Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes (13 page)

I had not been part of the 1960s drug culture and was so unfamiliar with cocaine that I had no idea whether Kohl was right. Huey's runny nose, his ability to stay alert despite the fifth of Courvoisier he daily consumed, the sleepless nights at Schneider's Beverly Hills home where (after Bert and his girlfriend Candice Bergen had gone to bed) Huey talked endlessly to me about politics and the millions of dollars the Party had squandered on bail — all these were telltale signs I could not read. I assumed the innocent possibility that Huey was "sniffing" because he had a cold, which is what I told Kohl, who probably thought I was shining him on. After the incident, Huey banished Kohl from the penthouse, but let him continue to help on the Learning Center.

The Center was operated by a front I had created called the Educational Opportunities Corporation, a California tax-exempt 501(c)(3). It was imperative — or so I thought — to keep the books of the school in order and to file appropriate tax reports so that hostile authorities would not be given a pretext to shut us down. This proved to be only another aspect of my politically induced innocence. Long after I had gone, too, I watched the Center operate illegally, without filing proper tax reports, while Huey and Elaine were diverting large sums of money (received as government grants) to themselves and their gunmen to keep them in fancy cars and clothes and, when necessary, out of jail. Unable to conceive such a possibility for the Black Panther Party, which everyone "knew" was targeted for destruction by J. Edgar Hoover, I engaged the services of our bookkeeper at
Ramparts
, Betty Van Patter, to keep the Learning Center accounts.

Virtually my entire relationship with Huey and the party was through the activities of the school. In the months following the purchase of the building on East 14th, it became apparent to me that things were not proceeding as planned. In particular, it was still exclusively a party operation.

I had never been enthusiastic about the party as such, which seemed to me merely an ideological sect whose time had passed. I had conveyed these views to Huey at the outset of our relationship and he had pretended to agree. He had even promised that if we purchased the facility and built an educational center, it would gradually be turned over to the East Oakland community and not become just another party institution.

Six months had gone by, however, and there were only Panthers in attendance. The impoverished black community around the school remained aloof, as did the black intellectuals (like Berkeley sociology Professor Troy Duster), whom I periodically approached to help out with the operation, and who would come up to the penthouse to see Huey, but afterwards never follow through or return. Adding to my dismay was the fact that the school head, Brenda Bay, had been replaced by Ericka Huggins, a prominent party figure and in my view a mentally unbalanced individual. (It did not improve my dim view of Ericka when I saw her punish a child by commanding the nine year old to write, one thousand times, "I am privileged to attend the Black Panther Party's Learning Center because . . .") My concerns about the school came to a head on May 19, 1974, which was Malcolm X's birthday.

A "Malcolm X Day" celebration was held in the school auditorium, which I attended. One after another, Bobby Seale, Elaine Brown, and other Panthers mounted the podium to proclaim the party as "the only true continuator of the legacy of Malcolm." Looking around at the familiar faces of the Panthers in the hall, I felt depressed and even betrayed. Huey had assured me that the Center would not become the power base for a sect, and had even excluded Bobby and Elaine from its operation to make me a believer. And yet now I could see that's all that it was.

At the next Planning Committee meeting in Huey's apartment, I braced myself and launched into a passionate complaint. On a day that all black Oakland should have been at the Center, I said, the occasion had been turned into a sectarian promotion for the Black Panther Party. My outburst was met by a tense silence from the others at the table. But Huey seemed unfazed and even to lend some support to what I had said. This duplicitous impression of yielding was almost a performance art with him.

Elaine had a similar talent for seduction when it fitted her agenda. In our first encounter at Mills, she had strategically brought the Malcolm X incident into our conversation. In her most disarming manner, she related how Ericka Huggins had reported to her and other members of the party, after the meeting, that "David Horowitz said that the Malcolm X Day celebration was too black."

