Biography
Martin Sostre was the owner of a Buffalo, NY bookstore which was the city's center of Black radicalism. Martin gave out free pamphlets, let people read for free, and fostered Black education in the city. A year after opening the bookstore, in 1967, Martin was arrested on charges later determined to be fabricated as a part of COINTELPRO. He was sentenced for over forty years, five of which he would spend in solitary confinement. Amnesty International claimed that Martin has "been the victim of an international miscarriage of justice because of his political beliefs... not for his crimes"
NY Governor Hugh Carey granted Martin clemency in 1975.
In April 1974, federal Judge John T. Curtin denied Sostre a new trial, ruling the recantation of the State's star witness Arto Williams — who had admitted under oath in May 1973 that he helped officer Alvin Gristmacher and Erie County Sheriff Michael Amico frame Sostre in July 1967 — "unworthy of belief," even as Gristmacher stood charged in the theft of half a million dollars of heroin from the police narcotics locker. Right On! reported that Sostre had by then spent 14 months in solitary at Clinton, beaten six times by guards, and faced a possible life sentence on pending charges of assaulting the very guards who attacked him (Right On!, May 1974).
Dragon Fire (January 27, 1976) reported that Sostre had received three concurrent four-year sentences on charges of assaulting prison guards after he resisted visual rectal searches. The support account alleged repeated beatings, including one that left him unconscious and unable to speak the next day. It announced a scheduled January 27 parole-board appearance at Green Haven following executive clemency; the scheduled hearing does not establish the day of his physical release.
Judge Constance Baker Motley’s May 14, 1970 district-court opinion in Sostre v. Rockefeller, 312 F. Supp. 863, recounts Sostre’s earlier 1952–1964 imprisonment and his March 18, 1968 sentencing to thirty to forty years plus contempt terms. It finds unconstitutional retaliation and censorship in his June 25, 1968–July 2, 1969 punitive segregation for legal and political activity. July 2 marked return to the general population, not release from prison. The district court awarded $9,300 compensatory and $3,720 punitive damages, restored good-time credit and ordered injunctive relief; its disposition must not be confused with later appellate rulings. Sostre v. Rockefeller, 312 F. Supp. 863 (S.D.N.Y., May 14, 1970), original PDF page 2. Source: https://clearinghouse-umich-production.s3.amazonaws.com/media/doc/131347.pdf#page=2
The Catholic Worker reports that on June 3, 1975 Sostre received up to four further years, concurrent with his existing imprisonment, for allegedly assaulting three Clinton guards during a forced rectal search. It also reports that he refused an offer of a suspended sentence in exchange for a guilty plea that day, maintaining that he had not struck the guards. This fixes the reported sentencing day and adds his attributed plea refusal; the concurrent term is not added to completed service. Source: https://merton.bellarmine.edu/files/original/e47d99685e4e417d411cf7ee99fd06d6cfad4111.pdf#page=6
The August 23, 1969 Black Panther reported that Martin Sostre was transferred from Green Haven Prison to Wallkill Prison on August 8, 1969. An August 1 injunction concerned release from solitary confinement, not release from prison.
Attica News reported that Martin Sostre was sentenced on June 3, 1975 by Judge Robert Feinberg after a February assault conviction arising from resistance to a forced rectal search at Clinton prison. The Catholic Worker independently dated the sentence June 3 and described a term of up to four years. The two contemporary accounts disagree about whether the term was concurrent or consecutive.
Attica News, June 26, 1975, PDF page 4; targeted supplemental Catholic Worker July-August 1975, PDF page 6.
The Black Panther reports that Sostre testified on October 29,1969 in his civil prison-conditions case against Nelson Rockefeller and prison officials, represented by Victor Rabinowitz before Judge Constance Baker Motley. It describes his evidence about censorship, segregation and mistreatment at Green Haven. These names belong to the civil challenge, not the judge or prosecutor in his underlying criminal conviction. The report also describes earlier solitary confinement; these overlapping components are not added to the existing custody total. Its claims of deliberate political retaliation are attributed to the contemporary report.
Highway 13 described Sostre’s earlier 1952–1964 imprisonment as twelve years actually served, including five in solitary confinement, and linked continued confinement to his challenges to racial and religious discrimination.
This issue dates the bookstore arrests of Sostre and Geraldine Robinson to July 14, 1967, one day earlier than the existing case dates. The discrepancy is retained here without silently replacing those dates. Its reference to release from solitary confinement concerns conditions within prison, not physical discharge.
A May 14, 1975 support statement placed Sostre in Jefferson County Jail, New York, awaiting sentencing after his February conviction concerning Clinton prison guards.
