Subverting Skeleton Bay: Black radicalism and the California prison hunger strikes

This article underscores Black radicalism as an underacknowledged but pivotal motivation of the 2011 and 2013 California prison hunger strikes. Originating from long-term solitary confinement, the strike expanded across thirty-four prisons amassing over 30,000 hunger strikers. It was a cross-racial effort led by a small collective of leaders at Pelican Bay State Prison who understood the racialising and racist segregationist forces of solitary confinement, and deliberately worked across difference to form a united front against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The author emphasises the political – rather than legal – motivations and aspirations of the hunger strikes, so as to argue that Black radicalism was central to strikers’ political consciousness. This article is the result of extensive oral history interviews with one of the strike leaders, as well as archival and public document research, and shows how discourse on the strike has been white-washed through the reproduction of the prison’s racialised gang classification systems. Black radicalism is, according to the author, foundational to understanding the political importance of the strike and its still-emerging political horizons.