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In late 1968, five prominent members of Louisville's black community and one activist who had come here from Washington, D.C. were arrested on trumped-up charges of conspiring to blow up private property in the city. They became known as the “Black Six,” and their case became one of the most significant milestones in Louisville's civil rights history.
Last night, almost exactly 41 years after their arrest, a panel convened at Bellarmine to tell a story that's not as well-known as it should be.
About half of the 85 or so in attendance (including the guy writing this) appeared to be too young to remember the events of the late 1960's.
Cate Fosl, the director of the social-justice-oriented Braden Institute at U of L (who co-sponsored the event with many other organizations, including the Society of Professional Journalists), said that one of the panel's goal was to help educate the younger generation about the case.
The details of just what happened in May 1968—when the saga really began—are fuzzy to this day. An evening rally protesting the re-instatement of a white policeman who had allegedly beaten a young black man turned into a riot when police showed up. The Kentucky National Guard descended on the West End by the afternoon of the next day.
“It was a major lockdown on our community,” said Bill Allison, an attorney who defended the Black Six and one of the panel members.
By the beginning of June 1968, the police had arrested three men—James Cortez, Bob Sims, and Sam Hawkins—and were holding them on accusations (but not charges) of conspiring to blow up the Ashland oil refinery on Algonquin Parkway.
By the end of October, one grand jury hadn't brought charges against them, so a new grand jury met and handed down an indictment against Cortez, Sims, Hawkins, and three more black Louisvillians—Manfred Reid, Pete Cosby, and Ruth Bryant—accusing them of conspiring to blow up the same refinery. (Though she never got to make her case, Bryant had the best defense: the Ashland refinery was at the end of the street where she lived, and the bombing would have taken place on her daughter's birthday.)
The only witness for the prosecution was a policeman who said he heard them talking about the plot, and, after the case was temporarily (and illegally) moved to Hart County (the prosecution asked for a change of venue, which isn't how the justice system is supposed to work), a Louisville judge decided that no reasonable person could believe the charges against the Six.
The case was important in Louisville, Allison said last night, because of who was charged in the case. Reid was a realtor, Cosby was a minister, and Bryant was the wife of a prominent doctor; all were respected middle-class blacks.
“It was meant really to stop the protests in Louisville against segregations, discrimination, and police brutality,” he said. “It was a message to 'shut your mouth up.'”
In the end, the spread of information about the details of the case from non-establishment publications (like the Southern Conference Educational Fund, represented on last night's panel by two members who were jailed at the time) and the public outcry that ensued, “galvanized the civil rights community,” Allison said.
“The authorities eventually realized they had a tiger by the tail,” he said.
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John LaFollette