One Last Day in the ‘60s
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SANTA ANA — Gray at the temples, bulging a bit at the belly, the ‘60s marched down to Orange County on Tuesday and paid a visit. Native drums pounded and old chants caromed through the hallways of the county courthouse: cries for justice and freedom, condemnations of J. Edgar Hoover and Nixon and the system.
Familiar faces were scattered throughout the crowd. There was Dennis Banks, co-founder of the American Indian Movement, standing in line outside Department 35. Surrounded by reporters, Banks was struggling to remember the address of his new Web site: “It’s Dennis Banks-dot AOL-dot something,” he said, patting the pockets of his vest in search of a business card. “I can’t remember.”
There was Eldridge Cleaver, the famous ex-Black Panther, his familiar goatee gone white. Asked what he’s been up to these days, some of the old fire flashed in Cleaver’s eyes: “I spend most of my time trying to get some money from my LOUSY PUBLISHER, . . . thousands of dollars of MY MONEY. I am practically homeless.”
And there, at the center of it all, was Geronimo Pratt, a name--if not a face--that has lingered on the edges of the national consciousness for a generation. Seated at the defense table, dressed in a saffron yellow jailhouse jumpsuit, his head freshly shaved and his eyes bright, Pratt seemed better preserved than the other icons: Maybe the fact that he’d been kept on ice, soul and body, for the past 27 years had something to do with it.
This was the day all that was to change.
*
Bail hearings typically don’t draw big crowds, but this was no typical bail hearing. Last month Judge Everett Dickey overturned Pratt’s conviction in the 1968 murder of a schoolteacher. He faulted the L.A. County prosecutors for failing to reveal that the case’s pivotal witness was a paid informant. On Tuesday, Dickey would decide whether Pratt could be freed on bail while awaiting the appeal promised by the L.A. County district attorney.
The line outside Dickey’s ninth-floor courtroom began to form hours before the 10 a.m. appearance. One of the first to arrive was Jeanne Hamilton, an Orange County accounting professor who knows more than a little about this case. Hamilton was a juror in the original trial. Her holdout against conviction ended after three days of deliberations. If she had known about the informant, and about the FBI campaign to splinter the Panthers, Hamilton said, she would have hung in for acquittal.
Back then she was 22 years old. “I wanted to be on the jury,” she said. “My friends were going off to Vietnam, and I didn’t necessarily trust the government. . . . I felt like my generation was the only generation that could provide reason. Of course, back then I had no clue about the extent to which the government did these things.”
Pratt also stood on the youthful side of the ‘60s generational divide. He had volunteered for the Army, earned a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts in Vietnam, defended Hue in the Tet offensive and then, all of 21, was returned to the United States, where he enrolled in UCLA and joined the Black Panthers. He had been back only months before the murder for robbery of Caroline Olsen on a Santa Monica tennis court. Pratt insisted he had been in Oakland at a Black Panther gathering. No key Panthers, however, would testify to this alibi: By the time of trial, Pratt had been drummed out, abandoned, as part of an internal power struggle. And so on to prison.
*
The hearing began on an odd note. For 15 minutes the judge scolded one of Pratt’s attorneys for hurrying the release process--of using lawyerly “means to justify the end.” This seemed an ironic complaint, given the context of Pratt’s case. The lawyers then made the case for bail. Finally, Pratt stood to speak.
His voice was husky, broken. Eight years in solitary confinement can leave behind throat rust. He thanked the judge for a “courageous ruling,” promised that at further proceedings he would “be the first one here.” He paused, stared at the judge.
“That is my word,” he said. “As a Vietnam veteran, and as a man.”
With that, he touched his fist once to his chest and sat back down.
An hour later, Pratt was out, dressed in khakis and a print shirt, encircled by a raucous crowd. “We need some peace on those drums,” Cleaver shouted in vain. Pratt said something into the din about “political prisoners” and “justice” and “Nixon and Hoover.” They asked him if he was bitter, and he grinned. They asked what was the worst of it. “Eight years in the hole!” he shouted back, and then he was crammed into a car and driven away. A couple dozen people gave chase for a block, chanting as they ran, “Power to the People! Power to the People!” For Elmer Pratt, the ‘60s were coming to an end--about 30 years late.
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