Stitching Freedom

Stitching Freedom is Gary Tyler's memoir of a wrongful conviction and his years on death row in Angola prison. In 1975, at seventeen, Gary was sent to Angola to die. A year earlier he had been charged with killing a white teenager and found guilty by an all-white jury, which made him the youngest prisoner on death row in the United States.

Three times he was recommended for a pardon, and three times Louisiana governors refused to take on the political risk. After more than four decades behind bars, Tyler was released in 2016, but he was never exonerated. He presents his case not as one of mistaken identity or thin circumstantial evidence, but as the product of systemic injustice from an institution tied to the legacy of slavery, in effect a legal lynching.

Alongside that account, the book tells of pride, forgiveness, community and triumph. Gary describes how he learned to reject bitterness and keep fighting for freedom, supported by activists such as Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace inside prison and by a mass movement outside. It also shows how incarcerated people look after one another and push for justice.

The memoir stands in the tradition of books by Albert Woodfox and Angela Davis.