While so many kids on the street are fighting for all of the wrong reasons. We say farewell to a man who not only inspired a movement but so many hip hop rebels in years to come.

Former Black Panther Party leader Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, whose murder conviction was overturned after he spent 27 years in prison for a crime he maintained he did not commit, died early Friday from a medical ailment, an associate said. He was 63. Pratt died just after midnight at his home in Imbaseni village, 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Arusha, Tanzania, where he had lived for at least half a decade, a friend of Pratt's in Arusha, former Black Panther Pete O'Neal, said. O'Neal said he suspects Pratt died of a heart attack or stroke. Pratt was taken to the hospital on Tuesday and Wednesday with high blood pressure. Pratt was convicted in 1972 of being one of two men who robbed and fatally shot schoolteacher Caroline Olsen on a Santa Monica tennis court in December 1968. No one else was arrested. Pratt claimed he was in Oakland for Black Panther Party meetings the day of the murder, and that FBI agents and police hid and possibly destroyed wiretap evidence that would prove it. The Black Panther Party was an African-American revolutionary leftist organization, active in the United States from 1966 until 1982. It achieved notoriety through its involvement in the Black Power movement and in U.S. politics of the 1960s and 70s.

via Former LA Black Panther leader Pratt dies at 63 - Yahoo! News.

We send our condolences to Pratt family and advise you to research your history on Geronimo Pratt and the Black Panthers movement. There is so much more to them, other then the negative tone that has been built around the name.

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