported thathe tried to expose the severed vesselsto control the hemorrhaging but bythen the "subject had already suc-cumbed."

Billie ("Buzzard") Harris lost a tes-ticle. ., .

Word of the triple killings flashedquickly throughout the Soledad "mainline. " Within hours various groups of

black inmates were demanding the a1'-rest of the gun guard and a grand juryinvestigation. Investigators and attor-neys from the Monterey County dis-trict attorney's office poked andprobed, but after a passage of threedays, there was no word on the prog-ress of the "investigation. " The prison

continued tense, "like a fire-crackerfixing to explode, " as one white in-

mate described it.During the evening of the third day,

the Monterey County district attorneytold reporters in an interview thatOpie G. Miller's killing of the threeblack prisoners was, in his personalopinion, "probable justi['zable homi-cide by a public officer in the per-formance of his duty. " When the black

inmates heard this report on television,they were incensed. Within an hour awhite guard named John v: Mills laydying on the concrete pavement ofY-wing. He died in the prison hospitalwithout regaining consciousness.

Mills probably never knew any ofthe truth about the killings on January13. His death was revenge, cold de-tached revenge. Opie Miller-the manwho shot Nolen, Edwards, Miller andHam's-took an extended vacation inGermany. The Mills death, the firstkilling of a guard in Soledad history,resulted in the arrest of three black in-mates: George Jackson, F7eeta Drum-go, and John Qutchette. Due to theincredibly heavy-handed and racisttreatment of these three men duringpre-trial hearings in Salinas, defense at-torneys won a transfer of venue to SanFrancisco, and the case of the three

tongue. Randolph slapped. Nolen's faceand the wounded man calmed down.But a minute later Nolen's eyes rolledup to the top of his head and hestarted biting his tongue. "I beganslapping his face again," said Ran-dolph, "but to no avail."

While the blacks were arguing withthe guards about taking the woundedoff the yard, two white prisoners-Ariaz and Guerrero-moved to thenorth end of the yard and playedhandball. They played for about tenminutes.

Finally, three guards and two MT As(civilian medical technical assistants )appeared at the O-wing sally port andwalked onto the yard. The guards werecarrying tear gas guns. .An MT Astopped by each of the wounded blackprisoners and mutely shook his headthree times. The guards said thewounded could be brought in off theyard but that the men would enter

through O-wing instead of directly upthe hospital ramp to the emergencyrooms. This meant a long circuitousroute to the hospital, through theseries of O-wing doors, down part ofthe prison's main-line corridor andthrough the hospital security doors.Both the blacks and the whites pro-

tested, arguing that the hospital gate,whose ramp jutted out into the yardbarely twenty feet from the woundedmen, should be opened. They knewthat prison laundry was taken inthrough there almost every day. Theguards refused. ...

The bullets that ripped into Nolen,Edwards and Miller did not kill themen outright. According to witnesses,

all three men lay bleeding in the yardfor 15 to 20 minutes before officialswould unlock any gates to take themoff the yard. The guards never did un-lock the two doors which led directlyto the prison hospital. The threeblacks bled to death.

A "corrected copy" of the highlyconfidential report of the chief medi-cal officer at Soledad, Dr. Daniel W.Boone, stated that Nolen "wasbrought to the hospital in a moribundcondition. ..from a circular 4 mm.wound in the right 4th interspace justto the right of the sternum. " The bul-

let was about as close to the middle ofa man's chest as a shot can be placed.

Jug Miller, the doctor said, wasbrought to surgery in a "near mori-

T he four surviving black prisoners

first tried to figure out who was

the most seriously wounded.Satcher and Randolph, kneeling overNolen asked how badly he was hit."I'm probably hit in the leg," saidNolen, but his shirt showed bleeding inthe chest and back. The men decidedto move Jug Miller.

"Everyone was now waiting for thedoctor ," said a witness, "but afterabout ten minutes nothing happened.We then began hollering to the gun-man in the tower to open up the emer-

gency gate to the hospital, but he re-fused and just stood there with hisrifle aimed at us." After 15 minutes

passed, Meneweather decided to try totake Jug Miller off the' yard. Hekneeled down so two other black' conscould place Miller across his back andshoulders. "I started to walk towardthe door through which we had en-

tered the yard," said Meneweather,

"but the tower guard pointed the gunat me and shook his head. Then Istarted forward with tears in my eyes,expecting to be shot down every sec-ond, but the tower guard told me,'That's far enough.' "

"If you take another step, it'll beyour last," Opie Miller shouted fromthe tower. "Nobody leaves the yarduntil I get an official O.K."

"If they don't get back, shootanother one," Sergeant Maddix yelledfrom the open O-wing door.

John Randolph and Ed Whitesidecarried W. L. Nolen up the hospitalramp but they were stopped by aguard who pointed a tear gas gun intheir faces. "I started cussing and inch-

ing forward," said Randolph, "untilthe gunman in the tower told me tostop and pointed his rifle at us. So we

stopped."By this time, Nolen had drifted into

shock and was trying to swallow his

RAMPARTS 39

3

rapidly became a cause celebre in Cali-fomia. Movement forces called themthe "Soledad Brothers " and their

George Jackson had been transferredto San Quentin.

