WASHINGTON, D.C.—In his mind’s eye, Gary Freeman can clearly see his wife and four grown children, laughing and joking in the kitchen of their family home on a quiet, leafy family street in Mississauga. He is particularly warmed by the thought of his 29-year-old daughter Tempie, who is due to give birth to his first grandchild this summer.
When he opens his eyes, however, Freeman, 61, is back living with his mother and stepfather in the same neighbourhood where he grew up in the racially divided 1960s. He is barred from re-entering Canada, in part because the federal government considers him to have been part of a terrorist organization — the Black Panthers, a militant black power group that ceased operating in the mid-’70s.
“It can physically ache to be apart from my family,” Freeman says in his first interview since he was arrested in March, 2004, outside the Metro Toronto Reference Library, where he worked as a librarian’s assistant. “Often, I awaken in the middle of the night and look around and begin to weep.”
Until his gunpoint arrest, Freeman, an African-American, had spent more than half of his life living peacefully in Canada. His kids were all born in Canada. Two are elementary schoolteachers, one played in the Canadian Football League and the other is an aide to Premier Dalton McGuinty.
But here’s the problem: He fled the U.S. and charges of shooting white Chicago police officer Terrence Knox in the arm in 1969. Freeman said he jumped bail only after he says he was shot at — he doesn’t know by whom — and threatened by two white men in suits while awaiting trial.
Freeman was 19 at the time. He maintains he shot Knox in self-defence, after the officer stopped him without probable cause, threatened his life, pressed a pistol against his head and called him “nigger.” He refuses to say why he was carrying a gun, other than to say it was a different, more dangerous time.
Knox disputes Freeman’s account. “He has shown no remorse for what he has done, only that he was caught.” He says Freeman is misleading Canadians and lived a secretive life under a false identity on the run in Montreal and Mississauga.
“This is hardly the kind of thing someone hiding would do,” Freeman says, listing his family’s public achievements: Two of his children won athletic scholarships in the U.S. and Freeman and his wife crossed the border frequently (using Canadian ID bearing the Freeman name) to watch them play; and he was featured prominently in a 1970s National Film Board documentary on natural childbirth, a film that remains in circulation today.
“I lived a full and constructive life. I looked toward the future, not the past.”
He still looks toward the future, but his future has never been more unclear. Should he be forgiven because of his decades of exemplary life in Canada? Or is he a terrorist who has been living a lie?
Freeman was born Joseph Pannell at the Freeman’s Hospital in Washington, where his birth certificate was marked “colored.”
After twice jumping bail in Chicago, Pannell adopted the first of several false names and made his way to Montreal in the early ’70s.
For a name, he eventually settled on Douglas Gary Freeman, with “Douglas” honouring abolitionist Frederick Douglass and “Gary” in honour of Gary, Indiana, a community that Freeman says was at the forefront in the struggle for equal rights.
“I knew about an old escaped slave graveyard around Chatham, Ontario, and it was there that I stood weeping amongst their spirits and gave birth to Douglas Gary Freeman in 1974,” he recalls. “I understood that I needed to be reborn.”
Rebirth also made him harder to find. He says he was able to acquire a Social Insurance Number as Freeman, paying taxes, like other citizens, under his new name.
He found a job in a library at Sir George Williams University, which became Concordia. That’s where he met his future wife Natercia. Their first encounter was at a university union meeting.
“I arrived late and when I got there things were getting pretty heated,” she says in an interview at their Mississauga home. “People were upset and there was shouting. And then I saw him. He was standing up near the front and to the side. He spoke very softly and all of a sudden the room went quiet. I don’t recall what he was saying but he certainly had everyone’s attention. I recall that he had amazing leadership skills. Who was he? He was able to calm people down and give them food for thought. He never raised his voice.”
They became a couple in 1979, just before his 30th birthday, while both were living in Montreal. They moved to Mississauga in 1987.
Natercia can’t recall exactly when Freeman told her about the Chicago shooting.
“I can’t give you an exact date or time or even place because I don’t remember. By this time, I knew the man that Gary was and is. He was a gentle person who thought all life was precious. He cared more about people than anyone that I had known. . . So, when he told me about the incident in Chicago I understood right away. You see, no one lives their life with such intensity unless they have been told they only have a few months to live or they have had a brush with death! I never really asked for specific details. I didn’t need to — the pain, the hurt — it was in his eyes and in his soul. He was a survivor.”
Freeman says he told her he planned to face up to “the horror in Chicago” after their children were grown. Natercia didn’t feel like the couple was looking over their shoulder.
“For what?” she asks. “You only look over your shoulder when you have done something wrong or you are afraid. Is falling in love with a man who has been a victim wrong? I never felt like we were hiding from anyone because we weren’t.”
Freeman says he wondered sometimes if his case had been abandoned. Twice he checked the name Joseph Pannell through lawyers in the mid to late ’80s and again after the death of his father in 1997. “No warrants,” says Freeman.
As they raised a family, he stressed a smoke- and drug-free home, where children received books as gifts. Toy guns, even water pistols, were banned, as were violent video games and cartoons, like those featuring the Road Runner and Elmer Fudd. He helped coach his daughters’ softball teams.
