Skip to content

Sondra Clark

Released
Gender:Female
Race:Black
Era:1980s
State:Michigan
Support
No image available

Biography

Sondra Clark was a Black resident of Battle Creek, Michigan, caught up in the 1984 Calhoun County state grand jury that subpoenaed as many as 200 people from the Black community — children among them — in a campaign against the Coalition to End Police Brutality and Racism and its leader Larry Guy. Clark refused to collaborate and was jailed for contempt even though she was still breast-feeding her seven-month-old child. The child died during her jailing; the movement press reported that the judge had ignored the pleas of her doctors in ordering her held. Reconstructed from the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee newspaper Stop the Grand Jury! (November 1984); further case details have not been located.

Case

Charges: Contempt — refusing to testify before the Calhoun County grand jury investigating the Coalition to End Police Brutality and Racism
Arrested: 1984
Sentence: Verdict as recorded: No — jailed for contempt, never charged with a crime
Convicted: No