Biography
George Walter Edwards was a New Haven Black Panther and community organizer. Police arrested him without a warrant at the Panther office in the early morning of May 22, 1969 and denied bail after accusing him in the Alex Rackley case. Contemporary accounts reported that the evidence placed him only at a brief visit after Rackley’s interrogation and that Edwards refused to participate in the abuse. He remained jailed through at least September 1970. No conviction has been located, but the reviewed records do not provide his exact release date. Edwards later worked for civil rights, environmental causes and New Haven’s needle-exchange program.
The Black Panther, June 7, 1969: Printed page 8 individually names this defendant in the New Haven raid and prints captioned portraits of eight defendants. Theodore Spurlock reports the office and upstairs apartment entered at 1:05 Thursday morning, with breakfast-program money and other property taken, and initial murder/conspiracy accusations. Printed page 11 describes the eight as held without bail. These are contemporary Party reports and allegations; no final verdict or complete custody duration is established here. Printed variants include Erica Huggins, Rose Smith, Francis Carter and Peggy Hudgins; established profile identities are retained. Source: https://washingtonareaspark.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/1969-06-07-black-panther-vol-3-no-7.pdf#page=7
