Indeed, we are all -- Black and white alike -- ill in the same way, mortally ill. But before we die, how shall we live? I say with hope and dignity; and if premature death is a result, that death has a meaning reactionary suicide can never have. It is the price of self-respect.
Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death. We will have to be driven out with a stick ....
-- Huey P. Newton [1]
TENS OF THOUSANDS of ghetto souls came into contact with the Party daily. Elementary school students attended the morning breakfast programs, adult poor came for the free clothing and free shoes programs, the ill came to the Party's People's Medical Centers across the nation for sickle cell anemia testing, and treatment for high-blood pressure, sexually transmitted diseases, and other fairly simple ailments. To this number must be added those many people who bought the Party's newspaper, The Black Panther, on ghetto street corners, in bars, in beauty parlors, and outside high schools.
Who were these people called Black Panthers?
Much has been written about Party leadership, its so-called stars: the photogenic Newton, the charismatic (Eldridge) and brilliant (Kathleen) Cleavers, the ambitious and talented Elaine Brown, the long-suffering Geronimo, and the like. As leaders, many of these people formed the Party's public profile and came to typify a Black Panther in much of the public mind.
Most people, indeed most Panthers, never came into intimate contact with such people, for they usually traveled in rarefied, higher strata than did the average Panther.
The average young man or woman in the Black Panther Party was between seventeen and twenty-two years old, lived in a collective home with other Panthers, worked long and hard days (and sometimes nights) doing necessary Party work without pay, and owned nothing. Except to their neighbors, and, of course, the ubiquitous police (and their snitches), most Panthers lived in relative obscurity and rarely, if ever, got their picture in the paper (in either the bourgeois press or the Party press). Friends, comrades, and lovers were primarily other Party members.
With very little exception, other than the folks who participated in the various programs, most Panthers spent every waking hour with other Panthers. The people looked up to and admired were the leadership, but close, loving relationships, of true care and concern, were with fellow Panthers. They were our confidants, our counselors, our comrades -- those we could be easy and relaxed around.
The average Panther rose at dawn and retired at dusk and did whatever job needed to be done to keep the programs going for the people, from brothers and sisters cooking breakfast for the school kids, to going door-to-door to gather signatures for petitions, to gathering clothes for the free clothing program, to procuring donated supplies from neighboring merchants.
The average Panther's life was long, hard, and filled with work.
A Philadelphia-born member of the Oakland branch was struck by the deep poverty she found among Party members in West Oakland:
Many of the brothers were hunters so they cut up the deer meat in the back of the office. I almost fainted. The Panther men in particular laughed at my reaction, but after it was cooked, I refused to eat the meat. Knowing that I was very hungry, some of them chased me around the office and playfully urged me to sample the spicy scented deer. Ironically, as we fed hungry children breakfast, and later gave out bags of groceries to the poor, oftentimes Panthers themselves had little food and certainly little money. We lived mostly off paper sales. We sold each Panther paper for twenty-five cents and kept ten cents for ourselves. [2]
While that division of the paper sales money may have been the case for her chapter, it differed in other places. In some chapters, where Panther members lived communally and ate Party dinners, it was argued that the additional dime should be donated to the office, for the Party met all of the essential needs of its fulltime members. That was certainly the case for the Philadelphia office.
People could be affiliated with the Party in the following ways:
Party supporter: This person might buy a paper or attend a rally organized by the Party, but was not a member.
Community worker: This person might donate time to Party efforts, as some non-Panthers would assist in the breakfast program, for example, or assist the Party in administering Party programs. Often, this person would be unable to secure parental permission to formally join the Party, but would help in some form; as students who sold the paper at their school, for example.
Panther-in-training (PIT): These were probationary members, who were expected to memorize the 10-Point Program and Platform; they were expected to obtain a copy of the Red Book by Mao Tse-Tung and to learn from it the Three Main Rules of Discipline and to memorize them. These PITs would also be required to attend a given number of Political Education (PE) classes, to learn more about the Party. If a PIT failed to attend required PE classes, he or she would be counseled and if unresponsive, could be dropped from consideration for full membership.
Black Panther: These persons were expected to use any and all of their skills or expertise to help build and protect the organization and further its aims and objectives as determined by local, regional, and national leadership. They were traditionally full-time Party operatives, who spent virtually seven days a week conducting Party business.
