By Edvardi Jackson
(Image above: Mariah Robinson, James Coughlin, Geraldine Pointer and Erie County Legislator Lawrence Dupre at Saturday’s restoration of 1412 Jefferson Ave. Photo by Edvardi Jackson.)

Community members and volunteers were in East Buffalo on Saturday, representing an effort to combine history and community building.

Volunteers representing the effort filled the previously vacant lot at 1412 Jefferson Avenue, the first location of the Afro-Asian Bookshop, with vegetable planter boxes, tree saplings, community bulletin board and a “little library” near the sidewalk. 

The Afro-Asian Bookshop opened there in 1965 during the 1960s Civil Rights Era to promote political education and liberation in the black community. 

Martin Sostre, the owner of the store, was influenced by the Black Nationalist movement after spending some time in prison. A second location opened at 289 High Street in Buffalo and was managed by Geraldine Robinson (now Geraldine Pointer). Both locations are now empty lots, but for now one will be empty no longer.

In addition to bringing people together to restore the store’s former location, organizers are attempting to help exonerate Sostre and Pointer, who were falsely convicted on drug charges. 

Sostre’s first store on Jefferson Avenue, where Pointer also worked, was raided in July 1967 as part of a sting operation under the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. 

The program was created to “disrupt the activities of the Communist Party of the United States” and later expanded to include other groups like the Ku Klux Klan, also keeping tabs on people they referred to as “Black Extremists” including Martin Luther King Jr. This came just two weeks after that year’s racial uprising, the riots often called the “Buffalo Rebellion” in progressive circles.

Buffalo Police held Sostre on drug and violent crime charges, which resulted in a sentence of up to 41 years, but received clemency after a witness who testified against Sostre admitted he lied, and the main police officer who helped in Sostre’s arrest and sentencing was accused to stealing drugs from a narcotics lab. Sostre left prison in 1976.

Pointer, who also managed the bookstore on High Street, was arrested on the same narcotics charges, and for interfering with an arrest. 

Pointer attended the community event Saturday. The aftermath of the arrest proved difficult for her. She explained that after the arrest she changed her name. 

She said, “When I got arrested, my name was Geraldine Robinson. After I came home, I used my maiden name Geraldine Porter, and I’ve been using that name ever since, because of my children. I didn’t want anybody saying any ill wills to our children about their mother being in jail and them not knowing what the circumstances were.”

She also noted, “When I got arrested, I might have been there for a couple of days before some friends came to bail me out, but I spent two years and 19 days incarcerated away from my children.”

The Justice for Geraldine Pointer and Martin Sostre campaign is pushing  for the Erie County District Attorney’s Office to formally exonerate Sostre and Pointer. 

James Coughlin is co-organizer of the event and one of the leaders of Justice for Geraldine Pointer and Martin Sostre. He said his personal connection to the project arose from working at Burning Books on Connecticut Street, a store which has been supportive of Sostre’s writings being published, and has offered those books in their shop. 

He said that he felt the renewed focus on exoneration puts a focus on the history of Jefferson Avenue (which also was the site of the 2022 Tops Shooting), and the history of black Buffalo as a whole. 

“There’s a gap in services towards adolescents and young adults,” he said.  “We’re continuing the traditional legacy of the (Afro-Asian) Bookstore’s serious educational program, while also listening to the news and desires of the people who now live near where the bookstore was.”

Another outgrowth of the Justice for Geraldine Pointer and Martin Sostre efforts is the upcoming Freedom School. Dr. Tiana U. Wilson is spearheading the upcoming six-week summer academy that covers mass incarceration, food apartheid, environmental racism and residential segregation in marginalized communities, more specifically, in Buffalo. 

“[Geraldine Pointer’s] story is actually the reason why I joined the campaign,” she said. 

Wilson criticized the media’s coverage of the story, both historically and currently. 

“Martin Sostre was a revolutionary. He was a brilliant man, and his legacy should be celebrated. The thing that concerned me, when we were remembering this history, is how folks kind of forgot about Ms. Geraldine Pointer,” Wilson said. “She was someone who was arrested with him, but there was no International Defense Committee with her name on it, right? There’s no book that has been published on her. So she has been someone, in the historical record, that has been deemed as apolitical — as someone who wasn’t a radical — she was just guilty by association.”

Asked if she viewed this as an example of “misogynoir,’ a term coined by Moya Bailey, a black feminist writer, to describe prejudice against Black women. 

“It is how people dismissed her,” Wilson said. “And then the other thing is that her background — she is someone whose highest education was 10th grade. She was a single mother of five. She was on welfare, right? And so we have to take into account that she wasn’t someone who was a business owner like Martin Sostre. And so I think the socioeconomic background also plays a part in how we kind of overlooked her.”

Wilson added, “Black women are always thought of as an afterthought. Black women are oftentimes remembered as organizers. We never or rarely consider them as intellectuals in their own right. And so with the Freedom School, especially with our last week focusing on black Buffalo intellectuals, we are going to share with the students different examples of black Buffalo intellectuals, or black thinkers who were from Buffalo or spent considerable time. Both men and women.”

Saturday’s event comes at the crossroads of two major events in Buffalo’s political cycle — the results of a new presidential administration, and the upcoming mayoral election. 

It also comes after District Attorney Michael Keane decided to step aside from the exoneration case due to a conflict of interest. A special prosecutor from Chautauqua County was appointed in his place to oversee the process. In a statement to the press, Keane wrote, “A close family relative was a member of the Buffalo Police Department who was involved in the investigation and arrest of the defendants in 1967.”

One official who stopped by the event was Erie County Legislator Lawrence Dupre, who lives nearby.  He welcomed the group’s efforts at the corner of Jefferson and Woodlawn avenues. 

“I’m [representing] the government, and [people] need to know that we’re behind them. And that’s important. We do more than just mess up stuff,” he said.  “People love to talk about what the community is not doing, but we don’t do enough at times to spotlight what community members are doing. This is a community project, brought up by community members who have worked a long time to get this done and are now coming to fruition—and [it’s still] not done. So I always want to make sure that I’m showing up and being supportive of my community that supports me.”

 Dupre emphasized that progress must be driven by community input, with residents leading decisions and the government playing a supporting role. He acknowledged the campaign’s challenges, specifically surrounding the lack of permits for the tree-planting and use of the land, but said he was confident that the community’s dedication and resilience would ensure long-term success. 

“This is another example of a great community in my Legislative District. One of coming together and making things better,” he said.

Pointer was met with applause from the volunteers at the event after she came out during the setting-up process. Pointer, now 80, praised the team’s efforts in the neighborhood and also for spreading awareness of the efforts toward her and Sostre’s exoneration. 

“Absolutely amazing for all of these people to come here to do this. Wonderful,” she said.

Pointer said, “Black people are still suffering for some unforeseen reason. They don’t really know about this. So like when I got arrested, I know what I got arrested for, until I got out of jail.” 

Asked what her message was to people in America, specifically young black girls, she said, “If you got a voice, use it.”