BLACK AUGUST MATTERS

August usually brings back to school shopping, football talk and the last stretch of summer. But August also carries a powerful chapter of Black history that far too many of us were never taught.

It is called Black August.

Black August grew out of California prisons during the 1970s and became an annual observance in 1979. It honors Black political prisoners, freedom fighters and people who challenged racism, abuse and unfair treatment inside the prison system. It began at San Quentin as incarcerated people remembered the lives and deaths of Jonathan Jackson and George Jackson.

Two brothers sit at the center of the story.

On August 7, 1970, seventeen year old Jonathan Jackson entered a Marin County courtroom with weapons. He tried to force the release of his brother George Jackson and the other men known as the Soledad Brothers. The attempt ended in a shootout. Jonathan, two prisoners and a judge were killed.

George Jackson was shot and killed at San Quentin on August 21, 1971, during what prison officials described as an escape attempt. His supporters never accepted that account. Those two August deaths became a major part of why the month was chosen for remembrance.

But George was more than a prisoner or activist. He was a writer.

His best known book, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson, collected letters he wrote from prison between 1964 and 1970. He wrote about race, poverty, power, prison life and the way the system could crush a person before the sentence was over.

The book became a classic and sold more than 400,000 copies before going out of print. Think about that. A man writing from inside a prison cell reached hundreds of thousands of readers around the world. The publisher still describes the book as a powerful look at racism and the American prison system.

That is one reason Black August is built around reading, studying, discipline and reflection. The point is not only to remember who died. The point is to understand what they were fighting against.

And those prison issues are not trapped in the past.

The latest full report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that more than 1.25 million people were in state or federal prisons at the end of 2023. That number had increased by about 24,100 people, or 2 percent, in one year.

Black people made up 33 percent of sentenced state and federal prisoners, even though Black Americans make up a much smaller share of the total United States population.

The numbers get even harder to ignore when you compare imprisonment rates. In 2023, about 1,218 Black adults out of every 100,000 were serving sentences longer than one year. The rate for white adults was 231 per 100,000. That means the Black adult imprisonment rate was about five times the white rate.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons also reports that Black inmates currently account for about 38.5 percent of the people listed in its federal inmate race statistics. That is more than 59,000 Black people in the federal system alone.

And prison is only part of the picture. At the end of 2023, about 5.5 million people were incarcerated or living under probation or parole supervision. That worked out to roughly one out of every 48 adults in this country.

So when people ask why Black August still matters, there is your answer. The history may go back decades, but the numbers tell us the conversation is not over.

August is also filled with major Black birthdays and historic moments.

James Baldwin was born August 2. Marcus Garvey was born August 17. Marsha P. Johnson was born August 24. Fred Hampton was born August 30. Johnson was not part of the original Black August movement, but she belongs in the wider story of Black people who fought for dignity and freedom.

The uprising that launched the Haitian Revolution began in August 1791. Nat Turner’s rebellion began August 21, 1831. Houston’s Camp Logan rebellion happened August 23, 1917. Emmett Till was kidnapped and murdered in August 1955. The March on Washington happened August 28, 1963.

Black August asks us to remember the price of freedom and to pay attention when justice is denied behind walls most people never see.

So this August, learn a name. Read a book. Talk to your children.

Black history did not begin in February, and it does not end there.