Assata: An Autobiography (29 page)

So the FBI came up with a brilliant idea. They brought in some dude from the FBI who said he was an expert on identifying photographs by examining them under a microscope. He was a real pro, slick as grease. He had charts and diagrams and whatnot, and i was worried to death that the jury would go for that crap. He sounded real good, until it came time for cross-examination. It turned out that he was a specialist in paleontology and had spent a lot of time studying rocks. He tried to claim that his expertise at examining rocks made him able to identify people. Under cross examination, all his carefully constructed "expertise" turned into a pile of rocks, and this new technical breakthrough in crime fighting proved to be nothing but a fraud. Because the prosecution had been allowed to introduce this new, "scientific" evidence, the judge said we had the right to find a photographic expert to rebut the testimony. Since i didn't have a dime, the kourt agreed to pay for it. The day our photograph expert testified i slumped down in the seat. He was a real straight-looking white guy who looked like he sub scribed to Reader's Digest. But the guy had credentials in photography a mile long, and you could tell from the way he talked that he loved photography and that he was incensed over what the FBI was trying to do. He explained to the jury the chemical process of photography and that what the FBI agent said was absolutely impossible. He said that if you look at a photograph under a microscope all you will see is little dots. His testimony was so correct and his facts so together that the prosecutor barely bothered to cross-examine him.

The capper came when the manager of the bank came forward to testify in my behalf. He said that i was definitely not the woman who robbed the bank and that the robber was a different height and weight from mine. We could see the prosecutor quietly creep under his table. His last hope was the summation.

In his closing statement, he tried to make up for everything he had not proved with the evidence. He painted me as an evil, conniving monster. He told the jury that i was hiding the fact that i had big fat arms like the woman who was shown robbing the bank, that i was concealing my arms because i had not worn a sleeveless dress in kourt (the trial was held in the middle of January). As he was talking, i politely rolled up my sleeves right there in the kourtroom, exposing my very thin arms. When he got to the final part of his closing, he grew strangely confident. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this woman is very clever, very conniving. She has tried to deceive this jury in every way. But she made one mistake, ladies and gentlemen, she made one fatal error." He then held up a picture of the woman robbing the bank and, in the other hand, he held up my mug shot picture. "She made one mistake," he kept repeating. "She forgot to change her earrings. She has the same earrings on."

The prosecutor was so dramatic. The scene was straight out of the movies. You could tell he had been watching the late show. Both the woman in the bank and i had on hoop earrings. When Stanley summed up, he just said, "Will all the women in the courtroom who have on hoop earrings, please stand up?" Half the women rose to their feet.

While the jury was out deliberating i paced back and forth in the holding pen. "They're gonna convict me anyway," i told Afeni. "They probably weren't even listening. "That jury isn't going to convict you, Assata," Afeni replied. "Didn't you see the faces of those jurors, especially the Black ones?" It was true, i had seen them look at me differently after the truth started coming out. And i knew that the Black jurors in the deliberating room would make all the difference in the world. If nothing else, they remind some of the more racist whites that Black people are human beings. It's a shame that too many Black people try to avoid jury duty, instead of trying to slow down the railroad. A lot of times it's a matter of simple economics. Black people often feel they can't afford to sit on a jury, that the money they would lose would mean a sacrifice for their family. And they are probably right. But their sitting on a jury might mean that their neighbor's son or daughter doesn't end up frying in the electric chair or rotting away behind bars.

A verdict had been reached. I could tell what it was before we even entered the kourtroom. The pigs were upset, to put it mildly. The female guard who escorted me to kourt every day seemed glad. The jury read the verdict. Acquittal. The kourtroom broke into a loud cheer. The judge just gave up calling for order. He had to wait for the shouting to die down. It was a long time coming. All the spectators were jumping around hugging each other. The marshals led me out of the courtroom and handcuffed me. They brought me back to Rikers Island where i was put into solitary confinement.

