Sostre served time in Attica prison during the early 1960s, where he was ideologically influenced by Black Islam, Black nationalism, internationalism, and later anarchism. In 1966, he opened the first Afro-Asian Bookstore at 1412 Jefferson in Buffalo, New York.[4][5] The store became a center for radical thought and education in Buffalo's Black community. As Sostre details:
I taught continually - giving out pamphlets free to those who had no money. I let them sit and read for hours in the store. Some would come back every day and read the same book until they finished it. This was the opportunity I had dreamed about - to be able to help my people by increasing the political awareness of the youth.[6]
Sostre and his coworker, Geraldine Robinson, were arrested at his bookstore on July 14, 1967, for "narcotics, riot, arson, and assault", charges later proven to be fabricated as part of a COINTELPRO program.[7][8] He was convicted and sentenced to serve forty-one years and thirty days. Sostre became a jailhouse lawyer, regularly acting as legal counsel to other inmates and winning two landmark legal cases involving prisoner rights: Sostre v. Rockefeller and Sostre v. Otis. According to Sostre, these decisions constituted "a resounding defeat for the establishment who will now find it exceedingly difficult to torture with impunity the thousands of captive black (and white) political prisoners illegally held in their concentration camps."[9]
Sostre was placed in solitary confinement for more than 5 years.[2] In earlier legal activity, Sostre secured religious rights for Black Muslim prisoners and also eliminated (in the words of Federal Judge Constance Motley) some of the more "outrageously inhuman aspects of solitary confinement in some of the state prisons." He was responsible for de-legitimatizing censorship of inmates' mail, invasive bodily exams, and penal solitary confinement.[10]
In December 1973 Amnesty International put Sostre on its "prisoner of conscience" list, stating: "We became convinced that Martin Sostre has been the victim of an international miscarriage of justice because of his political beliefs ... not for his crimes ."[11] In addition to numerous defense committees in New York State, a Committee to Free Martin Sostre, made up of prominent citizens, joined in an effort to publicize Sostre's case and petition the New York Governor Hugh Carey for his release. On December 7, 1975, Russian Nobel Peace LaureateAndrei Sakharov added his name to the clemency appeal. Governor Carey granted Sostre clemency on Christmas Eve of 1975;[11][12] Sostre was released from prison in February 1976.[12]
Black anarchist writer and activist Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin attributes his initial interest in anarchism to Sostre.[14]
In 1974, Pacific Street Films debuted a short documentary film on Sostre called Frame-up! The Imprisonment of Martin Sostre detailing Sostre's case with in-prison interviews.[15][16]
In 2012, activist Mariame Kaba lamented the lack of biographies on Sostre.[17] His death in 2015 prompted greater biographical attention.[13]
In November 2017, the Frank E. Merriweather Jr. Library hosted To and From 1967: A Rebellion with Martin Sostre, an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Black rebellion on Buffalo's East side.[18] The event included an installation created by a local eastside artist called Reviving Sostre.[19] The installation consisted of three bookshelves painted by the artists and placed in the lobby of the Merriweather Library, which was built on the same location one of Sostre's bookstores used to stand.[20]
In 2019, four years after his death, the New York Times published an obituary of Sostre in their "Overlooked No More" series, "obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths ... went unreported in The Times" and intended to include people from marginalized backgrounds whose profiles had not been included.[21]
The Martin Sostre Institute maintains a website that includes an archive of Sostre's writings, photos and films about Sostre, and information about court cases in which he was involved.[22] In March 2023, the Institute co-hosted a birthday centennial celebration for Sostre alongside the New York Public Library's Jail & Prison Services team, the NYPL's Harry Belafonte Library, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.[23]
^"Amnesty International Annual Report 1974-1975". Amnesty International. 1975. Archived(PDF) from the original on January 11, 2023. Retrieved February 21, 2023. Much attention has been given throughout the year to the case of Martin Sostre, sentenced to a possible 40 years' imprisonment in 1968 for the alleged sale of narcotics. The only witness of the alleged sale has since recanted his testimony, and AI believes that Mr Sostre was falsely implicated because of his political activities. He was one of the prisoners featured during Prisoner of Conscience Week in October 1974.
^Frame Up, at 10:30. The first was at 1412 and a half Jefferson Ave. A second was at 289 High
^Ervin, Lorenzo Kom'boa (February 25, 2020). "Martin Sostre: Prison Revolutionary". Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation. Retrieved March 31, 2023. I became an Anarchist, a jailhouse lawyer, and a prison activist during the 1970s because of Martin Sostre.
^"Frame Up! + Torture of Mothers: Case of Harlem 6". BAM. November 5, 2022. Retrieved March 23, 2023. Frame Up! shines a light on politically motivated abuses within the American justice system as well as Sostre's remarkable and enduring campaign for human rights.
^Sucher, J. (1974). Frame-up! the imprisonment of Martin Sostre. Pacific Street Films.
Felber, Garrett (2018). "'Shades of Mississippi': The Nation of Islam's Prison Organizing, the Carceral State, and the Black Freedom Struggle". The Journal of American History. 105: 71–95. doi:10.1093/jahist/jay008.
