“Justice for Geraldine and Martin”
Event to be held Sunday July 14th at 1PM at Burning Books
Buffalo, New York, July 9, 2024. On Sunday July 14th, at 1PM, community members will gather at Burning Books, located at 420 Connecticut St. in Buffalo, New York, to announce the application to the Erie County District Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity unit to review and vacate the convictions of Geraldine (Robinson) Pointer and Martin Sostre, stemming from falsified and uncorroborated arrests almost fifty-seven years earlier, on July 15th, 1967. Attendees will call upon Acting Erie County District Attorney Michael J. Keane (D) to exonerate Pointer and Sostre.
Their arrests came three weeks following Buffalo’s rebellion of June 27 - July 1, where Black Buffalonians revolted against police brutality, segregated housing, and racialized inequality. Since opening in 1965, Sostre’s Afro Asian Book Shop at 1412 Jefferson Avenue served as an empowering and liberating space for Black Buffalonians, and a refuge for those seeking safety from police brutality throughout the rebellion. Pointer managed another revolutionary bookstore at 289 High Street. Due to the bookstores' growing prominence and contributions to the radical Black political consciousness in Buffalo, Sostre and Pointer were targeted by local law enforcement.
Sostre was charged with illegal sale and possession of narcotics, inciting a riot, arson, resisting arrest, and assault. Pointer, who was working with him at the Afro Asian Book Shop, was charged with selling narcotics and interfering with an arrest. Authorities accused Sostre of conducting $15,000 in weekly drug sales and using his basement to manufacture and distribute Molotov cocktails. Narcotics Assistant Chief of Detectives Michael Amico claimed to have motion picture evidence of drug sales and portrayed Sostre as a violent drug trafficker distributing “bombs to hoodlums.” By the time of his trial the following year, the arson and riot charges were dropped, the motion picture footage could not be found, and the drug charges were reduced to a single $15 bag of heroin supplied by a police informant who later recanted his testimony. Sostre was sentenced to 31-41 years by an all-white jury, and Pointer to 7-15 years. She lost custody of her five children before being reunited with them after two and half years of imprisonment. Following nine years of incarceration, Sostre was granted executive clemency on December 24, 1975 and released on February 9, 1976.
Geraldine Pointer will be in attendance to highlight her contributions as well as those of other Black women involved in Buffalo’s Black Power movement. Featured will be the 1974 documentary Frame-up! The Imprisonment of Martin Sostre which details the broader historical context of Buffalo’s uprising, Sostre’s and Pointer’s imprisonment, and Sostre’s fight for bodily autonomy and dignity while incarcerated in the New York prison system.
Ms. Pointer enthusiastically stated “after all of these years, all of this is so unbelievable, because I had figured people had forgotten about my role. It makes my children and grandchildren feel so good, and they are just as excited as I am.” However, Pointer also stresses her arrest’s devastating impact on her and her family, emphasizing “I went through a lot of trauma with my children being put in foster homes.”
Vinny Sostre, Martin’s son who was born after he was released, added on behalf of the Sostre family: “The state is no more able to deliver justice today than it was then, but it can confirm the truth my dad always knew: he was imprisoned for his organizing and political convictions. Although limited, an exoneration would finally grant us closure—and endpoint to a tragedy of injustice that has impacted our family since its beginning.”
Leslie James Pickering, co-owner of Burning Books, added the following: “Reconciling what happened with Geraldine, Martin, and the Afro Asian Book Shop is integral to understanding the history and context of race relations, policing, and activism here in Buffalo, and crucial to moving forward. They were doing solid social justice work in the community, for which they received heavy-handed repression, a frame-up, and prison sentences. Exoneration is the very least we can do.”
This event seeks to right longstanding injustices against two prominent Buffalonians and examine state suppression’s impact on the Black Power movement locally and nationwide. As book bans continue to be legislated through the United States, Sostre’s and Pointer’s arrests highlight a historical attack on freedom of speech and thought, and how the Afro Asian Book Shop served as a catalyst for Black radical thought and movement building in 1967 Buffalo. Furthermore, as inequalities in Buffalo’s East Side have come into focus following the May 14, 2022 Tops massacre and December 2022 blizzard, Sostre’s and Pointer’s arrests demonstrated local government’s role in fostering and upholding, rather than repairing, racialized segregation.