Biography
Fred Bell was a Texas community organizer (associated with the Dallas chapter of SNCC) whom The Black Panther described as railroaded to prison on a frame-up charge of aiding and abetting a bank robbery — a charge his supporters, the New Bois d'Arc Patriots of Dallas, said was never formally made and which the convicting jury was not qualified to rule on. On July 21, 1972, after an appeals court had directed that his sentence be reduced to no more than six years, Judge William Steger (a recent Nixon appointee) instead re-sentenced him to ten years, reportedly calling Bell a "bad citizen." His case ran in the federal court of Judge William Wayne Justice. Documented in The Black Panther (August 5, 1972).
