MARTIN SOSTRE

On the night of July 14, 1967, Geraldine Pointer (then Robinson) was helping Martin Sostre close the Afro-Asian Bookshop on Jefferson Avenue. The two met and started dating the previous year, soon after he opened the city’s first Black revolutionary bookstore. Sostre eventually opened two more stores, including the East-West Bookshop which Pointer managed. In the early morning of July 15th, plainclothes police and FBI agents raided the store on Jefferson and arrested the two, scapegoating Sostre as the cause of the city’s recent uprising.  

​

Geraldine Robinson became one of the first Black women political prisoners of the Black Power era, yet her struggle remains virtually unknown today. Any dedication to the excavation and dissemination of Martin Sostre’s legacy must also acknowledge the importance of Geraldine’s struggle and the enduring impact of state repression on her and her family.

​

Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1943, Pointer was one of seven children and moved to Buffalo with her mother when she was young. They lived at the Willert Park homes, Western New York’s first public housing complex built exclusively for Black residents and which helped deepen the city’s racial segregation. Her mother earned enough money at Bethlehem Steel to purchase a home on East Utica Street in the Cold Spring neighborhood less than a half-mile from Jefferson Avenue. When she met Sostre, Pointer was in her early twenties and living in an apartment on Celtic Place with her five children: James, Terrance, Exzertios, Jamie, and Christa.

​

She began managing the East-West Bookshop at 289 High Street. As seen in the only existing photo of the bookstore, it focused more exclusively on records, carrying rock and roll, jazz, soul, and spirituals. It eventually became so successful that it covered rent for the other two stores.

​

In July 1967, the Afro-Asian Bookshop became a focal point of the Buffalo rebellion, one of the largest of the nearly 160 urban uprisings during what became known as the “Long Hot Summer” of 1967. The bookstore was physically and politically at the heart of the Buffalo uprising. Located in the middle of the three long blocks on Jefferson Avenue between East Ferry and East Utica Streets, where much of the rebellion took place, it became both a refuge and a site of politicization for the young Buffalonians. For over a month, local and state police worked with the FBI to surveil Sostre and the bookstore. They also cultivated relationships with informants, including a woman who occasionally helped at the store, Francis Beverly.

​

That month, Sergeant Alvin Gristmacher visited with Arto Williams in the Erie County Jail, where he was being held for stealing an air conditioner. Williams occasionally visited the Afro-Asian Bookshop to use the toilet, borrow the phone, or occasionally buy a book. He once left a cleaned suit for Sostre to watch and was a former classmate of Robinson. Gristmacher asked Williams, who used substances, for the names of people selling drugs. Although Williams complied, the sergeant “didn’t seem interested” in the names he gave, instead asking about Sostre, whom he believed was the cause of the uprising. Williams assured his cooperation. “What was on my mind was getting out of jail,” he explained. “I didn’t come out of jail thinking I was going to bust just anybody. I knew who I was going to bust.”

​

That Friday, July 14, 1967, Gristmacher released Williams from jail with a handful of cash. They reconvened that evening and the sergeant handed him another $15 in bills marked with a fluorescent pencil. Williams gave the money to Sostre to hold for him, as he had his suit in the past. “As I turned to walk out the door of the bookstore,” he later testified, “I put my hand into my pocket as though I was putting [drugs] in.” Williams then handed Gristmacher a bag of heroin he had purchased earlier that day and was taken back to police headquarters where a prepared statement awaited his signature. Hours later, back at the store, Sostre heard a “stampede of people coming in” and Robinson yelled “stick-up!" Thinking it was a robbery, Sostre fought back and was beaten with a blackjack and arrested.

​

Within a few weeks, a Martin Sostre Defense Committee (MSDC) was formed by students and organizers associated with the Workers World Party (WWP) and its youth affiliate, Youth Against War and Fascism (YAWF). The MSDC was dedicated in its inception to fighting to free both Sostre and Robinson. Geraldine was a key part of this struggle. She staffed the Afro-Asian Bookshop-in-Exile table on the University at Buffalo campus, which continued the life of the bookstore while providing an organizing base for the defense campaign. She marched with other committee members outside the courthouse when he stood trial. She did all this while caring for her five children as the state attempted to kidnap them by charging her with child neglect. Despite her efforts, and those of her comrades, she was convicted by an all-white jury and imprisoned for two years before being reunited with her children.