Let’s set the scene—Louisiana, 1974. A white teenager, Timothy Weber, is shot during a school bus fight. Instead of a real investigation, the police decide they don’t need evidence. They don’t need truth. They just need a Black scapegoat.
That scapegoat was Gary Tyler, a 16-year-old kid who barely had a chance to live before the system decided he was guilty.
They beat a confession out of him.
The murder weapon conveniently "appeared" after the fact.
Witnesses were pressured into lying.
And just like that, he was sentenced to death by electric chair.
Years later, when the courts admitted sentencing minors to death was too extreme, his sentence was reduced to life—but not because he was innocent, just because killing him outright didn’t look good anymore.
For 41 years, Gary Tyler sat in prison for a crime he never committed. Four decades stolen. And when they finally let him out in 2016, there was no apology, no compensation, no accountability. Just silence.
And people still want to pretend the system isn’t rigged? That this isn’t the reality Black people face?
Instead of just remembering our heroes, let’s talk about the people the system tried to erase. The ones who were framed, scapegoated, and thrown away because justice isn’t blind—it just refuses to see us.
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