My People Are Rising

by Aaron Dixon

When won’t we understand

  This is our last and only chance

  —Curtis Mayfield, “Future Shock,” 1973

  A packed crowd of onlookers sat rapt in the Oakland Auditorium, listening to Bobby Seale, dressed in a black suit and black hat, announce his candidacy for mayor of Oakland and the candidacy of Elaine Brown, who stood next to him, for city council. As Chairman Bobby threw his hat into the raucous crowd, the curtain went up behind him, revealing five thousand bags of groceries stacked on the stage floor. Panthers stationed at the corners of the stage, dressed in powder-blue shirts, black slacks, and black berets, began giving out the bags of groceries to the waiting constituents. Another five thousand bags or more would be distributed at two other locations that same week.

  Santa Rita and I had been put in charge of a squad of Panther monitors, all wearing the powder-blue shirts, black slacks, and berets. Given walkie-talkies, we had been charged with maintaining order and distributing the bags of groceries in an orderly fashion. Another security contingent wore leather coats and was obviously armed. With a few exceptions, the food giveaway at the auditorium went smoothly. I spotted one brother loading up the trunk of his Cadillac with groceries, and saw a few people clutching three or four bags, running down the street. But at the giveaway later in the week in East Oakland, the monitors were almost completely overrun by overzealous crowds.

  Preparing the bags of groceries was a huge logistical feat. Santa Rita, James Mott, and I had driven two freezer trucks down to San Jose to pick up the ten thousand frozen chickens purchased from Foster Farms. The poultry was then unloaded at the Berkeley Unitarian Church, where hundreds of nearly all white volunteers repackaged each chicken individually, in preparation for placement into waiting paper bags the night before the campaign kickoff. In the days before the event, ten thousand paper bags were laid out on the floor of the Oakland Auditorium. Joan Kelly and Carol Rucker coordinated the operation. Panthers spent hours putting canned goods, a sack of potatoes, a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, and canned vegetables into each bag. The frozen chickens went in last. It took a tremendous collective effort to pull this off. There were many nights of no sleep, and long hours of work, but this is what we lived for: meeting, planning, organizing, fighting, and serving the people.

  In the following weeks, the party opened up six campaign offices throughout Oakland, staffing each with the party’s best organizers from around the country. Monday through Saturday more than two hundred comrades would be sent out into the city streets, to pool halls, street corners, liquor stores, churches, bars, and grocery stores. Wherever people gathered, we were there to register them to vote. The goal was to register every single eligible voter in Oakland. Party members also enrolled at many of the Oakland community colleges for the purpose of organizing the student populace. We had a substantial presence at Laney College and Grove Street College, where, through contacts, John Seale and Big Man Howard had acquired jobs in the administration. We enrolled the most comrades at Grove Street, including many brothers on the security squad who registered for tae kwon do classes. Formerly called Merritt College, Grove Street was the school where Huey and Bobby met and where they first began to organize. I was glad I was allowed the opportunity to enroll in psychology and history classes at Grove Street; it was the only time I got away from Central Headquarters.

  Elaine Brown and Gwen Goodloe, the finance coordinator from the Los Angeles chapter, had enrolled at Mills College, an independent, all-female school. One of the first things Gwen and Elaine did was organize a party with the BSU on campus. They then selected a group of comrade brothers to attend for the sole purpose of hooking them up with the Mills sisters in order to better organize the campus. It was pretty comical at the party. Most of us brothers stood back, not really feeling up to this revolutionary dating game. Elaine and Gwen circulated, egging us on to mingle and meet the sisters. Elaine introduced me to the BSU president, Debby, from Los Angeles, and with Elaine’s prodding, we developed a relationship that for me was strictly business. Yet to say I did not enjoy the assignment would not be totally true. Debby was a very nice sister, and the relationship allowed me some time away from Central and gave me the freedom to roam around the beautiful Mills College campus.

