Biography
Alton Edwards was a member of the New Orleans chapter of the Black Panther Party (organized as the National Committee to Combat Fascism) and one of the defendants arrested after the September 14-15, 1970 police assault on the party's Piety Street office near the Desire housing project. In a landmark trial in August 1971 — the first Black Panther trial held before a Black judge and a majority-Black jury — twelve of the New Orleans defendants were acquitted of attempting to murder police. Alton Edwards is named among the defendants in The Black Panther's contemporaneous coverage.
Known as "Sugar Ed", he was born about 1949 and died on January 26, 2020, at seventy. His obituary identifies the Rev. Dr. Tyronne Edwards — his Piety Street codefendant — as his brother, which both anchors the identification and links the two defendants as family.
The August 21, 1971 Black Panther names this defendant among the twelve New Orleans Panthers tried after the September 15, 1970 raid. It identifies prosecutors Numa Bertel and William Ary and says the jury acquitted all twelve. The article also reports that the FBI placed holds on all defendants before the verdict and that only seven had posted the new federal bail by publication; it does not identify those seven or document their individual physical release dates.
The Black Panther, August 21, 1971, PDF page 5; The Black Panther, August 21, 1971, PDF page 14.