Being a Black Panther, for many members, was never a single thing; indeed, it was many things, at different times, in different places. Panthers were taught to eschew what was called careerism and to shun compartmentalist thinking. This meant that one should not perceive any given rank as one's own, nor to look at things from a narrow, linear perspective, but from a broad one, asking, "What is in the best interest of the Party?" Individualism, like careerism, was seen as a negative, bourgeois trait that was criticized. The highest achievement was for a brother or sister to think in collectivist terms, as in we not 1.
This way of thinking fostered humility, self-sacrifice, and discipline in Party ranks. It promoted the best interests of the collective, rather than arrogance and egotism, which threatened cohesion and working relationships.
In this environment, the Party became the central focus in the lives of thousands of Panthers across the nation, and an extraordinary morale and sense of unity of purpose were engendered. Thus, there were few things more exciting than meeting a fellow Panther from another part of the country.
Although there is considerable linguistic diversity in Black America, these regional forms of speech did not divide Panthers, but acted as bonds of affection between brothers and sisters. The deep, southern drawls of our North Carolinian or Virginian comrades drew smiles from Pennsylvanians or New Yorkers in the Party. Similarly, when we met Panthers from New Haven or Boston who wanted to drive a "cah" to the "bah," we found ourselves rolling on the ground, giddy with laughter, and really with a kind of amazement that Black people -- Black Panthers -- really talked like that. In many of these informal settings, Panthers learned from other Panthers how life was lived in different parts of this vast nation.
That joy, however, was tempered by gritty moments of terror. The slaughters of the sleeping Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in a Panther pad in Chicago on December 4, 1969, had sent a disturbing message to Panthers all across the nation: we will kill you in your sleep with impunity.
Some chapters had more intense relationships with the police than others, with the aggressive Los Angeles chapter finding an equally aggressive adversary in the Los Angeles Police Department. Panthers trying to sell papers, an action allegedly protected by the First Amendment, learned otherwise in the wilds of LA when met by members of the LAPD. In 1968, a sixteen-year-old Panther named Flores Forbes:
was stopped by the LAPD while selling Black Panther newspapers almost every single day. The cops insulted me, beat me, and, usually, dislodged my papers from under my arm, causing them to fly all over the streets of South Central Los Angeles. Even when I invoked the principles and guidelines of the Pocket Lawyer of Legal First Aid, the cops would bristle. "Nigger, you, your mama, and them other Black motherfuckers in the country have no constitutional rights that we recognize." [3]
How can one claim that the infamous Dred Scott opinion is truly ancient history and not the ever-present law of the land?
Forbes had an extraordinary career in the Party, one that lasted almost a decade and that took him from LA to the Party headquarters in northern California, to the homes of the highest ranked members of the organization. He rose from a rank-and-file member who sold Panther papers seven days a week and served free breakfasts to school kids, to Officer of the Day (OD) of both the LA office and, later, the San Francisco office. He was assigned to the Ministry of Information and worked as a community news reporter; he later served as Assistant Chief of Staff of the entire Party in 1974.
Now an urban planner and scholar, Forbes has written what may be the most remarkable, certainly the most detailed, and chilling account of a raid on a Black Panther office ever yet published in the non-BPP press. As a contributor to the anthology Police Brutality, he does not fall into the easy trap of macho posturing, but freely reports his moments of high anxiety and even fear while the office was under siege -- an unexpected, unprovoked attack that came about a year and a half after the infamous LAPD paramilitary assault on another LA Panther office on December 8, 1969.
In Forbes's account, the late September day in 1971 was unremarkable. The office was filling with members returning from selling BPP newspapers. The OD, Sheldon Jones, left his desk to perform a security check of the premises and the surrounding area. The residential building was an office to be sure, but largely indistinguishable from the single family, detached, three bedroom homes in this South Central neighborhood.
