I put on the holster and slid in the dark silver gun. Immediately, I felt differentâmore complete, more a part of this cadre of new friends. We walked around the corner to Robert Bay's house to show off my new piece. “Aaron, you drink?” asked Tommy.
“Heck yeah, man,” I responded.
He turned to Robert Bay. “Hey, Robert, I'm going to run to the store and get some Bitter Dog.” I wondered what the hell “Bitter Dog” was, but I was soon to find out.
Tommy returned within five minutes. “This is the Panther drink. We call it Panther Piss.” He pulled out a tall bottle of dark port wine, poured out a little bit in the sink, opened a small can of lemon juice, and poured it into the port. He then put the cap on, shook up the contents, and passed the bottle around. When it came to me, I took a long swig. It was sour yet sweet, with an aromatic taste to it. We passed the bottle around while the O'Jays' “Look Over Your Shoulder” played in the background. Soon I could feel the effectsâit was potent. We smoked some “Brother Roogie,” the Panther codename for marijuana.
We continued talking and laughing, and I began to loosen up, losing my stiffness. I began to feel like I was in the company of close friends, like we had known each other long before the party, long before this time and place.
Meanwhile, Landon, who did not drink or smoke weed, sat in the living room in front of the TV watching a cowboys-and-Indians flick. Suddenly, there was a loud bang. We ran into the living room and there sat Landon, holding his smoking .44 Magnum. The TV was completely destroyed.
“What the fuck?” Robert Bay yelled.
“Fuck them cowboys,” cussed Landon. “I get tired of the Indians getting killed by the fuckin'-ass cowboys. I'm tired of that bullshit.”
We all laughed. It was funny to us at the time. Although I think we all related to his frustration, it was evident to me that this brother was capable of losing his cool when anger got the best of him. Our generation had grown up with that kind of stereotypical brainwashing shit on TV and in movies, especially when it came to Black folks and to Indians. It was always the same story: the Indians got wiped out. Landon's actions made clear that as far as the party was concerned, those days were over.
The next day, I was assigned to go out into the field to sell papers with two comrades, Sister Love and Jimmy Charley. Sister Love was a talkative, chocolate beauty, typical of Panther sisters: young, bold, brash, sweet, and tough. We were assigned to downtown Oakland. Being Friday, the stores and streets were busy with shoppers, mostly Black folks, spending their government checks or their hard-earned paychecks. Meanwhile, we stood on street corners in our leathers and berets, yelling out to prospective customers, urging them to buy the latest issue of
The Black Panther
. Unike any other paper I had seen, it was blunt, to the point, hardcore, addressing racism, police brutality, and the party's method of dealing with the police: basic armed self-defense. Pictures of M-16s and carbines were scattered throughout the text, which included the party's ten-point program and platform. On the back page was a drawing by Emory Douglas advocating armed self-defense.
Young people and, at times, middle-aged people were eager to buy the paper. Some older people seemed uninterested. It was energizing and exciting to be out on the streets in the sun with the comrades, educating the people. They knew we were standing up for them. We felt proud and special, representing the people's army. In our travels around downtown, we ended up at Housewife's Market, a large grocery store where many of the low-income Blacks shopped. There we sold all the remaining papers.
Afterward, Orleander and I ended up at Robert Bay's house, drinking Bitter Dog. Tommy, Landon, and Randy soon joined the group. Quietly, I observed each one. Orleander was the youngest of twelve children, a toothpick perpetually dangling from his lips. Having joined the party at age sixteen, the brash, fearless young revolutionary had participated in the protest on the Sacramento capitol, carrying a Riot 18 shotgun. Tommy was the oldest, a seasoned veteran of the streets and of life. Robert Bayâ“Big Bay”âwas a disciplined, stoic Vietnam vet who exhibited very little bravado. And Landon and Randy, also Vietnam vets, were opposites. Landon was powder keg, whereas Randy was cool, calm, and collected.
