Magee, now 84 years old, was imprisoned in the racist South at the age of 16 for an alleged attempted rape charge against a white woman, the same year that Emmett Till was brutally lynched for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Upon release, he headed to Los Angeles, where he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for a dispute involving $10 worth of marijuana.
But Magee was not only a victim of this racist system; he emerged as a freedom fighter. While in prison, Magee became a jailhouse lawyer, helping others with writs and legal cases. He also took on the name of Cinqué, an African freedom fighter who led a rebellion on the Amistad, a ship transporting enslaved people.
It was Magee’s heroic actions in August 1970, when an armed Jonathan Jackson burst into the Marin County Courthouse to demand the freedom of his brother, George Jackson, that won the admiration of the worldwide movement for freedom and prison abolition.
Magee, without hesitation, joined Jonathan Jackson’s bold attempt to free his brother, which ended in a murderous hail of gunfire by deputy sheriffs, killing young Jackson, a judge, two prisoners and three jurors. Magee, badly wounded, survived and was held in prison for the next 53 years for his selfless act of solidarity.