“Our home was always a magnet for all the neighborhood kids . . ., ” says Freeman. “In the summer the kids used to run in from the front door, straight through the house and out the back door to the back yard like a little herd of wild ponies. And they went through their skateboard/big wheel phase. And the boys went through their break-dancing phase. We would throw birthday parties and I’d put on the music and the boys would get up and do their little moves. It was great!”
His eyes take on a dreamy, far-away look as he talks of their daughters Tempie and Patia playing rep softball, touring Ontario for tournaments. “Often, both their teams would be playing at the same time so my wife would alternate between watching one then the other.”
Freeman tells stories of his life while sitting at the wood dinner table in his mother’s semi-detached home in northeast Washington, where she worked as an elementary schoolteacher. Family photos cover the walls and ledges, some dating back more than a century to North Carolina, when the family’s ancestors were slaves and sharecroppers.
“He has been in a situation that has been very humiliating for him,” says his mother Pauline, 83. “He has done well trying to get out of it. I’m just grateful that we are able to help him out in his situation.”
While he awaits word on his appeals to get back into Canada, Freeman sleeps upstairs in his childhood bedroom.
Freeman first thought he had stumbled on to a crime scene when he was arrested at gunpoint by tactical officers in 2004 outside the Metro Reference Library on Yonge Street. Police dogs barked furiously as Freeman was ordered to the ground. His wife, waiting in the car to pick him up, thought he was being mugged.
Instead of his roomy suburban home, he was sent to a tiny, dank cell in the Don Jail. His next four Christmases were spent behind bars.
At first he fought extradition, but then says he felt hope as Barack Obama began his successful run for the White House with the backing of the new Chicago power-brokers. The old Chicago of street wars between African-Americans and police appeared to be long gone.
Freeman’s saga appeared over when he accepted a plea bargain in February 2008 that saw him serve 30 days in jail for aggravated battery, plus the time he had served awaiting trial. Charges of attempted murder were dropped and he was also ordered to pay $250,000 to a fund for children of police officers who died in the line of duty. He completed his probation earlier this year.
For the first time Freeman, who remains an American citizen, was able to vote. (He did so as Gary Freeman, having legally changed his American identity.) Natercia came down for the occasion. He stood in line for four hours before voting for Obama.
Now, he wants to go home. To Mississauga.
In November, the federal government rejected his re-entry into Canada on two grounds: 1) his conviction for aggravated battery and 2) on national security grounds, claiming that he has been unable to refute media reports that he was a Black Panther. “The Black Panther Party is an organization which has engaged in terrorism,” asserts a letter sent by a Canadian Immigration official to Freeman.
Freeman says he was never a Black Panther, suggesting Chicago police have connected him with the group to smear him. Prosecutors acknowledged at the time of his plea bargain that they had not verified that Freeman was connected to the Black Panthers.
Regardless, Freeman and his lawyer point out that former Black Panthers frequently travel to Canada. Activist and former Black Panther supporter Angela Davis spoke at the Bloor Cinema in February.
“I can go anywhere (else) I want in to world, but I can’t go to Canada,” Freeman says. “The Canadian government is the opposite of emancipation.”
The terrorism allegation is crucial because the label severely limits his ability to appeal immigration decisions, says his lawyer, Barbara Jackman. Refusals to admit him based on the conviction could be overturned on humanitarian grounds, she adds.
Among those pleased with the Canadian government’s stance is Knox.
He remains bitter, despite agreeing to the plea bargain when it was struck. In an email from his Orland Park, Ill., home, Knox says that Freeman should eventually be charged with murder for the 1969 shooting. Knox was recently diagnosed with cancer, an illness he blames on blood transfusions that followed his 1969 injury.
Wrote Knox: “Once the evidence supports the illnesses are a result of the shooting it is my intent to seek murder charges against Joseph Pannell upon my death.”
Freeman is trying to stay positive and active in Washington, remaining fit and pursuing photography. Before his arrest in 2004, his pictures had been published by Maclean’s magazine and the Montreal Gazette.
Natercia, who tries to visit monthly, applied in November 2008 to sponsor his re-entry into Canada. They are awaiting a final decision after having objected to the assessment that Freeman does not qualify for a temporary resident permit.
“You write letters and nobody answers,” Jackman says. “She can’t appeal, because there’s no decision to appeal.”
Nights and evenings are particularly lonely for Freeman. That’s when he and Natercia turn on their computer notebooks and chat via the Internet phone service Skype. That’s also how he watched Tempie’s recent baby shower.
“He deserves to be at home with us, his family,” says Tempie, a special assistant, operations, in the premier’s office. “And we don’t deserve to continue to be punished with his absence and the unknown of when or if we will ever get to see him at home again.”
In Washington, Freeman’s face clouds as the conversation shifts back to his fears that he won’t be allowed into Canada for the birth of his first grandchild.
“All I have done is what any sane person would have done — I defended myself, then removed myself from harm’s reach so I could raise my family and lead a good life. They say the proof is in the pudding. Well, my life in Canada is my pudding.”
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