Biography
Bobby Hardwick was a Black inmate activist at the Georgia State Prison in Reidsville who, The Black Panther reported (October 12, 1974), had been convicted of armed bank robbery and assaulting a police officer and who filed a federal civil-rights suit in August 1974 for the right to receive The Black Panther newspaper in prison. U.S. District Judge Wilbur Owens rejected the suit over an allegedly improperly completed filing questionnaire; Hardwick charged that Owens consistently denied Black people access to the Georgia courts. His suit named state corrections commissioner Allen Ault, warden James G. Ricketts, and prison official E.B. Blackburn. The September 22, 1975 Black Panther reported that Hardwick had won a Fifth Circuit appeals ruling allowing a prison civil-rights claim to proceed without first exhausting administrative remedies. The report dated that suit to 1973 and described challenges to denial of the newspaper and to restrictions on correspondence with a white woman. It said the appeal entitled him to reopening of the case; it did not report a release from prison.
The September 22, 1975 Black Panther reported that Hardwick had won a Fifth Circuit appeals ruling allowing a prison civil-rights claim to proceed without first exhausting administrative remedies. The report dated that suit to 1973 and described challenges to denial of the newspaper and to restrictions on correspondence with a white woman. It said the appeal entitled him to reopening of the case; it did not report a release from prison.
The October 12, 1974 Black Panther identified Hardwick as a minister and prison activist who challenged censorship of the newspaper. It reported his allegations that officials held him in maximum-security segregation without the required hearing, restrained him during movements, restricted correspondence and refused weekend family visits. The article describes his convictions as dating to 1969 but does not establish an actual admission date. Its Reidsville dateline and institution naming are inconsistent, so no institutional transfer date is inferred.