What set the house apart, however, was a bright, powder blue and black sign erected in the front yard designating the site as the Southern California chapter of the Black Panther Party. What also distinguished the home was that it was prepared for war. In a bedroom, off to the side, a locked cabinet stood, stocked with riot pump shotguns, an AR-180, and a number of handguns. Its walls were packed with earth, and trenches lined the four sides of the house. Gun ports were placed discreetly at eight locations and an "eagle's nest," installed by a Vietnam veteran named Simba, sat in the attic. Forbes writes:
We had been "tunneling for freedom" for the past two months. We dug straight down through the floor of a closet in one of our bedrooms for about ten feet and then hollowed out an area, like a vestibule that had two tunnels heading in different directions .... Each of the tunnels went directly to an exit under our neighbors' homes .... [4]
Forbes further explained that as the OD made his daily rounds of the property he was seized and surrounded by six to eight cops, who trained their weapons on him and disarmed him. A Panther sister inside witnessed Jones's seizure and alerted the others:
I started to hear the pounding of feet and the jingling of keys on the right side of the office. The police were outflanking us and taking up positions in our neighbor's yard. I could also hear the heavy engines from LAPD squad cars roaring through the alley. They literally shook the house. I noticed, as had everyone else, that the police in the front street were positioning themselves behind their cars with revolvers and riot shotguns ... [I] was somewhat alarmed at the speed with which everything unfolded and the precision displayed by this group of cops. I asked myself a very personal question, "Was this it?" [5]
The Panthers reported to their Defense Captain, who unlocked the gun cabinet and distributed weapons to disciplined Panthers standing in line. He also checked to see if every Panther knew his proper defensive position, to which each promptly reported.
Forbes was assigned to the trenches, in the northeast corridor, a hot, dirty, and dusty area:
I started to sweat profusely. Nevertheless, I loaded the shotgun, chambering the last round -- a rifled slug. I set my bandolier down in the dirt and waited, still sweating. From my vantage point, I could see our front yard, grass level. I removed the screen from my gun port, exposing the wire mesh that remained to protect me from tear gas canisters. I put the barrel of my shotgun near, but not completely out of, the gun port. Everything got quiet in the office, which made me believe we were all in position and ready to defend ourselves. To me at that moment, this was what it was all about: taking a stand and letting the state know that somewhere in our community a group of people were prepared to fight and die, if necessary.
The house started to rattle. The trees in our yard and across the street started to swirl. The once still grass began to flutter. It was the LAPD's chopper descending slowly and then drawing to a hover over the office. In the street outside the office and over the sound of the chopper, I could hear hundreds of our neighbors shouting and yelling at the police, who had once more invaded our community as if they were an occupying army in a foreign land. [6]
For about a half hour, both sides remained armed and waiting for action, nerves a-jangle with tension. That day, however, it did not come.
The cops pulled back, and before long the order to stand down was given. Panthers climbed up from the dark, dusty tunnels, turned in their weapons to their captain, and lived to fight another day.
According to Forbes, such faux attacks occurred weekly or biweekly in the LA area.
At first blush, it would seem like the LAPD staged dry runs to keep Panthers off-balance or to give their personnel on-site training for real raids to come. But as Forbes explains, these raids had a draining effect on the Party. A week after the raid four Panthers deserted. The LAPD managed to hurt the LA chapter without firing a single shot.
The infamous raid of December 8, 1969, on the chapter's former headquarters on LA's Central Avenue featured the first time that an American police department utilized a Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) unit. For six long, harrowing hours, LA Panthers and the LAPD traded gunfire.
The LA chapter was led and defended by the legendary Geronimo ji-Jaga, who fortified the headquarters and set up defensive positions. Ji-Jaga [ne Pratt] drew on lessons learned while fighting for the Empire in Vietnam. Upon his return, he was drafted into the Black Panther Party and served as Deputy Minister of Defense of the Southern California Chapter. Miraculously, because of the office's defensive preparations no one died from the December 8 police assault. Two Panthers and two cops were wounded.
Ironically, the Panthers suffered most when the public and media showed up and they surrendered to the police. Many, both men and women, were brutally beaten by the cops. The cops had their special targets of vengeance, like Paul Redd, the chapter's youthful Deputy Minister of Culture, a gifted artist whose work earned the praise of those who saw it in the national Black Panther newspaper and regional party publications. It earned him as well the enmity of the State. When he was arrested and his name learned, the members of the LAPD brutally broke the fIngers of his right hand. Undaunted, Redd learned to draft art with his left.