  I had hoped to get an assignment coordinating one of the campaign offices, but instead I remained at Central, becoming the main OD and missing out on much of the campaign. The work during this period was intense. In addition to the campaign, we still had all the day-to-day party work to sustain, such as the school and the Survival Programs, as well as our new CETA Programs. The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) was a federal government initiative to find work or provide job training for unemployed and disadvantaged people, especially youth. We had around twenty youth, some with gang ties, who worked in our CETA Programs. They were assigned jobs in different party facilities and also helped to launch the party’s new SAFE Program, an acronym for Seniors Against a Fearful Environment. SAFE entailed the young people accompanying seniors to the banks and grocery stores and other activities. CETA was probably the best program ever to come out of Washington, DC, which is precisely why it did not last very long.

  Manpower was sometimes short due to the needs of the campaign, which meant my having to pull security every night, sometimes going without sleep. Valentine and I often worked together on security, even though he had also been assigned to the clinic. We would compete to see who could stay up the longest. On one occasion both of us had gone three nights without closing an eye. Valentine was assigned to the upstairs window at Central, while I roamed the downstairs perimeter. I decided to go up to check on Valentine. I opened the door and could see him sitting in front of the window with the shotgun across his lap.

  “Valentine . . . Valentine . . .” I whispered. There was no response.

  I approached to see if he was asleep. When I looked at his eyes, I saw they were wide open, but he was dead asleep. He had snapped a toothpick in two and put the pieces in his eyes to prop his eyelids open. That was the funniest thing I had seen in a long time.

  I was up three days straight during another week, and on the third night, after security detail ended at 2 a.m., I had to drive the big black truck over to West Oakland to pick up a truckload of papers. I remember getting on the freeway, but nothing else. I seem to have awakened just as I was exiting the freeway in West Oakland. My ancestors were watching over me that night, as on so many other occasions. I finished that task around 4 a.m., then headed to Mary Williams’s house in East Oakland to prepare food for the Busing to Prisons Program, which was scheduled to depart at 8 a.m. Mary was Randy Williams’s wife. I had already prepared the potato salad and was able to get Mary to fry the chicken for me as I finally dozed off to sleep.

  Once, after yet another three-nighter, I took a shower and dressed up. I had been in Central for three days and three nights with the same clothes on. I needed to get out. I had one last function to perform. It was around 8:30 in the evening, and I had to deliver some papers to Huey’s penthouse on Lake Merritt, where he had been living since his release from prison. The Central Committee had decided this housing arrangement was necessary for Huey’s security. After handing the papers to Gwen Fontaine, now Huey’s wife, I headed back to the office. At almost every intersection I fell asleep. I just needed to make it back to Central, yet I was so tired I could not keep my eyes open long enough to do even that. Somehow I made it, and immediately fell out in the back room upstairs.

  Sleep deprivation was part of being a revolutionary. Up to this point, the only adverse effects had been a lot of grouchy attitudes and bad dispositions, which probably led to some faulty decisions. There had not been a fatality as a direct result of lack of sleep—not until one fateful morning.

  Ever since the party’s newspaper circulation had gone international, weary party members gathered in Distribution on Wednesday nights to work on the paper. On this particular Wednesday, as usual we had worked until 4 a.m.—and that was finishing early
. Those who lived in other parts of the Bay Area would take long, sleepy rides home in one of the party vans. The longest trip was to Richmond, about thirty miles away. When Distribution Manager James Pharms asked for a van driver to take a group of comrades to Richmond, only one person volunteered. I had started to volunteer, but decided to let Cindy Smallwood take the keys.

  Cindy was a fairly young sister with the disposition of an angel. Her lover, Andrew Austin, had been arrested back in New York, along with Ellis White. Andrew and Ellis had armed themselves as protection against the faction loyal to Eldridge and were subsequently arrested for carrying concealed weapons, a mandatory five-year sentence in New York. Cindy had remained faithful in her wait for Andrew, unusual in the party. Some days she and I would sneak away from the office to go for long walks, noting birds or vegetation we had not seen before. We had become close friends. She had a softness and tenderness about her that was as obvious as the morning sun.

