Colston Richard Westbrook (1937–1989) was a teacher and linguist who worked in the fields of minority education and literacy.
Early life
editWestbrook was born on September 14, 1937 in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. He also grew up in this area. His father was Sgt. Edward Cody Westbrook, who died in Germany, while serving in World War II. His mother, Virginia Ruth Colston, was a housewife, who held various jobs to raise their five children. His siblings were Cody Westbrook, Naomi Westbrook Martinez, Diane Hill, and Tanya Hill.[1]
Westbrook attended Chambersburg Primary and High schools, graduating with Honors in 1955. After graduation he and his elder brother, Cody, travelled Pennsylvania to Richmond, California to live with their maternal grandmother, Mrs Elisa Colston. Colston attended Contra Costa College, in San Pablo, California where he excelled and was an honors student. He displayed a great talent for languages.[1] He was selected to travel to Rome, Italy to represent Contra Costa College, based on President Eisenhower's People to People program, where he was able to practise his excellent Italian.
Military career, Korea and Vietnam
editWestbrook taught English at the International Christian University in Tokyo.[1]
Westbrook joined the Army/Air Force. After an assignment in Korea, he was assigned to Travis Air Force Base in California in 1960.[2] He was deployed to Vietnam and honorably discharged in 1967.
After this, he worked as a civilian with Pacific Architects and Engineers (now a part of Lockheed Martin). In 1974, The New York Times noted that:
- Pacific Architects and Engineering has been used as a recruiting pool and cover by the CIA for its Phoenix Program, which included assassination teams, according to Bart Osborne of the Fifth Estate, a Washington-based researched group of former intelligence personnel who had turned against the Vietnam War. Mr Osborne was at one time a handler of Phoenix teams.
When a journalist later asked why he went to Vietnam, Westbrook answered, "Money, why else? I was told by the American Embassy in Tokyo I could make $10,000 working in Vietnam. They said it pays to be black in Nam".[3]
Studies
editIn 1968, Westbrook returned to the United States. He enrolled in the Linguistics department at the University of California, Berkeley in September 1970[2]. By this time, Westbrook had mastered several foreign languages - Korean, Japanese, Italian, German, and French. He also studied Swahili at Berkeley with Bwana Kaaya, from Tanzania. He understood and had a working knowledge of Bakweri.
He worked in the fields of minority education and literacy.[1] He traveled to Paris on a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Sorbonne while a student at Berkeley. In 1975, he completed his Master's Thesis, on the dual linguistic heritage of African-Americans, or "Black English dialectology", focusing on how African-Americans need to "code switch" between formal English and their own style of English, which had some roots in African languages.[3] He told a journalist, "It's a brand new field, my own field. I made it up".[3]
Student activism and prison visits
editWestbrook was President of the Pan African Student Union in Berkeley, for two consecutive terms. His views on equity and justice created controversy.
As a graduate student in the early 1970s, he and a group of black students, started a project to teach black prisoners a wide range of classes in the California prison system. He was alarmed at the disproportionate number of black men in the prison system in the United States.
One of the classes Westbrook taught as a teaching assistant[2] at UC Berkeley was "Black Lexicon",[4] Through this class, a small group of students, including Willie Wolfe, Russ Little and Mary Alice Siem, began to visit local prisons. One of the main prisons visited was Vacaville prison. On Friday nights there were cultural meetings, which several hundred outsiders attended.[3] They opened with a pan African flag, black power salutes, speeches, poetry readings, plays and debates.[3]
A group known as the Black Cultural Association was formed, for which Westbrook became "outside coordinator". It was reported that he was asked to work with this group (but unclear who asked)[3]In 1972, prisoner Donald DeFreeze (Cinque), invited Wolfe and Russ Little, to join his separate study group, Unisight. A former Black Panther, an inmate by the name of Thero Wheeler, was also in the clique.[5] This was to be the beginnings of the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Symbionese Liberation Army
editAfter the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, two of the families of SLA members, including Willie Wolfe's father, contracted top notch private investigator Lake Headley in an attempt to shed some more light on the matter.[6]
The SLA placed Westbrook on their death list, claiming he was a CIA agent,[7] and had worked as a "torturer" for the CIA in Vietnam, [3], marked as "an enemy to be shot on sight". They also claimed he was an FBI informer.
