In 1975, convicted for a crime he did not commit, 17-year-old Gary Tyler became the youngest man on death row. Thirty years later, now middle-aged, Tyler remains behind bars. While he was saved from the electric chair in 1976 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Louisiana's death penalty unconstitutional, in the words of New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, Tyler "has in fact paid with his life."
Today, Tyler is incarcerated with 5,000 others — 75 percent of them black men — in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Situated on a former slave plantation, it goes by the nickname "the farm" — a reference not lost on the inmates. For a number of years, in fact, Tyler sat in solitary confinement because he refused to do manual labor — picking cotton for 3 cents an hour.
Tyler's resistance to the authorities goes back to his youth. Born in New Orleans in 1958, he moved to Los Angeles at age 11. There, he was introduced to the ideas of the Black Panthers and activists like Angela Davis, as well as the anti-war movement. After two years, he returned to the Louisiana town of Destrehan, where he was to attend the newly integrated high school. Remembering that time, Tyler commented, "Coming back to the South, it was like taking me out of the light and putting me into darkness." Although the 1954 Brown v. Board ruling had called for the desegregation of schools "with all deliberate speed," it was not until 1968 that the federal court finally ordered Destrehan to bus black children from areas of grinding poverty into the white school districts. This action was met by fierce, racist mobs, which were supported by then-President Gerald Ford, recently eulogized as "a healer." It was one of these mob assaults on black school children that eventually saw Tyler sentenced to death.
On the day white students and parents attacked Bus 91 outside Destrehan High School, a shot rang out and a white student, 13-year-old Timothy Weber, was killed. The black students were taken from the bus and searched, but no gun was found. Later, a .45 caliber was found stuffed in the seat Tyler was allegedly sitting in. Though the gun had no fingerprints and was later found to have been stolen from the sheriff deputies' firing range, a lab test on the gloves Tyler had worn that day turned up gunpowder residue. No independent testing was done, and two years later, the man who had performed the test resigned after being accused of lying in another case. Since then, the gun has disappeared, and the only material witness, Natalie Blanks, has recanted her testimony, claiming local police had forced her to testify against Tyler.
Local police had already labeled Tyler a "troublemaker." He was intelligent and outspoken, and was once referred to by one office as a "smart nigger." Tyler was arrested, convicted of first-degree murder by an all-white jury and sentenced by a judge who was associated with the White Citizen's Council of Louisiana. Despite overwhelming proof of the racial bias of the Louisiana court, Tyler has been repeatedly denied a new trial.
The legal system that condemned Gary Tyler is one aspect of how the ruling class uses racism to pit workers against one another. Whether by separating the American people from the people of Iraq by blaming the latter for the deaths of our troops, or by separating immigrant from native workers with immigration laws, capitalism depends on racism to survive. In Gary Tyler's case, racism is being used, not only to blame black men for crime and poverty, but to incarcerate a political prisoner. In 1990, the Louisiana defense attorney argued against granting Tyler a pardon because he had "demanded that he be allowed to correspond with socialist publications … like the Socialist Worker," referring to the International Socialist Organization's weekly paper.
In September 2006, the International Socialist Review published an article on Tyler called "Three Decades of Injustice." Shortly after this publication, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert read the story and devoted a three-column series to Tyler. Corresponding with a renewed effort on the part of the Free Gary Tyler Campaign and Amnesty International, Tyler's struggle is now back in the national spotlight.
Tyler's supporters are circulating a national petition calling for his pardon. It can be signed by going online to www.freegarytyler.com/petition.php, and the article that rekindled the struggle can be read at www.isreview.org/issues/49/garytyler.shtml. After 30 years, it is time for Gary Tyler to be free.
Benjamin Ratliffe is a senior and a member of the International Socialist Organization.
