Before the beginning of CPOF, jails and prisons across the United States experienced one of the deadliest years in it’s history.
On August 21, 1971, San Quentin Prison, expereinced the deadliest day in it’s history. The prison lost three officers that day, Sergeant Jere Graham, 39; Officer Frank DeLeon, 44 and Officer Paul Krasenes, 52.
“Jere Graham was my best friend,” said Mike Loftin, 74, who described himself as a “prison guard,” hired at San Quentin in 1966. “I was sitting in a bar in downtown San Rafael, waiting for Jere to get off work so I could have beer with him.” Hearing the news about his friend, Loftin said he felt “anger.”
“I had no idea what was even going on,” said Loftin in an interview. “It wasn’t until later that I found out. Three (guards) had their throats cut.” CDCR records show that DeLeon was shot.
In 1960, George Jackson was an unknown 18-year-old to the state prison system. He was arrested in Los Angeles for a gas station robbery of $70. He pleaded guilty to the charge in exchange for a short sentence in county jail. Instead, the judge sentenced him to one year to life in state prison. The sentence placed his fate in the hands of the Adult Authority — the parole board at the time. Jackson spent the next 10 years in Soledad Prison, seven and a half of those years in solitary confinement.
“Jackson first began studying radical political theorists, including Karl Marx and Frantz Fanon, in 1962, under the supervision of another African American prisoner, W.L. Nolen, who ran a reading group for prisoners,” Keramet Reiter wrote in her book 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement.
“Nolen, Jackson, and other members of the reading group were ultimately affiliated with the BGF, which was founded sometime between 1966 and 1971. According to its followers, the BGF is a revolutionary political organization; according to prison officials, it is a prison gang,” Reiter wrote.
During a riot at the prison in Soledad, Nolen and two other Black prisoners were reported killed by correctional officer Opie G. Miller. After a grand jury ruled Nolen’s death justifiable homicide, correctional officer John V. Mills, 25, was beaten by prisoners and thrown from the third tier in a cellblock on Jan. 16, 1970. Jackson was housed in that block.
The book If They Come in the Morning, edited by Angela Davis, asserts, “Deputy Superintendent William Black stated, ‘We believe that the death of Officer Mills was a reprisal for the death of the three Black inmates.’ And, as if to balance some score being kept, prison officials proceeded to find three Black suspects who, they said, had killed Mills.” Jackson and two other Black inmates, John Clutchette and Fleeta Drumgo were charged with the killing.
This started the case of the Soledad Brothers. Publicity of the case produced a change of venue from Monterey County, Calif., where Soledad prison was located, to Marin County. The change led to Jackson’s move to San Quentin, where he awaited trial in the prison’s Adjustment Center.
“In the prison system we were seeing a rise in Black inmates viewing themselves as ‘political prisoners;’ a view fostered and supported by activists in the community,” remembers former San Quentin Warden Robert Ayers Jr. Ayers started his career as a correctional officer with the then-California Department of Corrections on Jan. 24, 1968. Decades later he became San Quentin’s warden.
Watani Stiner, 73, an inmate at the time, remembers “We heard two shots followed by a series of whistles. While standing under the Upper Yard shed, just outside the North Block chow hall, I saw someone running down the ramp near the Adjustment Center. Guards were running all around, down to the Lower Yard and toward the AC building. Several guards quickly lined the gun rail and aimed their rifles down on us. They were screaming: ‘Bury your faces in the ground or get shot – NOW!’”
“I recall a great deal of distrust between many staff and Black inmates,” Ayers wrote. “There had been several fatal assaults on staff throughout CDC.”
Prisoners had control of the Adjustment Center when Lt. Dick Nelson arrived. According to Loftin, “(Nelson) took a weapon onto San Quentin grounds to take back the AC … just to let them know he was there and serious.” Then he fired. The weapon was reportedly a Thompson submachine gun.
Prisoners in the AC yelled, “’We have hostages,’” Loftin said. But Nelson “let out another burst” from the Tommy gun. “If San Quentin ever had a hero, it was Dick Nelson.”
Ayers worked as part of the rank-and-file. He knew the staff who were killed. “I knew Frank DeLeon well. We worked together frequently in Visiting, on the Main Yard, and in housing units. I had limited contact with Paul Krasner. My memory of him is he was a somewhat gruff ‘old-timer.’ I also had limited contact with Jere Graham. My only real recollection of him is his nickname was ‘Barabbas.’”
Ayers reported that immediately following Aug. 21, several of the prison’s staff resigned, but some returned to work after a few days. “Their issue was rage rather than fear.”
On that hot, summer day in 1971, Correctional Lieutenant Richard ‘Dick’ Nelson wass painting his dining room when his quiet afternoon off is jolted by the piercing sound of gunfire. Prior to his death in 2021, Dick sat down to write INTO HARM’S WAY. The story of a man who goes looking for a stable career in an honorable vocation, and builds a set of working principles along the way through unforgettable people and experiences. When anti-authority tension begins to mount behind the wall, Nelson tests those principles as he rushes in to stop a deadly riot that changes a profession for good.
Fifty-two years after its bloodiest day, San Quentin is the CDCR’s leading prison for inmate rehabilitation. Today it promotes dozens of self-help groups and programs, educational and college courses, vocational training, and more.