During the long, hot summer of 1967, as rebellion raged in Buffalo, New York, Martin Sostre’s Afro-Asian Book Shop provided Black revolutionary education. Geraldine Pointer worked there, too, and got arrested with him when the FBI raided the store.
After months of COINTELPRO surveillance, authorities framed Sostre and Pointer for selling heroin. Only in her early twenties, Pointer kept the bookstore and its political organizing alive, marched outside the courthouse during Sostre’s trial, and raised her five children.
Sostre and Pointer were both incarcerated, making Pointer one of the first Black women of the time into a political prisoner. She left the courthouse with a raised fist and her head held high. “Don’t waste any tears, and please take care of my children,” she declared. “Continue the struggle." She wouldn’t get her children back for two years.
Sostre passed in 2015. But 80-year-old Pointer is fighting to get their convictions vacated. If you want to help, you can sign the petition here: https://pushblack.news/ogb.
We have the opportunity to celebrate one of many Black women whose contributions to the struggle have been devalued or erased. “After all of these years, all of this is so unbelievable,” she said, “because I had figured people had forgotten about my role.”