Panther Baby (9 page)

At night I lay in my cell thinking about a three-hundred-year sentence. I would escape, I thought, or the revolution would succeed and the walls of Jericho would come tumbling down. But if I had to do life and die in prison, I could handle it. I had done a week when I didn’t think I could last a day. I did a month when a week seemed impossible. Now it was almost a year and I could do the time “standing on my head,” like the older prisoners said. My only regret was that I had never done more than French kiss a girl as we slow danced at a party. I was sixteen years old, facing 368 years in prison, and still a virgin.

Th
ere were a few more trips to court as we fought to have our bail lowered and to win pretrial motions to have the charges dismissed. Judge Murtagh would always rule against us. We would invariably turn the proceedings upside down with statements and outbursts that let the judge know how we felt about the “racist, fascist legal lying” he was trying to put down.

Back in our special prison unit the older Panthers tutored me in political and military theory. I studied Suntzu’s
Th
e Art of War
, Hannibal’s military campaigns, and the battle strategies that had been used by freedom fighters in Africa and Latin America. We had in-depth discussions about Marx, Mao, and Che and went deep into the writings and speeches of African revolutionaries like Patrice Lumumba, Sekou Torre, and Amílcar Cabral. Dhoruba, Cetewayo, and Lumumba were professor-like in their teaching and demands. I had to write essays and critically defend my positions. If prison was a university, as Malcolm said, then our Panther wing was grad school.

I had stopped counting the days that I was in prison. Like most men and women who are locked up for a long period, a prisoner learns to start counting months. Counting days makes you crazy. You think about the home-cooked meal you’re missing or who your lover is messing with on the outside. You trip about the hundreds of days left in your bid and wonder if you can keep it together. Your mind slips into thoughts and ways to beat the bed and eventually into thoughts of suicide. Better to count the months. Ask any prisoner how long they’ve been in, and he will tell you the time in months. Prisoners doing really long sentences will start counting the years. “Been down eighteen years, youngblood,” one lifer told me, “and I’m never gonna see daylight.”

I had been down eleven months when the guards came to take me to court.
Th
ey didn’t want my codefendants, just me, saying I had a special hearing.
Th
e older Panthers stood around me and demanded that the guard show us the court appearance order.
Th
e appearance was listed as a hearing to review a motion about my youthful offender status. I forgot that my lawyer filed this motion months ago and was surprised it hadn’t been dismissed along with all the other motions.
Th
e Panther wall parted, and Lumumba told me to go to court.

Th
e hearing was in a small courtroom. No supporters. No army of court guards. I stood next to my attorney, Bill Crain, who argued to Judge Murtagh that this was my first offense and that I was an honor student who was involved in church and community organizations.
Th
e hefty, perpetually annoyed assistant district attorney Joseph Phillips agreed that I was intelligent but argued that I had allowed myself to be influenced by violent revolutionaries and had turned my intelligence to illegal subversive activities. I took a deep breath to gather enough oxygen for a long stream of insults at Phillips. Bill Crain nudged me and whispered, “Just be cool.” Judge Murtagh then asked Mr. Phillips if he objected to the youthful offender motion. “
Th
e People have no objection, Your Honor.” It always pissed us off when the prosecution referred to themselves and their case as “the People,” as in
Th
e People of the State of New York vs. Lumumba Shakur and the Black Panther Party.

I was so involved in my negative reflexive gut reaction to Phillips’s use of the word “people” that it didn’t register that he wasn’t objecting. “
Th
e motion is granted and the defendant Eddie Joseph, also known as Jamal Joseph, is hereby adjudicated a youthful offender. Since he can no longer be tried as an adult, he is severed from the case.”

What? I thought, now trying to process the hearing.

“In view of Mr. Joseph’s YO status we request that he be released on his own recognizance,” Bill Crain said.

“Some bail should be imposed, Judge,” Phillips countered. “Even with YO status there is still a possibility of a four-year prison sentence.”

“Bail is set at ten thousand dollars,” Murtagh declared. He adjourned the hearing. Phillips and Judge Murtagh left the courtroom. Bill Crain smiled, congratulated me, and told me that I would probably be out on bail in a day or two.

I was totally troubled when I returned to the Panther wing. I didn’t want to leave my comrades behind and I definitely didn’t want to be thought of as a “youthful offender.” I had done eleven months in jail like a man. Now a judge had gone and made me a boy?
Th
e older Panthers told me to stop trippin’. Panthers were needed on the street fighting, not rotting in jail.

“If the gods forgot to lock your cell and you had a chance to escape, would you split and come back for us? Or would you stay behind like a knucklehead?” Dhoruba asked.