Though some left the Party, many Panthers withstood the attempted intimidations and State terrorism that was trained on Black revolutionaries for a very simple reason. Many had harsh memories of police violence or indignities that predated their membership in the Party. They therefore reasoned that the vicious, brutal behavior would not ease if they left the Party, but might in fact worsen if the Party didn't exist, and could not openly oppose it.
When Forbes reflected on his earliest childhood memories, they are marred by his contact with racist cops. As a twelve-year-old boy, riding around his neighborhood on a bike, Forbes was picked up by two white cops and ordered to get into the black and white. He was terrified and did as he was told:
They drove me up the hill on Market Street toward San Diego. After a ten or fifteen-minute ride, they pulled into a residential area just short of downtown and drove up to several other police officers and a young White couple. The car stopped, and the cop on the passenger side got out and walked over to the group of people. After a few brief words, which T could not hear, the officer pointed toward me sitting in the back seat, explaining something to them as he pointed. The cop and the couple walked over to the car and peered in. By this time my entire body was shaking with fear. All I could think about was going home and never riding my bike again. The couple looked at each other and spoke a few more words I couldn't hear (they never rolled the window down). The White man stood back from the window, shaking his head from side to side. He then took his woman by the hand and walked back toward the six or so policemen and they huddled again. The policeman returned to the car. They drove me back to Forty-Seventh Street and pulled into the parking lot where I had been kidnapped.
A huge crowd had gathered in the parking lot, and standing in the center was my mother. The policeman stopped, got out, went around to open the trunk and got my bike, while the other cop opened the back door to let me out. Man was I glad! My mother, with the crowd of neighbors in tow, approached the cop asking, "What are you doing with Flores? Did he do anything wrong?"
The cop who had my bike told my mother, "Back away bitch, this is official police business." [7]
Forbes saw a rage in his mother's face that he never saw before. That fear and rage was doubtless a factor in Forbes's decision some four years later to join the Black Panther Party.
A Philadelphia Story
Philadelphia, with its vast Black population, was a rich recruitment pool and a responsive propagation ground for the Black Panther Party.
We were gifted with a smart, levelheaded defense captain, Reggie Schell, and the over-the-top presence of the late Frank Rizzo as a political adversary. Most of the members were of high school-graduate age, with a smattering of military veterans among the officers and senior members.
Rizzo, as police commissioner in the 1970s and later mayor of Philadelphia, was an ambitious politician who knew well the value of appealing directly to white ethnics by engaging in repressive tactics against Black citizens. In one of his mayoral campaigns, he urged his supporters to "vote white." Members of the Party could always count on Rizzo to do, or say, something provocative and controversial, which would rebound to the organization's benefit.
Despite the ever-present repression, the police harassments, and the arrests, the city's chapter blossomed as Black youth flocked to the offices to join the Party. We had Panther supporters in most of the city high schools, selling and sharing the newspapers. By fall 1970, we fed kids in four sites throughout the city; across from the main office in North Philadelphia on Columbia Avenue in a storefront next to a supermarket; in West Philadelphia, in a church near Party headquarters; in Germantown; and in a community center in South Philadelphia. Soon, another center would open on Susquehanna Avenue, the second in North Philadelphia.
Hundreds of children were fed well, thanks to their elders in the Black Panther Party.
For most Panthers, the day began shortly after daybreak, as we awoke in our communal apartments, grabbed a quick munch, and rushed to our offices.
There, the Officer of the Day would assign Panthers to various duties throughout the day. Some were sent to high schools. Others would be sent out to sell papers. Still others would be sent out to have petitions signed. The time of a Panther would always be spent working for the Revolution.
Sometimes our work routine would change if we were relayed orders that originated from National. Such was the case in the fall of 1970, when the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention was planned for Philadelphia, and thousands of radicals and revolutionaries were expected to attend. This was supposed to be the Party's clarion call to all radicals to converge in a convention to write a new egalitarian, liberational Constitution for a Revolutionary New America.
