Panther Baby (4 page)

I gazed at the books and looked stupidly around the room. Books? I played hooky to come here. If I wanted books I would have stayed in school today.
Th
is must be a test, I decided. So I cocked my head to the side and slurred my voice like a black militant James Cagney. “Excuse me, brother, I thought you said you were going to arm me.”

“Excuse me, young brother, I just did.”
Th
ere were shouts of “Power to the people!” and “Right on!” which I later found out was a revolutionary version of “amen.”

I felt embarrassed as I hung my head and walked toward my seat.
Th
en Lieutenant Edmay called out to me: “Young brother.” I froze and turned around. “Let me ask you a question.” He launched into an articulation and cadence unique and famous to the Black Panther Party. “What if all of the racist-pig police running amok in the community, wantonly brutalizing and shooting down people, were black and the people being murdered were white? What if all of these greedy-hog avaricious businessmen who are ripping off the community and selling people this rotting food and these jive-time inferior products were black and the people being ripped off were white? What if all of these fascist-swine and imperialist-demagogue politicians were black and the people who were colonized, oppressed, and stomped down were white? Would that make things correct?”

I thought hard for a moment. Something told me the answer from my heart instead of from my militant Afro or my adolescent ego. “No, brother, I guess it would still be wrong.”

“
Th
at’s right,” said Edmay, smiling for the first time. “
Th
is is a class struggle, not just a race struggle. We’re not fighting a skin color; we’re fighting a corrupt capitalist system that exploits all poor people. Study those books so you can learn what the revolution is really about.”

I was humbled as I returned to my seat. I spent the rest of the meeting really paying attention to what was being said about the Ten-Point Program and the Panthers’ demands for an end to police brutality and a decent standard of living for poor and struggling folks.

As we were leaving the Panther office, I was stopped by a beautiful woman with dark brown skin and short hair. I had learned during the meeting that her name was Afeni Shakur and that she was a Panther leader. She had been outspoken during the PE (political education) class, saying that part-time revolutionaries and bourgeois Negroes who just wanted to look cool in a Panther uniform should get their asses out the office right now. “
Th
e struggle,” she said, “is about love, sacrifice, and being willing to die for the people.”

After the meeting I was at the front desk looking at copies of the Black Panther Party newspaper. Afeni walked over and stood in front of me. “How old are you?” she asked.

“Sixteen,” I answered, jacking my age up a year.

“You look like you’re thirteen, maybe fourteen. Go home.”

“I’m sixteen and a half,” I snapped back, trying to hide my desperation, thinking maybe another half year on the lie would make a difference.

“I said go home,” Afeni replied with unblinking firmness. I swallowed, and my next words came from nowhere as though a ventriloquist were using me as his skinny fifteen-year-old dummy. “I’m not going home,” I said firmly. “I want to be a Panther.”

Afeni looked me up and down, from head to toe. “
Th
en make sure I see you every time you come in the office. I got my eye on you.” With that she was off, talking shop with a group of senior Panthers in another part of the office.

James, Eric, and I purchased some Panther papers and stepped out of the office. We were stopped by a man standing six-foot-one, in fighting shape and wearing dark shades even though it was nighttime. “Where you brothers from?” he asked.

“Africa,” James replied.

“And is the subway taking your African ass home to Nigeria tonight? Or you crashing somewhere here in the city?” Yedwa asked with a sly smile.

“I live in the Bronx.” James answered. “For now,” he added, trying to salvage his ego.

Yedwa looked at Eric and me. “You all from the Bronx too?” he inquired.

“Yes, brother,” we replied.

“Right on.
Th
at means I’m your section leader. My name is Yedwa.
Th
e next PE class is on Saturday. Make sure you know the Ten-Point Program. Power to the people.”
Th
e subway ride home was quiet. We read Panther papers and tried to digest the events of the last three hours.

“All power to the people,” a fiery Panther speaker named Dhoruba had said in the PE class. “
Th
at means black power to black people, white power to white people, brown power to brown people, red power to red people, yellow power to yellow people, and Panther power to the vanguard.”

“Right on,” the room replied with pumped fists. “Power to the people and death to the fascist pigs.”

