Living with injustice: Gary Tyler had his life taken away, yet managed to claw it back.

Living with injustice: Gary Tyler had his life taken away, yet managed to claw it back. 
The Progressive Magazine; by Bill Lueders; 10/6/25 
Just as I sat down to write this review of former death row inmate Gary Tyler’s memoir, I noticed that its publication date is the fifty-first anniversary of the day that upended his life: October 7, 1974. This undoubtedly deliberate timing, like the book itself, serves to help close the circle around Tyler’s remarkable—at times, almost unbelievable—life journey. That was the day Tyler, then a sixteen-year-old Black youth, was arrested for the shooting death of a thirteen-year-old white boy at their high school in Destrehan, Louisiana, about twenty-five miles from New Orleans. He was taken into custody and beaten so severely that he was left with permanent physical scars, as well as psychological ones. Police and prosecutors ignored and withheld evidence of his innocence, and suborned perjury by threatening witnesses. One witness, Natalie Blanks, was told she would be charged as an accessory to murder and miss out on her baby’s life if she didn’t falsely testify that she saw Tyler fire a gun from inside a bus. Stitching Freedom: A True Story of Injustice, Defiance, and Hope in Angola Prison is, for much of its first half especially, an intensely bleak book.
Editor's Note: See previous significant posts in our newsletter about Gary Tyler and this transformative hospice program at Angola Prison.

• Penny Stamps speaker Gary Tyler shares his wrongful conviction story, empowers communities through art
• Fabric artist's new exhibition in Historic Overtown sheds light on 41 years of wrongful incarceration
• At Frieze LA, Gary Tyler finds resilience after prison—in each stitch of his poignant quilts
• Death and redemption in an American prison