Later, the six of us found ourselves sitting in a soul food restaurant on 7th Street and Wood in West Oakland, eating black-eyed peas and fried chicken, trying to dull the effects of the Bitter Dog and the weed we'd smoked. After Orleander and I finished, we went outside and stood on the corner to light up a couple of Kools. Feeling full and feeling good, we watched the crowds of Black people on this warm spring Friday night. The clubs and restaurants were full of our people, wanting to get high, to drink, to gambleâanything to try to forget the racism and oppression of white America. We didn't register that we were standing at the very same intersection where Huey had stood on that fateful night the year before, with one pig dead and another wounded, as was Huey.
But we did notice the police cruiser slowly driving past. Orleander began yelling at the police. “You pigs better stop at that stop sign.”
I joined in. We began yelling in unison, feeling both bold and foolish, as the young so often do. Then we began shouting epithets at the cops. “You mothafuckin' pigs better stop at that sign.”
We were full of ourselves, in our uniforms, and on our own turf. I was armed but Orleander was not, as he was underage and not allowed to carry a concealed weapon. Soon Robert Bay, Tommy, Randy, and Landon came out of the restaurant to see what was going on.
The cruiser stopped and two cops got out, looking aloof. Orleander and I backed up off the curb, and the others moved away from the advancing officers. But Tommy, who earlier had taken a red devil or some other downer, was by this point what Panthers called “nonfunctional.” He was standing by himself near the curb. One officer asked for his ID while the other returned to the car and called for backup. Within minutes, five police cars were on the scene. Suddenly, the streets began to turn chaotic. People hurried past, whispering among themselves and yelling to others to get out of there. Amid the confusion, Tommy somehow slipped his small snub-nosed .38 to Orleander.
As the police poured out of their cars, hands on their guns, I heard Robert Bay say in his husky voice, “Spread out!”
I watched as the others formed a semicircle around Tommy and the cops. I followed suit, taking position next to Robert Bay. Shops and stores in the area closed their doors. People began running. I heard fearful cries and screams.
“There's going to be a shootout!”
“I'm getting outta here!”
I remember seeing a young brother, probably a year younger than me, wearing a McClymonds High School letter jacket, carrying two bags of groceries in his arms, probably heading for a quiet dinner at home. Our eyes met for a split second, his expression full of fear, my eyes pleading,
Stay. Help
. He must have read my mind.
He sputtered out, “Man, I would like to stay and help, but I gotta get home!”
In a second he was gone, leaving me, leaving us, just like all the other people fleeing, the same people for whom we had taken up the banner, the same people we had pledged to defend.
The comrades spread out with hands on their guns. In that brief second, fear engulfed my entire body; images of my childhood and my family flashed before me, yet I understood that here, on this corner with my newfound comrades on this fateful night, was where I belonged. I placed my hand on my gun in preparation for the worst.
Within minutes, the streets were empty except for a few prostitutes who refused to leave, proclaiming loudly, “We ain't going nowhere, we gonna stay out here with our brothers.”
Tommy was arrested and the seven or eight pigs, now bunched together, turned their attention to the remaining five of us.
For a split second, time seemed to stand still. The Oakland night was deathly quiet. Orleander was standing to my right, legs spread apart, toothpick still dangling from his mouth, semi-smiling as he always was. Robert Bay, to my left, looked like an immovable object. Randy stood erect, emotionless, hand on his gun, almost daring the cops to make a move. Landon was out in front, his right hand on that big .44.
The pigs, on the other hand, were huddled together on the corner, hesitant, wondering what we were going to do. That is, all except for the hard-looking lieutenant out in front of his fellow officers. The lieutenant was almost face-to-face with Landon, hand on his service revolver. Like Landon, he, too, probably had been in Vietnam.
He blurted out, “I'm going to search you.”
Landon defiantly snapped back, “You ain't gonna search me.”
The lieutenant began moving toward Landon. In turn, Landon slowly, carefully, backed up. I thought about the TV blown to bits by Landon's .44.
The air was thick and heavy and eerily silent, the thoughts of blood and death lingering. The lieutenant repeated his demands to search, and Landon continued to resist. The five of us stood by, trying to maintain our defiant postures.
