Biography
Larry Roberson was a Chicago chapter Black Panther Party member shot by Chicago police in July 1969, then held under police guard and, the paper says, harassed and beaten in the hospital before he died on Sept. 4, 1969; memorialized as a fallen comrade in The Black Panther Vol. 17 no.13 (1977).
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July 14, 1969 hospital custody
Safiya Bukhari’s Lest We Forget, printed page 12 (original PDF page 17), explicitly dates the shooting of Larry Roberson to July 14, 1969 and states that he was taken to Cook County Hospital and placed under police guard. It reports his death in the hospital on September 4, 1969. The admission refinement refers to documented guarded hospital custody, not a prison booking or a sentence. No new sentence, arrest day or additional episode is inferred.
The Black Panther’s memorial reported that Larry Roberson was shot on July 14, 1969, taken to Cook County Hospital under police guard and harassed and beaten there. He died at that hospital on September 4, 1969. That date marks his death in guarded custody.
The Black Panther, September 10, 1977, vol. 17 no. 13, PDF page 3.
An FBI Chicago report attributes to Officer Pat Gleason information furnished July 16, 1969 that Larry Roberson and Grady Lee Moore had been arrested on attempted-murder, narcotics-possession, aggravated-battery and weapons accusations, that Roberson had been seriously wounded and that both continued in custody (NARA docid-32989647 PDF page 356). July 16 is the police information date and is not substituted for the separately documented July 14 physical-custody date. The report supplies no release day and does not alter the existing death-in-custody endpoint or counter. Police allegations about responsibility for the shooting remain attributed.
Two reports in the issue describe Roberson wounded and under guard in Cook County Hospital, facing attempted-murder accusations, with Grady “Slim” Moore separately held in Cook County Jail. One reports two attempted-murder counts against Roberson and one against Moore. The longer account dates the confrontation July 17, 1969 and says the men were held without bond, while another narrative describes a Wednesday encounter. These are the paper’s contested accounts of the same episode; they do not replace the previously recorded July 14 admission from another source. They are distinct from Roberson’s earlier June FBI-raid custody.