AUGUST 21,1971: THE DEATH

OF GEORGE JACKSON

"The Soledad Brothers ..

s an Quentin Prison is California's

oldest. Because it has the only

gas chamber in the state, it alsobecame the most famous. It was herein the late spring of 1960 that CarylChessman lost his ninth stay of execu-tion and was strapped into a steel chairto inhale the bitter almqnd stench oftwo cyanide capsules. It is here thatRobert Kennedy's assassin, SirhanSirhan, and the Tate murderers CharlesManson and Charles Watson sit andsleep their life away. It was here thatRuchell Magee awaited trial for his in-volvement in the Marin County Court-house tragedy. And it was here, on aplaza of flower beds and walkways,that George J ackson met his death ona late August Saturday in 1971.

Except for a gusty wind that fun-neled in through the Golden Gate, theday George Jackson died was sunnyand warm. He had expected at leastone visitor that August 21 and insidethe Adjustment Center he kept askingthe guards whether his visitor had ar-rived. The guards said no, even thoughthey knew otherwise. Two peoplewere waiting to see Jackson but thevisiting room officer had told theguards on the telephone that they hadnot been "cleared."

The two visitors, a young, whiteradical attorney named Stephen Bing-ham and a black female activist namedVanita Anderson, had signed in at theprison's East Gate at 10: 15 A.M.

Inside the East Gate, the twowalked about 200 yards to the prison'ssecurity fence, where all visitors are re-quired to pass through a metal detec-tor. Purses, bags, tape recorders, brief-cases and similar large objects, whilenot passing through the "inspecto-scope" detector, are examined rou-tinely by the guard at that gate.

That Saturday, Correctional OfficerBernard C. Betts processed more than225 visitors through his metal detec-tor. It was not his normal duty stationbut he had manned the machine be-fore. It was another routine day forBetts. A man wearing a leg brace setthe metal detector off. So did awoman wearing a naugahyde coat with

case-which focused on racial injusticeand inhuman prison conditions-beganreceiving wider attention and presscoverage. It was not until August1970, however, that the press reallyclosed in. For it was then that GeorgeJackson's younger brother, Jonathan,armed himself and entered the MarinCounty Courthouse. The youngerJackson emerged with five white hos-tages, including an assistant D.A. and aSuperior Court judge, hostages theywanted to exchange for the freedomof the Soledad Brothers. In a murder-ous barrage of gunfire, Jonathan Jack-son was killed. So were two otherblack inmates, James McOain andWilliam Christmas, and the whitejudge, Harold Haley. Ruchell Magee,one of the survivors in the van, is ontrial for murder as this is beingwritten.

Within days of the Marin Court-house shooting, law enforcementofficials reported that Angela Davishad purchased the guns involved in thekidnapping. Warrants were issued forher arrest and she was captured in adowntown New York motel nearlythree months after the event. Federalauthorities delivered Ms. Davis to Cali-fomia, where she was imprisoned atthe Marin County jail. Meanwhile,

three-inch metallic buttons.Steve Bingham passed through the

inspectoscope at about 10:20 A.M.Betts remembered that the young at-torney was wearing a mod necktie anda corduroy jacket, his long haircombed neatly. Betts could not recallthat the Berkeley attorney carried any-

thing.Vanita Anderson walked up to the

inspectoscope carrying what looked toBetts like a portable typewriter case.Light-complexioned, with a mild Afroand wearing a pair of finely hand-crafted copper earrings, Ms. Andersonwas dressed in a three-piece checker-

board suit.

"What's your title?" Betts asked."I'm a legal investigator," she an-

swered."Who are you going to visit?" Betts

inquired."George Jackson," Ms, Anderson

replied.Betts instructed her to pass him the

bluish-gray metallic case, holding itaway from the metal detector so thecase would not set the machine off.She thrust the case toward him "in acontemptuous manner" and Betts be-gan examining the contents. The casewas about 20 inches long, l6 incheswide and some four or five inchesdeep. Inside, Betts found severalinches of yellow legal-sized paper anda tape recorder. The recorder was nineto ten inches long, five or six incheswide and almost four inches thick. Theguard carefully removed the back ofthe recorder and saw four C-size bat-teries, various diodes and transistor-ized parts and a speaker;Betts did nottry to turn the recorder on to see if itworked. He said later that there wereabout three inches of the recorderwhich he could not see. He also saidthat the tape recorder and the attachecase belonging to Ms. Anderson werethe only ones which passed throughhis gate that day.

"You 're clear ," Betts said to thewoman, returning the case. He pickedup his phone and called the visitingroom to inform guards there that theblack female visitor was carrying atape recorder inside her attachecase. ...

The visiting room guard was DanielP. Scarborough, a quiet, gangly officerwho was well-liked by most of the

(Continued on page 49 )

40 RAMPARTS

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