My People Are Rising (14 page)

“All power to the people,” replied Murray, a brother with uncombed hair and dark sunglasses.

The three Panthers sat down on the couch. Among our group were Kathy Halley, Kathy Jones, Larry Gossett, and a handful of other BSU members from the UW. Willie Brazier and some of his street buddies were there as well. It was quite a mix of young people. We sat or stood, huddled around these three men of experience, listening intently to every word.

“First off,” Bobby started, “to be a member of the Black Panther Party, every member must have two weapons and a thousand rounds of ammunition. And you need to know how to clean your weapons and break them down and you need to know how to carry your weapons in a disciplined fashion—you dig?”

“Right on,” we responded.

“The party isn't just about a bunch of niggas getting together with a bunch of guns. You gotta have some ideology. Brother Huey says the power of the people grows out of the barrel of a gun, but at the same time we have to study to understand how to unravel all the shit the oppressor has put down on the people. Right?”

“Right on,” we answered, quietly.

“The minister of education, Brother George, is going to talk to you about political education classes.”

“You know who Frantz Fanon is?” Brother George asked, as he pulled out several books from a large, overstuffed, black briefcase he was carrying. “This book,
Wretched of the Earth
,
is essential for Panthers to read. Brother Frantz Fanon breaks it down about the psychology that develops between the oppressed and the oppressor. He talks about the Algerian people and the fight for liberation against the French colonizers. We, as oppressed people, have taken on a number of attributes that can be considered detrimental to our struggle for liberation.

“This is another book by Fanon.” He pulled another book from the briefcase,
Black Skin, White Masks.
“Somebody here taking notes?” he asked.

Kathy Jones answered quickly, “I'll take notes,” pulling out her high school notebook.

“Panthers must read at least two hours a day. Here is a list of books that you have to study. They got some righteous bookstores around here?”

“Yeah,” someone bellowed out. “Mrs. Boyetta's bookstore.”

“And the books you can't find, we will send you some.”

The meeting went on all day and well into the night. People came, people left. My parents came in from work, prepared dinner as usual, not really saying much but sharing the sense of history we were all feeling. Many questions were asked, and the three visitors answered them all, including one Joyce Redman posed about the sisters in the party.

“We say that the woman is our better half. In the party, a sister is our equal. And we don't play that male chauvinism shit. You gotta respect a sister, just like you would a brother, you dig?”

“Right on,” we answered.

Bobby spent considerable time talking about Huey Newton. “Brother Huey was a bad motherfucker when he ran the streets with his runnin' buddies. He was known as a fierce street fighter. But he also read a lot of books. He always studied a lot of shit. Huey understood what was goin' on with the masses of oppressed people. He realized that we have to organize the people against the racist pig power structure. We have to raise the consciousness of the people and educate them about the fact that they have a right to defend themselves, just as it says in the Second Amendment of the Constitution.

“Me and Huey and Little Bobby sat down and came up with the ten-point program and platform of the Black Panther Party. The ten-point program and platform speaks to the needs of Black people and all Panthers must memorize it, know it by heart. Number one, we want freedom, we want the power to determine the destiny of our Black community. Number two, we want decent housing fit for the shelter of human beings. . . .”

I sat and listened to the words of Bobby Seale as he continued detailing the Panthers' platform. The words eased from his lips. His face was unshaven, his hair uncombed. He wore an unbuttoned blue shirt and black slacks.

I felt privileged to have him and the others here in my house. I also felt uncertain. On one hand, I felt the pull of history. On the other hand, I felt afraid—afraid about the future, and scared that bit by bit my young freedom was now being committed to the struggle.

“Who's going to be the defense captain?” Seale asked.

I was caught by surprise, having slipped off into deep thought. Fingers were pointing my way. It was as if no one wanted the responsibility for leading what lay ahead. I felt a little like a trick had been played on me, and I fell for it because, as usual, my response was slow. Reluctantly, I accepted my new role.

“Okay, Dixon. You're the captain. I want you to come with me back to New York on an organizing tour through the East Coast. There's a lot of shit you have to learn,” said Bobby Seale.

The title “defense captain” may have been placed on my head without my resistance, but I definitely was not ready to up and go with Bobby Seale and the others. I felt deeply about the movement that was rapidly gaining steam, coming over the horizon, but I was not yet a true, committed revolutionary. I was not ready to leave the comfort of my home, the love of my parents, or the tranquility of Madrona.

“Bobby, I can't leave right now. I have some stuff to take care of.” I hoped my response didn't sound too weak, like a cop-out. I needed time to think, to adjust to everything that was happening.

The next morning, Bobby Seale and the others were gone, heading to their East Coast destination to appoint more captains, to arouse the hearts of hungry young men and women. A week later, I would be on my first plane ride—to Oakland and the beginning of a much different life.

11

7th and Wood—April 1968

Look over your shoulder

There will I be

Look over your shoulder

There I'll be waiting patiently

—O'Jays, “Look Over Your Shoulder,” 1968

Ever since my arrest
for the Franklin sit-in, rebellious events had been erupting in a quick, staccato manner. I was changing rapidly but also had some inner resistance, creating a push-and-pull; it felt like a tug-of-war, an exciting yet very dangerous game of tug-of-war. Yet, this rebellion is what I was being prepared for. In some ways, this seemed to be what I was born for—to add my voice to the chorus of dissent and the cry for change. No matter the shyness, the inexperience, the doubts. Resistance was my path and I was ready—even if reluctantly—to follow.

