GERONIMO [ nee Elmer G. Pratt] Returns to His Ancestors

 GERONIMO [ nee Elmer G. Pratt] Returns to His Ancestors

[col. writ. 6/4/11] (c) '11 Mumia Abu-Jamal

   On Thursday, June 2, 2011, came word that former Black Panther leader, Geronimo Ji-Jaga [nee Elmer G. Pratt) died in exile in Tanzania. 

   Geronimo's life was one of intense and almost total warfare, from battles in his youth on behalf of the U.S. empire in the steaming jungles of Vietnam, to his membership and leadership of the L.A. chapter of the Black Panther Party, where he fought for his people.

   The FBI-inspired killing of L.A. Black Panther leader Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter led to Geronimo's rise as the chapter's deputy Minister of Defense, and during a police raid on the Central Avenue office on December 8th, 1969, Geronimo so prepared the site that it withstood over 6 hours of a police paramilitary assault with automatic weapons and grenades.

   Geronimo's prominence and shine in the shadows of Hollywood so disturbed the state, local and federal governments that they framed him for a murder that it was impossible for him to commit, and sent him to prison for 27 years.

   When he was freed, it was because of an insistent, national movement, and because federal government files revealed he was nearly 300 miles away when the murder took place, and the state's chief witness was not only an LAPD undercover agent, but a snitch for the L.A. DA's office as well as the L.A. Sheriff's Department, an agency that formerly employed him.

   Upon his liberation, Geronimo, after going across the country to thank his supporters, left the land of his birth and joined a small expatriate community near Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

   Like several other ex-Panthers, he could never trust his life nor his freedom to the American government.

   And though he spent the balance of his years under a brilliant African sun, one suspects he longed for the rhythms of his native Louisiana, which remained in his speech and its accents.

   It was in Louisiana, after all, where he learned about  Black armed self-defense, for this was fertile ground for the Deacons for Defense, and armed body which resisted and forcefully discouraged Ku Klux Klan violence in the region.

   Geronimo Ji-Jaga, a warrior for his people, returns to his ancestors.

--(c) '11 maj