Several days before the event, a group of young Blacks, who were not Panthers, engaged in a deadly shoot-out with members of the Philadelphia Park police. Rizzo seized on this event to justify an unprovoked series of raids against local offices of the Black Panther Party. The predawn raids were Rizzo's attempt to destabilize and humiliate the Panthers as well as to derail the imminent convention. Captain Reggie recalls:
About five o'clock that morning I was asleep, and somebody woke me up (we used to pull guard duty in the Panthers anyway) and said, "They're here." I looked out the window, and they're lined up across the street with sub machine guns, shotguns; they're in the alley. I saw the head man clearly, he had a pistol and a gas mask strapped to his leg; he was bending down, and then all hell broke loose. Finally, we had children in there and the gas got to them too much so we had to come out.
Each cop took an individual Panther and placed their pistol up back of our neck and told us to walk down the street backward. They told us if we stumble or fall they're gonna kill us. Then they lined us up against the wall and a cop with a .45 sub would fire over our heads so the bricks started falling down. Most of us had been in bed, and they just ripped the god damn clothes off everybody, women and men. They had the gun, they'd just snatch your pants down and they took pictures of us like that.
Then they put us in a wagon and took us down to the police station. We were handcuffed and running down this little driveway; when we got to the other end of it, a cop would come by with a stick and he'd punch us, beat us. Some of us were bleeding; I know I was bleeding, but really I thought it would be a whole lot worse. [8]
Rizzo had his photo op: embarrassed, naked Panthers. But it had the opposite effect he intended. Support for the Panthers was wide and deep, the fruit of anger and outrage unleashed by the publication of the photos in the media. Community groups protested and some sued the city for their sanctioning of such police tactics against Black Philadelphians. Progressive attorneys organized legal defense and bail hearings for the imprisoned Panthers, some of whom had $100,000 bail.
On September 4, 1970, the registration for the convention opened, and over six thousand people came from across the country in support. One contemporary observer, the late Rev. Paul Washington, would term the Philadelphia Panthers "essentially a nonviolent movement." [9] He came to know, respect, and admire Captain Reggie for his sincerity and his down-to-earth style. Captain Reggie could be tough and gruff, as well as sensitive and even silly. He knew that people were motivated by hope and strengthened by love. He knew, instinctively, that people were drawn to the Party by boundless youthful idealism and that therefore the fear tactics that often accompanied paramilitary organizations would not work with the young people around him. We were there to serve our people, to defend our people, and to protect our community. We were servants of the people. Those ideas sparked us and carried us through dark days and too-short nights.
Being a Panther in Philadelphia was a unique challenge. One was home, but not at home. For "home" meant where Panthers dwelled, not where one's mother lived or where one's biological brothers and sisters lived.
It meant living in a family of several hundred young men and women, all dedicated to building, defending, or promoting the revolutionary collective. With offices in several sections of the nation's fourth largest city, the BPP was in contact with broad segments of the Black community on a frequent and daily basis: in North Philadelphia, through the two offices at 1928 West Columbia Avenue and 2935 West Columbia Avenue; in West Philadelphia, through the office at 3625 Wallace Street; and in Germantown, through the office at 428 West Queen Lane. There was a free breakfast program for schoolchildren in a South Philadelphia community center and near all major offices.
The offices were like buzzing beehives of Black resistance. It was always busy, as people piled in starting at its 7:30 a.m. opening time and continuing 'till after nightfall. People came with every problem imaginable, and because our sworn duty was to serve the people, we took our commitment seriously.
Early in the morning, we might get visits from nearby merchants, who just wanted to chat. We welcomed such visits, for they normalized our presence in the neighborhood, and they cemented relationships with businesspeople who had a stake in the area. When people had been badly treated by the cops or if parents were demanding a traffic light to slow traffic on North Philly streets where their children played, they came to our offices. In short, whatever our people's problems were, they became our problems. We didn't preach to the people; we worked with them. Some of us worked hard to develop relationships with our neighbors, because we knew that they knew the neighborhood intimately and they could teach us things about it. Throughout the early afternoon, we would get visits from school kids, not those of breakfast school age, but junior high and high school kids, who wanted to sell the paper in their schools. We would caution them to be careful, to only take as many as they were fairly certain they could sell, and ask them to return to the office 20 cents on each paper sold before the week was out.