A bundle of energy walked into the Black Panther Party office on Seventh Avenue. If a light had been plugged into me, i'm sure i would have lit up half of Harlem. I was fired up and raring to go. When i joined the BPP, i was determined to give it everything i had.

The officer of the day gave me a form to fill out.

He couldn't find the second sheet so i went back with him to look for it. He was searching through a file cabinet which was in a state of anti-order. It was a complete mess. I offered to arrange it for him and the brother consented. In a minute i was knee-deep in paper, indexing and putting everything in alphabetical order. After everybody's "security files" were filed, i cut index markers out of a manila folder, thinking about how lax security was. I had just walked in off the street and they let me go through all the files. I explained the new system to the brother, happy at least that the experience gained from all those boring office jobs was put to some revolutionary use.

That same evening i was on the bus to Philadelphia. The Party had called for a constitutional convention to write a new constitution that would guarantee the rights of the poor and oppressed and would be antiracist and antifascist. We were attending the plenary session for the convention to be held later in D.C. This session was a definite up. Everybody's spirits were soaring. It took my breath away to see all those revolutionaries get up and tell it like it was. I was happy as a dog in boneville. My "hotel room" was a pool table in the basement of a church. I slept better than a princess on twenty mattresses.

When i got back to New York, i was assigned to the medical cadre. Joan Bird was my immediate supervisor. She had been a nursing student and was one of the defendants in the New York Panther 21 case. She was out on $100,000 bail and busy working on the trial. She had been beaten, tortured, and hung upside down out of a police station window. She had big, soft eyes, nervous lips, and the face of someone who had been forced to grow up too soon. She reminded me of someone who had led a very sheltered life and then, all of a sudden, found herself in the cold, cruel world. She was sort of shy, and i felt sorry for her because she seemed to be under so much pressure. She took everything to heart; nothing seemed to slide off her back. She worried about everything and everyone. She was facing thirty years in prison, so i had to do most of the medical cadre work, and she worried herself sick about that.

The medical cadre was responsible for the health care of the Panthers. We made medical and dental appointments for them and taught them basic first aid so that they could help the people in emergencies. Periodically, we set up a table on the street corner and gave free TB tests or gave out information on sickle-cell anemia. It was also my job to work with the Black medical students and doctors who we were counting on to help us set up a free clinic in Harlem. The Panther Party had bought a brownstone on 127th Street, and as soon as it was renovated we planned to open a free clinic there.

Every week all the medical cadre members from the Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem, Jamaica, and Corona branches met at the Bronx Ministry of Information. On my first trip to the Ministry, i carried a big stack of Panther newspapers. I was a lousy paper seller, and most of the time i got some of my doing-good friends to chip in and buy them. Then we'd give them away to the people.

The head of the medical cadre was Alaywa, and from the first moment she gained my respect and admiration. She was serious about everything that concerned Black people, but when it came to their health she was a fanatic. She demanded that we take our jobs seriously, and woe be to the medical cadre who showed up at the weekly meeting with nothing on their progress reports. Alaywa had a young daughter, but she nevertheless did the work of two people.

I got expelled from the Party, though, that first night after the medical cadre meeting. When i came out of the meeting, my stack of Panther papers was gone. I asked around, but no one had seen them. Finally, Robert Bey, the head of the whole East Coast branch of the Party, said that he had seen them.

"Where are they?" i asked.

"I threw them away."

"What do you mean, you threw them away?" i asked, thinking it was some kind of joke.

"I threw them away," he insisted. "Ya'll know that you're not supposed to leave the papers out here on the desk. This will teach you to put the papers up on the rack where they belong."

I explained that it was my first time coming up to the Ministry and that i had no way of knowing the procedure.

"You should have asked," he replied arrogantly. "I threw them away and that's that."

I was losing my patience. "Look, man, why don't you just give me my papers so that i can get out of here. I don't have time to stand here all night."

"I told you i threw the papers away, and that's that."

