In 2011, with so much technology at our disposal, it seems close to incomprehensible that someone could be wrongly convicted of a crime they never committed. But that’s what happened in 1968 when Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt went to prison.

Although this article doesn’t indicate, Mr. Pratt was born in Morgan City, LA so he had heard the blues a few times. And it’s  the blues that accompanied him all those years like it has so many…

Source:  Erica Henry, CNN

Former Black Panther Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, who was wrongly imprisoned for 27 years on a murder conviction, died Thursday in Tanzania, his former lawyer said. He was 63.

Stuart Hanlon, a San Francisco-based lawyer who helped overturn Pratt’s murder conviction, said he did not know the exact cause of death. Pratt died in a small village in Tanzania where he lived with his wife and child, Hanlon said. Hanlon called Pratt a “true American,” saying that he was an Army veteran who served two tours in Vietnam before joining the Black Panther Party.

“He could’ve been a great leader. He was very charismatic,” Hanlon said. “His legacy is that he never gave up. He never got despondent or angry.”

Pratt’s conviction became a rallying cry for rights groups that said he had been framed for his strident activism during the turbulent civil rights era.

Pratt was convicted for the 1968 murder of Caroline Olsen on a Santa Monica tennis court. He spent 27 years in prison before the conviction was overturned in 1997 after a judge ruled that prosecutors had concealed evidence. The victim’s husband, wounded during the robbery attempt, originally identified another man as the killer. But the jury was not informed of that, the judge said.

Famed attorney Johnnie Cochran also helped in the legal battle to get Pratt released from prison. Pratt spoke at Cochran’s funeral in 2005.

After his release, Pratt told CNN that he held no bitterness about the many years he spent behind bars. “I don’t think bitterness has a place. I’m more understanding,” Pratt said in a 1999 interview. “Understanding doesn’t leave any room for bitterness or anger.”

Of the 27 years he spent in prison, Pratt said eight was in solitary confinement. He said his spirituality and love of music helped him through that period.

“My mantra was the blues. It would go through my head when I was going through my meditations,” Pratt said.

Last year Anna Gordon and her mother wandered into the Little Professor in Birmingham, and I was lucky enough to meet them. Noticing the patch on Anna’s chest, they told me of the leukemia that was in remission. We were all happy about the future. But as we connected on Facebook, I began to see the updates of a relapse. And two months ago as they entered the hospital, we became witness to the carnage a fatal illness can leave. Pam allowed us the privilege of fighting with her, and her strength is mightier than a thousand suns, but Anna did not win her battle. She passed earlier last week.

Later in the week and hundreds of miles away in Austin, TX, I began to receive text messages from my daughter. A classmate had fallen while skateboarding and was on life support. Heath Eiland, while someone I had not met, was someone my daughter knew and the updates were heart-wrenching. Unbearable decisions were made, mitigated little by Heath’s incredible health and the opportunity to bring life to others through organ donation.

What happens to one child affects all parents collectively through a shared parental bond. Maybe not with the same intensity, but we are all reflective and saddened nonetheless as empathy and emotion draw us close.

Anna and Heath, you are like setting suns. Although you have slipped beyond the horizon, you still radiate warmth on those who love you. Watch over your families, they will need your care.

Last year, as I was being consoled by Reed’s Emily Gatlin due to the lack of customers lined up to purchase the next great novel, she mentioned someone I should contact. Someone who she thought I would get along with, and who I had something in common besides middle age and gray hair. She sent his contact information, but I never followed up unable to devise a clever way to make an online introduction.

Skip forward several months and deep in the heart of Jefferson, TX, near the home of Scott Joplin, Don Henley, and T Bone Walker, at a place called Aunty Skinner’s, my wife and I were quaffing red wine and spirits with someone whose name rang a bell. We got along, shared stories, had a couple more than we should have, and I soon realized Emily was right. Neil White’s story, the book based on it, and the aftermath is a tale that had to be told. And Neil, I’m sure much to his chagrin on most days, was given a gift that took years to unwrap  – the gift, as Eudora Welty would say, a sense of place.

While I read a bit, waffling between nonfiction which helps me keep my day job and fiction which entertains and amuses me, I normally save writing for my own selfish pursuits. But in this case, I can’t restrain my appreciation for Neil’s honesty and his recognition there was a greater glory in revering the lives and history of those special people he grew to love.

In the SANCTUARY of OUTCASTS is a memoir based on Neil White’s unimaginable professional and personal free fall. His account poignantly uncovers the real story that had been buried by time and apathy and is reminiscent of Sea Biscuit, similar in its hidden greatness but distinctly different in its discovery. While literary archeologist Hillenbrand meticulously brushed back the sands of time to reveal a gem, Neil descended uncontrolled down an abandoned and lonely mineshaft landing in the bosom of a long forgotten land.

I offer no spoilers of this Southern story with relevance to all our lives, but as I read, fascinated by Neil’s day-to-day life and wincing at his confessions, some too familiar, my subconscious began to formulate the stages of a breach of covenant as my theology teacher used to say. Not unlike the stages of grief, they are simple, direct. First, the sin, some greater than others; second, the crucifixion, punishment for the misdeeds; third, contrition, healing cannot begin without it; fourth, absolution, the gift from others, that all wrongs can be righted, but not always in this life; and finally, enlightenment, clarity in the new day. These are human experiences, exclusive to no one, shared by all.

