Panther Baby

by Jamal Joseph

  Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, the “first couple” of black theater, Broadway and Hollywood, came to the Panther office to show support and to film fund-raising appeals for the Panther 21. Harry Belafonte, Henry Fonda, Leonard Bernstein, and the great French playwright and philosopher Jean Genet were among other celebrities who visited the Harlem Panther office.

  I learned to love jazz by sitting in the front row of clubs and concerts given in support of the Panther 21. Carmen McRae, Freddie Hubbard, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and Max Roach turned me on with amazing vocals and intense playing. After the shows we would hang with the jazz greats and listen to their war stories about the racism and struggles they encountered traveling around the country. A couple of the musicians told me they kept guns in their music cases and considered themselves Panthers long before there was a Black Panther Party. White musicians also performed benefit concerts. The Grateful Dead did a few concerts on the West Coast. The Young Rascals rocked the Apollo Theater with “Groovin,’ ” “Good Lovin’,” and other hits to help us raise money in New York.

  We did a lot of small-group fund-raising events for Manhattan’s “upper crust.” These talks were designed to connect human faces to the Panther movement and to educate people about the Panther 21. The media had portrayed us as hate-filled terrorists; Afeni and I would talk about our community programs and the lives of our fellow Panther 21 members. There were other groups and organizations that also came forward in support of the civil liberties of the Panthers. The Committee of Returned Volunteers, founded by former Peace Corps volunteers, held fund raisers for the Panther Bail Fund. Reverend Moore opened his church in Harlem for fund-raising concerts and dinners. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund sent lawyers to help the Panther 21 fight in court for a reasonable bail. We worked together as a community.

  The bigger events like the outdoor rallies, rock concerts, and student takeovers were designed to fire up the masses. “Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today because the time for revolution has come and because the fascist pigs of the power structure have got to go,” I yelled through a bullhorn microphone to a crowd of several thousand students at Columbia University. They had once again taken over the campus, protesting the war in Vietnam. The steps of Low Library, the stately domed building that governs the center of the campus, was the stage for the rally. The large bronze statue of Alma Mater that sits in front of Low Library had been blindfolded with the North Vietnamese flag.

  Students held signs and banners: STOP THE WAR and POWER TO THE PEOPLE. “Brothers and sisters,” I continued, “what the pigs fear most is what we have here today. Solidarity! Black, white, red, brown, and yellow standing together. Students and community folks standing together. Children of the bourgeois and children of the lumpen proletariat standing together demanding complete and total liberation. That’s why the pig police and the swine National Guard have been brutally attacking college campuses. When the pigs murdered students at Jackson State University in Mississippi they made it clear that they will kill any nigger who stands up, and when the pigs fired on white students at Kent State University in Ohio they made it clear that anybody who stands up is a nigger.” The crowd of students and activists cheered.

  I looked around and saw the riot-geared police standing on the fringes of campus. “So, brothers and sisters, if Columbia University doesn’t recognize that the war in Vietnam is a war of capitalist exploitation being waged against oppressed people of color, and if it doesn’t recognize that the United States pig military is occupying Vietnam the way the New York City pig department occupies Harlem, then you must do more than take over this campus today. You need to burn this motherfucker down.” The students went crazy. I pumped my fist and left the makeshift stage with the crowd shouting, “Power to the people!” and “Free the Panther 21!”

  I would usually be escorted to these events by one or two young Panthers, Mark Holder and his younger brother Kim, partly for security and partly to help sell the Panther papers, buttons, and posters that we brought along to the events. These were good community organizers and dedicated “people’s soldiers” who had the skills to do battle if and when it came to that.

  There were many young Panthers, the rank and file, who literally worked day and night to keep the New York chapter going, who didn’t get the headlines or the media soundbites but who gave blood, sweat, tears, and in some cases their lives to the movement.

