Nine Lives of a Black Panther Page 11

  I was standing now too. “It’s to broaden awareness of issues and highlight glaring contradictions in this whole Wizard of Oz fairy tale called United Capitalist of America,” I declared. “Minister Cleaver is running for that very reason.”

  It was very important to us Panthers that everyday people understood the importance of analysis and dialogue, which leads to a deeper grasp of issues. While not everyone left the classroom that day in agreement, they did have their eyes opened a little more, had more food for thought.

  I was thankful I had that chance to provide security for Eldridge, because he disappeared shortly thereafter. In late November, a few days before he was required to turn himself in to the authorities to serve time for a parole violation, Eldridge went underground. The next time we heard from Eldridge, he was in Cuba.

  Although Eldridge played a major role in the Party, we didn’t suffer because of his absence or that of any individual Party leader. Huey was in jail, and Bobby had done time around the Sacramento incident, but we kept moving. It was understood that at any time, any one of us could be jailed or killed for challenging the system. We were now too busy with the important work of the Party to appropriately mourn the loss of a comrade. Selling newspapers, attending political education classes, weapons training, and meeting and training the hundreds of new recruits joining the Party was a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week commitment.

  Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver in Altadena, California, August 1976. COURTESY OF NIK WHEELER

  9

  DIVIDE AND CONQUER

  I was a comrade in a national revolutionary organization but still naive about the dangers that might come about because of our willingness to confront the system. One thing I knew for sure was that whatever came my way, I could count on my comrades to have my back. But on New Year’s Day 1969, my confidence was shaken, and suddenly I found myself questioning the bond that held the Black Panther Party together.

  It was bright and sunny that day, so Tyrone and I decided to hang out at the All Nations Pool Hall on Broadway. We agreed to meet there, and when I arrived, I saw him standing outside waiting for me.

  I immediately knew something was up with Tyrone. The first thing I noticed was his gloomy demeanor. I thought to myself, Maybe he has some bad news.

  “Captain Franco is dead,” Tyrone said as I walked up.

  Dumbfounded, I just stared at him, trying to wrap my head around the news.

  “They found him in an alley in Long Beach, with three bullets in his head.”

  “What the fuck! Who did it?” I said angrily at Tyrone.

  “Nobody seems to know. It could have been the pigs, but I don’t know. Some say it was agents.”

  “Do you know why?” This seemed senseless, and even though I knew it had nothing to do with Tyrone, his response made me angrier.

  Tyrone shrugged his shoulders, signaling that he had no answers. I waited for more dialogue on Franco, but it wasn’t coming. I calmed myself down, and we walked into the pool hall.

  Captain Franco had been the leader of a small squad of three to four people. Actually, Long John worked under him. He was older than most of us, by about ten years. He had served more than a decade in Sing Sing, a notorious prison in New York, for armed robbery and attempted murder. Sing Sing was well known for its high number of executions, including that of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who had been convicted of espionage—a conviction that helped fuel Joseph McCarthy’s campaign against “anti-American activities” in the 1950s. Captain Franco had experience and knowledge that were very valuable to the organization, and he used those skills to train Party members on how to avoid getting killed. He was also the leader of the Party’s local underground apparatus in Southern California, teaching Panthers how to rob and steal to liberate resources on behalf of the community. Sometimes Franco could be inappropriate, but you couldn’t deny that he was committed.

  Tyrone’s news threw me into deep thought. I hadn’t had much contact with the Captain after I joined, because I was mainly in Watts and working with the BSU. Franco operated out of Broadway and spent a lot of time at headquarters with G and Bunchy. However, in that moment of realization that he was gone, my mind flashed back to the times I had listened to Franco’s diatribes, mostly revolving around how he wanted to kill as many white people as possible, before they killed us. “I’m finishing up what Nat Turner started,” he liked to boast. Franco truly understood the enemy.

  How the hell did they get him, of all people? I wondered to myself. It was unnerving.

  Over the next few days, stories about Franco’s death started flying around from everywhere. Some thought he was an agent provocateur because of his advocacy of killing white people. Franco’s open hatred for white folks, it was said, was bringing heat to the Party.

  Eventually, more facts surfaced: apparently FBI agents had put him in a no-win situation that was bound to get him killed, while at the same time creating more confusion and dissension within the Party. It was the age-old war tactic of divide and conquer. Shortly before his death, Captain Franco had been arrested for armed robbery after leading the police on a high-speed chase. Shortly after the arrest, he was mysteriously released without charges being filed, which led some Panthers to say that he had snitched. How else could he have just walked away from that kind of situation with no consequences? It was hard for comrades to accept.

  Franco, for his part, had begun to feel like he had been set up. In fact, on the night before he died, he told Roland Freeman, a Panther out of Broadway and the brother of Ronald Freeman, that he was feeling like some of the leadership no longer trusted him. Roland had pressed Franco on the matter. “That’s some deep shit you’re saying there. Maybe you’re just paranoid,” Roland told him that night.

