Jonathan Jackson took hostages in a courthouse in Marin County, California, to coerce the release of the Soledad Brothers, resulting in the deaths of judge Harold Haley and three others.

Jonathan Peter Jackson was an American militant activist who died of gunshot wounds sustained during an armed invasion of the Marin County Civic Center. The action was initiated to demand the freedom of the jailed Soledad Brothers, including Jackson's brother George.

The Marin County Civic Center attacks were two related attacks in 1970 at the Marin County Superior Court, located in the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, California, United States, tied to escalating racial tensions in the state's criminal justice system.

Marin County is a county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and largest city is San Rafael. Marin County is across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, and is included in the San Francisco–Oakland–Berkeley, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The Soledad Brothers were three inmates charged with the murder of a prison guard, John Vincent Mills, at California's Soledad State Prison on January 16, 1970. George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Clutchette were alleged to have murdered Mills in retaliation for the shooting deaths by another prison guard, Opie G. Miller, of three black inmates during a fight in the exercise yard on January 13. The killing of Mills occurred 30 minutes after Soledad prisoners learned that Miller had been cleared of wrongdoing by a grand jury.