Leah Hodges

Released
Date of birth:c. 1951
Age:75
Gender:Female
Race:Black
Era:1970s
State:Louisiana
Time Imprisoned:
10 Months 22 Days
Support
Black Liberation Black Panther Party National Committee to Combat Fascism
No image available

Biography

Leah Hodges was a member of the New Orleans chapter of the Black Panther Party (organized as the National Committee to Combat Fascism) and one of the defendants arrested after the September 14-15, 1970 police assault on the party's Piety Street office near the Desire housing project. In a landmark trial in August 1971 — the first Black Panther trial held before a Black judge and a majority-Black jury — twelve of the New Orleans defendants were acquitted of attempting to murder police. Leah Hodges is named among the defendants in The Black Panther's contemporaneous coverage.

Case

Orleans Parish Prison
Charges: Attempted murder of police (the September 1970 Piety Street standoff, New Orleans)
Arrested: Sep 15, 1970
Incarcerated: Sep 15, 1970
Released: Aug 6, 1971
Sentence: Arrested September 15, 1970 after the police assault on the Piety Street headquarters and held in the Orleans Parish Prison. Acquitted and released August 6, 1971 — the release date is assumed from the acquittal, as no separate discharge record is documented. Born about 1951, a year derived from her reported age at the time. A New Orleans community activist named Leah Hodges was photographed in 2007, but that identity connection is probable rather than proved, so no later-life detail is asserted.
Convicted: No — acquitted August 6, 1971
Institution State: Louisiana

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