William Hurst

William Hurst was the only white defendant among the seven Leavenworth Brothers — prisoners indicted on February 13, 1974 on charges growing out of the July 31, 1973 rebellion in which large portions of Leavenworth Penitentiary burned. Charged with assault and kidnapping alongside Jesse Lopez and Armando Miramon, he answered the prosecution in the words of Che Guevara: we are not going to submit to injustice to get justice. On May 9, 1974, Hurst was found hanging dead in his cell in the Wyandotte County Jail in Kansas — an alleged suicide that fellow prisoners charged was a murder by guards, and which the Leavenworth Brothers Legal Offense/Defense Committee independently investigated. Reconstructed from The Black Panther, 1974 run.