Biography
Co-defendant of Fred Ahmed Evans in the Glenville Shootout — the July 23, 1968 armed confrontation in the Glenville neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio between the Black Nationalists of New Libya (a militant Black-nationalist group led by Evans) and Cleveland police. Three police officers, three Black militants, and one Black civilian were killed in the gunfight, which sparked five days of uprising in the city. Federal and state authorities prosecuted the surviving militants in what became one of the harshest Black-nationalist prosecutions of the era. Jackson was 16 at the time of the shootout. Adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court and held at the Mansfield Youth Center until age 21.
Leslie Jackson was arrested at 9:30 a.m. on July 24, 1968, according to the contemporaneous federal study Shoot-Out in Cleveland. Its account places him at 12314 Auburndale on the morning after the gun battle and names him among the three people arrested there. The study does not establish the date of his actual admission to an institution or his eventual release.