“
Th
e answer is obvious to a duck,” I replied sarcastically, “but this is different.”

“No different,” I was told in a collective voice. “We need you out there raising awareness and bail money with Sister Afeni.”

Afeni had been released two weeks earlier when the Panther 21 Defense Committee had raised enough money to post her hundred-thousand-dollar bail. We took a vote among ourselves and chose Afeni as the best person to represent the 21 on the outside. We felt a broader section of people could relate to her as a black woman who was being framed. Now that my bail had been lowered, it was my turn to spread our message. People would also respond to me as a young student who had been kidnapped by the pigs from his grandmother’s home.

Th
e next night the deputy warden and two guards told me I was being released on bail. I had been in prison for eleven months, from April 1969 to February 1970. So much had happened inside that it felt more like three years. I was embraced by my comrades and then led from the unit. I signed a discharge paper and stepped through the barred gate into a cold February night. Afeni was waiting for me along with two Panther officers from California who had been sent to work in New York after our arrest. Afeni gave me a crushing hug.
Th
e brothers gave me a Panther handshake and welcomed me home. A car was waiting. Before I got in I looked up at the barred windows on the ninth floor.
Th
at was the location of the Panther wing. Dhoruba had made me promise to yell something back at the jail when I got out. As promised, I cupped my hands and shouted, “You pigs kiss my motherfuckin’ ass!” Dhoruba and the other Panthers yelled back at me, “Power to the people!”
Th
e California Panthers shook their heads and laughed. “You New York niggas sure is crazy.” We climbed into a black sedan and sped off toward Harlem.

9

Blood and Wine

T
he streets of Harlem looked good as we cruised through the night. Even the run-down tenements and junkies wandering the street were welcome sights. I was out of the concentration camp and back in the black colony. It was a weeknight, but the bars along Seventh Avenue, the Gold Lounge and the Shalimar, were jumping like it was a Saturday night—street folks and hustlers hanging out front, flashy cars pulling up.

We drove across the bridge to the South Bronx where a new Panther office had opened. It was called the East Coast Ministry of Information and had been designated as the official headquarters for East Coast Panther operations. It was a large storefront office, three times as big as the Harlem office.
Th
e office was packed with new faces. Many had joined the party in the last year; others were Panthers from other cities who had been transferred to New York to help keep the chapter there running after the arrest of the Panther 21. I was engulfed with a chorus of “Power to the people,” “Welcome home, brother,” and Panther handshakes and hugs as I moved through the room. I felt awkward and dizzy.
Th
e scene was overwhelming. Everyone knew my name and was giving me a hero’s welcome. But I knew I was just a nervous man-child getting out of jail.

Anyone fresh out the joint will tell you that readjustment is a bitch. You feel like everyone can see your prison number tattooed on your forehead. Handling money, ordering food, buying knickknacks in a store, and getting on subways where people are pushing and shoving is a cold shock. You’ve just been released from a world where there is imposed structure, lines, order, solitude, and no menu choices. It may be steel and concrete, but it’s familiar and home bitter home. I’d only been in prison for eleven months, but it was enough to be contaminated with the virus of institutionalization. And on my first night out even the friendly crush of adoring Panthers was an overload.

I was grateful that Afeni was right there introducing me to people and pulling me to the side when she saw me getting stressed. “You all right?” she asked.

“Real cool,” came my automatic, show-no-weakness response. What was I supposed to say?
Th
at I was really shittin’ bricks and that I wished I was back in Branch Queens jail with the rest of the 21?

“Call your grandmother,” Afeni said firmly. “Let her know you’re out and you’re okay.”

I spun the rotary dial. Noonie answered after the second ring. “It’s me, Noonie. I’m out,” I said cheerfully, trying to hide the Panther voices and the James Brown music playing in the background.

“Praise the Lord,” she intoned. “Where are you?”

“At the Panther office,” I replied meekly. Silence. I could tell she wasn’t happy I didn’t come straight home and that I made my first stop the Panthers.

“When will you be home?” she asked, as if I were calling in late from a basketball game or a community center dance. Hell, I just got out of prison.

“Soon,” I said respectfully.

I knew Noonie would be watching from the front window so I declined a lift in the Panther car and took the subway with money that Afeni pressed into my hand. I hugged Noonie a long time when I walked in the door. She seemed smaller and older than before. We sat and talked a long time.
Th
ere wasn’t much I felt I could share about my prison experiences. Instead I listened to church and neighborhood stories as I relished the home-cooked meal she prepared for me.

