Claude Marks is the Project Director of the “Freedom Archives”, a non- profit project that is organizing over 5,000 hours of radical oral history dating from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s. He is a former political prisoner who served time for a conspiracy to break two Puerto Rican and Black political prisoners out of Leavenworth. Claude taught English as a second language, literacy, writing and history inside.
Under Claude’s direction, the “Freedom Archives” has developed a youth training curriculum and has released documentary CDs and videos combining restored historical audio and contemporary interviews. The videos focus on Jalil Muntaqim, David Gilbert and Nuh Washington. “Prisons on Fire” focuses on George Jackson and the Attica Rebellion, Robert Williams and, most recently, a special DVD historical documentary on the Black Panther Party. Claude remains a prison activist and uses media to educate and advocate for prison abolition and the freeing of all political prisoners. His most recent focus has been on building a defense for the 2005 Grand Jury attempt to frame five former members of the Black Panther Party for a 34 year old case in San Francisco involving an attack on a police precinct following the assassination of George Jackson. A DVD documentary titled, “Legacy of Torture: The War Against the Black Liberation Movement” is on the case and can be ordered from the “Freedom Archives”.
Claude Marks The Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, California 94110 (415) 863-9977 info@freedomarchives.org http://www.freedomarchives.org
