Biography
Mark Everett Comfort was one of Oakland's most prominent grassroots Black organizers of the early-to-mid 1960s and a direct precursor to the Black Panther Party. He founded the Oakland Direct Action Committee in 1965 and ran a "Black Panther Project" under it. After learning of the police killing of Denzil Dowell, he helped bring the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense to Sacramento and, at Bobby Seale's request, was among those arrested with Huey Newton and Bobby Seale at the armed protest at the California State Capitol on May 2, 1967, for which he was sentenced to six months and served 44 days at the Santa Rita Prison Farm before Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas granted a stay. He had earlier been jailed about 30 days for blockading the Oakland Tribune building in a 1964 anti-discrimination protest, which prompted a "Free Mark Comfort" campaign. He later did SNCC security work in Lowndes County, Alabama, and died in 1976.
