My People Are Rising (36 page)

One morning I was lying in bed in my living quarters at the Fulton Street house, one of several Panther houses. I had been on guard duty most of the night, so I was allowed to sleep in. Most of the other comrades were gone for the day, except for a very attractive comrade sister named Brenda. Before I knew it, we were in her bed kissing, caressing, our passions heating up. Since first laying eyes on this comrade sister, I had wanted to make love to her. She was relating to one of the leading members of the party, so thus far I had kept my distance, but now we were in each other's arms. As I gently got on top of her to consummate our desire, she whispered in my ear, with that Eartha Kitt voice of hers, “Aaron . . . don't forget the freeze.” With those words, my passions cooled and I slowly moved off. We got dressed and left for our assignments. I was not always the most principled comrade, but on this occasion I decided I should be.

Another freeze had to do with the increasing number of babies in the party. During and shortly after the most heated periods of attacks against the party, pregnancies would rise. This phenomenon has repeated throughout history—during times of war and great stress, humans have sought comfort and release through sex. The big house in Berkeley, where Tanya and I had stayed along with Chairman Bobby and Landon Williams back in August '69, now served as the party's child development center. Eight to twelve party members were assigned to look after the babies and toddlers, who required round-the-clock care, because their parents were all working in various other party capacities. It took a lot of people and resources to care for all the babies born in the party over the previous two years.

The freeze order stated that no party members could have any more children until further notice. So, if a sister became pregnant, she was required to have an abortion from a private doctor. The Panther clinic tested for sexually transmitted diseases and provided birth control but did not perform abortions. Some people also got birth control through private doctors. This freeze lasted almost six years, from 1972–1978, with only one exception: Ericka Huggins and James Mott were granted a special exemption and allowed to have a baby.

The older children, three years and up, were housed in dormitories. There were two large houses in Berkeley around the corner from each other, and another large house on Santa Rosa Street, where some Central Committee members also stayed along with the school staff. The staff cooked, cleaned, washed clothes, took kids on field trips, helped with homework—everything a parent would provide and more. There was also a huge house on 29th Street, where some children stayed along with their parents. In the morning, vans picked up the kids for school. On weekends, the kids in the dorms went home to their parents. Aaron Patrice, who was now four, stayed with me on weekends and occasionally during the week. It was an extremely difficult arrangement for both parent and child, but it worked to some degree.

The party's paper, renamed
The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service
, was gradually becoming one of the finest alternative newspapers in the land. The centralization had brought the party's best writers, photographers, and editors from around the country to Oakland. The party even hired the talented journalist David Du Bois, stepson of W. E. B. Du Bois, as editor in chief. Under Huey's orders, the party also hired a top-flight typist to work with the newspaper staff. Roderick also happened to be an out-of-the-closet, flamboyant homosexual.

Huey was a proponent of freedom of choice and expression, and he wanted the sometimes macho men of the party to embrace those concepts. It was interesting to see how the male comrades of Central Headquarters responded to Roderick, who stood over six feet tall and was well-built, with a long, brown perm, earrings, and makeup to boot. Some of the comrades were intimidated by his presence. However, in the party, accepting change was not only important to accomplishing our goals, it was also an integral part of being a Panther, and accepting change went hand in hand with accepting others. Save for a few rough moments, before long Roderick had become a part of our family.

Huey and the Black Panther Party helped pave the way for the emergence of the gay liberation movement. As the vanguard, the party influenced and gave direction to many emerging movements in the United States—the white radical movement, the Latino revolutionary movement, the Gray Panthers, the women's movement, and eventually the gay rights movement, which had been in the shadows, waiting to raise its voice. The historic Stonewall Uprising in New York City in the summer of 1969, when dozens of gay men and women resisted arrest and fought back against the police, put the gay rights movement on the scene. Shortly afterward, in 1970, Huey wrote an article from prison on the importance of gay people having the same right to freedom as all Americans, advocating that the party have a working coalition with the gay rights movement and other revolutionary movements. Soon after that article, with the support of the party and the momentum from Stonewall, the gay rights movement in New York became a revolutionary force to reckon with.

At its core, the party was made up of lovers. We loved life, we loved each other, we loved the people, and we embraced our mission and our responsibilities, so it was easy for us to embrace others, particularly if they were not embraced by society as a whole. However, there was still an undercurrent of fear I sensed in a very subtle way, and I was about to find out more about it firsthand.

With David Hilliard on his way to prison for his participation in the shootout on April 6, 1968, June Hilliard assumed the responsibilities of chief of staff and John Seale became assistant chief of staff. Under Huey's direction, the party also created the “security squad,” composed of party members from around the country who were considered the toughest and most vicious, most of whom had been handpicked for the squad by Huey himself. The security squad's main function was to protect Central Committee members and provide overall security for the party and its facilities. They also were involved in enforcing whatever the party wanted to enforce, whether on the streets or within the party. This included physical discipline of party members, which was new to me as well as many other comrades.

Valentine had been recruited to this newly formed wing of the party. Squad members, including John Seale, had lobbied for me to be recruited, but for some reason Huey denied this request. John Seale often strode through the office with his black leather coat draped over his shoulders, sometimes followed by one or two members of the security squad.

One day John Seale and his comrades asked me to come into the photo department, and closed the door behind them. Calmly, John said, “Tanya told me that you had disrespected her.”

As I was sitting on the corner of a desk, explaining to him why I had cursed at my estranged wife and supervisor during a disagreement over some procedures, I was blindsided and knocked to the floor. Darren “The Duke” Perkins and Carl Colar pounced on me and began pummeling me. It was over within minutes. For the first time as a party member, I had been physically disciplined. They did not really hurt me physically, not because they couldn't; they were probably ordered not to. But my ego and my pride were bruised. That night I left Central Headquarters angry and uncertain as to whether I would ever return.