Thanks Neil, for the openness with which you have let others into your life. We should endeavor to read, learn, and assimilate.

Head to the bookstore, get online, go buy it. You’ll think about the people, their plight, and their lives long after you’ve turned the final page.

Blues fans,

The final 2 tracks from the CD have finally been uploaded.

Let me personally recommend track 18, Will Starks’ oral history narration. It’s a great compilation of stories, several dealing with the Hopson farm, located just outside Clarksdale.

Enjoy!

As the dozen or so people who have bought my book can attest, Mr. Perkins endorsed my novel. I’m not sure he ever got to read it, and I so much wanted to read it to him. He lived less than a mile from me in Austin, TX. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. There are degrees of regrets in life, and this is a small one in the grand scheme of things.

I wrote my story thinking of people like Mr. Perkins, and hoping my words expressed the reverence, gratitude, and adoration I have for the community of blues artists and their struggle and journey through the 20th century.

I will remember Mr. Perkins and his friends who reached out and helped a young author. I will endeavor to pay it forward.

Rest comfortably behind that piano wherever enlightenment has taken you, and know that you are loved and missed.

Allen Whitley

My parents both smoked for about 30 years. I call it the golden age of cigarettes – a time when smoking was actually good for you. I used to wander downstairs to get some water or something to eat, and they’d be lounging in their living room puffing away. During really big parties, the smoke would be so thick I’m not sure how they could see each other. But it created a nice ambiance and looked cool, especially with a cocktail. There was no better conversation starter than to light a woman’s cigarette with a good-looking, expensive gold lighter. Years later, it certainly caught us all off guard when I was diagnosed with asthma at 11.

If you’ve ever read the Anti-Cancer by David Servan-Schreiber then you know about mighty mouse. This was a mouse with such a superlative immune system that no matter how lethal the dose of cancer cells given to him by researchers, his furry little body fought off the attack on his system. It’s truly fascinating. And if you ever had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Perkins at a festival, you know he was a smoker. He claimed to have started when he was 9. Even if he wasn’t a chain smoker just think of the number of bars he performed in where he was exposed to second-hand smoke – decades of exposure. There is no doubt that like mighty mouse, Mr. Perkins was able to combat the effects of smoking. His body was strong, resilient.

Don’t we all hope there’s a little Pinetop in all of us.

With heavy hearts, blues lovers around the world certainly feel blue with the news of Pinetop’s passing. There are so many others who will tell a better story, but for most of us it’ll be the faintest brush with his greatness we’ll always treasure. And his presence will certainly be missed as we start the blues festival season, and no where more than the King Biscuit in October.

I hope there are few lamenting about a missed opportunity to see a man who probably passed Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule before he was 15. Was there anyone who played more piano than he did? Maybe the Grey Ghost who also died in Austin. Do all the great blues piano players retire in Austin? Ghost played the Continental Club regularly in the early-1990s and he, too, taught those who listened lessons from a long ago past. But some of those musicians left the music business for long stretches only to be rediscovered later in life. They may have played for themselves, family, house parties, etc. but Mr. Perkins never strayed.

Mr. Perkins was born in 1913 in Belzoni, MS, and he grew up in Honey Island. And if you read my last post, his birth year divides the period of time from Reconstruction to the end of WWII (Slavery by Another Name) almost in half. That means the good Lord dropped him in the middle of Jim Crow, literally, the most difficult period for any group in American history. When he says he “grew up hard,” we can’t even imagine. But it’s not where he ended up but where he came from and the journey he took. There will never be another because that time is gone. His journey was through an era that no longer exists, and it forged him in a unique way. Yes, you head down south and there is racism, as there is in many places,  that runs in undercurrents, sometimes more overtly, but the incessant injustices, sharecropping, and enslavement have vanished, as it should be. But they were alive and well when young Mr. Perkins was making his way through a cotton field.

And when he had to decide between a plow and a piano (or guitar), he chose the latter. Aren’t we all glad he did.

Douglas A. Blackmon is on tour promoting Slavery by Another Name. A rich look into some of the horrendous and subversive practices that existed after Reconstruction and which created a neoslavery that lasted for decades. If you’re ready for a new book and looking for nonfiction, this is definitely worth checking out. The PBS documentary is coming soon. And one more thing, it won a Pulitzer Prize.

Hey e-book buyers,

Thank you  for your purchase, and for your commitment to Where Southern Cross the Dog we are now offering all but two of the CD tracks that accompany hard copy version of the book online. These are FREE downloads. Please click on the Free Tracks tab and download your favorites. We’re still working hard to get the final two tracks loaded, but there was an issue with WordPress and file size. Don’t worry, though, I have the right man on the job. We’ll try and get them up soon.

Thanks

If you like reading, you’ll like watching these authors talk about their craft.

Beauty and the Book Show

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Enjoy.