Biography
Black nationalist leader convicted of first-degree murder for the July 1968 Glenville shootout in Cleveland with police, in which three officers and four others were killed. Sentenced to death; sentence commuted to life after Ohio's death penalty was struck down. Died in prison in 1978. Documented in PFOC Breakthrough magazine.
Evans was a Black nationalist activist in Cleveland during the late 1960s, associated with Black Nationalists of New Libya and with calls for Black self-determination and community control during a period of intense conflict between Black freedom movements and law enforcement.
In 1968 he became the central figure in the deadly “Glenville shootout,” a standoff that left police officers and civilians dead. He surrendered afterward, was convicted of murder, and received a death sentence that was later commuted to life imprisonment after changes in death-penalty law. He died in prison in 1978.