It was a shrewd gambit, reminding me of my precarious position in the Panther environment, while at the same time making her appear as a friend and potential protector. She had her reasons to ingratiate herself with me then, because she knew that somehow I had Huey's ear, and she wanted desperately to end her exile. A month later, Huey kicked Bobby out of the party and her wish was granted. She became the new "Chairman." A month after that, Huey was gone to Cuba.

When Huey left, all the Panthers whom Huey had assigned to work with me — all the members of the Planning Committee except Ericka — fled as well. They left suddenly, without warning, in the middle of the night. A week earlier, which was the last time I saw them, they had worried about Elaine's new ascendance. When I asked why they were afraid of Elaine, they said "She's crazy." Now they had disappeared, and I had no way of contacting them to question them further.

Although I had been warned about Elaine's dark side, I had only seen benign aspects myself. Now, as she took charge of the party, she revealed another dimension of her personality that was even more attractive.

Where Huey had pretty much ignored the Learning Center after its creation, Elaine threw herself into its every detail, from curriculum to hygiene. She ordered it scrubbed from top to bottom, got proper supplies for the children, and made the Center's needs a visible priority. Soon, the first real community event was held on its premises. It was a teen dance attended by five hundred youths from the neighborhood. I could not have asked for a more concrete sign that things were going to be different. And these efforts were ongoing. Eventually Elaine would recruit Oakland dignitaries to the board of the Center, like Mayor Lionel Wilson and Robert Shetterly, the president and chairman of the Oakland Council for Economic Development. How could I not support her efforts in behalf of a project that had seemed so worthy and to which I had dedicated so much effort of my own?

There were other seductive aspects to her leadership as well. The Black Panther Party — the most male-dominated organization of the Left — was suddenly being led by an articulate, take-charge woman. And not just one woman. Elaine's right and left hands in the party organization — Joan Kelley and Phyllis Jackson — were also female, as was its treasurer Gwen Goodloe. With Huey gone under a dark cloud, Elaine and the Center were facing formidable odds. My social and racial privilege always afforded me a way out of these difficulties (as my leftist conscience was constantly reproving me). How could I face myself, if I abandoned their ship now?

I stayed. And when the party's treasurer, Gwen Goodloe, fled a week later, and Elaine became desperate over who would manage its finances, I suggested a solution. Betty Van Patter, who was already keeping the books for the Learning Center, might be of help in handling the general accounts.

This was to be my last act of assistance to the party. The crises of the fall had piled on one another in such swift succession, that I was unable to assess the toll they were taking. But in November, an event occurred that pushed me over the edge.

There had been a second teen dance, and this time there was a shooting. A Panther named Deacon was dead. His assailant, a black youth of sixteen, was in the county hospital. When I phoned Elaine to ask what had happened, she exploded in the kind of violent outpouring I had become used to by then, blaming the disaster on "the police and the CIA." This stock paranoia was really all I needed to hear. (Years later, I learned from other Panthers that the shooting had been over drugs, which the party was dealing from the school.)

When I walked into the school auditorium where Deacon lay in state (there is really no other term for the scene), I suddenly saw the real party, to which I had closed my eyes to for so long. Of course, the children were there, as were their parents and teachers, but dominating them and everything else physically and symbolically was the honor guard of Panther soldiers in black berets, shotguns alarmingly on display. And, added to this spectacle, mingling with the mourners, there were the unmistakable gangster types, whose presence had suddenly become apparent to me after Elaine took over the party: "Big Bob," Perkins, Aaron, Ricardo, Larry. They were fitted in shades and Bogarts and pinstripe suits, as though waiting for action on the set of a B crime movie. In their menacing faces there was no reflection of political complexity such as Huey was so adept at projecting, or of the benevolent community efforts like the breakfast for children programs that the Center provided.

Underneath all the political rhetoric and social uplift, I suddenly realized was the stark reality of the gang. I remember a voice silently beating my head, as I sat there during the service, tears streaming down my face: "What are you doing here, David?" it screamed at me. It was my turn to flee.

