Biography
Essex Smith was a Cleveland organizer associated with the local National Committee to Combat Fascism. On September 29, 1970 he and Darryl Harris were arrested and charged with rape, abduction, armed robbery, and shooting with intent to kill, and held in lieu of $50,000 bail despite having alibi witnesses, according to The Black Panther. The arrests were part of a wider 1970 crackdown in which more than 25 Cleveland Panthers were charged with some 40 felonies. Documented in The Black Panther (May 1, 1971).
