If there was a quintessential tale of how great the cost was to change the cruel, inhumane conditions of American prisons from the inside, Martin Sostre’s heroic life of activism would be it.
First shackled in 1952 on drug possession charges, a streetwise Sostre joined the Nation of Islam and took up reading as a means to mentally rise above his physical incarceration.
It was this grab for intellectual liberation that changed prison culture and the rights of the incarcerated forever.
Serving a second drug sentence in the late 60s - later testimony proved he was framed - Sostre armed himself for a long fight. He studied history, philosophy, and law.
Throughout his bids, he outspokenly filed several lawsuits advocating for inmates’ rights to humane treatment. The retaliation for his boldness was brutal.
He endured a total of nine years of intermittent solitary confinement, just one of the insufferable practices he sought to reform, along with “censorship of inmates’ incoming mail [and] rectal examinations,” according to his New York Times obituary. Hyper-supervision came while serving his parole.
Ultimately, we owe Martin Sostre a great debt in the age of mass incarceration.
His monumental prison rights advocacy became the legal precedent used to challenge mistreatment and injustices at the hands of state agencies and institutions in federal civil rights courts.