The United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army (commonly referred to simply as the SLA) was a small, American far-left militant organization active between 1973 and 1975; it claimed to be a vanguard movement. The FBI and wider American law enforcement considered the SLA to be the first terrorist organization to rise from the American left. Six members died in a May 1974 shootout with police in Los Angeles. The three surviving fugitives recruited new members, but nearly all of them were apprehended in 1975 and prosecuted. The pursuit and prosecution of SLA members lasted until 2003, when former member Sara Jane Olson, another fugitive, was convicted and sentenced for second-degree murder during the SLA’s 1975 bank robbery in Carmichael, California. During its existence from 1973 to 1975, the group murdered at least two people, committed armed bank robberies, attempted bombings, and other violent crimes including the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. Its spokesman was escaped convict Donald DeFreeze, but Patricia Soltysik and Nancy Ling Perry were believed to share group leadership. The membership was majority white during its years of operation. The SLA assassinated Marcus Foster, the black Superintendent of Oakland Public Schools, and wounded his deputy superintendent Robert Blackburn in November 1973. This murder alienated the SLA from the local radical community. The SLA are widely regarded by American law enforcement as the first domestic terrorist group to rise on the political left. The group was made up overwhelmingly of white members from the beginning. After Thero Wheeler left in October 1973, disagreeing with plans for violence, DeFreeze was the SLA's only black member. Joe Remiro was Chicano, described as white in a February 1974 article in The New York Times. He had been active for a period in Venceremos before it disbanded in 1973. Background and formation Prison visits The SLA formed from people who met during prisoner outreach programs supported by the radical left-wing group Venceremos, active in the Palo Alto area, and the Black Cultural Association in Vacaville Prison, about 45 miles from Berkeley. Student volunteers from University of California, Berkeley, some recruited by grad student and professor Colston Westbrook from his classes in African-American linguistics, were encouraged to conduct prisoner outreach at Vacaville. Initiated in 1969 by black inmates, the program was intended to help educate inmates in a variety of classes and prepare them for life after prison. It also sponsored