“Pigs” was the name the Panthers had for the cops, the businessmen, the politicians, and anyone who was part of the ruling power structure.
Th
e power structure, as it was explained in the PE class, was a capitalist system that profited the rich and oppressed the poor, the Proletarians. I went to the Panther office saying I hated “whitey,” and I came out talking about Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Che Guevara.
Th
is was new, exciting, and really confusing. I had grown up learning to fear, distrust, and yet admire white people. At the same time, I had learned to be self-conscious and sometimes hateful toward my blackness. Now I had to rethink everything.

4

A Panther Is a Two-Legged Cat

I
could read well and was a good student. So memorizing the Panther Ten-Point Program by the next meeting was no problem. James, Eric, and I reported to the new Harlem office, which was on Seventh Avenue and 122nd Street. Captain Lumumba Shakur ran the meeting, and when he called on me I recited the Ten-Point Program flawlessly. “Point number ten. We want land, bread, housing, education, justice, and peace. And as our major political objective a United Nations supervised plebiscite that will determine the will of Black people as to their National destiny.”

“Right on,” the other Panthers in the meeting said. “Good job, brother.”

I sat down, feeling proud. I was now officially a Panther in training. After the meeting I spotted a cute Panther sister who appeared to be around eighteen. She smiled. I puffed my chest out and walked over. “What’s happening, baby?” I said coolly.

Her smile turned into a military stare. “
Th
e revolution is happening, brother, and I’m nobody’s baby.”
Th
e young Panther sister walked off. I didn’t notice Yedwa standing two feet away, but he saw the whole thing.

“You can’t run a jive-time game on a Panther woman,” he scolded. “You got to greet her with respect. You say, ‘Power to the people, my sister.’ She says, ‘Power to the people, my brother. How are you doing?’
Th
en you say, ‘Aw, I’m really exhausted, my sister. I’ve been working hard for the people. Selling newspapers, organizing, doing community patrols, political education class. Just trying to make the revolution happen.’ ” I nodded dumbly. “Matter of fact,” Yedwa said, “you and your boys from the Bronx meet me in Central Park Saturday morning at eight a.m. for some training.” Yedwa shook his head and walked away. Once again I left the Panther office feeling unsure of myself.

Over the next few weeks Yedwa and a couple of other senior Panthers led us through military-style calisthenics, hand-to-hand combat techniques, and security detail training. We also learned how to sell Panther newspapers and organizing techniques. I went along with Afeni as she organized tenants to have rent strikes. I also watched her organize parents and progressive teachers in Harlem schools. I used these techniques in my school to form a black students organization and to get black and white students to march out of school in protest of the Vietnam War.

One day after political education class, Yedwa pulled me to the side. “You’re doing good, Brother Jamal. Now that you’re getting your PE down, it’s time for you to learn about TE.” TE stood for technical equipment, which stood for guns. Yedwa made me memorize his address and told me to be at his house at 6 p.m. When I knocked on his door that evening Yedwa answered holding a .44 automatic pistol. Sadik and Katara were already in the living room. “Power to the people,” I said. “Power, brother,” they replied.

Yedwa went to his closet and pulled out a green army duffel bag. He reached inside and pulled out an M16 rifle. “First thing you know about a gun,” he said, “is to never point it at anyone unless you intend to kill them.” He showed me how to unload the gun, clear the chamber, and put the safety on.
Th
en he handed me the rifle and my training began. After an hour or so of taking apart different weapons, Yedwa handed me the M16 and said, “Good. Now do it blindfolded.”

Th
e next three months became more and more about the Panthers and less and less about school, church, and my other activities. I stopped doing karate and the after-school teen program at Minisink Townhouse (a community center in Harlem). I stopped singing in the choir and would slip out of church services early. “Religion is the opium of the masses,” Mao Tse-tung said in the “Little Red Book,
”
and so rather than worship with Noonie, I’d spend my Sundays on 125th Street enlightening the masses by selling copies of the Black Panther newspaper.