One of our closest neighbors were the Siedlers, a family who ran a children's clothing store across the street from us. They were an older couple, affectionately called Mom and Pop Siedler, who lived in an apartment overtop their Columbia Avenue storefront. Although they were white, they were warm and supportive, and as they were apparently well-read in Marxist literature, we held political discussions with them after the office was closed. One of our sisters, a mother with a young child, stayed with them, as it seemed far more conducive to their well-being than the rough and tumble and dangerous Panther pad where we lived communally. Although unstated, we knew that the cops would be more hesitant to raid a home where white merchants lived, than a Black Panther apartment building, where we were known to be well-armed. The sister was the wife of a well-known Panther from the West Coast who left the country surreptitiously, so we were grateful for the Siedlers' generosity and kindness. Unfortunately, all did not go well for the Siedlers as Pop (Bill) was killed during a robbery of the downstairs store. We shared our grief with Mom (Miriam) at the tragic loss of her mate.
As an officer, it was disconcerting to have older members come to me with Party, and even personal, problems. I had to dispel the suspicion that I was a young snot, convince them instead that I had the confidence of the chapter and Party leadership, and thus had a duty to try to do my level best to help any Panther brother or sister, older or younger, who came for help, and if unable to do so, to refer them to other leaders in the organization.
The days were full, the nights too short, and the fellowship was electric with Black love and die-hard commitment.
One could be transferred in the blink of an eye, for reasons that were beyond one's ken. A Panther accepted this with equanimity or even looked forward to it with anticipation.
I was excited when transferred to the BPP Ministry of Information in the Bronx, New York. The size and scale of New York's five boroughs were stunning. It would take a vast metropolis like New York to make a city like Philadelphia seem small and somewhat parochial.
The people of the Bronx were outgoing and warm in their response. Once, while we were racing from our home on Kelly Street to the office on Boston Road near Prospect, we hailed a cab, and as all five of us couldn't fit in the back, the cabbie, a middle-aged guy who spoke with Spanish-accented, broken English, invited one of us into the front seat, where he and his woman sat. He was a happy, gregarious man who exuded an infectious joi de vivre. He passed around hot, steaming English muffins to his riders and chatted amiably with us in a way that warmed us despite the biting New York winter all about us. I couldn't help thinking that we wouldn't have received such warm hospitality if we were in the city that claims to be reflective of brotherly love. Philadelphia never seemed smaller or meaner.
New York's branches were also unique in the racial composition of party members, for it was the only site where Puerto Ricans served as Panthers. While they seemed to make up a higher percentage in Brooklyn, there were also some in our Bronx and Harlem branches. Some were former members of the Young Lords Party, who, because of their African heritage or their radicalism, felt more at home en el Partido Pantero Negro. They gave the Party a deeper penetration in the communities of color in New York and served with both pride and distinction.
New York seemed like an ethnic and cultural stew that was far more varied and textured than its Oakland-based progenitor. In New York, for example, a significant portion of Panthers were Sunni Muslims, as many of them had either known personally, or profoundly respected the Sunni-convert, Al Hajji Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X). Indeed, Dr. Curtis Powell (one of the famed New York Panther 21) met and talked with Malcolm in Paris after his pilgrimage to Mecca. Fellow Panther 21 veteran Richard Harris heard Malcolm preach as a Black Muslim minister at the Newark Temple.
Consequently the National Office saw the New York branch as somewhat skewed, perhaps tacking toward the dreaded heresy of "cultural nationalism." New York Panthers boasted African or Islamic-oriented names, had Hispanic names or accents, often wore African or traditional garb, and were riotously independent. The secular, uniformed center in California looked at New York as a wildly undisciplined little brother (with, incidentally, a larger membership).
If Philadelphia was busy, then New York was a frenzy.
Everywhere one turned there was something new to learn about this vast tableau. In Philadelphia, Broad Street was the main artery, dissecting the city into North and South Philadelphia. If you knew Broad Street, you knew Philadelphia. What in the name of heaven did one do in New York, where five huge cities (they called them boroughs, but they looked like cities to me) converged into an amorphous, octopus-like mass of confusion. Manhattan? The Bronx? Harlem? Queens? Staten Island? IRT? IND? New York was a vast puzzle that a young Philadelphia Panther tried to solve daily. Native New Yorkers rarely helped, for they assumed that anybody with half a brain would know, almost instinctively, what the IND or IRT lines meant in the subways. I had to learn how to ask questions and how to pick up keys for what train went where, and when. It was dizzying and challenging.
