Jerry Ross (b. 1944)

Jerry Ross's "mugshot portrait of Martin Sostre," which was painted in his studio in Eugene, Oregon, has been used for the Martin Sostre Wikipedia page:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Sostre.

Martin Ramirez Sostre (March 20, 1923-August 12, 2015) was an American activist known for his role in the prisoners' rights movement…

He served time in Attica prison during the early 1960s, where he embraced doctrines as diverse as Black Muslimism, Black nationalism, Internationalism, and finally anarchism. In 1966 Sostre opened the first[1] Afro-Asian Bookstore at 1412 Jefferson in Buffalo, New York. For its somewhat short existence, Sostre's bookstore was a center for radical thought and education in the Buffalo ghetto. As Sostre details: "I taught continually - giving out pamphlets free to those who had no money. I let them sit and read for hours in the store. Some would come back every day and read the same book until they finished it. This was the opportunity I had dreamed about - to be able to help my people by increasing the political awareness of the youth." 

Sostre was arrested at his bookstore on July 14, 1967, for "narcotics, riot, arson, and assault," charges later proven to be fabricated, part of a COINTELPRO program. He was convicted and sentenced to serve forty-one years and thirty days. Sostre became a jailhouse lawyer, regularly acting as legal counsel to other inmates and winning two landmark legal cases involving prisoner rights….

In December 1973 Amnesty International put Sostre on its "prisoner of conscience" list, stating: "We became convinced that Martin Sostre has been the victim of an international miscarriage of justice because of his political beliefs ... not for his crimes ."… In addition to numerous defense committees in New York State, a Committee to Free Martin Sostre, made up of prominent citizens, joined in an effort to publicize Sostre's case and petition the New York Governo Hugh Carey for his release. On December 7, 1975, Russian Nobel Peace Laureate Andrei Sakharov added his name to the clemency appeal. Governor Carey granted Sostre clemency on Christmas Eve of 1975; Sostre was released from prison in February 1976….

In November 2017, the Frank E. Merriweather Jr. Library hosted To and From 1967: A Rebellion with Martin Sostre, an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Black rebellion on Buffalo's eastside. The event included an installation created by local eastside artist called Reviving Sostre. The installation consisted of three bookshelves painted by the artists and placed in the lobby of the Merriweather Library, which was built on the same location one of Sostre's bookstore used to stand. In addition, Just Buffalo Literary Center presented “The Civil Writes Project, To & From 1967: A Rebellion with Martin Sostre” on November 18, 2017. Their title puns on the word Rights to signal the literary event’s theme. https://www.justbuffalo.org/event/1967-rebellion-martin-sostre-20171118/

Jerry Ross stated: “Although the bulk of my artistic life has taken place in Eugene, Oregon where I settled after leaving Buffalo, some of my work was done while I lived and worked as an activist in Buffalo. I was Jerry Gross, one of the Buffalo Nine, but had to change my name to Jerry Ross once my federal trials were over and to continue my work on behalf of the Martin Sostre Defense Committee while on the road. You may remember Martin Sostre was an important political prisoner in Buffalo stemming from the 1967 riots and subsequent upheaval.”

The Buffalo Nine was a group of Vietnam War protesters who were arrested in 1968 at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Buffalo, NY on charges of draft evasion and assaulting an officer. University of Buffalo students and faculty picketed the U.S. Courthouse and their trial received media attention. Only the leader, Bruce Beyer, was convicted and received a 3-year sentence. In a second trial, two were acquitted, two were convicted; but the jury was unable to reach a verdict for Jerry Gross and the government dropped his case. For an interesting podcast about this, see “The Vietnam War, Protest, and Liberal Academia: The Buffalo Nine” published by Sarah Hendley-Cousins on August 27, 2017, which includes a complete transcript. (https://digpodcast.org/2017/08/27/buffalo-nine/)