  I thought to myself that there should be an effort to avenge Franco’s murder. But it never happened. Neither was there any real investigation; at least that was the rumor. I heard that G had been questioned by the police about Captain Franco’s murder, but that was it. No witnesses ever came forward. I decided not to go to the funeral, because I didn’t want to be viewed as going outside of what appeared to be the conventional view that Franco had turned snitch. But the matter of Franco’s murder weighed on me for days.

  Eventually, though, the discussion around Franco’s death subsided, the needs of day-to-day business demanded our attention, and we went back to work. Ironically, a year after Captain Franco’s death, the bullets found in his body were supposedly matched with a 9-millimeter automatic pistol that was seized in a raid of one of the Party’s headquarters. Some of my comrades were stunned, while others believed that the police had planted the bullets or just lied. But for me, it wasn’t a head-twister at all. I had already concluded that the police had not murdered Captain Franco. It was an inside job, and I felt it was a dirty deed. I wasn’t sure who had given the order, nor did I know how high up the chain of command the matter had gone. Was it a directive from the leadership of the Southern California chapter, or was the Central Committee in Oakland involved? One thing I knew for sure: my grandmother’s words of caution were echoing more stridently in my ears. It was like a prophet foretelling that which was to come: “Wayne, watch your back.” I wasn’t paranoid, but I began to seriously watch those around me. It was no time to sleep.

  Although I thought the Party had taken out Captain Franco, I felt relatively secure in my relationships with comrades in Watts and on Broadway. I rationalized Captain Franco’s death by concluding that he might have died soon anyway. He wanted to kill white people so badly at times that he would have always been a risk to himself and the Party. Captain Franco was not destined to live a long life. The primary threat to the security of the Black Panther Party and the black community came in the form of blue uniforms and tailored suits. At the time, I didn’t think that a real life-and-death threat would come from other black liberation organizations. But I was wrong.

  The Us Organization, a group that also saw itself as the vanguard in the struggl
e for black liberation, was willing to fight and kill for that title. Ronald Everett, a migrant from Maryland who had come to Los Angeles in 1958, led Us. He was short and stocky with light nut-brown skin and was known for his ability to articulate important ideas. But he did so with a high-pitched voice that I found irritating. He attended Los Angeles Community College (LACC) and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). People knew him as Ron Everett, a student activist, until he changed his last name to Karenga. As he became more confident in his gifts and talents, he changed his first name to Maulana, which means “master teacher” in Swahili. Maulana Karenga founded Us in 1965 in Los Angeles with several known movement leaders including Hakim Jamal, a cousin of Malcolm X, and Tommy Jacquette, an activist who helped to establish the Watts Summer Festival. The founders of the group named it the Us Organization, as opposed to them—white people. Their early meetings were held at a black-owned bookstore called Aquarius, but they eventually moved into their own building in 1967. Infighting and ideological disagreements caused the group to fragment; when it was over, Maulana Karenga was its leader.

  My own encounters with Us were minimal prior to joining the Party. They promoted Afrocentric ideas, wore dashikis, and advocated Swahili as an alternative language for black people. The men wore shaved heads, and the women sported their hair in large Afros. One major component of their program was changing Christmas to Kwanzaa.

  The group was organized in paramilitary fashion like the Fruit of Islam (FOI), the security wing of the Nation of Islam. Us’s soldiers were known as Simba Wachangas, which meant “young lions.” I was impressed with their martial arts program and weapons training, but I didn’t like how they tried to come off as too hard, too angry, and too uniform in their stoic looks. Hell, they were less friendly than the FOI, and that’s really saying something.

  I wasn’t afraid of them Us niggas, but I never felt comfortable around them, either, because they were overimposing and worked hard at putting out the vibe that a fight could jump off at any time. In early 1968, I had attended a rally organized by Us at Green Meadows Park on Eighty-Eighth and Avalon. As I walked through the park, I took note of the Simbas, looking mean as usual, wearing sunglasses and dashikis. I listened to their ideas, which were cool, but I wasn’t down with their robotic feel. Like the Nation of Islam, they all looked and dressed the same and all parroted the words of their spokesperson. I decided then that I didn’t need to get any closer to Us, because it seemed to me like they were scripted, blind, and brainwashed. After I became a Panther, I didn’t even think about Us unless someone brought them up.

  In activist circles, criticisms of Us were becoming common. The first person who complained to me directly, and with great emotion, was Mrs. Ventress, the mother of Shay-vee, a beautiful young lady I met at Harbor College. Shay-vee and I had started hanging out together. We became so close that she invited me to her home to meet her mother, who she told me was a community activist. Mrs. Ventress was a member of the local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality, CORE for short. She was a smart lady who wore her hair in an Afro and spoke a lot about black consciousness. I liked Mrs. Ventress because she reached out to young people and tried to build up our self-esteem.

  One day while I was visiting Shay-vee, Mrs. Ventress called me into the kitchen, where she was sewing. I came in and sat down at the table, careful to keep my good manners.

  “Let me tell you something, Wayne,” she began. “The older folks in the community don’t like the way that Karenga and the Us people act.”

  I sat and watched her, nodding my head as she talked and sewed.

  She continued, as I took note of the serious look on her face. “They feel uncomfortable with all the arrogance, scowling, and cold looks coming from them.”

  I nodded attentively, letting her know I understood.