  The Panther party I came home to from prison was different from the organization I left. When I joined in 1968, being a Panther was a part-time proposition. You were expected to represent Panther ideology and organize wherever you went. The requirements for being a full-fledged Panther meant coming to a couple of political education classes a week and occasional branch meetings. The barrage of raids, shootouts, and arrests now made things different. Panthers were expected to make a full-time commitment. It was no longer an after-work or after-school thing.

  Panthers around the country lived communally in houses or apartments. The days began before dawn and ended late at night. After serving children at one of the free breakfast program locations, selling papers, organizing, attending meetings, and patrolling the community, you would stumble into the Panther pad exhausted. It didn’t matter how sleep-deprived a Panther was at the end of the day, you were still expected to take your turn sitting at the window of a Panther house or office, on lookout for the police. There was a real expectation that the cops would raid our homes or offices with guns blazing. Fred Hampton was murdered in his bed as he slept next to his pregnant wife. Seventeen-year-old Bobby Hutton was shot eleven times in the back after Oakland cops told him to run down an alley. In Des Moines, Iowa, Philadelphia, Newark, Denver, and L.A. cops shot up, bombed, and raided Panther offices. Thirty-six Panthers had been killed and hundreds were in prison.

  Of course, we didn’t think one or two teenagers with guns could hold off a police assault force by themselves. The job of the Panthers on sentry duty was to sound the alert so that the children could be taken to the safest area of the Panther pad, and then calls could be made to attorneys, the press, and community supporters. In cities where Panthers were able to sound the alert on police raids, the death toll and the brutality were held to a minimum. Cops were reluctant to kill Panthers when a crowd of community folk, lawyers, and reporters were watching.

  Still the raids continued, and many more Panthers would die. Every day we received phone calls and letters that promised death to Panthers. We knew that the police were trying to intimidate us and to scare us, to make us quit, close the Panther offices, and go home. Instead, the threats and intimidation strengthened our resolve to fight, and to die if necessary. That, of course, was exactly the reaction that the FBI and the government wanted, as witnessed by FBI Director Hoover’s counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO, through which operatives infiltrated the Panthers and planted false information and evidence designed to create anger, distrust, and paranoia. At the same time, the FBI went to local police departments with “evidence” that the Panthers were gearing up for an attack.

  Both sides were hyped and paranoid because of the disinformation. We all wondered who in our midst could be a “pig,” and we knew that the bullet that killed you could come from the front or the back. Veteran Panthers looked at newer Panthers with suspicion and at each other with doubt. Was Sister So-and-So leaving for a week because her mother was really sick? Did Brother So-and-So get his assault charges dropped because of lack of evidence or because he made a deal?

  I took the floor at one of our monthly central staff meetings to talk about the sense of paranoia in the party. “When I joined the Panthers two years ago, Panthers were on the offensive with community patrols, programs, and rallies. When you turned on the news you would see Panthers storming the state capital at Sacramento, or Bobby, Eldridge, or David verbally kicking ass doing an interview. Now, whenever you turn on the TV, there’s a story about a Panther who’s been busted or been killed. I wouldn’t join today if I saw all this shit coming
down on the party. And anyone who joins knowing all this shit is coming down has got to be a fool or a pig and we don’t need either one. So I propose that we do a moratorium on new members and tighten the ranks.”

  My remarks got a healthy dose of applause and “right ons.” Nonetheless, the officers decided to keep the membership ranks open. I disagreed, but I was a loyal Panther and followed orders. That night I again took my turn at the window of the Harlem Panther apartment, watching the street with fatigued, bloodshot eyes, waiting for the enemy to come.

  10

  Revolution in Our Lifetime

  It was spring in Harlem, and people were in bloom on the streets. Children playing and beautiful women doing African ballets just by walking down the block. Hustlers and gangsters, challenging the eyes with green and yellow silk suits and red and gold Cadillacs.

