He Was Targeted For Running A Radical Bookstore, But Refused To Back Down
Black History Year
PushBlack
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2023
⏱️ 3 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
They called him “an uncaged lion.” He stepped into court, chains hanging from his feet. He addressed the judge: “Your honor, you are nothing but a white racial bigot in judicial robes and you know it!” Who was he?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | They called him an uncage lion. |
| 0:05.5 | He stepped into court, chained, hanging from his feet. |
| 0:08.9 | He addressed the judge. |
| 0:10.8 | Your honor, you are nothing but a white racial bigot in judicial roles and you know it. |
| 0:17.1 | Who was he? |
| 0:18.6 | This is two-minute black history. |
| 0:20.8 | What you didn't learn in school. |
| 0:28.9 | After undergoing a political transformation in Attica Prison, Martin Sosteron knew he had |
| 0:34.0 | worked to do when he got out. |
| 0:36.8 | So in 1964, he opened the Afro-Asian bookshop in Buffalo, New York. |
| 0:42.2 | He enjoyed mentoring Black youth and let them read radical literature for free. |
| 0:47.1 | But little did he know, his new bookstore would land him with a 30-year prison sentence. |
| 0:52.8 | Why? |
| 0:59.2 | A detective came by. |
| 1:04.3 | Selling radical books can get you in trouble, he threatened. |
| 1:07.5 | But Sosteron kept the store open. |
| 1:10.4 | In the spring, firefighters broke in and doused his books with water. |
| 1:15.5 | Sosteron replaced them. |
| 1:17.9 | During the summer uprisings of 1967, his shop stood tall as the beacon of liberation. |
| 1:25.0 | So police raided his bookstore and arrested him. |
| 1:29.6 | That didn't stop Sosteron from fighting back. |
| 1:33.0 | At his hearing, Sosteron called out the anti-blackness of the bail system. |
... |
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