More than once I dozed during a subway ride, only to wake on a darkened car, out in some huge, dark subway yard, and have to find my way back. Many times I spent hours walking from place to place, selling papers or traveling from our office to the apartment. I was more confident in my walking than engaging the alphabet soup of the subway and El system.
After several months in the bustling city, several of us were informed we would be leaving that very night for the West Coast. Brad, Stephanie, and I were driven to New York's LaGuardia Airport, given cash for tickets, and told to catch the next flight to San Francisco, California. Brad, Stephanie, and I were artists and writers for Party leaflets and other media that came through the Ministry of Information. We were all excited about going out West, I, perhaps more than my comrades, because I had never flown before. We had no real luggage (as Panthers, we owned little), but Stephanie had a carry-on bag for her cosmetics, a few dresses, and other female necessaries. A chocolate-skinned, deeply dimpled, slender young woman, Stephanie was one of the few Panther women who seemed to utilize makeup.
As we were boarding the plane, a strange thing happened to us. We were walking down the accordion-like feeder tube to the plane, when the stewardess closed the door abruptly and a troop of armed men in dark suits appeared, as if they were waiting for us. They leaped at us as if we were the Al Capone gang, instead of Black Panther artists and writers. They rifled through what bags we had, searched us as if they expected to find a bazooka, and spoke nastily to us, in the way cops do to spark angry responses, "We gotcha now, nigger!" We looked at each other, our eyes betraying exasperation and muffled laughter. When they found no weapons, they seemed deeply disappointed and somewhat deflated; they stormed away, leaving threats instead of the expected arrests. Almost as if on cue, the blonde stewardess reopened the door of the plane, and with a fake Barbie-doll smile, welcomed three tousled Panthers aboard her flight, the New York-to-San Francisco overnight. To ease the tension of my first flight, I plucked a tightly wound joint out of my jacket pocket and lit it up, drawing a deep draught of the pungent herb into my lungs. Almost before I could taste it, a stewardess appeared at my elbow to announce, "Smoking marijuana on board American Airlines is a violation --" and she cited a statute. "Please put it out, sir!" she perkily ordered. I almost choked. I was so rattled that I did exactly that and rode across the country at night, marveling at the sheer vastness of the nation, its cities flashing by beneath us like a distant swarm of lightning bugs.
We shed our stifling winter gear at the door of the plane; the California warmth of March 1970 greeted us as we alighted from the silver-skinned bird. The heat, compared to the icy temperatures of the Bronx, was almost unbearable. Stephanie was sent to the San Francisco office, I to the national office, and Brad I know not where.
Upon arrival, I was sent to the office of Judi Douglass, editor of The Black Panther, to assist her in any form she wished. She was a sweet, gentle woman, with a soft, southern accent, who seemed to always possess an aura of sadness about her.
But it was a rare Panther who did one job. I wrote; I read; I edited; I shoveled sand for our sandbags; I sold papers; I worked security; I did all that I was ordered to do.
One night, I was posted to night watch, a job requiring one to stand armed and to watch the rear of the national office on Shattuck Avenue for any incursion from the police. My job was to watch the side alleys, the rear concrete yard, and the rooftops; the side alleys, the rear yard, and the rooftops; the side alleys, the rear yard, and the rooftops; the side alleys, the rear yard and the rooftops .... and all of a sudden, I felt a dull thump, and it felt like I got hit in the head with a hammer: I fell. I looked, surprised, at Willie Dawkins and was about to ask him what happened:
"Willie! What the -- ?"
"Nigga! Wachu mean, 'What the --?' Nigga! You was 'sleep! Don't you know you sleepin' ona job coulda got us killed? What if the pigs had vamped?"
"Sleep? Hub? Wachu mean? -- I-uh -- ?"
"Nigga -- I called you four times! Four times! You didn't hear me, did you?"
"But I wasn't 'sleep, man --"
"Then how'd I getcha gun? Huh?"
