Free Angela and All Political Prisoners Page #7

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to hear the pre-trial motions,

had already been charged with prejudice

by Miss Davis' co-defendant Ruchell Magee.

The judge said he would proceed

no further with the case

until the prejudice challenge

was ruled on by another judge.

Finally, I realized that

the case needed to be tried.

It needed to be tried soon.

And that was because

the organizing was at its peak.

And if we got involved

in all of these other motions

and motion for removal...

It might be five years

before the trial took place,

and I didn't want to do that.

So I reluctantly

decided that...

Ruchell was intransigent

on this idea of removal.

There were Communist Parties

everywhere in the world.

And they launched campaigns,

which very quickly

mushroomed into much, much larger

than themselves.

There was enormous feeling

for Angela everywhere in the world.

I was traveling around the world.

I was in Moscow. I think I was in Leningrad.

Kiev. I was in Poland.

I was in Czechoslovakia

and a number of different cities in Italy.

West Germany and East Germany.

So I was on the front lines

with all the people who were demanding

the freedom for Angela Davis.

These millions of people around

the world would not allow my sister

to be convicted,

would not allow her to be executed.

There were plays, and theater,

music being written about Angela Davis.

It just created this irresistible wave,

this irresistible force.

We want to tell that pharaoh in Washington

to let Angela Davis go free.

Nina Simone came and visited me

for a long time.

She came in with a balloon,

which the jailers did not

want to allow me to have,

but I fought for that balloon

because I love Nina Simone.

I kept that balloon as long

as it remained inflated.

Children of East Germany

wrote millions of letters to my sister.

The mailman arriving every day with

a huge sack of mail on his back.

Just addressed to,

"Angela Davis, USA."

This letter was written by a very,

very young child, apparently.

And it says very simply,

"Dear Angela Davis,

"My name is Sarah.

I wish that you were free.

"This is a picture of you

when you will be free.

"Love, Sarah."

And on the other side,

there's a picture that she's drawn.

She says it's a picture of me.

You see the smile on my face.

I guess that's supposed to be

symbolic of freedom.

Bettina and I were in the jail

with her in Marin.

The prison guards came up

and told us that we had to leave.

And everything was locked down.

There was no movement in the prison

at all, not on the prison ground.

As I was coming home, I heard on the radio

there had been an outbreak at San Quentin,

and George Jackson

was believed to have escaped

and had been shot in the process.

And I felt that it was my responsibility

to come back and tell Angela.

And then it was Margaret and Howard

who had told me that he had been killed.

I didn't know the details.

I had no idea what had happened,

except that he had been killed.

He had said that he expected

that he would die in that way.

He expected that he would probably

be killed by the state.

By guards, by police.

I remember the scene in the cell

when I came back.

She was just totally grief stricken.

And inside that grief,

again, I think true for Angela,

but true for anybody,

is rage, just enormous rage.

Rage at the system that you couldn't stop.

What should we do? What should we do?

What should we do?

And George's funeral which was enormous.

And then picking ourselves up

and saying, "We have to go on."

San Jose, California,

has changed over the last 20 years

from a prosperous agricultural center

to an urbanized extension

of San Francisco.

Roughly 85% of the people

who live here are white.

About 10% have Spanish surnames.

And less than 2% are black.

Over her objections,

it is the site for the trial of Angela Davis.

I knew nothing about

San Jose, California,

except the Dionne Warwick song.

I came down and I thought

that it was Birmingham, Alabama.

The only thing was

I didn't see any African Americans.

The atmosphere, which often surrounds

much publicized trials,

is beginning to build.

More than 300 newsmen

have applied for credentials.

Three-quarters of a million dollars

has been spent on

security and facilities for the news media.

Fences for crowd control, reconstruction

inside and outside the court building.

The courtroom itself is small with only

60 seats for spectators and newsmen.

Closed circuit television will

carry the proceedings to another building

with room for 150 more.

Questions from both sides

will only be answered

as the evidence unfolds day by day

in the California courtroom,

and the trial,

estimated to last six to nine months.

Howard had been on the case from the start.

I had a minimal role in the trial.

I think I questioned one or two witnesses.

I was there representing the party

and keeping an eye on the politics.

And I told them that

I thought she would be convicted.

I thought the crucial thing was getting

a different approach to the defense.

And that's what Leo brought to the case.

Leo Branton,

who was also African American,

very dynamic fellow, and very

well-known in the black community in LA.

He understood his client,

he understood the situation.

I felt much more optimistic with him there.

A trial lawyer

must be somewhat of a showman.

You are acting in front of a jury.

You cannot be all actor, though.

There must be substance

to what you're doing.

By being passionate about your cause,

being intellectual

and having prepared the case

to the point where you can make the

best possible presentation before a jury.

So the stakes are, we have to win

this case, and we have to win it now.

You either win the case now,

or you forget about it. It's over.

I was charged with

three crimes that carried the death penalty.

I tried to avoid actually thinking about that.

I tried to avoid thinking about what was,

at that time, a gas chamber.

Anyone facing the death penalty

was not allowed bail.

But the trial judge previously stated

that if it weren't for the death penalty,

he would allow Angela Davis

to have bail on appeal.

You get pressure all the time.

They'd say, "Kill her, kill her, kill her.

You can do it."

And I never let that bother me.

I never told anybody about it.

Today, the small green room

at San Quentin is empty, unused.

The California Supreme Court

has outlawed the death penalty

as "cruel" and "unusual" punishment.

Immediately upon getting this news,

I called Howard Moore

on the phone, I said,

"Call the judge and call

the prosecuting attorney, and tell them

"that you're gonna make a motion

to free Angela Davis on bail."

Aretha Franklin had said that she would

put up any amount of money for bail.

And so I was trying to reach her.

I was trying to call Aretha, man.

"We need money, honey.

As much as you can give us. "

Well, she was in the West Indies and

it wasn't possible to make the transfer,

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