Th
e next day Noonie and I walked to Evander Childs High School to reenroll me.
Th
e guidance counselor told me he was placing me in the tenth grade. “But I was in the eleventh grade,” I protested. “Two more months and I would have been promoted to the twelfth.”
Th
e guidance counselor made some calls and said there was nothing he could do.
Th
e principal and the superintendent’s office all said that I had to repeat tenth grade.
Th
ese people were trippin’! I had been an honor student with no marks lower than 85. I had skipped eighth grade as a Special Progress student, and was well on my way to graduate high school at sixteen and a half. No way was I down with this charade.

“
Th
e fascist board of miseducation is collaborating with the government swine to deny me my rights,” I shouted as I jumped to my feet.

Noonie would have broken my shin with a kick had I been close enough, but instead I caught a stiff “Eddie, sit down and be respectful.” Even though she was embarrassed by my outburst, she saw my point. “I don’t know why they’re making you repeat a grade,” Noonie said as we walked home through the chilly February air. “You should be getting ready for graduation now.” All I could do was shrug. I was sure that the cops and FBI had been around to the school to make sure that I was given a hard time.

Th
ere were a number of alternative schools called street academies that opened as a result of community activists’ struggle for more meaningful community-based education.
Th
ese certified schools were having success educating kids who had dropped out or were having a difficult time in regular schools. Noonie agreed to let me check out one of the street academies.

I enrolled in a school called Harlem Prep, short for Harlem Preparatory Academy. It was a large storefront located near 135th Street and Eighth Avenue.
Th
e curriculum featured math and science classes along with black and African history courses that weren’t part of the regular school curriculum.
Th
e director and most of the teachers were black and prided themselves on their ability to engage students and to get them into college.
Th
ey knew I was a Black Panther out on bail and welcomed me. Class discussions were open and Afrocentric. When I spoke, I felt like I was joining in a real forum of ideas instead of battling a teacher who was trying to brainwash the students. After class I would walk downtown to the Panther office where I would help sell newspapers, run meetings, or be out in the community organizing.

At night Panthers would meet back at the office or at one of the “Panther pads” (an apartment or a house that had been set up as a Panther commune) for a meal, some wine, music, and a few short hours in bed—sometimes alone but most of the times with another exhausted Panther or with a Panther lover. A bed was often nothing more than a mattress on the floor, sometimes two or three mattresses in the room.

Th
ree days after I got out of jail I spent the night at a Panther pad. I had been all over the city selling Panther newspapers with an eighteen-year-old Panther girl named Sheila. We started out with a group of other Panthers along 125th Street, then left the “black colony” to head downtown to Times Square and then the Village, so we could sell the remainder of our papers in “the mother country.” We’d duck in and out of bars listening to rock music on Bleecker Street, and we hung out in Washington Square Park watching hippies dance around the fountain. By the time we got to the Panther pad on 153rd Street all the food was gone, so we whipped up some leftovers and ate in the kitchen. Sheila and I brushed against each other as we were doing dishes. A bolt of electricity shot from my loins to my brain. Of course, I didn’t know what to do except say “Excuse me” and soap up another dish. It was close to midnight when I grabbed my coat to head back to the Bronx.

“I know you ain’t trying to get out on the street this time of night, brother,” said Jacob, a Panther who was wearing sweatpants as pajamas. “
Th
e pigs out there are like vampires, just waiting to vamp on a Panther rollin’ by himself.”

Th
at was all the prodding I needed. I picked up the wall phone and dialed Noonie. I told her I was staying at a friend’s house and would be home in the morning. She wasn’t pleased, but at least I had called.

I undressed down to my T-shirt and socks, keeping my pants on, and lay on the narrow couch. Sheila said I could crash on her mattress. When I told her I was fine on the couch, she took me by the hand and led me to her room, which looked like it had been a large closet. It had no window and was barely able to accommodate a full-size mattress. I lay next to Sheila like a train rail, scared to move.
Th
e apartment was quiet. Most of the other Panthers were knocked out. “You always sleep with your pants on?” Sheila teased. She had a pretty smile and wore only a baggy T-shirt and panties. I jettisoned my pants and tossed them in the corner. Sheila lay with her back to me. She nudged closer and guided my arm around her waist. I got up my courage and kissed her on the neck. She moved even closer and turned to me. We kissed. We helped each other out of our remaining clothes and got under the covers. Sheila could tell I was a virgin. She slowed me down and taught me how to move. We made love until we fell asleep in each other’s arms.

