Biography
Norma Gist was a thirty-year-old Black mother of two in Idabel, Oklahoma, whose prosecution grew out of an incident in which she criticized a white school principal, Wilfred Conant, for the brutal beating of her ten-year-old son, Sol. On April 12, 1971, after what The Black Panther called a "quickie, non-peer jury trial," she was convicted and sentenced to ten years in the state prison, then released two days later on a $10,000 appeal bond. On November 15, 1971 Idabel and Oklahoma state police seized her from her home and, on November 17, took her to McAlester prison; the state had also cut off her welfare in an effort to force her into submission. Documented in The Black Panther (November 29, 1971).
Writing as Norma Spagner Gist in the November 4, 1972 Black Panther, she argued against California Proposition 17 and the restoration of the death penalty. The editors introduced her as a mother of two who had spent months in prison awaiting trial after defending her son Sol from a white school principal in Idabel, Oklahoma. Her essay distinguished defending life from the state’s claimed power to decide who should die.
Gist was a former teacher and an organizer of Idabel's Community Residential Association, which opposed the closing of Black schools and sought better education. The contemporary report says she was released on appeal bond two days after her April 12, 1971 sentencing. When her bond was revoked on November 15, police took her to Idabel City Jail, where her mother visited her; she was transferred to McAlester on November 17. Her lawyer was seeking reinstatement of appeal bail, and the report does not establish a later discharge.
The Black Panther, November 29, 1971, PDF page 2; The Black Panther, November 29, 1971, PDF page 20; The Black Panther, November 29, 1971, PDF page 21.
