Biography
Woodrow Wilson Gillis was a Black man who, after being attacked by a white man and woman in Kinston, North Carolina in 1965 — the white man having pulled a knife on him — was himself convicted of assaulting the white couple and sentenced to 18 to 20 years on a North Carolina chain gang. He escaped and settled in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, living for years as a respected community member under the name Woodrow Wilson. In 1974, at age 51, he faced extradition back to North Carolina to serve at least 16 more years; his attorney David Kairys and his neighbors petitioned Pennsylvania Governor Milton Shapp not to send him back. Documented in The Black Panther (July 6, 1974).
