Gary Freeman

Douglas Gary Joseph Freeman is an African American now living in Canada. He grew up in Washington, D.C., a segregated city known for police brutality. As a high school student and then at Howard University, he became involved in the Civil Rights movement and then turned to Revolutionary Black Nationalism. Inspired by Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, he went to Chicago where he worked with a local South Side African American organization. Targeted by Chicago’s Red Squad for elimination, he had to fight for his life on a South Side street. The gun-battle that ensued left an officer wounded and the author wounded and in prison. The author began a long quest for justice weathering repeated and renewed threats to his life. He fled to Canada “illegally” and became Douglas Gary Joseph Freeman. Married with four children, he worked chiefly as a library professional in Toronto. Arrested on July 27, 2004 on an extradition warrant, after an 11-year successful struggle for justice, he was returned home to Canada in January 2015.