John Sinclair

John Sinclair was a Detroit poet, jazz writer and political organiser whose prison sentence for two marijuana cigarettes made him the best-known cannabis prisoner in the United States of the early 1970s. In 1969 a Michigan judge gave him nine and a half to ten years. Two and a half years later fifteen thousand people came to an arena in Ann Arbor to demand his release, and in March 1972 the Michigan Supreme Court reversed his conviction.^[1][2][3]

His case belongs to the law as much as to the counterculture. It showed how heavily a state could punish possession of a small amount, and it became the occasion for an annual gathering, the Hash Bash, that still meets.^[1][4]

Poet, manager, Panther

Sinclair was born in Flint in 1941. In Detroit in the mid-1960s he wrote poetry and jazz criticism and managed the rock band MC5 from 1966 to 1969. In 1968 he founded the White Panther Party with Pun Plamondon, a white radical group conceived as a counterpart to the Black Panther Party.^[3]

He was also a target. In December 1966 he was arrested for giving two joints to an undercover police officer.^[3]

Ten years for two joints

At trial the charge of selling was dismissed on grounds of entrapment, and he was convicted of possessing the two cigarettes. On 28 July 1969 he was sentenced to nine and a half to ten years in prison.^[1]

The length of the sentence for so small an amount made him a cause, and a “Free John Sinclair” campaign grew through his years in prison.^[2][5]

The Freedom Rally

On 10 December 1971 the John Sinclair Freedom Rally filled the Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor. John Lennon and Yoko Ono headlined, with musicians, poets and political speakers. Lennon sang a song he had written for the occasion, “John Sinclair”, later released on Some Time in New York City.^[2][3] The concert did not overturn the conviction, but Sinclair was freed three days later, having served twenty-nine months.^[3][4]

People v. Sinclair

On 9 March 1972 the Michigan Supreme Court reversed and set aside the conviction and ordered his discharge. The justices wrote separate opinions rather than one, and the case is cited as People v. Sinclair, 387 Mich. 91.^[1] The ruling is remembered as the decision that struck down Michigan’s marijuana statutes.^[3]

On 1 April 1972 the first Hash Bash gathered on the University of Michigan’s Diag in Ann Arbor. It has met every year since, on or near the first Saturday of April.^[4]

Later life

Sinclair went on writing, performing poetry with musicians, and broadcasting. He worked as a disc jockey in New Orleans, lived for years in Amsterdam, where he founded a foundation in 2004 and from 2005 ran a radio show, and kept campaigning for cannabis. On 1 December 2019, when legal sales began in Michigan, he was among the first customers. He died in Detroit on 2 April 2024, and that year’s Hash Bash was held in his memory.^[3][4]