Biography
Black civil rights organizer and one of the 'Charlotte Three,' convicted in 1972 in Charlotte, North Carolina of conspiracy to burn down a stable as part of what supporters and the U.S. National Minority Advisory Council on Criminal Justice (1980) described as a politically motivated prosecution of Black activists. The all-but-one-white jury convicted Grant, Thomas James Reddy, and Charles Parker solely on the testimony of two witnesses with long criminal records who were secretly paid $4,000 each by government authorities and later partly recanted. A Justice Department memo labeled the defendants 'Black militants' and the case is widely cited alongside the Wilmington Ten as a textbook example of state political repression of Southern Black civil rights workers in the early 1970s.
Charlotte, N.C. civil-rights activist imprisoned in connection with the anti-racist school struggles of the period; The Black Panther Vol. 14 no.28 (1976) names him among the jailed Southern activists a national campaign sought to free.
A SCEF report reprinted in Right On! (Nov.-Dec. 1972) described a separate federal conviction at Raleigh in April 1972 and a ten-year sentence for helping two young men flee to Canada to avoid prosecution. An appeal alleged racial discrimination in the grand and trial jury selection. The article separately reported his 25-year Charlotte riding-stable sentence, describing a total of 35 years; the federal sentence was distinct from the state sentence.
The Militant of October 27, 1978 reports that Grant and Reddy physically returned to prison on October 17 after the Supreme Court refused review. It states that the Charlotte Three had been free pending appeal and that Parker had already returned on another charge. Thus the broad original-conviction-to-final-release dates do not describe uninterrupted custody. The earlier bail departure and any total actual duration remain unestablished by this report.
The Militant, July 16, 1976, page 2, explicitly reports physical release on bond for James Earl Grant on June 24, 1976 ($50,000 bond). The brief dates Grant’s exit June 24 and says Reddy had left two days earlier. This establishes a break in custody before the later imprisonment and final case endpoint. The inherited January 1, 1972 entries are year-storage placeholders, not independently verified exact admission days. No precise completed first interval or continuous 1972–1979 total can be calculated from this source; the later overall release endpoint is preserved, and the total remains unknown. The separate October 1978 return evidence is handled in the companion source review.
The Charlotte Three paragraph says Reddy, Parker and Grant were actually out on bail early in 1977 while awaiting a new trial after four years in prison. It alleges government payments to prosecution witnesses and refers to their work integrating the stable they were accused of burning. The four years are reported actual service, not a new nominal sentence or an exact 1,460-day calculation. Bail liberty is distinct from a final acquittal or later pardon.