I, along with many others on the West Coast, was now a member of the Black Panther Party, an organization born on the streets of Oakland, born not out of desperation but out of an innate desire to be free—free from the racism, poverty, and police brutality that seemed to engulf almost every person of color in the United States. Fueled by anger, frustration, and the Black Nationalism of the mid-sixties, the party began to unfold. Two friends, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, along with their young protégé, sixteen-year-old Bobby Hutton, and later David Hilliard, Elbert “Big Man” Howard, and other schoolboy friends, formulated the organization. Ron Dellums, the inspiring radical whose words had so affected me when he spoke at our BSU lectures, also took part in the strategizing sessions. And in October 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was born.

Based on Malcolm X's vision of a broad revolutionary movement, they began to piece together a militant, internationally minded organization, which Huey and Bobby infused with their knowledge of history and other, kindred liberation struggles in Africa and Latin America. Drawing on the US Constitution, Huey and Bobby based the party's ideology and strategy around particular Constitutional elements, the first being the right to bear arms. Dressed in the Panther uniform, armed with shotguns, .30-caliber carbines, and .45s, Huey and Bobby led their small group of young, Black, armed rebels into the streets on missions that ranged from providing security for Malcolm's widow, Betty Shabazz, to protesting the murder of young Denzil Dowell by a sheriff's deputy in Richmond, to patrolling the police on the streets of Oakland. And now I was about to enter into this world of tough Black revolutionaries.

I remember that first flight so clearly. It was late April 1968. This was not only my first trip to Oakland as a member of the Black Panther Party but also my first time ever flying in an airplane. My emotions were running wild—the exhilaration of my first flight combined with excitement, apprehension, and fear of what might await me at the other end. I could barely hold a single thought in my mind. In many ways I was leaving behind my childhood, all the games at Madrona Park, the innocence of youth, the protective comforts my parents had provided during the first nineteen years of my life. All those memories would soon be supplanted by defiance, anger, rage, uncertainty, fear, and pain—as well as dedication, hope, and occasionally victory.

When the pilot announced our approach to the San Francisco International Airport, I looked out the window at the glistening waters of the San Francisco Bay, almost lapping up against the runways dotted with airplanes, some landing and others taking off for faraway destinations. I wondered how this plane was going to land on that thin airstrip.

As we hit the ground, my thoughts quickly shifted to what lay ahead and who was waiting for me. I began questioning the decisions that had brought me to this point. Doubts rose in my mind and my palms began to sweat. Walking down the airport corridor in my Panther uniform, I realized it was too late to turn back, too late to change the circumstances that had led me to my destiny. The time was ripe for me to take my place in the movement.

My hands were clammy, my heart beat a little faster, and anticipation was building with each step. Yet I tried to stay cool, stay calm. In the distance, among the crowd of white faces, I could see a tall, slender Black man in a short black leather jacket. As I approached, he smiled confidently, exposing a missing tooth and several silver crowns. He was wearing thin black sunglasses, the kind we used to call “pimp shades.”

“All power to the people, Comrade Eric,” he said as he extended his hand. “All power to the people, Comrade.”

“It's Aaron,” I replied, as we exchanged the Black Power handshake.

“I'm Tommy Jones.”

With Tommy was a very stocky, brown-skinned brother with a neat Afro. He quickly introduced himself. “Hey, Comrade, I'm Robert Bay. Welcome to the Bay.”

We walked out to the parking lot. Tommy threw my father's old suitcase in the trunk and we jumped in Robert Bay's blue '65 LeSabre, headed for Oakland.

I sat in the back, excited, exchanging small talk, listening to the sounds of the congas of Mongo Santa Maria blaring on the eight-track, looking at the small, white houses stacked like cards on the San Francisco hillside, the sun shining brightly.

The freeway took us through downtown San Francisco before reaching the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The gray, cold, steel bridge seemed to stretch for miles, yet it was only minutes before we took the exit into West Oakland and headed down Grove Street.

In the distance, on the right-hand side of the street, I could see a group of young Black men milling around, some dressed in the Panther uniform of black leather jackets and black berets. We pulled up in front of the group and got out, facing the National Headquarters of the Black Panther Party. The large storefront windows were plastered with posters. A large one of Huey hung in the middle—Huey was sitting in a wicker chair, a spear in one hand and a long, bolt-action shotgun in the other, looking boyish and pensive, distant, not quite real. This image of Huey with spear and shotgun would become the defining image of the party, a worldwide symbol of Black resistance to US imperialism.

There was also a poster of a young man. I recognized the young Panther's face—it was Bobby Hutton. The photograph must have been taken not long before he was brutally killed by the Oakland police. He was smiling infectiously, wearing a military-style hat with a military fatigue jacket draped over his shoulders. There was also a poster of Eldridge Cleaver, the minister of information, wearing dark shades and smoking a cigarette.

I was so warmly greeted by the brothers standing out front that I completely forgot my nervousness and apprehension. I met Jimmy Charley and Orleander Harrison, a sixteen-year-old who coolly introduced himself, a toothpick dangling from his lips.

In the office, behind a long counter separating the office from the waiting area, was a tall sister with a large, glistening Afro, who was very busy answering phones and organizing material. She stopped her work briefly and said, “You must be the brother from Seattle. I'm Betty, the national secretary. The chairman said for you to stay with Tommy and he would catch up with you tomorrow.”

After mingling with some of the Panthers out front, Tommy and I split and headed to his pad about two blocks away on West Street. Tommy was much older than me, almost forty, but he looked to be in good physical condition. I was surprised when he told me he was originally from Tacoma, which instantly gave us a connection.

“I joined the navy when I was eighteen,” Tommy said. “So after I got out, I just stayed right here in Oakland. I worked for a while as a cook.” He had also become immersed in the Oakland street life, selling dope and hustling. Now he was a full-time revolutionary.