I took a long ride on the 43 bus line to Berkeley and spent the night with a friend, a Berkeley student from the Bahamas. She comforted me, tended to my mental and emotional wounds, while I tried to understand my feelings of hurt and betrayal. I could not share with her my larger dilemma. That was something I dared not divulge. After a few drinks of rum, I finally went to sleep.

The next day I headed back to Central Headquarters. I had been through many trials and tribulations since joining the party. I had witnessed the many successes of our Seattle chapter, and I had felt the pain of losing comrades and the sting of humiliation, arrest, and harassment by the pigs. I did not know the reasons behind my demotion and mistreatment. I only knew that while many former captains were getting high-profile assignments, I remained at Central mainly as the OD during the entire mayoral campaign. However, I was determined not to allow these things to drive me away. It would take more than a bruised ego to send me packing. I was in this fight to the end.

27

The Campaign—1973

We got to stop all men

From messing up the land

When won't we understand

This is our last and only chance

—Curtis Mayfield, “Future Shock,” 1973

A packed crowd of onlookers
sat rapt in the Oakland Auditorium, listening to Bobby Seale, dressed in a black suit and black hat, announce his candidacy for mayor of Oakland and the candidacy of Elaine Brown, who stood next to him, for city council. As Chairman Bobby threw his hat into the raucous crowd, the curtain went up behind him, revealing five thousand bags of groceries stacked on the stage floor. Panthers stationed at the corners of the stage, dressed in powder-blue shirts, black slacks, and black berets, began giving out the bags of groceries to the waiting constituents. Another five thousand bags or more would be distributed at two other locations that same week.

Santa Rita and I had been put in charge of a squad of Panther monitors, all wearing the powder-blue shirts, black slacks, and berets. Given walkie-talkies, we had been charged with maintaining order and distributing the bags of groceries in an orderly fashion. Another security contingent wore leather coats and was obviously armed. With a few exceptions, the food giveaway at the auditorium went smoothly. I spotted one brother loading up the trunk of his Cadillac with groceries, and saw a few people clutching three or four bags, running down the street. But at the giveaway later in the week in East Oakland, the monitors were almost completely overrun by overzealous crowds.

Preparing the bags of groceries was a huge logistical feat. Santa Rita, James Mott, and I had driven two freezer trucks down to San Jose to pick up the ten thousand frozen chickens purchased from Foster Farms. The poultry was then unloaded at the Berkeley Unitarian Church, where hundreds of nearly all white volunteers repackaged each chicken individually, in preparation for placement into waiting paper bags the night before the campaign kickoff. In the days before the event, ten thousand paper bags were laid out on the floor of the Oakland Auditorium. Joan Kelly and Carol Rucker coordinated the operation. Panthers spent hours putting canned goods, a sack of potatoes, a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, and canned vegetables into each bag. The frozen chickens went in last. It took a tremendous collective effort to pull this off. There were many nights of no sleep, and long hours of work, but this is what we lived for: meeting, planning, organizing, fighting, and serving the people.

In the following weeks, the party opened up six campaign offices throughout Oakland, staffing each with the party's best organizers from around the country. Monday through Saturday more than two hundred comrades would be sent out into the city streets, to pool halls, street corners, liquor stores, churches, bars, and grocery stores. Wherever people gathered, we were there to register them to vote. The goal was to register every single eligible voter in Oakland. Party members also enrolled at many of the Oakland community colleges for the purpose of organizing the student populace. We had a substantial presence at Laney College and Grove Street College, where, through contacts, John Seale and Big Man Howard had acquired jobs in the administration. We enrolled the most comrades at Grove Street, including many brothers on the security squad who registered for tae kwon do classes. Formerly called Merritt College, Grove Street was the school where Huey and Bobby met and where they first began to organize. I was glad I was allowed the opportunity to enroll in psychology and history classes at Grove Street; it was the only time I got away from Central Headquarters.

Elaine Brown and Gwen Goodloe, the finance coordinator from the Los Angeles chapter, had enrolled at Mills College, an independent, all-female school. One of the first things Gwen and Elaine did was organize a party with the BSU on campus. They then selected a group of comrade brothers to attend for the sole purpose of hooking them up with the Mills sisters in order to better organize the campus. It was pretty comical at the party. Most of us brothers stood back, not really feeling up to this revolutionary dating game. Elaine and Gwen circulated, egging us on to mingle and meet the sisters. Elaine introduced me to the BSU president, Debby, from Los Angeles, and with Elaine's prodding, we developed a relationship that for me was strictly business. Yet to say I did not enjoy the assignment would not be totally true. Debby was a very nice sister, and the relationship allowed me some time away from Central and gave me the freedom to roam around the beautiful Mills College campus.

I had hoped to get an assignment coordinating one of the campaign offices, but instead I remained at Central, becoming the main OD and missing out on much of the campaign. The work during this period was intense. In addition to the campaign, we still had all the day-to-day party work to sustain, such as the school and the Survival Programs, as well as our new CETA Programs. The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) was a federal government initiative to find work or provide job training for unemployed and disadvantaged people, especially youth. We had around twenty youth, some with gang ties, who worked in our CETA Programs. They were assigned jobs in different party facilities and also helped to launch the party's new SAFE Program, an acronym for Seniors Against a Fearful Environment. SAFE entailed the young people accompanying seniors to the banks and grocery stores and other activities. CETA was probably the best program ever to come out of Washington, DC, which is precisely why it did not last very long.