Doc details Marin man's life as a fugitive
On Aug. 21, 1971, Stephen Bingham visited Black Panther leader and San Quentin inmate George Jackson, who was working on a new book after his bestselling “Soledad Brother.” Bingham, a young Yale-educated lawyer who dedicated his life to working on racial and social issues, was the last person to visit with Jackson.
What happened after that — the bloodiest episode in California prison history — sent Bingham into hiding with a fake identity for 13 years until he was acquitted by a Marin jury of charges that he concealed a gun in a tape recorder and gave it to Jackson, triggering what the government called a riot and that left Jackson and five others dead, including three prison guards.
Bingham's story is told in “A Double Life,” a documentary by award-winning filmmaker Catherine Masud, Bingham's niece, making its world premiere at the 46th annual Mill Valley Film Fest, which runs through Oct. 15.
“People tend to remember it but they remember it wrongly,” says Bingham from his home in Marin, where he's lived since 1994. “It's a story that belongs to the world and it's a story in my opinion and many others' of government malfeasance. It's not just blood and gore and the tragedy of what happened at San Quentin.”
Told in Bingham's own words along with interviews with friends, family and his legal team, the documentary follows Bingham's path from when he began to embrace progressive causes to his life in exile, his trial and acquittal in 1986, the tragic death in 2009 of his daughter, and his dedication to racial and justice work since.
The `radical blue blood'
Dubbed the “radical blue blood,” Bingham grew up in a politically prominent Connecticut family. Coming of age during the intersection of the civil rights, anti-war, Black power and prison-rights movements, he became involved in politics and justice issues at Yale, volunteered in the Mississippi