When students come to Grambling State, they learn about Eddie Robinson, the one of the winningest coaches in college football history. They learn about the fabled World Famed Tiger Marching Band. They learn about how GSU is the only HBCU with 100 percent accreditation.While roaming the yard, students will also see the man that is known as “Nature Boy.” No, he’s not Ric Flair a la WWE. He’s Elijah Alexander Jr., a man known to all. A man who has decided to lose the attachments to life and become one with nature.
While most enjoy Elijah’s presence, there are a few in the area who do not enjoy him. Those few have had him arrested several times, in what Elijah believe is because of the way he dresses.
“It started when I got back to Grambling in ’84,” Elijah explained. “I had six invitations to attend graduation. I went in and took a seat, and they arrested me because of my appearance.”
Elijah, who is scantly clothed in accordance to his religion, has been arrested so many times that he already knows the routine.
“The courts would hold me awhile and let me go,” he said.
However, the courts continued to see more and more of Elijah.
“I kept getting arrested year after year,” he said. During one 1987 trial, according to Elijah, the GSU Police chief at the time, Ed Adams, told presiding Judge Joe Black that if Elijah “was walking down the public road that I could be arrested.”
“It’s been ballooning ever since.”
Elijah contends that he shouldn’t be arrested because of his appearance. But it’s not because of the freedom he has as a citizen of the United States; it’s because of a status that’s listed on his record. According to Elijah, he is a public minister, a title given to him back in 1978.
Normally, public ministers are given diplomatic immunity, as associated with public ministers overseas. Diplomatic immunity, as defined by Wikipedia, is “a form of legal immunity . which ensures that diplomats are given safe passage and are considered not susceptible to lawsuit or prosecution under the host country’s laws (although they can be expelled).”
The most general cases of the immunity being removed is when the public’s safety is at risk or when the body granting the immunity removes it.
Elijah said he found out when he overheard a highway patrolman talking to a dispatcher in 2005. Despite finding out in 2005, he knew something was up.
“All the time, I’ve been suspicious that something was on my record,” he said. “Anywhere around the country, the city would give me a business car and tell me to call them if I had any problems. Everywhere around the country except Grambling.
“I’ve been arrested and I’ve been brutally mistreated.”
Due to what he calls miscarriages of justice, Elijah is taking action.
“Now, I’m in the U.S. Supreme Court suing the state of Louisiana for $500 a day for each day I’ve been in jail,” he said.
According to his count, he had been in jail for over 2,600 days, all because his rights were denied.
“(Recognizing my rights) is what the state of Louisiana refused to do,” he said.
Elijah then named courts that had ruled against him, including the city courts of West Monroe, the Third District Court in Lincoln Parish, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the State Supreme Court, the U.S. District Court in Monroe, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
“All have ignored the immunity on my record,” he said.
“Those judges are domestic enemies of the U.S. Constitution when they have taken an oath to protect the U.S. Constitution from foreign and domestic enemies.