Biography
Michael Harris was a member of the Des Moines, Iowa chapter of the Black Panther Party. According to The Black Panther newspaper (May 19, 1969), while he was on parole the authorities moved to revoke it — citing parole violations such as traveling out of Polk County — and charged him with the arson of the Jewett Lumber Co., a charge the Party said rested only on the proximity of another member's car. The paper reported he sat in the county jail awaiting transfer to the state reformatory and ran a "Free Michael Harris" campaign that framed the parole revocation as political repression, likening it to Eldridge Cleaver's. NOTE: this record is documented only in The Black Panther; standard accounts of the Jewett Lumber arson name other defendants (Charles Knox and the Cheatoms), so the details here are not independently corroborated.
