Robert Collier
Biography
Robert Steele Collier was a longtime Harlem-based revolutionary and one of the New York Panther 21. He had been one of the four 1965 Statue of Liberty plot defendants - a Black-Cuban solidarity action - and had served federal time before joining the Black Panther Party. He was arrested April 2, 1969, held in pretrial detention, and was one of the 13 defendants who went to trial and was acquitted on May 13, 1971. He continued tenant- and welfare-rights organizing in New York City for decades after.
Contemporary report of earlier federal imprisonment
The bulletin identifies Bob Collier as a former Statue of Liberty conspiracy defendant and a New York Panther 21 defendant, matching Robert Collier’s existing biography. It reports that he had spent seven years in prison in connection with the former case and was again facing a weapons-and-explosives conspiracy proceeding in April 1974.
The seven-year statement is preserved as the bulletin’s retrospective account, not converted into 84 stored months or an exact day count. The source gives no admission or discharge endpoints for that earlier prosecution and does not reconcile the reported duration with the separate 1969–1971 Panther detention already recorded. No new overlapping case or numerical duration is added without that reconciliation. The April 23 appearance notice is not proof of another executed custody event.
Friends of Assata Shakur and Sundiata Acoli Bulletin, no. 4, April 10, 1974, original PDF pages 3. Contemporary descriptions are attributed to the bulletin.
Workers Vanguard’s December 19, 1975 investigation of New York police surveillance distinguishes three prosecutions of Robert Collier. It reports his February 16, 1965 arrest in the Statue of Liberty conspiracy case and says he actually served twenty-one months of a five-year sentence. That imprisonment preceded the separate Panther 21 detention. The article also reports that Judge Peter McQuillan dismissed later explosives, gun and stolen-goods charges on July 28, 1975. The dismissal does not establish a physical release on that day. Its nearly four years behind bars is an aggregate across prosecutions, not the duration of the 1965 term.
Workers Vanguard no.89, December 19, 1975, PDF page 3; Workers Vanguard no.89, December 19, 1975, PDF page 9.
