Biography
Mark Everett Comfort was one of Oakland's most prominent grassroots Black organizers of the early-to-mid 1960s and a direct precursor to the Black Panther Party. He founded the Oakland Direct Action Committee in 1965 and ran a "Black Panther Project" under it. After learning of the police killing of Denzil Dowell, he helped bring the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense to Sacramento and, at Bobby Seale's request, was among those arrested with Huey Newton and Bobby Seale at the armed protest at the California State Capitol on May 2, 1967. His six-month sentence arose from the earlier Oakland Tribune employment-discrimination protests. A December 1966 report described 44 days served at Santa Rita before Justice William O. Douglas stayed that sentence; the May 15, 1967 Black Panther update reported that he was again confined at Santa Rita after his appeal was declined. These confinements were separate from the Capitol prosecution. He later did SNCC security work in Lowndes County, Alabama, and died in 1976.
The May 15, 1967 update places Comfort in Alameda County Jail at Santa Rita on the earlier Oakland Tribune case after his appeal was declined, separately from his May 2 Capitol arrest. An older Movement article reprinted on the same page forecast a May 9 or 10 return; that forecast is not used as an actual admission date.