  Stretch Peterson, a brother from Philly, volunteered to ride shotgun with Cindy. After dropping off the comrades in Richmond, they headed back to Central. Fighting to stay awake, Stretch had succumbed to fatigue and dozed off. Cindy, exhausted from too many sleepless nights, fell asleep at the wheel and lost control. She was thrown from the van, only to end up beneath it. In the hospital she lay comatose for several days before life support was turned off and she was pronounced dead. Her death came as a particularly terrible shock because this had been a time of peace for the party. There was no war against the police, no shootouts or raids, which made her death that much more wrenching. At her funeral we all gathered to pay our last respects to a very beautiful angel, Cindy, the second Panther sister to expire; the first was Sandra, Geronimo Pratt’s wife, found in a plastic bag on the side of the highway in Los Angeles, killed by the police. This was my ninth Panther funeral and by far the most difficult to bear. Cindy’s family was devastated, for they’d had great expectations for their fallen angel. Stretch took it hardest of all the comrades, falling into depression and drinking, eventually returning to Philly. After about six months, though, he came back to Oakland.

  During this period of relative peace, we experienced other kinds of losses as well. Early one morning, while on guard duty at Central Headquarters, I saw Harold “Poison” Holmes ram the party vehicle he was driving into the back of a station wagon driven by a gray-haired white man, right in front of the office. Poison jumped out and began firing his weapon at the station wagon. Then Poison climbed on top of the station wagon, yelling, “Bobby Seale for mayor!” with a glassy look in his eyes.

  We quickly woke up the comrades and got everyone out of the back door of the building, unsure what was transpiring. Within minutes, the cops converged on the scene and arrested Poison. Had he taken refuge in the office, the incident could easily have escalated into a serious confrontation with the police. What happened to Poison was something that had been brewing for some time and was bound to occur among overworked, overstressed party members. Poison had snapped. He had reached a point mentally where his reality had become distorted and merged with irrationality.

  The white man in the station wagon was mortally wounded by the gunfire, and Poison was sentenced to five years in San Quentin. Poison had always been a very high-strung, highly emotional comrade. He was also a very good organizer and could articulate the ideology of the party very effectively. And he demonstrated the fearlessness necessary to be a soldier in the party. In 1970, he had been sent to New Orleans to assist in organizing the chapter there. Shortly after his arrival, he was arrested by the New Orleans pigs and subsequently beaten and tortured. He was beaten severely, nearly losing a testicle. That incident had a tremendously damaging impact on him. When he was finally freed, he was sent back to Oakland. Then, in 1972, he went to China for three months with a delegation of Panthers and supporters, led by Huey and Elaine. After enduring brutality and constant fear in America, to travel to a country totally supportive of our movement and revolution, where there was no worry of arrest or fear of attacks, only to come back to America and face repression was apparently too much for Poison. He had not been the same since New Orleans, and after returning from China he appeared even more incoherent. It was a sad way to lose a very good soldier.

  Another brother from the trip to China also suffered a breakdown and was sent back home to the Midwest. At the time, we were not aware of the long-term effects of the tremendous amount of stress and trauma that we were subjected to, or its impact on us and the party as a whole. A sister from Philly was dealing with a lot of emotional stress and decided to move out of party facilities. She rented a room on San Pablo Avenue in a run-down part of Oakland. As OD, it was my responsibility to account for all the comrades who worked out of Central Headquarters. After she had not reported for duty for several days and no one had heard from her, Comrade Bunchy and I went to check on her. We knocked on the door to her room and did not get a response. We knew she had to be inside, so we kicked in the door and found our comrade sister in a very bad state. She had attempted to overdose on some sleeping pills. We immediately picked her up and rushed her to Highland Hospital. Thankfully, she fully recovered and moved back to one of the party facilities, and did not have any more problems after that incident. I think she just felt lost in everything that was going on but came to realize that her comrades were always going to be there for her.

  There were other serious matters to contemplate as well. Comrade Fred Bennett was missing. With Randy Williams in prison, Fred had become the primary coordinator of the underground network and the party’s weaponry. It was some time before his body was found, and details of his death emerged later. There was speculation that Fred might have been killed in retaliation for having an affair with Artie Seale, the chairman’s wife. This was a ludicrous accusation, for the chairman was much more principled than that. Another scenario that circulated was that Fred had been killed by Jimmy Carr in the Santa Cruz mountains. Carr was a close associate of George Jackson while in San Quentin and after his release from prison had functioned at times as a bodyguard for Huey and also worked with Fred Bennett organizing the underground. Not long after Fred Bennett was killed, Jimmy Carr was shot dead in front of his house in San Jose.