  I walked down the street with Raymond Masai Hewitt, who was the Panther minister of education in California. He liked walking through the community whenever he visited a local chapter. I had become part of the Panthers’ National Speakers Bureau. The senior leadership had seen me rap at various local fund-raisers for the Panther 21 and decided to make me part of the national speaking team. Masai taught me to walk through the poorest part of town anywhere I was appearing so I could talk about the local problems and issues in my speech. Many colleges and universities border poor communities, and we would try to fire up university students about conditions of poverty and police brutality that existed near their classrooms and dormitories. So in the shadow of Columbia University and the sunrise of the Apollo, Masai and I hung out with Harlem community folk; “the grassroots,” as Malcolm called them; “the lumpen proletariat,” as the Panthers called them.

  There were two men—“lumpen brothers”—fighting on 120th Street. A small crowd was watching. I ran through the crowd and jumped in the middle of the action. Gently, but firmly, I pushed a short dude and a muscle-bound cat apart, without thinking, doing it like I did it all the time. “Don’t fight, brothers,” I shouted. “That’s what the oppressor wants us to do—kill each other.” Those words and my Black Panther buttons were usually enough to cool the situation. If there were no fellow Panthers present to help me, someone from the crowd usually stepped forward to help me keep the combatants apart. This time no one moved.

  Masai yelled, “Jamal, he’s got a knife.”

  I turned to see that “Shorty” had pulled a hunting knife and was starting to swing at “Muscles,” the guy I was holding. Swoosh. The blade swept by my ear as Shorty tried to leap over me to get his thrust in.

  Common sense should have made me jump out of the way and run. But what young Panther has common sense? Instead I walked toward Shorty and his ten-inch blade.

  “You want to kill somebody, brother? Kill me. That’s all the pigs want to see is another dead nigga. Any dead nigga will do.”

  “But I ain’t got no beef with you,” Shorty snarled. He sidestepped me so he could lunge at Muscles.

  I pushed his knife aside and yelled at Muscles over my shoulder, “Split, man. Run!” Muscles blended into the crowd and made his retreat. “It’s over, brother,” I yelled at Shorty. “He’s gone.”

  By this time Masai was at my side. Shorty had lowered his knife, but I was still worried that he would run Muscles down and stab him.

  “Why don’t you let me hold the knife?”

  “What?” Shorty barked, like I had just asked for a kidney.

  “You could get it from the Panther office later. Right on 122nd and Seventh Avenue.”

  “I know where the office is,” Shorty replied. “My aunt got clothes and food there before.” Shorty handed me the hunting knife and walked off.

  Masai looked at me and shook his head. “Are you crazy, Jamal? You don’t jump in front of a knife like that.” It was a warning and a compliment at the same time.

  When I was a kid there was a neighborhood wino who we called Mr. Charlie. Now this was a funny name for a black man, since Charlie and Mr. Charlie were nicknames commonly reserved for white people. But our parents would not let us call any adult by their first name, so Charlie the wino became known to us kids as Mr. Charlie.

  There were two cool things about Charlie. One, after he downed about a pint of wine and got his head where he needed it to be, he would forget we were kids and share the second pint with us. Two, he would tell us crazy stories about the Korean War. Mr. Charlie was in a black unit that saw two-thirds of its men killed in combat, and he told us he was “shell-shocked” and on full disability from the Veterans Administration. It wasn’t recognized as posttraumatic stress disorder in those days, but Mr. Charlie had clearly been damaged by the war.

  One story he told was about driving in a convoy at high speeds late at night with the headlights off, so Korean artillery could not get a fix on their positions. Every so often a Korean local would run in front of the truck as though he wanted to be killed. Drivers were ordered not to stop for fear of the enemy opening fire, and sometimes these people would get hit and the convoy would roll on. Mr. Charlie explained that Korean men weren’t actually trying to kill themselves, but instead wanted to kill a demon that was riding on their back. They believed the only way to do this was to have a truck barely miss them, and that would kill the demon.

