Danger and Trust

This memoir describes the many unexpected things that occurred during Ted Davidson’s unique research among Chicano prisoners at San Quentin Prison and in the Chicano movement in California, from 1966 until 1997. He reached the depths of the prisoners’ own illegal culture via the secretive-deadly if crossed-Mexican Mafia. A very few highlights during those 31 years: Ted was kicked out of San Quentin by prison administrators for revealing staff secrets to the media. He was repeatedly set up by undercover FBI agent provocateurs posing as students, who tried to provoke him into doing things he would never imagine doing. Ted was fired from Cabrillo College for criticizing California Department of Corrections and protesting the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. He wrote a popular ethnography, Chicano Prisoners: The Key to San Quentin—in print from 1974 until 2002. Ted lived under a death threat against him and his family for six weeks. He cut his San Quentin and Chicano ties in 1979. Still, in 1997, Ted wisely refused to testify in a case against 12 Mexican Mafia members who were convicted by the U.S. government of racketeering, conspiracy, murder and extortion.