The SLA featured this image on their publications. Murder of Marcus Foster On November 6, 1973, in Oakland, California, two members of the SLA killed school superintendent Marcus Foster and badly wounded his deputy, Robert Blackburn, as the two men left an Oakland school board meeting. The hollow-point bullets used to kill Foster had been packed with cyanide. Although Foster had been the first black school superintendent of any major public school system, the SLA condemned him in their flyers for his supposed plan to introduce identification cards into Oakland schools, calling him "fascist". But Foster had already gained support by the School Board to change the proposal. Some SLA members had mistakenly believed that killing Foster would gain support for them in the black community and help them recruit new members; instead they alienated most blacks and other leftists by this crime. Harry Reynolds, a deputy superintendent in the system, said those who published the flyers had “irresponsible flapping at the mouth.” In addition, he said "somebody didn't like this guy [Foster] bringing all these people together. They may have been jealous of the type of progress he was making.” Robert Blackburn, who served for a time as acting superintendent, later discussed how off base the SLA was. "These were not political radicals," Blackburn said of the SLA. "They were uniquely mediocre and stunningly off-base. The people in the SLA had no grounding in history. They swung from the world of being thumb-in-the-mouth cheerleaders to self-described revolutionaries with nothing but rhetoric to support them." On January 10, 1974, Russell Little and Joseph Remiro, other SLA founding members, were arrested during an armed encounter with police. After police found extensive SLA materials at a house they were renting, the two were charged with Foster's murder. Both men were convicted of murder in 1975 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Seven years later, on June 5, 1981, Little's conviction was overturned by the California Court of Appeal, and he was later acquitted in a retrial in Monterey County. Remiro remains incarcerated; his eleven parole requests have been rejected. Little later said that Soltysik had shot Foster, and Perry had shot Blackburn, aided by DeFreeze. Kidnapping of Patty Hearst After Remiro and Little were arrested, the SLA considered kidnapping an important figure in order to negotiate the release of their imprisoned members. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found documents at one