Suddenly, while stepping backward, Landon slipped and stumbled on the lid of a garbage can. The rattling sound reverberated, puncturing the tension and silence. Landon caught himself from falling and quickly bounced back up, maintaining his position, his hand still on his gun. Then, just when we thought the blood would surely spill and death would be upon us, the lieutenant and the rest of the cops quietly and slowly backed up, silently got into their cars, and drove off, making a U-turn beneath a transit construction project, and headed back downtown.
It was over. The pigs had decided that this warm spring night was not the time they wished to die. As for us, we had chosen this night as our time to stand our ground. Moments after the pigs left, some prostitute friends of Captain Crutch took our weapons for safekeeping in case the cops came back with reinforcements. We were not to about to give up our weapons to the cops, not after what had happened to Bobby Hutton just a few weeks earlier. We split the scene. That night I stayed at the house with Robert Bay, Landon, and Randy.
The tension had been so tight, the cops' fear of the combatants so heavy, that whatever rationale they might have given for backing out of this potential bloodbath was understandable. Simply put, we appeared to be more prepared to sacrifice our lives than they were. This was our street, our community. As Panthers, we had drawn the line in the sand. Although I was grateful to have escaped a potential gun battle, I felt proud of myself. I also felt this experience forever cemented my relationship with these four comrades.
The next day, Tommy was released and news of the standoff spread throughout the party. David Hilliard proclaimed that the incident on Friday night had served as my baptism into the party. Whereas I was relieved, the Oakland Panthers treated this as a normal occurrence. Ever since the shootout that killed Little Bobby Hutton, the police and the party were at war. This incident was a battle in that war, and there would be many more to come.
The following evening, Panthers from all over the Bay Area gathered in the basement of St. Augustine's Church. They came from Frisco, Marin County, Vallejo, Richmond, Palo Altoâmost dressed in the Panther uniformâand warmly greeted each other, filling the room with energy and enthusiasm. There must have been two hundred Panthers. It was electrifying. I could hardly contain my excitement of being among these righteous brothers and sisters.
Bobby Seale brought the meeting to order, reminding the comrades of the importance of learning the ten-point program and platform by heart, and exhorting us to study the Red Book. He talked about the need to get out and sell the Black Panther paper, and took reports from captains from each area. As part of the meeting, I was introduced as the captain of the new Seattle chapter, the first Panther chapter outside California. Afterward, comrades welcomed me into the fold, asking questions about Seattle. I was able to meet Panthers from throughout the Bay Area, including Captain Dexter Woods from San Francisco, Captain Randy from Vallejo, Chico from Richmond, and Fred from Palo Alto. One brother in particular stood out, and I would later come to know him to be probably the most dedicated Panther of allâSam Napier, a thin, disheveled-looking brother. I remember that while everyone else was standing and talking, he was in the street stopping cars, selling the Panther paper, moving as if powered by some secret energy source.
After the meeting I headed back with Robert Bay and Tommy. No sooner had we walked into the unlit house than the phone rang. Robert Bay answered in his usual, gruff voice: “Yeah.”
He suddenly slammed down the phone, ran to his room, and came rushing out, carrying several rifles. He handed me a .44 Magnum carbine and a box of shells. “The pigs are vamping on some comrades at the church.”
Tommy grabbed a rifle and we ran out, jumped into the LeSabre, and sped down Grove Street. “Hey, man, you know how to use one of these?” Robert Bay asked me.
Although I answered yes, I had actually never seen the weapon before. But I sat there in the middle of the back seat, loading short, stubby rounds into the .44 Magnum carbine, and awaited my fate.
When we arrived at the church, everyone was goneâthe pigs, the Panthers, everyone. Either the caller had overreacted or the pigs knew that reinforcements would be coming and got the hell out of Dodge. I'm sure the pigs had heard about the standoff the night before down on Wood Street. They knew that since the murder of Bobby Hutton, the party was just waiting for an opportunity to take revenge.