School became a battleground. I had skipped the eighth grade as part of a program they had in New York City schools known as Special Progress. I was now in the eleventh grade at age 15. My plan had been to graduate high school at sixteen, get a scholarship and finish college in three years, and go to law school and be an attorney by twenty-one.
Th
en I would make a lot of money and buy Noonie a big house next to mine in the suburbs. My second-grade teacher, a firm but loving woman named Mrs. Johnson, had once told Noonie that I was the best student in her class and that I would grow up to be president one day. Noonie smiled with pride and gave me a big hug.

So I thought that after being an attorney for a few years I would go into politics and be a congressman or a senator. Even before joining the Panthers I had been disabused of the notion that I or any other black kid could grow up to be president, but maybe a congressman or a senator was possible.

But by November of 1968 I was a full-fledged Panther determined to point out all the contradictions in the capitalistic bourgeois educational system. Forget going to college. I wanted to lead the students and instill a revolutionary curriculum in the high schools in New York. I was convinced that by the time I was supposed to go to college the people’s revolution would be in full swing, and I would be in heavy combat against the army and the national guard as we battled for the liberation of Harlem, the South Bronx, and other black colonies across the country.

At the same time, the white students I had been organizing in my high school would be waging war in their own communities, which we (the Panthers) called “the mother country.” If there were any colleges functioning, they would be People’s Universities that would teach classes in Socialist economics, medicine, agriculture, and other subjects relevant to building a new revolutionary society. So imagine me in a classroom with a teacher trying to present a lesson about slavery and Reconstruction. I’d spend the whole period talking about slavery’s connection to capitalism and the heroic actions of the rebel slave Nat Turner and the white abolitionist John Brown. When I wasn’t challenging my history teacher about American imperialism or my English teacher about the racist and bourgeois nature of the writings of Mark Twain, I would be organizing school rallies and walkouts demanding a black studies program or an end to the war in Vietnam.

My grades started slipping and letters were sent home to Noonie about my “behavior problems.” I would intercept these letters and toss them into the trash can. I guess the school also tried to call Noonie at home, but she still did domestic work a few hours during the day and didn’t get home till after five o’clock.

I’d go to the Panther office every day after school and be there all day Saturday and most of Sunday.
Th
e Panther office was one part political field office and three parts counseling center. People from the community would come to the Panther office for all kinds of problems. “Cops are kicking a guy’s ass down the block,” a man would scream, running into the office. In ten seconds we would be on the move, running down the street and forming a protective wall between the cops and the black man they were roughing up. More cops would come, more community people would come. Sometimes the cops would back off; sometime they would make an arrest and we would follow them to the precinct to make sure that there was no more police brutality and that the black person who was arrested had a lawyer.

One day a mother came in carrying her ten-year-old
daughter, who was moaning and shaking. “She has sickle-cell anemia,” her mother said. “I went to the hospital and they sent me home.
Th
ey told me that it was psychosomatic.
Th
at I should just give my daughter some aspirin and put her in bed.”

Within minutes we were back in the hospital emergency room with the mother and her daughter—
th
irty Panthers in uniform, looking poised and dangerous.
Th
e white doctors and nurses looked at us and their jaws dropped. “You better treat this young sister right now,” Captain Lumumba Shakur demanded, “or there’s going to be a psychosomatic riot right here in the emergency room.”
Th
e ER doctors located a hematologist and gave the little girl morphine for her pain and proper treatment for her sickle-cell. I stood at attention in line with the other Panthers, but inside I was bursting with excitement and pride. I had never seen or been a part of anything like this. Young black people, liberation soldiers, taking on doctors and the hospital system—and winning. I felt like I was part of a team of superheroes, like I might even been able to step outside and fly.

One day I was with Afeni and other Panthers in a broken-down building whose tenants we were helping to organize. I saw a little boy with a bandage covering an ugly rat bite. We noticed a baby sleeping in a crib with panties tied around his head. “Why do you have panties around the baby’s head?” Afeni asked the young mother.

“So the roaches won’t crawl into her nose or her ears while she sleeps,” the young mother replied tearfully. “I scrub my house every day. I use the insect spray every night, and they still come back.”

By the end of the week we helped the tenants seize control of the building and had community lawyers teach them how to set up an escrow account so they could use their rent money to bring in an exterminator and make repairs to the building.

