Black and Pro-Life in America

ebook The Incarceration and Exoneration of Walter B. Hoye II

By Robert W. Artigo

cover image of Black and Pro-Life in America

Sign up to save your library

With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability. Find out more about OverDrive accounts.

   Not today

Find this title in Libby, the library reading app by OverDrive.

Download Libby on the App Store Download Libby on Google Play

Search for a digital library with this title

Title found at these libraries:

Library Name Distance
Loading...

On Friday, March 20, 2009, fifteen months after the City of Oakland, California, passed a law making it illegal to approach a woman entering an abortion clinic without her consent, Walter B. Hoye II went to jail for standing on a public sidewalk outside an abortion clinic with a sign saying, "God loves you and your baby. Let us help you."

The ordained Baptist minister could have accepted a lesser sentence of community service, provided he agreed never to return to the clinic. But he preferred spending thirty days in the county jail to forfeiting his constitutional right to free speech and his Christian duty to offer help to women in need, most of whom were black like him. Two higher courts eventually exonerated him: one overturned his criminal conviction, and the other judged that the enforcement of the Oakland "bubble law" was unconstitutional.

Walter's dramatic days in prison, where he lived and preached the gospel and won the hearts of fellow inmates, are detailed in this book. The political machinations that created the bubble law and then entrapped Walter are also described, using public records. Both stories are told in the context of Walter's background as the descendant of black slaves and the disciple of his hero Martin Luther King Jr., whose niece, Alveda, has written the foreword for this book.

Black and Pro-Life in America