Biography
Alton Edwards was a member of the New Orleans chapter of the Black Panther Party (organized as the National Committee to Combat Fascism) and one of the defendants arrested after the September 14-15, 1970 police assault on the party's Piety Street office near the Desire housing project. In a landmark trial in August 1971 — the first Black Panther trial held before a Black judge and a majority-Black jury — twelve of the New Orleans defendants were acquitted of attempting to murder police. Alton Edwards is named among the defendants in The Black Panther's contemporaneous coverage.
Known as "Sugar Ed", he was born about 1949 and died on January 26, 2020, at seventy. His obituary identifies the Rev. Dr. Tyronne Edwards — his Piety Street codefendant — as his brother, which both anchors the identification and links the two defendants as family.
