Biography
Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin was a Civil Rights Activist, Vietnam Veteran and Black Panther Party member who in 1969 was accused by police of threatening the life of a Klu Klux Klan leader in retaliation over his refusal to testify before a Grand Jury investigating the local Black Panther chapter. Police raided Ervin's home and allegedly found weapons though Ervin maintains he had no firearms in his home and made no threats towards the Klansman. Facing a 20 year sentence Ervin hijacked a commercial airplane and fled to Cuba. Cuban officials deported Ervin to Czechoslovakia where he was soon turned over to U.S officials and extradited to the United States. Ervin was drugged by jail officials during his trial and unable to participate in his defense, after being found guilty he was given a life sentence for the hijacking and spent nearly 15 years behind bars before an international campaign managed to secure his release in 1983.
Former SNCC activist serving a life sentence at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary for the 1969 hijacking of a plane to Cuba in protest of the Vietnam War; The Black Panther Vol. 17 no.1 (1977) reports his 'Appeal to African Heads of State' to the OAU condemning U.S. repression of the Black liberation movement. [Source: The Black Panther (Black Panther Party newspaper), v17 no.1; digitized at marxists.org — https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/black-panther/index.htm]