  As I grew into my teenage years, I began to secretly believe that a demon was on my back and that it would take a near brush with death to remove it. Not only did my demon ride me, but I believed he killed many people close to me, like Pa Baltimore; my mother, Gladys; and Panther leaders like Bunchy Carter and John Huggins who were assassinated on my birthday. A part of me believed these deaths were all my fault, as was the arrest of the Panther 21 because of the actions of Yedwa, my mentor. So I kept pushing myself into dangerous situations, hoping that those near-miss razor slashes and gunshots would kill the demon, once and for all.

  The Panther office was essentially a crisis and relief center with socialist politics. People would come in at all hours to have us break up disputes, intervene when the cops were making arrests, or for emergency medical care and disputes with slumlords. A few people even kicked the heroin habit in the Panther office. We once took turns sitting with a twenty-year-old brother named Stan as for three days he sweated, shivered, cramped, and vomited. He had tried to kick the drug a couple of times before but felt that having the Panthers standing guard over him was the charm he needed to break the habit.

  Drugs were an epidemic in Harlem. There were intersections and blocks where junkies would line up to buy drugs in full view of the cops and the community. In fact, many of the cops were on the drug dealers’ payrolls, and the community felt powerless to do anything. We would claim certain areas as “liberated territory” and make it plain to the drug dealers that we would deal with them if they came there. Blocks where we organized buildings, breakfast programs, liberation schools, and so on were off limits.

  But we knew the Panthers alone could not run all of the drug dealers from the community. It would be the community itself, strong and organized into a “people’s party” and a “people’s army,” that would make it impossible for drugs and crime to exist. Our goal was not to have every black person in the community join the Black Panther Party but rather to make the Black Panther Party obsolete because the whole community had become politicized and organized. In our youth, fueled by enthusiasm, we truly believed this would happen. The only question was how long it would take.

  One night a group of us community activists were hanging out in the dorms of Columbia University—Panthers, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Young Lords, Asian activists, and members of the women’s movement. We got into a heavy debate about how long the revolution would take. “One year,” an optimist shouted. Felipe Luciano, Denise Oliver, and Yoruba Guzman from the Lords predicted Puerto Rican independence and socialism within two years. “Five years,” a pragmatist countered. Finally we agreed that the military- industrial complex of America was too difficult an enemy to overcome quickly and
that the revolution would take at least ten years. This led us to the horrifying realization that those of us who lived might be near or over thirty when the people’s victory arrived.

  Not only was this the night that I helped to set the date for our goal of completing the revolution, it was the first time I dropped acid. An SDS kid passed out tabs of “sunshine,” and I swallowed one with some wine. For a while I felt nothing. I was used to a swig of wine or a hit of a joint going to my head in a few seconds. This is some bullshit, I thought as I watched people roll around and dance in the dorm rooms. Acid must be a white-people thing, cuz I don’t feel nothin’. That’s when the first burst of electric butterflies exploded in my stomach and shot up my spine. “Damn,” I said out loud. A few seconds later another burst. Then I started laughing uncontrollably.

  “Just relax,” a pretty white student named Natalie said to me. She guided me to a bed and helped me stretch out. “Just breathe and feel the music. Everything is cool.” The ceiling melted away and the sky was filled with colors as Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” played in the background. Natalie gave me fruit, juice, hugs, and cookies and made sure I was okay as the trip got more intense. Eventually we wound up in the dorm shower together and got it on, laughing, coming up with crazy positions, slipping on soap, and falling on our asses. There was no towel so we wrapped our wet bodies under one sheet and stumbled back to her dorm bed.

  As I lay next to Natalie, the vision of revolution in our lifetime started playing in my head. There were rainbow people dancing in the streets; Sly and the Family Stone’s “Everyday People” was the new national anthem; President Bobby Seale ordered the White House to be painted black and blue, the Panther colors. But I’m not at the celebration. Instead I’m in a grave, dead at seventeen, my troubled spirit watching everything from the other side. My trip suddenly made me feel that I needed to be back in Harlem, back on the street. I climbed out of bed and found my clothes. Natalie opened her eyes and smiled at me. “See you in the colors,” she said. We hugged again and I left.