After 37 Years, a Panther Apology

His fellow Black Panthers tied him to a chair. One put a .45 to his head. They forced him to make a phony taped ​“confession.” Then they decided to murder him. That happened in 1969; all these years later, George Edwards (pictured) confronted one of those interrogators in public — and demanded that the interrogator apologize for what he did to him.

The dramatic confrontation occurred this past Thursday evening, Oct. 19, at the Yale Bookstore. The occasion was a reading and signing of a new book about a pivotal moment in New Haven’s modern history — the torture and murder of Black Panther Alex Rackley, and the subsequent trials and protests. The book focuses in large part on the story of Warren Kimbro, the man who pulled the trigger in that murder, then turned his life around.

(Disclosure: I co-authored the book, Murder in the Model City. And I spoke at the Yale Bookstore event along with Warren Kimbro.)

Rackley’s torture is well known. He was a 19 year-old hanger-on in the Black Panther Party, a group seeking a black-led revolution in America in the late 1960s. In a climate of hysteria, fed in part by law enforcement’s COINTELPRO effort of sowing distrust among radicals through the use of informants and forged documents, the Panthers accused Rackley of being a government spy, apparently without justification. They brought Rackley to New Haven, to Warren Kimbro’s house on Orchard Street, which served as local party headquarters. Kimbro and others tied up Rackley, poured pots of boiling water on him, extracted a ​“confession” from him. They tied him for several days to a bed, where he lay in his own waste. Then they drove him to a swamp in Middlefield and killed him. The case — and the subsequent arrests of national Panther leaders — became a national cause celebre and the subject of protests.

Less well known is George Edwards’ role. Edwards was one of the New Haven Panthers. He refused to participate in the torture of Alex Rackley. So he, too, was tied to a chair and told at gunpoint to ​“confess.” The night the Panthers took out Alex Rackley for his rendezvous with death, an order came to find Edwards and take him, too. But Edwards could not be found and he survived.

Ironically, the police ended up arresting Edwards and charging him with complicity in Rackley’s murder. He spent years in jail before being released. He has remained an activist in New Haven to this day. He has carried the scars of that episode with him.

And he has waited all that time for someone to say, ​“Sorry.”

He asked Warren Kimbro to do that at last Thursday’s book event. He spoke at the end of the event, after other visitors had asked questions. ​“After 37 years, five months tomorrow,” he said, ​“I want a public apology for having been tied up in that basement at gunpoint, under orders of [out-of-town Panther leader] George Sams, a .45 to my head.” Click on the play arrow to watch Edwards’ remarks and then to see the beginning of Warren Kimbro’s apology.

Kimbro added another piece of unreported history.

As the Panthers prepared to put Alex Rackley in the car for his fatal ride, Kimbro was the one asked to track down George Edwards. Kimbro dialed some phone numbers — but, he said, he deliberately avoided dialing the number where he believed Edwards could be found.

“I dialed all your numbers but one, George,” Kimbro said. ​“I said I couldn’t get you.” Click on the play arrow to watch this second part of his response at the bookstore event.