"Then you're either a liar or a fool," i shot back. He had made me mad, gone and stepped on my last nerve. Then he tried to get all bad, getting all up in my face, trying to defend his stupid arrogance. I was in no mood for fooling around. I cursed him out royally and walked out of the office.

The next day, when i walked into the Harlem office, Bashir, the officer of the day, told me i would have to leave. "What do you mean, leave?" i asked. He said that he was sorry, but Robert Bey had called and told him that i was no longer in the Party. I was burnt. I got the Bronx Ministry and told them to put Bey on the phone and proceeded to call him the unprincipled, arrogant idiot he was. In addition to being cowardly, he hadn't even told me to my face that i was expelled. I was so warm i wasn't even surprised when he apologized and told me i was reinstated. I hate arrogance whether it's white or purple or Black. Some people let power go to their heads. They think that just because they have some kind of title in front of their name you're supposed to bend over and kiss them on the ass. The only great people i have met have been modest and humble. You can't claim that you love people when you don't respect them, and you can't call for political unity unless you practice it in your relationships. And that doesn't happen out of nowhere. That's something that has got to be put into practice every day.

The first day i was assigned to the breakfast program i over slept. To get there on time i had to get up at 4:30 in the morning. I was the picture of shame and remorse as i came plodding into the office. "Fancy meeting you here," the sister who i was supposed to be helping said. "So nice of you to come." Later on that evening i criticized myself for being late. "That's all right, sister," the brother who was leading the meeting said. "you can do penance by working on the breakfast program for life."

"For life?" i repeated.

"Yep, you can show your sincerity to the hungry children of Harlem by working on the breakfast for as long as you're in the Party. "

I have always hated to get up in the morning, and the sheer idea of getting up every day at 4:30 made me groan. But i thought about the children i'd let down. Getting up early should be an easy thing for a revolutionary. I thought about those who had given their lives for our struggle and decided it wasn't so hard after all. Later, one of the sisters told me, "Don't worry. They'll just assign you to the breakfast program every day until you're used to it and they can count on you to be disciplined. The same thing happened to me."

I was glad it had happened to others because i felt like such a dumbbell. Got to try harder, i told myself.

Working on the breakfast program turned out to be an absolute delight. The work was so fulfilling. The Harlem branch had breakfast programs in three different churches, and i rotated among all three. From the first day i saw those kids, my heart went out to them. They were such bright, open little people, each with his or her own personality. I spent the first two weeks or so just getting my cooking act together. One little girl came over to me and tapped me on the back.

"There's something wrong with your pancakes.”

"What's wrong with them?”

"They don't taste good.”

Making breakfast for a whole bunch of hungry kids in the morning is no easy task, especially when you don't know how many are coming or how much they're going to eat. There was one little boy who i was convinced had a tapeworm. He put away so much food it was unbelievable. One day i saw him stuff some food into his pockets.

"Would you like some paper to wrap that in?" i asked him, tearing off a piece of foil.

"I wasn't stealing." Tears welled up in his eyes.

"Of course you weren't. Everything is free here and you can take as much as you want. But don't you want to wrap it up so your pockets don't get all greasy?"

"It's for my mother. We don't have no food and the stove is broke."

"You can tell your mother that she can come down if she wants to, and you can take as much food home as you want to." A few of the other kids were looking at us. "That goes for everyone. If you want to take a sandwich or something with you, just let me know and i'll give you some wrapping paper for it." After that i would try to remember to ask if anybody wanted anything to go. Most of the kids were interested. "Give me an egg sandwich to go." "I want two sausages to go." We rarely met the parents. When a new kid joined the program, the parents might drop by to check it out, but in general they would only come to leave the kids or pick them up.

