1. Mark Everett Comfort was a community activist who worked in early Oakland grassroots civil rights movements in the 1960s, before moving to Lowndes County, Alabama.
13 Facts About Mark Comfort
1. 2.
Mark Comfort helped in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Black Panther project in Lowndes County, Alabama with security and self-defense against the Ku Klux Klan.
3.
Mark Comfort asked Stokely Carmichael if he could use the Panther name and idea to try to spread it.
4.
Mark Comfort later found that other local groups liked the Black Panther name as well.
5.
Mark Comfort started clubs for young black males called the Alm Boy Dukes and the Enchanted Maffions.
6.
Mark Comfort married a white woman, Gloria Black, on March 27,1953, in Oakland.
7.
In 1966, Mark Comfort was a candidate for the State Assembly and finished 4th in a field of nine in a campaign run almost entirely without funds.
8.
Between 1966 and 1968 Mark Comfort served on the editorial board of Oakland's Flatlands Newspaper.
9.
When Mark Comfort contacted Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, they accepted the request for assistance.
10.
At Bobby Seale's request, Mark Comfort was the last person to surrender his weapon.
11.
At Bobby Seale's request, Mark Comfort was the last person to surrender his weapon.
12.
Mark Comfort was arrested in 1967 along with Newton and Seale following a picket of The Oakland Tribune.
13.
Mark Comfort was sentenced to six months in jail and served only 44 days in the Santa Rita Prison Farm after Supreme Court Justice William O Douglas gave him a stay of sentence.