Westbrook told the media in April 1974, "I think the honkies are calling the shots. [DeFreeze had] better wake up."[8]
On May 4, 1974, Headley, along with freelance writer Donald Freed, held a press conference in San Francisco. They presented 400 pages of documentation of their findings, some of which included:
- a year before the kidnapping Patty Hearst had visited black convict, Donald DeFreeze, who later became the SLA's figurehead.[6]
- DeFreeze's arrest records;
- the work of Westbrook with Los Angeles Police Department's CCS (Criminal Conspiracy Section) and the State of California's Sacramento-based CII (Criminal Identification and Investigation) unit.;[9] and
- evidence of links of the CIA to Police Departments.[4][10]
On May 17, 1974, The New York Times ran the story of DeFreeze and the Los Angeles Police Department.[7] However, the story was largely overlooked due to this being the day of the shoot out and conflagration that killed DeFreeze and five other members of the SLA. Part of its report read:
- In an interview here, Mr Westbrook said he had not worked for the CIA. "They want to make me into some kind of Super Henry the K type dude," he said.[7]
In another interview with the same paper a year later he said, "I've never been a torturer, but I know how to do it. I know how to cut a cat's throat".[3]
Minority Consultants
editWestbrook established his own company, Minority Consultants, located on San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley, to assist African immigrants and African Americans with resources, to educated mainstream society about how African Americans learn, and to assist immigrants on how to adjust to American society.
Personal life
editWestbrook married Eposi Mary Ngomba, whom he met on a visit to Cameroon to visit a friend he'd first met in Japan. He enjoyed traveling and was curious about the world and Africa in particular. They had four children, Ngeke Colston Westbrook, Enjema Diane Westbrook, Nalova Elaine Westbrook, and Menyoli Cody Gerard Westbrook. They lived in California.
Later life
editWestrook was Dean of Students, Contra Costa College San Pablo, California from 1978 until 1989.[1]
Death
editWestbrook died of cancer at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland on August 3, 1989, aged 51.[1]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f http://www.forevermissed.com/colston-richard-westbrook/lifestory#lifestory
- ^ a b c Ross, Colin A. "The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychiatrists", Manitou Communications, 2006
- ^ a b c d e f g h Davidson, Sara, "Notes from the Land of the Cobra", The New York Times, June 2, 1974
- ^ a b Brussell, Mae http://www.maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Why%20Was%20Hearst%20Kidnapped%201.html
- ^ McLellan, Vin, "The Man and the Mystery Behind the Sla Terror", People, April 29, 1974
- ^ a b Langley, W, "Patty Hearst - urban guerrilla brought to heel", The Telegraph, 17 Feb, 2008
- ^ a b c Kifner, John, "Cinque: A Dropout Who Has Been in Constant Trouble; School Dropout On Welfare Wanted to Sell Bombs Recommendation Ignored Cooperation Indicated Charges Dropped" The New York Times, 17 May 1974
- ^ Shane, Peter M, "The SLA: Revolutionary Irresponsibility", The Harvard Crimson, May 29, 1974;
- ^ Churchill, Ward & Vander Wall, Jim, "Agents of Repression: The FBI's secret wars against the Black Panther Party", 2002
- ^ Russell, Dick, "Who Ran the Sla?", John Sinclair, Argosy, Ann Arbor Sun, January 22, 1976, http://freeingjohnsinclair.aadl.org/node/200649
| Founding members |
|  |
|---|---|---|
| Later members |
| |
| Victims |
| |
Category:African-American academics Category:Fulbright Scholars Category:Symbionese Liberation Army Category:1937 births Category:1989 deaths Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni