Geronimo Ji Jaga
Pratt, noted Black revolutionary who fought a 27-year battle for
freedom after an FBI
frame-up, died at his home in Tanzania on June 3 at the age of 63
due to illness.
He had been
living in Tanzania for several years, after his hard-won release
from California prison in 1997.
Geronimo was born
Elmer Gerard Pratt on Sept. 13, 1947, the youngest of seven children.
He grew up in rural Louisiana, Morgan City, during the era of
segregation. Ku
Klux Klan attacks
on the Black community were common.
Geronimo’s
consciousness was shaped in early life by the brutal racism of the
South. Early on, his family and community instilled in him an
understanding of the need for community self-defense against racist
attack. He was deeply affected as a 15-year-old when his brother
Timothy was viciously beaten by Ku
Klux Klan members.
Geronimo and his
three brothers worked hard alongside their father Jack, collecting
scrap metal to sell in New Orleans. In the biography
“Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of Geronimo
Pratt”
by Jack Olsen, Geronimo recounted: “Daddy taught us to be tough … me and my brothers, we
worked in that fire and smoke till we near dropped, baled up rope,
rags, newspapers, ripped the lead plates out of batteries, raked hot
ashes for coat hangers and wire springs and bolts. … We could break
the welds and chop up a car in an hour…”
When his father
suffered a debilitating stroke, it was now upon his mother Eunice and the
children to keep the family going. It is a tribute to the parents’
determination that all the children went to college.
Deacons for
Defense
Geronimo’s life
took a different turn at the age of 17. The elders in the African
American community led an organization called Deacons
for Defense and Justice.
They quietly but effectively organized self-defense of their
community.
After another
killing by Klansmen, the elders called on Geronimo and other youth to
join the U.S. military. Their training would help defend the
community on their return. Geronimo said, “By the time the elders
finished amping me up, I was ready to take on the whole KKK
single-handed.” (Last Man
Standing, p. 26)
The next day he
took a bus to join the army.
Geronimo served
two tours in Vietnam. He was wounded twice and awarded two purple
hearts. His war injuries would haunt him in prison, where extremely
harsh conditions made his physical suffering greater. It was on his
second tour that he became conscious of the genocidal and racist
nature of the war.
With his
discharge from the military in the summer of 1968, the elders sent
him to Los Angeles to meet the Black
Panther Party
for Self-Defense. Geronimo quickly met BPP leader Alprentice “Bunchy”
Carter,
who educated him in revolutionary politics, and gave him the name
Geronimo Ji Jaga.
Carter in turn
recognized Geronimo’s abilities. He was exceptional for his keen
defense and discipline skills, forged in his childhood and U.S.
military training, as well as a deep sense of justice.
Defense
minister for Black Panther Party
Geronimo’s
effective role as defense minister in the Los Angeles Black Panther
Party made him a major target—with other BPP members—for
repression by the FBI’s secret “Counterintelligence Program”
(COINTELPRO).
The fascistic FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover
had declared the Black
Panthers to be “the greatest threat to the internal security of the
country” and called on agents to “submit imaginative and
hard-hitting counterintelligence measures aimed at crippling the
BPP.”
Beginning in 1968
in Los Angeles, the LAPD
and FBI launched a war against the Black Panthers, both open and
covert. Their strategy included assassinations, armed raids on BPP
offices and subversive campaigns to turn radicals against each
other. This was repeated in cities from Chicago to Newark to New York
City to Oakland.
In a major LAPD
raid on the Panther’s Los Angeles headquarters on Dec. 8, 1969, dozens of LAPD
cops fired 5,000 rounds into the building. After hours of gunfire,
six Panther members were wounded. Casualties were minimized because
for weeks Geronimo had mobilized the members to fortify the offices
with walls of sandbags.
At the same time,
cops broke into Geronimo’s apartment and fired into his bedroom.
The attack mirrored the assassination of BPP leaders Fred
Hampton and Mark Clark by Chicago police only four days earlier.
Failing in their
attack, the FBI and LAPD then manufactured an indictment for murder
against Geronimo.
Framed for
murder
One year earlier
on the evening of Dec. 18, 1968, a woman named Caroline Olsen and her
husband Kenneth were shot in a tennis court during an apparent
robbery in Santa Monica. Caroline Olsen died 11 days later.
With false
information from BPP member Julius Butler—who was revealed years
later as an FBI informant and close collaborator—Geronimo was
arrested and charged with first-degree murder. At the time of the
murder, Geronimo was in Oakland at a BPP meeting, and the FBI, which
had the Los Angeles and Oakland offices under constant surveillance
and wiretapping, was fully aware of this fact. The FBI had
successfully exploited growing divisions and manufactured others inside of the BPP so that witnesses
who were with Geronimo refused to testify on his behalf.
Because of FBI
and LAPD falsification—and the COINTELPRO operation unknown to
anyone at the time—Geronimo was convicted. The trial included false
testimony against Geronimo based on lies told by the FBI informer. For
27
long years—including eight years in solidarity confinement—Geronimo
suffered the brutality of prison, demonization and a long chain of
frustrated appeals and parole denials.
It took many
years and the tireless work of appeals attorney Stuart
Hanlon,
along with trial lawyer Johnnie
Cochran,
before Geronimo was finally freed.
In a rare
occurrence, the FBI and LAPD had to pay a $4.5 million settlement for
his wrongful conviction. But no amount of money could make up for the
years Geronimo lost and his suffering at the hands of the state.
Bato Talamantez,
former political
prisoner
of the San Quentin Six struggle, was a close friend of Geronimo. “Ji,
like George Jackson, was a great bridge of love and solidarity
between prison racial groups, trying to bring about unity so they
could win justice for everyone.
“He continued
to care greatly about serving the Black community, in Morgan City or
Tanzania. Ji confided to me many times, and he told me again last
month after his visit to the U.S., ‘I’m going back across the
waters … to Mother Africa.’”
Attorney Stuart
Hanlon said: “Geromino was much more than a client. From
the very beginning he was a close friend. What I will remember
most about him is his warmth, his joy at life, his lack of bitterness
at those who framed him and took away 27 years of freedom. I will
also remember his indomitable will and strength, his refusal to yield
or bow to oppression and fear. He often told me they locked him in
the hole for nine years but never could take away his freedom,
the freedom of his mind and soul to soar and be always with his
comrades and his ancestors.
“The
Government could never silence him or his voice. Before his false
imprisonment, during and after, his voice rang true for justice and
freedom, for the end to racial and all forms of oppression. While in
prison and for the 14 years outside that he had after his release, he
was relentless in fighting for these beliefs. He was, and is a true
warrior and leader. I will miss my friend, and we will all miss the
power and commitment of the warrior Geronimo Ji Jaga.”
