Biography
Dr. Curtis Powell was an Oxford-trained biochemist and Black Panther Party member indicted as one of the New York Panther 21. Arrested April 2, 1969 in the predawn NYPD raids, he was held in the Manhattan House of Detention through most of the pretrial period on $100,000 bail. He was one of the 13 defendants who went to trial and was acquitted with the others on May 13, 1971. He returned to scientific research after the trial.
The Black Panther, June 7, 1969: Printed page 9 reports that the raid arrest caused Lena Powell to give premature birth to their child, who lived three days. The causal claim is the contemporary movement account’s allegation. This article prints April 3 as the raid date while printed page 11 prints April 2; the established April 2 arrest is not overwritten. It describes high bail and dispersed jail locations for the group, without proving every member remained held at the same later moment. Source: https://washingtonareaspark.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/1969-06-07-black-panther-vol-3-no-7.pdf#page=8
Photo credit
In a first-person account published in July 1970, Powell recalled being born in South Orange, New Jersey, where his mother worked as a maid. He described Marine service, study and research at Seton Hall and other institutions, work overseas, earning his doctorate in Sweden and returning to cancer research at Columbia while organizing with the Black Panther Party. The account recounts his April 2 arrest but supplies no new date of birth or physical release endpoint.
