During Black History Month, the Innocence Project is spotlighting Black resilience through wrongful conviction — this is Gerry Thomas’s story:

John,

“Imagine you’re a grown up, but you’re treated like a little kid and you have all these restrictions — you can’t do this or that — and you have to obey someone that you don’t know and you’re innocent.” That’s how Gerry Thomas described being wrongly incarcerated for nearly 30 years.

He knew he had to find some kind of creative outlet, so he started making crafts in prison, and now, he wants to share his gift of creativity with the world. Please take a moment to read more about Gerry’s craftsmanship and share his story with your friends and family online.

In 1987, a Black woman in Detroit was threatened at knifepoint and sexually assaulted in her car. She eventually escaped and the man drove off with her car. Two years later, she thought she spotted her attacker and called the police. Police searched the area and encountered Gerry — and the woman identified him as her attacker, despite the fact that his light complexation and height did not match her original description.

Due to this eyewitness misidentification, Gerry would go on to spend nearly 30 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

“My mother always told me to ‘keep love in your heart,’” Gerry says. These words helped to give him strength on his darkest days while incarcerated.

Since he was a kid, Gerry always loved to make things. He would spruce up his clothes to make them his own, or make little trinkets out of items around the house or at school. He would then give them away to folks — and this continued in prison. He learned leatherworking while incarcerated and would craft belts and shoes. He made such beautiful pieces that other incarcerated people would ask him for specialty made items — even prison officers started asking him to make leather goods for their use. Gerry thrived off this. He called his artistry his “spiritual food” and used it as a way to keep moving forward and remain hopeful.

But in 1998, he was moved to a prison that was much stricter, and he had less access to crafting materials. So he found peace in his old gospel tapes, and the words of Dr. King.

Finally, in January 2020, Gerry was exonerated after a reinvestigation and finally set free.

Today, Gerry still collects and crafts items, and is looking forward to getting back to leatherworking. He continues to live by his mother’s words, “For the rest of my stay here on earth, I’m just going to try to keep love in my heart and go from there.” He said his main goal is to make people happy.

Please take a moment and read more about Gerry’s story, and share with the people you love most.

Gerry would love nothing more.

The Innocence Project Team