Members of the city’s grassroots community held a memorial in March for native Harlemite and cop watch activist Joseph “Jazz” Hayden, 82, who passed on Jan. 6 in Northampton, Pennsylvania. Hayden earned notoriety through documenting police activities for potential harassment—always with a camera—and also was an advocate for criminal justice reform and restoration of voting rights for former felons. Hayden, 82, suffered a heart attack, according to his daughter, Jo-Anne Hayden-Williams.
During the service at Harlem’s Erudite Academy, it was noted how he was a Harlemite from day one. Hayden was born May 12, 1941 at Harlem Hospital, and went from being a reckless youth during the 1970s to serving as a lieutenant for disgraced drug kingpin Nicky Barnes. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees while in prison, and later became an advocate for parolees and convicts.
“As I educated myself and developed, I began to see opportunity in other areas,” he said in a 2009 interview. “I started to work on changing the system, on trying to reform the system.”
Hayden was one of Barnes’ close associates in a squad known as “the Council.” The collective was convicted of conspiracy to distribute $1 million worth of heroin a month; Hayden got a 15-year sentence. During their 1977 trial, prosecutors called Hayden the No. 2 man.
After being freed from federal prison in the mid-1980s, he was arrested again and charged with manslaughter after a traffic altercation led to a sanitation worker’s death.
That led to a conviction and a 12-year sentence.
Upon being released from prison in 2000, Hayden dedicated himself to political and social activism. That same year he filed a class-action lawsuit, Hayden v. Pataki, to restore prisoners’ and parolees’ voting rights. The Legal Defense Fund unsuccessfully argued Hayden’s case in federal court, but his efforts led to a national campaign, becoming the catalyst for Free the Vote, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo supported in New York by executive order in 2018.
“[The VRA] stopped at the prison walls,” Hayden said in a 2005 interview. “What Congress gave, the states took away…We have unfinished business. We hope to sweep these laws, too, into the dustbin of history along with the poll tax, literacy test, and grandfather clause.”
It was a landmark case.
“Mr. Hayden is a legend in Harlem and in the broader community of formerly incarcerated activists, one who helped to jumpstart a powerful movement” to win voting rights for released felons,” said Janai Nelson, president of the Legal Defense Fund. “Mr. Jazz Hayden was an extraordinary activist and brilliant strategist who, in the name of justice, worked to redefine what it means to be an incarcerated citizen in a democracy.”
Jazz began recording “bogus stop and frisks” in Harlem in 2008 for his All Things Harlem website series of “Copwatch” videos after raising $40,000. He worked to bring awareness about the burgeoning policy and its racist implications.
“This is the kind of policing we get in Harlem,” he said in one video with a hint of sarcasm, as police are seen arresting a man for a marijuana cigarette.
Along with Ms. Hayden-Williams, he’s survived by six other children: Geneva, Jazzanee and Nicole Hayden, Jazzmin Brown, Stephen Ramon and Joseph Adams; a sister, Gloria Hayden; 12 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. His wife of more than 30 years, Jacqueline (Adams) Hayden, died in 2011.