Each year various organizations present awards in memory of one person or another, but usually, the recipients are politically acceptable, safe, or deceased.
The City of Monroe gives Trailblazer awards to individuals who charted paths in the community. They were there first and took the heat of criticism, the threat of life, and the depression of abandonment as they paved the way for others.
Ironically, the people who should receive trailblazer awards never receive them, at least not during their lifetimes.
This year, the city gave the trailblazer award posthumously to the late Paul Henry Kidd, Sr., who was loved by the Black community but rejected in the white community.
Attorney Kidd was the civil rights attorney behind most civil rights suits that integrated local governments and school systems. He represented most civil rights organizations in Northeast Louisiana including the N.A.A.C.P. and Black Citizens Council.
In my book “The Perfect Patsy,” I detailed one of Kidd’s fights against what he called the “white good old boys club” as he fought for decades to undo the unjust sentence of Gerald Manning, a local man who served 40 years in prison for a murder he didn’t do.
The Monroe police manufactured evidence against Manning, coached him through two fake confessions, and dumped all of its open rape charges on Manning when they discovered that because of a low I.Q., he was a “habitual confessor.”
Kidd passionately defended Manning, but the system stacked the deck against his client, mostly as payback against Kidd who they saw as a “Nigger Lover.”
Kidd defended Manning in court, filed his appeals, and even had Manning hire another lawyer and blame him for inadequate representation to get him a new trial. It didn’t work.
Long after Kidd died, I took Manning’s files (which mysteriously disappeared from the courthouse) and gave them to District Attorney Jerry Jones. He studied them for a month and concluded that the evidence did not support his charge or conviction.
Jones started the wheels rolling, which eventually led to Manning’s release thanks to District Attorney Steve Tew and the Innocence Project.
Manning spent 40 years in jail because the white community hated his lawyer for being a “Nigger Lover.”
When he died in 2011, his death was front-page news in the black community, but it merited only a few lines in the white media. He had no funeral or memorial service. There were no flowers.
Only the black community mourned his death.
This year the city presented one of Kidd’s sons with the Trailblazer award in his memory.
Paul Kidd never apologized for being a defender of the poor. He was hated among his own, but our community loved him with a passion.
The city finally showed some level of respect for Kidd’s memory.
However, the Monroe Police and the City of Monroe stole 40 years of Gerald Manning’s life.
Manning was wrongfully prosecuted and has never received an apology from the city.
At least Paul got a plaque ….posthumously.
