by Jamal Joseph
“Jamal,” James said and nodded firmly.
“Ja Mal,” I repeated phonetically.
“Yep, Unbutu Usa Jamal, that’s your name.”
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“What it means is he who comes together in the spirit of blackness.”
I would find out later that James—excuse me, Rhaheem—was totally pulling syllables and meanings out of the air, but at that moment, sitting in a subway car headed for Brooklyn, I had been reborn and renamed. I smiled to myself as we rode. I had a black name and a black outfit. I was almost a Panther—and we hadn’t even gotten to headquarters yet.
Then Rhaheem leaned over to me and said in a low voice, “You know, the Panthers are like the Mafia. Once you join, there’s no getting out.”
“I don’t care,” I responded nonchalantly, though inside I was feeling unsure.
Sabu leaned in. “Man, you know you gotta kill a white dude in order to be a Panther.”
“I don’t care,” I said with a shrug. Now I was really feeling nervous. Kill somebody? Just to join? But I was with two of the coolest guys from the neighborhood, and I couldn’t let them think I was a punk.
“Naw, get it straight,” James said indignantly. “You don’t have to kill a white dude.” With those words I began to breathe again and I felt myself relax. “You have to kill a white cop,” he said, “and you have to bring in his badge and his gun.”
All the air sucked out my lungs, and my stomach felt like an erupting volcano. But I couldn’t be a punk. “I don’t care,” I squeaked, and sat back between James and Eric, suddenly feeling like a condemned man.
We got off the subway at Nostrand Avenue and walked toward the Panther office. The closer we got, the more my spine began to rattle. Suppose the Panthers killed us just for daring to show up on their doorstep. I was hoping that one of my friends would chump out first. I could tell that we were all nervous, but none of us wanted to be the one who got teased for bitchin’ up. As we approached the office, we saw the Panther logo and the sign BLACK PANTHER PARTY. We walked up to the front door and were greeted warmly by a stunningly beautiful woman in a long African dress. That was enough to get the three of us inside.
We passed posters of Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, both men holding guns. A burly man in a beret and a leather jacket welcomed us with a “Power to the people” greeting. We imitated his black-power salute and answered, “Power.” He pointed out three empty chairs at the back of the room. The office was packed with about fifty men and women, some wearing Panther uniforms, some wearing African garb. Everyone was “militant cool.” My heart began to race with excitement. I had made it to the inner sanctum.
The meeting was being run by a handsome twenty-five-year-old man in shades and a leather jacket, seated behind a large wooden desk. People addressed him as Lieutenant Edmay or brother lieutenant. He was reading from the back page of the Black Panther Party newspaper, which listed the Ten-Point Program. After each point he would take comments from Panthers in the room. As I looked about, everyone in the room seemed older, but then I had just turned fifteen, so everyone was older. The Panthers in this meeting ranged in age from eighteen to twenty-five. They were students, ex-convicts, Vietnam veterans, welfare mothers, street people, the disenfranchised, the least opposing the most, the folks that Malcolm X called “the grassroots.” “Point number one,” Lieutenant Edmay recited, “we want freedom. We want the power to determine the destiny of our community.” There was some discussion on the point, and Edmay moved on. “Number two,” he continued, “we want full employment for our people. Number three, we want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our black community.”
The Panthers in the room made comments about human rights, equal justice, better housing, community action programs, and other ways to improve things in the community. There was no conversation about murdering white people, blood oaths, and general acts of mayhem. But I couldn’t really hear what was being said because I had my own internal adolescent conversation raging in my head, a kind of mantra, with me reciting, “I’m a man. I ain’t no punk.” By the time Edmay got through a few more points, I had hyped myself up to make my bid to be a Panther.
“Number seven, we want an end to police brutality and the murder of our people.”
That was my cue. I jumped to my feet. “Choose me, brother,” I shouted. “Arm me and send me on a mission. I’ll kill whitey right now.” Edmay looked at me long and hard and gestured for me to come to the front. I looked at my friends with an expression that said, “I told you I was ready.” They looked amazed. I walked to the front of the office, under the silent and intense scrutiny of dozens of Panthers.
Lieutenant Edmay inspected me for a moment. Then he pulled open the bottom drawer of the bottom desk and reached deep inside. My heart began pounding again. Damn, I thought, look how far he’s reaching in that drawer. He must be pulling out a big ass gun. Instead Edmay handed me a small stack of books. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver, The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, and the “Little Red Book” by Mao Tse-tung.
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. This 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.” There 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. Then 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.”
“That’s right,” said Edmay, smiling for the first time. “This 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. “The 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, thinki
ng 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. “Then 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. That means I’m your section leader. My name is Yedwa. The next PE class is on Saturday. Make sure you know the Ten-Point Program. Power to the people.” The 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. “That 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. The 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. This 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. “The revolution is happening, brother, and I’m nobody’s baby.” The 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?’ Then 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. Then 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.”
The 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. Then 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 class
room 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. The 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. They told me that it was psychosomatic. That 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—thirty Panthers in uniform, looking poised and dangerous. The 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.” The 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.
