26 Facts About James Kilgore

James Kilgore lived as a fugitive for 27 years, working in Zimbabwe, Australia, and South Africa.

James Kilgore developed a career as an educator, researcher, and far-left radical activist, before being arrested in Cape Town, South Africa, in November 2002.

James Kilgore was extradited to the United States, where he was convicted and subsequently served six and a half years in prisons in California on charges of participation in SLA criminal activities.

James Kilgore grew up in California, graduating from San Rafael High School in 1965.

James Kilgore played on the college volleyball team and subsequently became active in politics during the anti-war protests of 1969 and 1970.

James Kilgore visited a number of political activists who were in prison, including Willie Brandt, convicted for his role in anti-war bombings in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In 1974, James Kilgore joined the Symbionese Liberation Army, the group that kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst in February of that year.

Hearst said that James Kilgore took part in a number of crimes in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1974 and 1975, including a bank robbery in Carmichael, California.

Hearst, Harris, and Montague were arrested in September 1975, but James Kilgore remained at large.

The defendants, including James Kilgore, subsequently pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in a plea deal, and all served time in California state prisons for this offense.

James Kilgore was released in 2009, the last of the defendants in the case to leave prison.

James Kilgore remained on the run for 27 years until November 2002, when he was arrested in Cape Town, South Africa.

James Kilgore lived in Australia for two years where he enrolled in Deakin University and eventually earned a Ph.

James Kilgore exchanged his guns and masks for pen and paper.

James Kilgore stopped living between the cracks and in the night; he built a new life, took care of his family and contributed to the struggle of the workers.

Statements of support for James Kilgore were made by representatives of the South African Municipal Workers' Union, Khanya College, the University of Cape Town, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

James Kilgore was sentenced to ten years in prison in California.

James Kilgore has subsequently published two other novels that he drafted in prison: Freedom Never Rests: A Tale of Democracy in South Africa and Prudence Couldn't Swim, a crime fiction story set in Oakland, California, and Zimbabwe.

Also while incarcerated, James Kilgore worked as a prison mathematics teacher, helping fellow inmates prepare for the math portion of their GED tests.

Relatively few of James Kilgore's students were there because of an academic interest in the material, with the majority being interested in a reduced sentence or better paying prison job that might come with the GED.

James Kilgore did not want to encourage such an environment in his classroom, finding it reminiscent of the Jim Crow era, so took any opportunity he could to encourage his students to sit next to others of different races.

James Kilgore has become active in local social justice campaigns such as Build Programs Not Jails.

James Kilgore has written a number of articles for online and print platforms such as The Chronicle of Higher Education, Truthout, Counterpunch, Dissent, Radical Teacher, and Critical Criminology.

James Kilgore has carried out a research project on electronic monitoring in the criminal justice system, and was a keynote speaker on this topic at the 2014 Confederation of European Probation conference in Germany.

The withdrawal of his employment offer prompted a protest from faculty members and beyond, while victim's advocates said James Kilgore was never qualified to teach at the college level and forged his doctorate degree.

James Kilgore began working after his wife hired him in January 2015 as a research scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Center for African Studies.