Betty did not attend the funeral, and if she had would not have been able to see what I saw. Moreover, she and I had never had the kind of relationship that inspired confidences between us. As my employee, she never really approved of the way Peter and I ran
Ramparts
. For whatever reasons — perhaps a streak of feminist militancy — she did not trust me.

As a precaution, I had warned Betty, even before Deacon's funeral, not to get involved in any part of the party or its functioning that she didn't feel comfortable with. But Betty kept her own counsel. In one of our few phone conversations, I mentioned the shooting at the dance. She did not take my remark further.

Later it became obvious that I had not really known Betty I had counted to some extent on her middle class scruples to keep her from any danger zones she encountered in Panther territory. But this too was an illusion. She had passions that prompted her to want a deeper involvement in what she also perceived as their struggle against oppression.

There was another reason I did not express my growing fears to Betty. The more fear I had the more I realized that it would not be okay for me to voice such criticism, having been so close to the operation. To badmouth the party would be tantamount to treason. I had a wife and four children who lived in neighboring Berkeley, and I would not be able to protect them or myself from Elaine's wrath.

There were other considerations in my silence, too. What I had seen at the funeral, what I knew from hearsay and from the press were only blips on a radar screen that was highly personal, dependent on my own experience to read. I had begun to know the Panther reality, at least enough to have a healthy fear of Elaine. But how could I convey this knowledge to someone who had not been privy to the same things I had? How could I do it in such a way that they would believe me and not endanger me? Before fleeing, my Panther friends had tried to warn me about Huey through similar signs, and I had failed to understand. My ignorance was dangerous to them and to myself.

Finally, only the police had ever accused the Panthers of actual crimes. Everyone I knew and respected on the left — and beyond the left — regarded the police allegations against the Panthers as malicious libels by a racist power structure bent on holding down and eliminating militant black leadership. It was one of the most powerful liberal myths of the times.
^*

One Friday night, a month or so after Deacon's funeral, a black man walked into the Berkeley Square, a neighborhood bar that Betty frequented, and handed her a note. Betty, who seemed to know the messenger, read the note and left shortly afterwards. She was never seen alive again.

On the following Monday, I received an anxious phone call from Tammy Van Patter, Betty's eighteen-year-old daughter, who had also worked for me at
Ramparts
. She told me her mother was missing and asked for my help. I phoned Elaine, but got Joan Kelley instead. Joan told me that Elaine had had a fight with Betty on Thursday and fired her. (Later, Elaine lied to investigating police, telling them she had fired Betty the previous Friday and hadn't seen her for a week before she disappeared.)

When Elaine returned my call, she immediately launched into a tirade against Betty, calling her an "idiot" who believed in astrology, and who "wanted to know too much." She said that Betty was employed by a bookkeeping firm with offices in the Philippines, and was probably working for the CIA. Then Elaine turned on me for recommending that Betty be hired in the first place. She noted that I was "bawling" at Deacon's funeral and had not "come around for a long time." Perhaps I was scared by the dangers the party faced. Why was I so concerned about this white woman who was crazy, when all those brothers had been gunned down by the police? White people did not seem to care that much when it was black people dying.

A week later, when Betty still had not turned up, I called Elaine one more time, and was subjected to another torrent of abuse culminating in a threat only thinly veiled: "If you were run over by a car or something, David, I would be very upset, because people would say I did it."

I was visited in my home by the Berkeley police. They told me they were convinced the Panthers had taken Betty hostage and had probably already killed her. From her daughter, Tammy, I learned that the very small circle of Betty's friends and acquaintances had all been questioned since her disappearance, and none had seen her for some time. She had left her credit cards and birth control pills at home, and thus could not have been going on an unexpected trip when she left Berkeley Square with the mysterious messenger for the rendezvous to which she had been summoned.

Betty was found on January 13, 1975, five weeks after she had disappeared, when her water-logged body washed up on the western shore of San Francisco Bay. Her head had been bashed in by a blunt instrument and police estimated that she had been in the water for seventeen days. She was forty-two years old.