ghetto outbreak in Newark, New Jersey, last summer. The harsh sentence was virtually the maximum possible and allows no probation.
The trial was staged and hysteria whipped up by those who view the spontaneous rebellions of the black masses as the result of a plot instead of the racist oppression under which they are forced to live.
The crude racism of the court was nowhere clearer than in the judge's explanation of the severity of the sentence. He did not attempt to justify it on the grounds of the poet's alleged actions during the rebellion. The judge openly declared that he “based the severity of Jones's punishment to a large extent" on a poem published in December in Evergreen Review, a widely read literary magazine.
In the poem LeRoi Jones merely articulated the anger of the black masses. But Judge Kapp viewed the poem as incitement to rebellion, a high crime in the eyes of those entrusted with upholding the white capitalist power structure.
Two codefendants got smaller sentences and fines. The three were arrested last July 14 while driving to Jones's home in Newark. Jones was seriously beaten by police who claimed to have found two pistols and a small amount of ammunition in his car. Jones and the others in the car have consistently denied any knowledge of the guns, charging they were planted by the police.
After being sentenced Jones declared to the judge: “You are not a righteous person, and you don't represent Almighty God. You represent a crumbling structure.