Geronimo Pratt

Elmer Gerard "Geronimo" Pratt was born on September 13, 1947, in Morgan City, Louisiana, the youngest of seven children in a devout Roman Catholic family. His father, Jack Pratt, ran a scrap-metal business, and his mother was Eunice Petty Pratt. As a boy Geronimo worked alongside his father and brothers gathering scrap to sell in New Orleans, learning early the discipline and loyalty that would mark his life.

He enlisted in the United States Army and served two combat tours in the Vietnam War, rising to the rank of sergeant and earning a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts. Returning home, he enrolled at UCLA under the GI Bill and joined the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party. After the 1969 killings of Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter and John Huggins, he rose to serve as Deputy Minister of Defense of the Southern California chapter.

In 1972 Pratt was convicted of the 1968 murder of Caroline Olsen in Santa Monica, a killing he insisted he could not have committed. He served twenty-seven years in prison, eight of them in solitary confinement, becoming a symbol of the injustices carried out under the FBI's COINTELPRO campaign against Black activists. In 1997 a court vacated his conviction after finding that prosecutors had concealed evidence, including that a key witness was a paid government informant.

Freed at last, Pratt received a settlement for his wrongful imprisonment and devoted his remaining years to human-rights work and to others who had been unjustly jailed. He died on June 2, 2011, in Tanzania, at the age of sixty-three. Through decades of confinement he never surrendered his dignity or his name — and his vindication stands as a testament to the endurance of an innocent man.