Bobby Hardwick

Bobby Hardwick was a Black inmate activist at the Georgia State Prison in Reidsville who, The Black Panther reported (October 12, 1974), had been convicted of armed bank robbery and assaulting a police officer and who filed a federal civil-rights suit in August 1974 for the right to receive The Black Panther newspaper in prison. U.S. District Judge Wilbur Owens rejected the suit over an allegedly improperly completed filing questionnaire; Hardwick charged that Owens consistently denied Black people access to the Georgia courts. His suit named state corrections commissioner Allen Ault, warden James G. Ricketts, and prison official E.B. Blackburn.