Colston Westbrook facts for kids

Colston Richard Westbrook (1937–1989) was an American teacher and expert in languages. He worked to help people from minority groups get a good education and learn to read and write. At the University of California, Berkeley, he started a special program. This program allowed students to volunteer and help people in prisons. Some of these students, along with two former prisoners, later became part of a group called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in 1973.

Before his time at Berkeley, Westbrook worked for a company that helped the US Army in Vietnam. After returning to the United States, he worked for the Los Angeles Police Department and the State of California. In 1970, he began studying at the University of California, Berkeley and later taught there.

Early Life and Education

Colston Westbrook was born on September 14, 1937, in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. He grew up there with his family. His mother, Virginia Ruth Westbrook, raised five children and always made sure they focused on their education.

Colston went to school in Chambersburg and graduated with high honors in 1955. After high school, he moved to Richmond, California, to live with his grandmother. He attended Contra Costa College in San Pablo. Colston was a very good student, especially in languages. He was chosen to travel to Rome, Italy to represent his college. This trip was part of a special program by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to connect people from different countries.

Military Service and Work Abroad

Colston Westbrook served in both the US Army and the Air Force. After being stationed in South Korea, he was assigned to Travis Air Force Base in California in 1960.

After leaving the military in 1967, he taught English in Tokyo, Japan, at the International Christian University. While there, he made friends and even visited the country of Cameroon.

Later, he took a job in South Vietnam with a company called Pacific Architects and Engineers. This company worked for the US government during the Vietnam War. Westbrook worked there for five years. He said he took the job for the money.

Academic Career and Education

In September 1970, Westbrook started studying at the University of California, Berkeley. He was already very good at several languages, including Korean, Japanese, Italian, German, and French. He also learned Swahili at Berkeley.

He focused his work on helping minority groups with education and reading skills. While he was a student, he won a special scholarship called a Fulbright Scholarship. This allowed him to study at the Sorbonne in Paris, France.

In 1975, he finished his master's degree. His main project was about how African Americans use language. He studied how many African-American students often switch between different ways of speaking English. He even said he created a "brand new field" of study. He taught a class on African-American Linguistics at Berkeley.

Westbrook also started his own company called Minority Consultants. This company helped African immigrants and African Americans. It also worked to teach others about how African Americans learn.

From 1978 until 1989, he served as the dean of students at Contra Costa College in San Pablo, California.

Student Programs and Prison Outreach

In 1968, a group called the Black Cultural Association (BCA) was formed inside a prison in Vacaville. This group became officially recognized by the prison in 1971. Colston Westbrook, who was a student at Berkeley at the time, became the person who helped coordinate outside visitors for the BCA. He helped students from colleges in the Bay Area visit the prison.

These visitors, including students, would attend cultural meetings at the prison on Friday nights. Hundreds of people from outside the prison also attended these meetings. The meetings included speeches, poetry, plays, and debates. Some students who attended were interested in ideas about Black nationalism and social change.

Some people have suggested that Westbrook's earlier connections with a prisoner named Donald DeFreeze led to DeFreeze being an informant. This idea suggests that DeFreeze might have been helping to keep an eye on prisoners and students who had strong political views.

Willie Wolfe, Russell Little, and Mary Alice Siem were white students who took Westbrook's language class. They were among the students from Berkeley who joined the BCA prison program. In 1972, DeFreeze invited these three, along with another prisoner named Thero Wheeler, to join his own study group called Unisight.

These individuals later became some of the first members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in 1973. This happened after Donald DeFreeze escaped from another prison. Thero Wheeler also escaped and joined them in Berkeley.

Westbrook was also involved in student politics at the university. He was the president of the Pan African Student Union at UC Berkeley for two terms. In 1979, he hosted a question-and-answer session with the famous author James Baldwin on campus. Westbrook's strong opinions on fairness and justice often caused discussions.

The Symbionese Liberation Army

Many questions have been asked about Colston Westbrook's connection to the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). This is because he knew some of the main people in the group, including Donald DeFreeze and the students from the prison outreach program.

Some reports have suggested that Donald DeFreeze received special treatment while in prison. There were also ideas that his escape from prison might have been planned by law enforcement. This was possibly done to gather information or set up operations against certain groups.

After DeFreeze escaped, he was known for trying to sell weapons and explosives to people in the Bay Area. Some writers wondered if he was trying to set up "sting operations" (where law enforcement pretends to be criminals to catch real ones). It's not clear how he got these weapons.

After the SLA kidnapped Patty Hearst in February 1974, they put Colston Westbrook on their "death list" by April. They claimed he was an agent for the CIA and the FBI. They said he was "an enemy to be shot on sight."

Westbrook became very afraid for his life and went into hiding. He said that the SLA's founders disliked him because some "lesbians" in the group didn't like that he allowed women in short skirts to attend BCA events. He also said he brought pictures of women for the prisoners. He explained that he did this to encourage prisoners to learn and attend meetings, saying, "If you want to dangle a carrot in front of the inmates to get 'em to learn and come to meetings, you don't dangle Communism. You dangle fine‐looking chicks they'll think maybe they can get next to."

A BCA founder named David Inua said that DeFreeze was not very smart and couldn't lead the group or write the messages they sent out. Inua believed that Patricia "Mizmoon" Soltysik and Nancy Ling Perry, two white women who were very enthusiastic about revolution, were the real leaders and thinkers behind the SLA.

Investigation of the SLA

After the SLA spoke out against Westbrook, the father of Willie Wolfe and another family hired a private investigator named Lake Headley. They wanted him to research the group. On May 4, 1974, Headley and a writer named Donald Freed held a press conference. They shared what they had found.

They presented many documents and shared these findings:

• Patty Hearst had visited Donald DeFreeze, who became the SLA's leader, a year before she was kidnapped.
• DeFreeze's arrest records showed he received unusually light punishment starting in 1967. This was when he gave information about someone who had many stolen weapons. The detective on his case then moved to a new unit that focused on Black activist groups.
• Westbrook's work with the Los Angeles Police Department and the State of California was noted. During this time, it was thought that DeFreeze might have been an informant.

On May 17, 1974, The New York Times published an article about DeFreeze's connection to the Los Angeles Police Department and the idea that he was an informant. However, this news was quickly overshadowed by reports of a shootout in Los Angeles. DeFreeze and five other SLA members died when the house they were in caught fire during a confrontation with the police.

In a book published in 1993, Lake Headley presented more evidence. He suggested that DeFreeze had been a police informant and someone who secretly encouraged others to break the law. He also said that the Black Cultural Association was used by law enforcement to watch students and prisoners who had strong political views.

Some people believed that the SLA was secretly created by the CIA as a special team. These ideas were discussed in some magazines and publications.

One writer, Dick Russell, suggested that prisoners in California were recruited by being pressured or promised special treatment. He claimed that DeFreeze was recruited and allowed to escape from prison to do what the government wanted. Russell also suggested that the main target of the SLA was the Black Panther Party. He believed that the killing of Oakland School Superintendent Marcus Foster was planned by government forces because he was seen as too friendly with the Black Panthers.

Personal Life and Death

Colston Westbrook married Eposi Mary Ngomba, whom he met during a visit to Cameroon. They had four children and lived in California.

Westbrook died from cancer at Kaiser Oakland Medical Center on August 3, 1989. He was 51 years old.