I then saw that it wasn 't a hammer that hit me but the butt of a shotgun. I was asleep? I was asleep. Standing up. On post. On night watch. I had dreamed that I was awake, watching the side alleys, the rear yard, and the rooftops. Willie was right. I had endangered every Panther asleep within the walls. My head ringing, crestfallen I apologized to Willie.
"Nigga, don't be sorry -- be alert!"
The national office if the Black Panther Party had its share of unexpected guests.
One day Chief Hilliard came up to me and in a low voice, drew my attention to a little white guy standing around the office, his arms clasped behind his back. The Chief told me to escort him around the office, saying, "He's French. He wrote some shit, The Blacks, or something about Blacks. Show this motherfucker around, ok?" I readily agreed, and he handed me a slim worn paperback with the title The Blacks emblazoned on its cover, written by someone named Jean Genet.
There, in front if me, stood a diminutive, elderly white man, bald, with very short gray hair fringed around the base of his head. His eyes were blue and seemed full of joy. He wore a weathered, cracked, brown leather, bombardier-style jacket and bluish-gray corduroys that sang with his every step. He apparently spoke no English, and I, not a word of French.
How were we to communicate? Oh, boy.
I figured simple sign language would suffice, and, as I looked into his eyes, I sensed deep intelligence. I motioned for him to wait, as I read the back cover of his book. I learned he was a playwright and did a serious bit in a French prison. His work was called emblematic of something termed "the theatre of the absurd." Hmmm? I hadn't the faintest idea of what the "theatre of the absurd" was, but I somehow felt that any white dude who wrote a play about Black folks had to be alright. Moreover, I had little choice but to obey the Chief. So I resolved to do my best. I escorted the short guy around the office, introduced him to several Panthers, and showed him the production facilities of The Black Panther newspaper. I explained that the white dude came all the way from France to see us, and some were duly impressed. (Most weren't, though -- they had no idea who he was!) When I returned from the brief tour and left him again in the company of the Chief, Hilliard seemed peeved, but I shall never forget the broad smile and twinkle of joy on Genet's face. He seemed more honored to be in the company of the Black Panthers than if he were accorded an honor guard by the president of the United States.
I later learned that he had entered the US illegally and toured on the Party's behalf both in the States and abroad. Refused a visa by the United States, Genet spent several weeks in the US, even attending the murder trial in New Haven, Connecticut, of Chairman Bobby Seale and Captain Ericka Huggins, and he gave speeches at Yale, Columbia, and other colleges.
While Bobby and Ericka's fate hung in the courtroom, Genet spoke to over twenty thousand people on May 2, 1970, on the Green at Yale:As for Bobby Seale, I repeat, there must not be another Dreyfus Affair. Therefore, I count on you, on all of you, to spread the contestation abroad, to speak of Bobby Seale in your families, in the universities, in your courses and classrooms: you must contest and occasionally contradict your professors and the police themselves.
And, I say it once more, for it is important, what is at stake are no longer symbolic gestures, but real actions. And if it comes to this -- I mean, if the Black Panther Party asks it of you -- you must desert your universities, leave your classrooms in order to carry the word across America in favor of Bobby Seale and against racism.
The life of Bobby Seale, the existence of the Black Panther Party, come first, ahead of your diplomas. You must now -- and you have the physical, material, and intellectual means to do so -- you must now face life directly and no longer in comfortable aquariums -- I mean the American universities -- which raise goldfish capable of no more than blowing bubbles.
The life of Bobby Seale depends on you. Your real life depends on the Black Panther Party. [10]
Genet left America as he arrived, illegally, returning to his native France in May 1970.
I often wonder why his wordless visit stands so stark in my memory.
It is not because he was the only white visitor to the office. He wasn't.
Several white radicals came by, some fairly often, but almost all of them radiated fear and discomfiture in the office. Genet seemed oddly at home and at ease around the office. As a former prisoner, and a homosexual perhaps he saw himself as the perennial outsider, the consummate outlaw. I could tell by his body language, by the openness of his face, by his vibration, that he really dug being in the office. It gave him a kick. He looked like a little boy who had found his favorite toy. He did not fear us. Strangely, he seemed to feel as one with us. His Yale speech certainly showed deep support for the significance of the Party in American life.
Perhaps, as an outsider, he perceived these other outsiders as insiders? [11]