  “And then they try to dictate and impose their ways on us elders and the nonviolent groups, like the NAACP and SCLC. Ain’t nobody gonna trust them if they act like we’re a bunch of sheep!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I responded.

  Mrs. Ventress continued to sew and talk. “Maulana Karenga is trying to force all of the Black Congress to accept his teachings, but we don’t even understand his name.”

  “Really?” I chuckled.

  “Yes!” she exclaimed, her arms waving vigorously in the air. “Karenga is a bully with an oversized ego who is trying to control all the activism in Los Angeles.”

  I nodded as my eyes widened, taking her message in.

  “You Panthers need to step in and stop them from intimidating people and dictating to our groups.” She was adamant.

  Mrs. Ventress was referring to all the groups that belonged to the Black Congress, an umbrella organization for civil rights and black power groups such as the NAACP, SCLC, CORE and CAP, the L.A. Black Panthers, the Watts Happening Coffee House, and the Freedom Draft Movement. The Black Congress also included socialist organizations like the United Front and organizations that emphasized black liberation like the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), Nation of Islam, and the Us Organization. Some organizations combined many of those ideologies but also pushed self-defense, like we did. Individual activists like Caffee Green would also attend the Black Congress meetings.

  The Black Congress was an organization of groups, but it was also a building known by the same name. It was a medium-sized two-story stucco affair with a brick foundation, located at Broadway and Florence. Small rooms used as offices for each group divided the bottom floor, and there was a larger room where classes and meetings were held.

  I was aware of the Black Congress years before I became a Black Panther, because it was in our neighborhood. For me, the Black Congress was similar to the Aquarius Bookstore, a place where we would go to buy a book or hear a speech. I had visited the Congress a few times to pick up flyers and hear presentations. I liked what I perceived as camaraderie within the Congress organizations: there was always a vibe of black consciousness when I visited.

  The Black Panther Party of Southern California used space at the Black Congress building as its headquarters when it was first established. The location was beneficial to the new organization because people interested in the Party could pick up some up-to-date information or stay to listen to one of Bunchy’s speeches. Being affiliated with the Black Congress also meant that the Party had relationships with other activist groups, and could coordinate work and support each other—except for Us and the Panthers, who did not get along.

  The animosity between the Black Panther Party and Us began during the time when they both held offices at the Black Congress. In February 1967, the same month of the rally at the Sports Arena, Bunchy located space at 4115 Central Avenue and moved the Party from the Black Congress to its new Central Headquarters. Because the organization was growing so quickly, Bunchy soon opened up a second office in my neighborhood, on Eighty-Fourth and Broadway. But that didn’t do anything to abate the feud between the two organizations.

  I was still new to the organization and had a lot of questions about the enmity between the two. One day, I was hanging out with Russell Washington, helping him distribute newspapers, still trying to figure out why the Panthers and Us didn’t get along. I decided to query Russell flat-out. As a lady was walking away with a paper I had just sold her, I turned and looked at him.

  “Comrade Russell,” I said bluntly, “why is there so much friction between Us and the Panthers?”

  He considered me for a moment. “Because we are revolutionaries who understand political struggle and practice dialectic materialism,” he replied matter-of-factly.

  “Of course,” I said with a shrug.

  “Karenga and Us are pork-chop cultural nationalists,” he continued, “who look down on the masses because they don’t wear African clothes or speak Swahili. But we embrace the masses, even if they’re wearing their hair conked and don’t speak anything but street slang.”

  I nodded my head. “Right on,” I smiled.

  Russell bega
n to laugh. “Karenga got pissed off when Bunchy used some of the money we got from the Sports Arena to open up headquarters,” he snickered.

  I was surprised when he said that, but I decided to avoid asking questions about the issue of money. Also, I knew it wasn’t my territory, but I was still curious about the differences between Us and the Panthers on the question of working with white people. At Harbor, some of the students who supported the BSU were white. They weren’t members, but they would contribute and help us organize events on campus. I knew that Us refused to work with whites, while the Black Panther Party saw whites and other races as important to the struggle.

  I went ahead and asked Russell about the issue.

  “Those fools got the wrong idea about what we should all be doing,” he responded sharply. “They’re so caught up in racism that they can’t see the wisdom of people like Mao Tse-Tung and Karl Marx, because they aren’t black. They don’t understand that capitalism is a big problem for all people.”

  “OK, comrade, I can dig that,” I replied. We studied the teachings of both Mao and Marx extensively in PE classes. Russell filled in a lot of the blanks for me that day.

  The Panthers and Us also engaged in different recruitment methods and ways of motivating people to work to free black people. The Us Organization came off like gangsters, attempting to force people and entire organizations to accept their philosophy. But our approach was much smoother, using conversation to show people the righteousness of our program. We also demonstrated our philosophy through political activism and met people wherever they were in their political growth. We didn’t take the position that everybody had to be in the Panther Party; we wanted to give people free will.

  Despite its differences with Us, the Black Panther Party put up a united front within the black community. But our disagreements were getting more intense daily, especially when student groups would ask us to intercede because the Simbas were showing up at their meetings trying to strong-arm them into accepting leadership from Us.