The Martin Sostre Defense Committee
After Martin was convicted and sentenced to 41 years in prison, I continued to work actively for his Defense Committee. WWP was interested as well and eventually made Martin a party project with Vincent Copeland, the "bard" of the organization, writing a book about Martin. I think a movie was made as well.
The House Un-American Activities Committee held hearings in Buffalo and I was ordered to appear before the Committee. Like Dalton Trumbo, I told them to take a "flying leap" and to bugger off. But times had changed, there was no declaration of "Contempt of Congress." Nevertheleess, the Committee issued a "Report" on subversive activities related to the Buffalo "riots" in which my name was mentioned.
At one point I travelled with Clarence M. Maloney, an elderly Afro-American lawyer all the way to Greenhaven Penitentiary to visit Martin. He had known DuBois and had a good reputation in the black community. We drove for five or six hours to reach Greenhaven from Buffalo. I wasn’t allowed in but the lawyer got in to see Martin and talked with him in the visitors room. Martin reported being placed in solitary confinement and left on a bare wire bedframe without blankets. He talked about his yoga and meditation as a way of coping with the deprivation.
Upon our return to Buffalo we redoubled our efforts on behalf of Martin. After I moved to the West Coast, I had an opportunity to contact Amnesty International. Eventually the Hamburg branch adopted Martin as a prisoner of conscience and the case caught the attention of Sokorov, the Russian author who wrote Governor Carey of New York requesting amnesty. But it wasn’t until the State trooper who planted the drugs on Martin was caught stealing drugs from a police locker, that the Governor released Martin.
On the following page is a painting I made many years after the fact, of the arrest of Bruce Beyer. I was fooling around with renaissance style painting motif complete with “puti” and all.
Andrei Sakharov
"The Arrest if Bruce Beyer" by Jerry Ross