  Around this time, we also lost important members of the prison reform movement. Prison activist Popeye Jackson (not related to George) was assassinated on the streets of San Francisco. And attorney Fay Stender, Charles Garry’s legal partner, was shot at point-blank range in her Berkeley home by a disgruntled former inmate and left for dead. Fay represented many prisoners pro bono, including George Jackson. I often drove to her home to deliver or pick up documents pertaining to my work with the Legal Aid Program. Fay was a tall, blond woman, always pleasant in demeanor yet very serious and devoted to her work, which was seeking justice for the San Quentin Six, the inmates charged with arranging the failed escape attempt that resulted in George Jackson’s murder. Fay was not killed in the assassination attempt but was partially paralyzed and in constant pain from her injuries. Fearing for her life, she moved to Hong Kong, where she committed suicide in 1980.

  Paul Morgan, a brother from the San Quentin cadre, worked with me on the prison program upon his release. He had burn scars on his face and neck, the result of a childhood accident. I enjoyed working with Paul, especially listening to stories about his experiences in San Quentin. He was gunned down in Berkeley near his apartment. The underground world of radical prison revolutionaries in Northern California was a dangerous, murky world where distrust and shifting loyalties were the order of the day. I could only sit back and observe all that was going on around me and wait for the next killing to occur.

  One bit of good news during this unsettling wave of assassinations was that Elmer was finally released from Oregon state prison. Under the terms of his probation he was not allowed to leave Seattle for the next few years, so Elmer, our younger brother Michael, and Rosita Holland would undertake the rebuilding of the Seattle chapter.

  As the ma
yoral race entered the final stretch, we were excited about our chances of toppling the white incumbent, John Redding. In deciding to run Bobby Seale and Elaine Brown for office, the party’s objective was to raise the possibility among the Black populace that we could actually determine who occupied the mayor’s seat as well as the city council in downtown Oakland. After preliminary polls were favorable to Bobby and Elaine, we began to think victory could be ours. However, a Black businessman named Otho Green, backed by the white Oakland establishment, also announced his candidacy for mayor fairly late in the race. This meant he might possibly draw a lot of the Black votes away from Bobby Seale. We tried to convince Otho Green to drop out, but he stayed in.

  The morning of the elections, Panthers and community workers were stationed at key areas throughout the city with large banners, signs, and posters of Bobby and Elaine. The most significant strategic action that day was sending out vans driven by Panthers and community workers to senior centers and the homes of elderly people to escort them to the polls. We were not leaving anything to chance. Through the night and into the morning, we sat watching television coverage of the election, nervously awaiting the results.

  The headline of the Oakland Tribune read: “John Redding Narrowly Defeats Bobby Seale.” We had lost by a very narrow margin. The party and its members had run a magnificent, well-organized campaign. We had brought the Black community to the brink of victory. Black people who had never voted before cast a ballot for the first time. We had proven that the white control of city hall was coming to an end. We had also shown that the Black Panther Party had a political machine that could not be matched—at least not in California. As for all the comrades at Central, we had come together from around the country and had overcome petty problems and monumental obstacles to run one of the greatest local campaigns in California history.

  After the campaign was over, we loaded up the Chicago chapter’s Greyhound bus and all the vans and cars, including all of the Panther children, and took a two-day outing to Clear Lake, northwest of Sacramento. Everyone was in great need of some rest and relaxation. It was the first time—ever—that we had taken a break from our work to do nothing but take it easy. Once we arrived, everyone broke off into little groups to hike or just walk around and relax. Daryl Hopkins, Tapps, House Man Lewis, and I rented a rowboat and grabbed a six-pack of beer, rolled up some joints, rowed to the middle of the lake, and just kicked back, not worrying about paper sales, driving duties, cleanup, or security. We had nothing to do but take in the trees and mountains, and enjoy each other’s company without the usual stress of being a member of the Black Panther Party. Of course, there was still security to pull.