The story of Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt taught many people about Black activists, the Black Panther Party, and the U.S. criminal justice system.
His story also raised awareness about surveillance of Black activists and COINTELPRO — the federal government’s domestic surveillance program.
Pratt was at one time the highest-ranking Black Panther leader in Los Angeles. He was imprisoned for 27 years for murder and it was later proved he had been framed by COINTELPRO.
COINTELPRO was a secret FBI program that specifically targeted the civil rights movement through which FBI agents worked to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize” various civil rights-focused organizations. (The NAACP wasn’t included.)
Protests from civil rights groups and the concerned public led to his conviction being overturned.
Pratt, who was known by his Panther name, Geronimo ji-Jaga, died in 2011 in a village in Tanzania where he was living. He was 63.
Here are 10 things you should know about Pratt.
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Pratt has supporters who fought for his freedom for 27 years. Among the groups who pushed for his release were Amnesty International, the N.A.A.C.P., and the American Civil Liberties Union.
A 27-year-old teacher was murdered and Pratt was blamed for the crime. Here’s what happened: “The teacher, Caroline Olsen, and her husband, Kenneth, were accosted by two young Black men with guns on Dec. 18, 1968, in Santa Monica, Calif. They took $18 from Mrs. Olsen’s purse…Shots were fired, hitting Mr. Olsen five times and his wife twice. Olsen died 11 days later. Pratt was arrested,” The New York Times reported.
The evidence against Pratt included the pistol used as the murder weapon, the red-and-white GTO convertible used as the getaway car which belonged to him, and an eight-page letter from an informant claiming Pratt had bragged to him that he committed the murder.
Pratt was convicted of first-degree murder on July 28, 1972. One month later, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
As information was uncovered that Pratt might have been set up, there were protests and open debate. “Documents showed that the informant who said that Pratt had confessed to him had lied about himself. Wiretap evidence that might have supported Pratt’s alibi mysteriously vanished from F.B.I. files,” The Times reported. The coverup, many say, was all in an attempt to take down the Black power movement.
In an interview with The New York Times in 1997, John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League, said, “The Geronimo Pratt case is one of the most compelling and painful examples of a political assassination on an African-American activist.”
Pratt spent most of his incarceration in solitary confinement. Eventually, Pratt was represented by the late attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., famous for defending O.J. Simpson. Cochran gathered data for an appeal.
It took 27 years for Pratt to be vindicated.
“In 1997 a California Superior Court judge, Everett W. Dickey, vacated Pratt’s conviction on the grounds that the government informant, Julius C. Butler, had lied about being one. Moreover, it was learned that the Los Angeles Police Department, the F.B.I. and prosecutors had not shared with the defense their knowledge that Butler was an informant,” The Times reported.
Juror Jeanne Rook Hamilton told The Times at the time: “If we had known about Butler’s background, there’s no way Pratt would have been convicted.”
Cochran continued to work on Pratt’s case and was joined by law student Stuart Hanlon. Pratt was finally granted a new trial in 1996. He was released in 1997, with the judge ruling that the original conviction should be vacated because the Los Angeles district attorney’s office had concealed crucial information from the jury.
Early in his life, Pratt decided to change his name. At the age of 20, he rejected the name Pratt as that of a “dirty dog” slave master.
It was while he was attending the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studied political science, that Pratt learned about and later joined the Panthers. He soon rose to lead the Los Angeles branch.
In 1971, Pratt’s wife, Saundra, was murdered. She was eight months pregnant at the time.
“The murder was attributed at the time to a BPP schism between supporters of Huey Newton and those of Eldridge Cleaver; Pratt and his wife belonged to the Cleaver faction. Pratt later believed this account was an FBI lie, and that Saundra’s murder was unrelated to her activities in the Black Panther Party,” according to Wikipedia.
Pratt was born on Sept. 13, 1947 in Morgan City, Louisiana. He was one of seven kids. His parents, Jack and Eunice Pratt, ran a small scrap metal salvaging business.
As a young boy, Pratt would shoot rabbits and sell them. In high school, he was a football quarterback. He joined the Army in 1965, serving two tours in Vietnam. He was awarded two Bronze Stars, a Silver Star, and two Purple Hearts and was promoted to sergeant. He was honorably discharged in 1968.
Returning from Vietnam, he moved to L.A. and he enrolled at UCLA using his GI Bill.
After being released from prison, Pratt dedicated his life to working for those wrongfully incarcerated. He moved to Tanzania with the daughter of Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver and that is where hedied on June 2, 2011, Black Past reported.
Geronimo made a statement of his own about the accusations against him, according to Solidarity.org. “This is similar and very much in line with the way COINTELPRO acted in the ’60s and ’70s to discredit and criminalize the people who were actively involved in the struggle for human rights,” he said. “I see it as a continuation of the COINTELPRO campaign against me which illegally put me in prison in the first place and now wants to keep me here for life.”
