Biography
Ben Lenard was a Black worker at International Harvester in Chicago who, driving home from work on January 31, 1977, was struck by another car. When police finally arrived, the other driver — a white woman with no license or insurance — claimed Lenard had assaulted her; without any investigation the officers handcuffed him, beat him nearly beyond recognition in the squad car, beat him again at the jail, stripped him, threw him into a cell, opened the windows in zero-degree weather and doused him with cold water. His family was able to bail him out only after being told he was being "processed," and took him to a hospital. Reconstructed from Revolutionary Cause (August Twenty-Ninth Movement M-L), March 1977, which reported the case as part of the pattern of racist police frame-ups; the disposition of the charge against him has not been located.