The breakfast program in East Harlem was the poorest. In the middle of winter some of the kids were without hats, gloves, scarves, and boots and wore just some skimpy coats or jackets. When it was possible, we tried to hook them up with something from the free clothing drive. Only once in a while, when everything went smoothly and we were through early, did we get a chance to spend some time with the children. Usually we were in a rush making sure they got out to school on time. Some of the Panthers wanted them to learn the ten-point program and platform and others wanted to teach them Panther songs. I preferred talking to them, sitting down with them and exchanging ideas. So we just sort of combined these approaches. We were all dead set against cram ming things in their heads or teaching them meaningless rote phrases. The children were so naturally curious we had to take care not to let the food burn while we answered their questions.

My closest friends in the Party were Dhoruba, Cetewayo, and Jamal. They were all out on bail from the Panther 21 case. They came over to my house and we sat for hours talking politics, the Party, North Korea, and what was happening on 116th Street. I learned more in one night than i learned in City College in a month. They had a hard time dealing with me, though. I can be stubborn as six mules and will argue anyone down until i'm convinced one way or the other. Although i no longer hated white people and no longer saw all of them as the enemy, i was still not too fond of them. As far as i was concerned, it was the duty of Black people to work in the Black community and it was the job of white people to go into the white community and organize white people. The brothers were in one hundred percent agreement with that. We also agreed that it was necessary for Black, white, Hispanic, Native American, and Oriental people to come together to fight. We disagreed on who and what i should study.

Usually, after a disagreement, they suggested i read this or that, often Marx, Lenin, or Engels. I preferred Ho Chi Minh, Kim II Sung, Che, or Fidel, but i ended up having to get into Marx and Lenin just to understand a lot of the speeches and stuff Huey Newton was putting out. It wasn't easy reading, but i was glad i did it. It opened up my horizons a hell of a lot. I didn't relate to them as the great white fathers or like some kind of gods, like some of the white revolutionaries did. As far as i was concerned, they were two dudes who had made contributions to revolutionary struggle too great to be ignored.

The more i studied, the more critical i became of the political education (PE) program in the Party. There were three different political education classes: community classes, classes for BPP cadre, and PE classes for Panther leadership. In the community classes, Panthers explained the ten-point program and the general objectives and philosophy of the BPP as well as various articles that appeared in the Black Panther newspaper. As far as i was concerned, these were the best PE classes the party ever gave. If the teachers were good, the classes were interesting and fun.

With a few exceptions, PE classes for Party members turned out to be just the opposite. We reviewed articles in the BPP paper, read passages from Mao's Red Book, and discussed certain speeches and articles by various Party members. Most of the time whoever was giving the class discussed whatever we were studying and explained it, but without giving the underlying issues or putting it into any historical context. The basic problem was not whether the teacher was good or bad. The basic problem stemmed from the fact that the BPP had no systematic approach to political education. They were reading the Red Book but didn't know who Harriet Tubman, Marcus Garvey, and Nat Turner were. They talked about intercommunalism but still really believed that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves. A whole lot of them barely understood any kind of history, Black, African or otherwise. Huey Newton had written that politics was war without bloodshed and that war was politics with bloodshed. To a lot of Panthers, however, struggle consisted of only two aspects: picking up the gun and serving the people.

That was the main reason many Party members, in my opinion, underestimated the need to unite with other Black organizations and to struggle around various community issues. A lot of the sisters and brothers had joined because they were sick and tired of the oppression they had been suffering. Most of them had never been in the struggle before. Quite a few joined thinking the Party was going to issue them a gun and direct them to go out and shoot pigs. Most of these brothers and sisters had attended inferior schools which either taught them lies or nothing at all. Education of every kind was sorely needed. Without an adequate education program, many Panthers fell into a roboton bag. They repeated slogans and phrases without understanding their complete mean ing, often resulting in dogmatic and shortsighted practices. For example, one day an African brother who was working with one of the African liberation movements came into the office and gave us a beautiful calendar put out by one of the African liberation groups. It was baaad. It had beautiful pictures of African freedom fighters and said something like "International support for African liberation." The first thing i did was hang it up. When i came to the office the next day the calendar was gone. When i asked what had happened to it, they said, "The calendar said 'international' and we're not internationalists, we're intercommunalists."