President Biden Issues a Pardon to Nation’s Pioneering Black Secret Service Agent
Abraham Bolden, who still lives in Chicago, was the first African American to serve on the President’s protection detail for the U. S. Secret Service in 1961.
It’s about damn time! President Joe Biden this morning did something that was long overdue when he fully pardoned the nation’s first African American U.S. Secret Service Agent Abraham Bolden. I wrote about Mr. Bolden’s plight in April of 2012 for the Chicago Crusader Newspaper. A member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., Mr. Bolden was a friend and frat brother of my uncle, who sadly passed away in 2020. Bolden’s story, as he told it in his 2008 memoir: “The Echo from Dealey Plaza” was one that would make your head spin.
Bolden, who is currently blind in one eye and is non-ambulatory, became a Secret Service agent in 1960 after serving with the Illinois State Police. He became the first African American assigned to the presidential protection detail on April 28, 1961. He served as a member of the advanced scouting team where he would travel to a site the President was scheduled to visit days in advance to begin putting in safety protocols.
The stories Bolden told me during our interview from his home on the South Side of Chicago were mind-boggling. I was interviewing him regarding a story that came out of Columbia where several U.S. Secret Service agents were caught up in a scandal with prostitutes when they were supposed to be planning for the protection of President Barack Obama.
Bolden said many of his fellow agents would show up half-drunk to work, when he was with the agency. Others were known to seek out the services of prostitutes while they were on the road. Bolden was the subject of many racists acts during his three years as an agent. Bolden reported many of the actions to his superiors who did nothing about the alleged misconduct. Bolden believes that, along with his allegations that members of the Secret Service withheld information of a plot to assassinate President Kennedy during a trip to Chicago, is what prompted him to be falsely accused in May of 1964 of selling a secret file to Joseph Spagnoli, Jr., in exchange for $50,000. Spagnoli was part of a counterfeiting ring at the time. Bolden publicly blamed rogue Secret Service members for framing him.
Bolden’s first trial ended in a hung jury, as the sole Black juror, Anna B. Hightower, refused to convict him. He was found guilty during a second trial and sentenced to six years in federal prison. He appealed his conviction after Spagnoli admitted his was pressured by prosecutors to testify against Bolden and that it was all a lie. Bolden’s appeal failed and he ended up serving three years. His conviction was still on his record until President Biden’s pardon.
My former colleague Erik Johnson wrote about Bolden’s plight in May of 2021. At that time, the 87-year-old Bolden was questioning if he would ever be pardoned for a crime, he claimed he never committed. Bolden was upset that the nation’s first African American President, did not pardon him. He had prior petitioned to Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush to no avail.
Tuesday’s news from the White House is a relief for Bolden and his family. In recent years he lost a son and a daughter to cancer. Bolden himself has survived prostate cancer. The wheels of justice turn slow. We need to find a way to speed them up.