An ambitious and vast family history by the nephew of Soledad Brother author George Jackson and son of Black Panther martyr Jonathan Jackson, whose famous act of defiance redefined Black Power and American dissent in the early 1970s.
"In his quest for the truth about his iconic father and uncle and how the struggle that took their lives shaped his own, Jonathan Peter Jackson, Jr. has produced an epic story of family, race, enigmatic literary and political worlds, and the incalculable cost of revolution. Part memoir, part history, part novel, Notes of a Radical Son is a work of art: beautiful, honest, tragic, and unsettling. Destined to be a classic."
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
In thirty-six minutes on a sweltering day in August 1970, there occurred one of the most tragic days in American history. Jonathan Jackson, then a seventeen-year-old boy, attempted to free the Soledad Brothers, who included among them his older brother and hero George Jackson. Jackson died that day, as did a judge and two others. Jonathan’s son, the writer of this book, wasn’t yet born and would only learn who his father was when he was nine years old.
To better understand his legacy, Jonathan Peter Jackson Jr. reconstructs and restores his family history on both sides, going back almost a hundred years, to the period of slavery that his paternal grandparents and great-grandparents endured and escaped, eventually rising through struggle into the Black middle class. And he tells his white mother’s history, including her Kansas roots as well as her courage and sacrifice to keep a movement alive for her son.
Through the writing of this book Jackson Jr. comes to know who his parents were, who his uncle was, and ultimately, who he himself is. Most urgently, Notes of a Radical Son takes us on an affecting journey through three generations of a family’s enduring resilience.