Biography
Herman Ferguson was a New York City public-school principal, a co-founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity with Malcolm X in 1964, and a longtime leader of the Republic of New Afrika movement. After Malcolm Xs assassination in February 1965, Ferguson became one of the most prominent organizers of the radical Black liberation network that grew out of the OAAU and the Revolutionary Action Movement.
In June 1967 he was arrested by the New York Police Departments Bureau of Special Services and charged with conspiracy to murder Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and Whitney Young of the National Urban League. The principal evidence at trial came from a paid NYPD informant. Ferguson was convicted in 1968 and sentenced to three and a half to seven years in New York state prison. While free pending appeal he fled the United States with his wife Iyaluua Ferguson and settled in Cooperative Republic of Guyana, where they remained for twenty years. He returned voluntarily to New York in April 1989 and surrendered. He served roughly three years in New York state prison and was released in 1992.
He spent his last decades organizing for the freedom of U.S. political prisoners, serving as a co-chair of the Jericho Movement and on the board of the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee. He died on October 14, 2014, age 93.
Contemporary October 1968 newspaper account
The Bard Observer of October 17, 1968, printed p. 2 (PDF p. 4), reports that Herman Ferguson and Arthur Harris were sentenced in Queens County on October 3, 1968 to three and one-half to seven years for conspiracy to murder Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young. The same contemporary brief gives their conviction date as June 15, 1968. These are conviction and sentencing dates, not proof of initial imprisonment or uninterrupted custody through the later appeal period. Ferguson’s independently recorded 1989 admission remains unchanged.
Source: Bard Observer, volume 11 number 6, October 17, 1968.
The Fall 1990 Write Through the Walls directory individually lists this prisoner under historical identifier 89-A-4621. This dated source-specific identifier fills the previously blank number field; the listing supplies no new admission, release or completed custody duration. The contact location is historical and does not establish current imprisonment.
Harry Ring’s July13,1990 Militant report individually records a one-year bail-jumping sentence imposed on Herman Ferguson June27,1990 and expressly says it ran concurrently with the existing conspiracy term. This is a legal development during already recorded custody, not another prison-admission interval or an additional year to sum into imprisonment. The existing1989-1992 actual endpoints and earlier conspiracy sentence remain unchanged.
