How One Inmate Changed The Prison System From The Inside

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Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.9K Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2017

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

In this Podcast Extra, NPR correspondent Joe Shapiro recalls the life and legacy of Martin Sostre, someone he first reported on as a student in the 1970s. Sostre died a free man in 2015. But he spent at least nine years of his life in solitary confinement, including in the notorious Attica prison. Today, Sostre's life and pioneering prisoners' rights work is largely hidden from the public.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	What's good, Joel? I'm Gene Demby and you're listening to a Co-Twitch podcast extra.
0:04.3	This week we're bringing you a little bit of hidden history. It's about an
0:07.0	inmate who spent over two decades in prison, but defied the odds, his keepers, and the federal
0:12.0	government to become the father of the modern prisoner's rights movement. Martin Sostray was
0:16.8	known by prisoners, wardens, and prison guards across the country back in the 1970s.
0:21.3	And he became famous after successfully challenging prison conditions in court.
0:25.3	Joe Shapiro, our colleague on the NPR investigative news team, met Sostray right after Sostray was
0:30.7	released from prison back in 1976. Joe was just an office reporter then and Sostray became the
0:35.0	subject of his first big story. In decades later he wrote a fascinating long read for Co-Twitch
0:39.9	that takes us through Sostray's checkered life and his transformational impact. You can read that
0:43.6	whole thing at mpr.org slash Co-Twitch. For this podcast extra though, he sat down to tell us some
0:49.4	of Sostray's story. Martin Sostray basically created the prisoner's rights movement. He brought
0:58.4	the most important lawsuits in the 1960s and 70s. Sostray was my first big story. I was a graduate
1:04.4	student at Columbia Journalism School and when he was in prison I wrote to him. I wanted to write
1:09.9	about his case. When he got out of prison I got to know him. He brought up cases about
1:17.4	solitary confinement about false convictions. These are issues I've been writing about the last
1:21.7	several years and I've always thought about Sostray. I went back. I tried to find him. I couldn't
1:26.8	find him. I then found out in the last year that he died in late 2015, August of 2015. No
1:36.1	newspaper, no television station, no radio program ran an obituary forum. I think he deserves to be
1:43.3	remembered. He changed the way prisons are run in America. He gave prisoners the hope, the
1:52.6	possibility, the chance to bring lawsuits. He goes to prison for the first time in 1952 on a drug
2:05.8	charge. He described to himself he was served. He was a street dude, a hustler. He gets to prison.
	...

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