Jack Foster, former Pine Bluff alderman, dies at 78 of cancer
PINE BLUFF, Ark. – Former Pine Bluff alderman Jack Foster has passed away at the age of 78.
Foster served as an alderman from 2001 to 2005 before being indicted by a federal grand jury for attempted extortion.
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His family and members of the community said those charges don’t define the man he was or all the work he did.
“If they write a book about Pine Bluff, he definitely should have a few pages in that,” his daughter Ella Foster said.
She said the former alderman was a man dedicated to helping the less fortunate.
“People would call the house after midnight with issues and my dad would get out that bed and go help,” she said.
Ella said Foster was a man known to ruffle a few feathers but only for what he felt was right.
“If he said it, he meant it and he did the work behind it,” she said.
In 2004, Foster was convicted of federal extortion charges for aiding and abetting an attempt to affect interstate commerce.
“That one incident does not define the greatness of this man,” Pine Bluff NAACP President Ivan Whitfield said.
Whitfield worked closely with Foster following his three-year sentence and said he “wanted Jack Foster because of his intelligence, his knowledge, his ability to research.”
Foster didn’t let his conviction stop his passion. In 2021 he announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate.
In a release when announcing his was running for U.S. Senate, Jack Foster said he wanted to be upfront with his 2004 conviction, calling it “wrongful.”
“He always said that he was innocent. The man that I know, if he did it, he would tell you he did it,” Ella Foster said.
He eventually lost in the Democratic primary, but Whitfield and Foster’s daughter said no matter what battle he was faced with, he never veered from the mission of helping others.
“God blessed us to have a man of his quality,” Whitfield said, adding that he is a better person because he was able to sit at the same table with Foster.
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According to his daughter, Jack Foster passed away from a battle with stomach cancer after being diagnosed this February.
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