It felt like there was never a dull moment with the Black Panther Party. I was always in the midst of excitement, potential danger, and the coolest black men and women on the planet. What fifteen-year-old wouldn’t want to feel as fully engaged and as turned on about life, black culture, and the “people’s revolution” as I was?

Th
e New York chapter was divided into sections according to where you lived.
Th
e Bronx section did not have an office. We went to our main meetings at the Harlem office but had section meetings at Yedwa’s house.
Th
ere were about fifteen of us in a section. I would find reasons to hang around and be one of the last ones to leave the meeting. I was fascinated by Yedwa’s swagger and style. He spent time in Vietnam before joining the movement. He worked along with Lumumba Shakur as an organizer for a group called the Elsmere Tenants Council.
Th
ey would help tenants get repairs, heat, fight evictions, and so forth.

Yedwa was always shoving cops, arguing with officials, and talking about battling the pigs. Most of the young Panthers wanted to be like him. I felt really cool and important when Yedwa would let me hang around with him selling Panther papers; standing security at a rally; or cooling out in his apartment listening to jazz, eating fried chicken and apple pie, and talking about life from a “revolutionary black man’s point of view.”

His pad had a couch with no legs and a couple of pillows that Yedwa called the “low-to-the-ground feel.” He would push back his couch to teach me fighting moves or take me to the park and show me hand-to-hand combat techniques. He took me to the woods and taught me how to shoot a pistol and a rifle so I could be “ready when the time comes.” Most important, for a fifteen-year-old man-child with raging hormones, he instructed me on the right way to rap to a Panther woman, something he had touched on earlier when he overheard me trying to talk to a pretty young sister. Yedwa completed the lesson with a smile and a wink. “If you say all the right things, then a sister might tell you, ‘Well, come by my house and rest while I make a little dinner, brother.’ See Panther women like brothers who work hard for the struggle.
Th
at’s how you get their attention.”

I first got Yedwa’s attention when the Panthers got into a scuffle with cops at a courthouse in Brooklyn. We came out to support a Panther who was arrested on gun charges.
Th
irty cops started pushing and shoving us in the hallway near the elevator. We started swinging and pushing back. I was right next to Yedwa doing my best to land a few haymakers and kicks.
Th
ere were no arrests and the cops didn’t follow us when we jogged out of the building. “You’re a crazy little nigger. You like to get down, don’t you?” Yedwa said as he dabbed blood from my nose with his bandanna.

“Yeah,” I answered, trying to sound tough even though I was still shaken from the fight. From that moment on, he seemed to take a special interest in me.

One night we were sitting in a Harlem greasy spoon known as a Jap joint. Greasy spoons are small restaurants where patrons can get large portions of greasy but delicious soul food for cheap prices. Jap joints got their nickname because they were staffed by Chinese cooks that Harlem residents incorrectly identified as Japanese.
Th
e trippy and fun part would be the black waiter or waitress at the counter who took your order in English and yelled it to the cooks in Chinese.

Yedwa and I were well into a few jokes and big plates of ribs when two young thugs eased into the restaurant.
Th
ey took off their fedora hats, which they used to shield the pistols they pulled from their waistbands. One gun man jumped behind the counter and cleaned out the register.
Th
e other stood near me watching the patrons, his gun inches from my head. I jerked nervously and turned to run out the door. Yedwa grabbed my arm with a grip that was firm and calming. “Just keep eating your food, brother,” he ordered in a whisper. I mechanically shoved food in my mouth while the gunmen stuffed money into a paper bag and scooted out the door.

After a minute, one of the Chinese cooks ran into the street yelling, “Police, police. He rob us.”

Yedwa kept calmly eating like we were at a beachfront resort. “
Th
at was real smooth,” he commented between bites. “Now those brothers need to go downtown to a bank where the money is.” Yedwa dabbed his goatee with a napkin and put five dollars on the counter to pay for our meals. “Let’s split before the pigs get here.” I followed Yedwa out, my body still electrified from the robbery, my mind blown at how cool Yedwa was. He was the father I never met, the big brother I never had.