Murder of Marcus Foster
On November 6, 1973, in Oakland, California, two members of the SLA killed school superintendent Marcus Foster and badly wounded his deputy, Robert Blackburn, as the two men left an Oakland school board meeting. The hollow-point bullets used to kill Foster had been packed with cyanide.
The SLA had condemned Foster for his plan to introduce identification cards into Oakland schools, calling him "fascist". In fact, Foster had originally opposed the use of identification cards in his schools, and his plan was a watered-down version of other similar proposals. An African American, Foster was popular on the Left and in the black community.
On January 10, 1974, Joseph Remiro and Russell Little were arrested and charged with Foster's murder, and initially both men were convicted of murder. Both men received sentences of life imprisonment. Seven years later, on June 5, 1981, Little's conviction was overturned by the California Court of Appeal, and he was later acquitted in a retrial in Monterey County.
Little has stated: "Who actually pulled the trigger that killed Foster was Mizmoon. Nancy was supposed to shoot Blackburn, she kind of botched that and DeFreeze ended up shooting him with a shotgun."
Read more about this topic: Symbionese Liberation Army
Famous quotes containing the words murder of, murder, marcus and/or foster:
“Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”
—Anonymous. Late 19th century ballad.
The quatrain refers to the famous case of Lizzie Borden, tried for the murder of her father and stepmother on Aug. 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Though she was found innocent, there were many who contested the verdict, occasioning a prodigious output of articles and books, including, most recently, Frank Spierings Lizzie (1985)
“Theres in people simply an urge to destroy, an urge to kill, to murder and rage, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated, and grown will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.”
—Anne Frank (19291945)
“We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isnt just oursit is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you cant beat it.”
—Greil Marcus (b. 1945)
“Our capacity to retaliate must be, and is, massive in order to deter all forms of aggression.”
—John Foster Dulles (18881959)