“The Killing of Richard Oakes” traces the life and death of the Mohawk activist who sparked the famous indigenous occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969. It reveals disturbing new details about Oakes’ killing 50 years ago, which altered the course of U.S. history and still haunts the victim’s family today.
Oakes and a group of college students seized Alcatraz to protest the government’s treatment of indigenous people. The protest sparked a wider movement for Native American rights known as “Red Power,” and for a brief time, Oakes was its face. But in 1972, at age 30, he was fatally shot by a white man on a remote forest road in Northern California. Oakes was unarmed. His friends and family believed he’d been murdered. The shooter, Michael Morgan, told police he’d fired in self-defense, and an all-white jury acquitted him.
Oakes’ widow and six children lost a husband and father, while Red Power lost its most charismatic voice. Yet despite Oakes’ importance, just one local reporter attended Morgan’s 1973 trial for its three-week duration. The press and the court system treated the homicide as unfortunate but excusable, the result of a random brawl. Holes in Morgan’s self-defense alibi received little scrutiny, and the anger and grief of his indigenous community was all but ignored.
Reporters Jason Fagone and Julie Johnson set out to explore Oakes’ killing and the trial in depth, for the first time uncovering evidence that recasts the shooting as a possible hate crime. Some of these details were concealed from the public by prosecutors and law enforcement, according to records of a 1972 FBI investigation into the killing. A small and heavily redacted portion of the FBI’s case file had been released before, but the reporters obtained a fuller, unredacted version through a FOIA request to the National Archives. These records paint a fresh and chilling picture of a shooter motivated by racism and a sheriff’s deputy who appeared to collude with him.
The reporters also reveal how racism shaped the manslaughter trial of Morgan. Fagone and Johnson rely on extensive interviews with law enforcement sources and surviving jurors. Few involved with the case had ever spoken publicly, but over the course of 18 months, the reporters tracked down sources and convinced them to open up. Fagone and Johnson also spoke with Oakes’ descendants and allies to understand his life’s work and the impact of his killing on those who loved and followed him.
Many who knew Oakes or worked on the case are in their 80s and 90s today. One source died during the reporting of the story. Although “The Killing of Richard Oakes” concerns an old injustice, the reporting is urgent, a race against time to correct a false narrative before it’s too late.
