Biography
Jerry Jacobs was among the Black students involved in Wilmington’s 1971 school boycott and related activism, protesting inequities experienced by Black students during the desegregation of the public school system. Jacobs later became one of the Wilmington Ten, whose prosecution became a major civil-rights-era flashpoint.
Jacobs was charged and tried with the Wilmington Ten in 1972 in connection with the Mike’s Grocery firebombing and a conspiracy charge involving assaults on emergency responders. A jury convicted the group on October 17, 1972; Jacobs received a 29‑year sentence. The convictions were overturned by the Fourth Circuit in 1980, and the group received pardons of innocence in 2012.
Case
North Carolina state courts