I walked into Noonie’s apartment around eleven o’clock the next morning. Noonie was angry, but she didn’t yell or scold. Instead she sat on the couch sewing and told me that I could not use her house like a motel. I needed to be in by a certain time and that was that. I took a deep breath and told Noonie what I had been thinking about on the long subway ride home. “I’m leaving, Ma.
Th
ere’s too much work to do for the revolution and I need to be with the party.” My words hit Noonie like a heavy weight, and she sagged. She wanted to continue life where we left off. Church, Sunday dinner, school conferences, watching a show on the black-and-white TV together on the worn but comfortable couch. I wanted to spend all my time agitating, fighting, and hanging with my Panther comrades. Plus I had slept with a woman. No way was I letting Noonie tuck me in at 10 p.m. in her house when sexy Panther women like Sheila were willing to share their beds with me.

I reminded Noonie that both she and Pa B. had left home when they were teenagers.

“But times were different,” Noonie said with worry.

“Times are worse,” I responded, “and I need to be out there in the struggle.”

I expected Noonie to call our pastor or another family friend to talk sense to me, but she didn’t. I spent one more night at the apartment, then next morning packed a few things. Noonie gave me a long hug and fifty dollars to see me on my way. I could feel her heart beating as she held me close. Part of me wanted to turn back and be the man-child again—safe and spoiled by Grandma. But scar tissue had already grown over my youth. I let Noonie go and headed out the door to battle—without looking back.

Th
ere was one more family visit I needed to make. Noonie told me that my maternal grandmother, Alita, had been calling her the whole time I was in prison. Since Alita spoke no English, my little sister, Elba, would do the telephone Spanish–English translations. Elba was now thirteen and Luis was eleven. I thought my family might be reluctant, perhaps even ashamed, to see me, but my brother and sister opened the front door of their Brownsville house and jumped into my arms. Alita cried tears of joy. We sat at the kitchen table eating a home-cooked Cuban feast. My Spanish was poor at best, but I clearly understood the love and the prayers as Alita squeezed my hand and told me to be safe.
Th
at night I stayed at a Panther pad in Brooklyn and headed back to Harlem the next day.

Th
e life of the full-time Panther wasn’t as romantic as I thought it would be. Life in the Panther pad was tough.
Th
e Panthers, especially those in the Harlem branch, were poor as shit.
Th
e boiler in our tenement building was old and out of commission two or three times a week. Even though we had organized a rent strike and were making repairs ourselves, the building was in sad shape. It was February, and the rags and blankets stuffed in the cracked windows did not keep the cold out. Lovemaking could keep you warm for a while, but Sheila and I would have to put on sweat clothes and sometimes coats on those frigid nights.

Picture dragging yourself from exhausted sleep, out of whatever little warmth you had in your bed, to boil water to wash up and head out into the cold to start work at a Panther breakfast program, where all Panthers were required to work. Getting up at five and trudging through the freezing cold with three hours of sleep took commitment, although once you made it to the church or community center basement you were energized by the kids.
Th
ey were glad to be there and happy to have a hot meal provided by the Panthers. We would have them sing songs, and we’d talk about black history and love for the community as we served pancakes, eggs, cereal, and juice.

By eight o’clock, the kids were gone and the pots and pans were scrubbed and put away. From there I walked ten blocks to my classes at Harlem Prep. I was freezing. My only winter clothing was a thin leather jacket and a light sweater.

One afternoon I stood shivering on a corner of 125th Street selling Panther papers. A community activist named Sayeed, one of the Harlem Five, took me to his apartment in the Lincoln projects and gave me a long army-style coat out of his closet, and Afeni made the Panther finance officer give me twenty dollars so I could buy a pair of warm shoes. Now I was really ready for the cold—bring on the revolution!

My classes at Harlem Prep ran from 9 a.m. till noon. Afternoons were spent selling newspapers and community organizing.
Th
e Panther paper was the main source of income for the party. Panthers got to keep five cents from each twenty-five-cent paper.
Th
e rest went to the chapter and national headquarters. So selling a hundred papers meant five dollars. And five dollars meant carfare, a meal, and a dollar or two in your pocket.
Th
ere were no salaries, so if your stomach was growling at lunchtime or you needed to take a train or a bus someplace, then you’d better sell some papers.

Th
ere was usually a collective pot of food for dinner at the office or Panther pad. Our best cook was a three-hundred-
pound, six-foot-five-inch intimidating-looking Panther
named Bashir. Bashir could cook a pot of stew or fry a pile of chicken that would bring tears to your eyes. He was truly a gentle giant. When a group of racist white militia men jumped out of their cars and stood in military formation outside the Panther office, Bashir whipped most of their asses as a small crowd of Harlem residents cheered. I got in a few punches, but it was Bashir that put them on the run. A few minutes later he was laughing and crawling around on the floor of the Panther office as five kids rode on his back.