George Lester Jackson (September 23, 1941 – August 21, 1971) was an American author, prisoner, and revolutionary. While serving an indeterminate sentence for stealing $71 at gunpoint from a gas station in 1960, Jackson became involved in the Black power movement and inspired the creation of a far-left prison gang, the Black Guerrilla Family.

In 1970, he was one of three prisoners dubbed the Soledad Brothers. They were charged with the murder at Soledad Prison of corrections officer John V. Mills, allegedly in retaliation for the shooting deaths of three black inmates by a white prison guard several days prior. Also in 1970, Jackson published Soledad Brother, a collection of his letters that comprised a combination autobiography and manifesto addressed primarily to an African-American audience, but which was embraced by radicals around the world. The book was a bestseller and earned Jackson international fame.

In August 1971, Jackson was killed by prison guards during an escape attempt at San Quentin State Prison, in which three guards and two inmates were killed. Jackson never went to trial for the Mills murder.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, George was the second of five children of Robert Lester and Georgia Bea Jackson. In a letter written in June 1970, George recalled the following about his parents and early childhood:

My mother was a country girl from Harrisburg, Illinois. My father was born in East St. Louis, Illinois. They met in Chicago, and were living on Lake Street near Racine [Avenue] when I was born. It was in one of the oldest sections of Chicago, part ghetto residential, part factory. The el train passed a few yards from our front windows (the only windows really). There were factories across the street and garage shops on the bottom level of our flat. I felt right in the middle of things.

As a young teen, George began getting into legal trouble while his family lived in the housing projects of Chicago. In the hope of placing his son in a better environment, Jackson's father transferred his U.S. Post Office job to Los Angeles in 1956. He and George drove cross-country and initially stayed in Watts, and then settled in Pasadena where the rest of the family joined them. The relocation to L.A. did not end George's clashes with the law. At age 15, he was sent to prison reformatory for driving without a license. He also had juvenile convictions for armed robbery, assault, and burglary, and spent two years in California Youth Authority correctional facilities.

On September 18, 1960, while still age 18, Jackson was arrested for participating with Robert Earl Young in the armed robbery at gunpoint of $71 from a Standard Oil service station in Los Angeles. In December 1960, Jackson pled guilty to second-degree robbery. The following January he was sentenced to one year to life in prison. The judge pointed to Jackson's previous arrests as justification for the harsh sentence. He would remain in prison until his death.

During his first years at San Quentin State Prison, Jackson involved himself in revolutionary activity. He was characterized by prison officials as egocentric and anti-social. In 1966, he befriended fellow inmate W. L. Nolen, who introduced him to Marxist, Leninist and Maoist political thought, which would later form the ideological basis of the Black Guerrilla Family. In speaking of his ideological transformation, Jackson remarked: "I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me." In Blood in My Eye (1972), Jackson labeled himself a "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Fanonist".