Nine Lives of a Black Panther Read online

  I waited until dark and went around to where I knew they would enter. Off to the side, I noticed a big Dumpster. From there, I thought, I could get a good view of the hospital entrance they would use. Perfect hiding place. Those suckers would never know what hit ’em. I walked over to the Dumpster, pried open the heavy metal lid, and peered inside, trying to figure out the best way to climb into it without making a bunch of noise. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed an old crate, so I pulled it over and propped it up next to the Dumpster. Stepping up onto the crate, I climbed inside and lowered the lid, leaving it open just wide enough for me to have a lookout. I squatted down in the darkness, settling in for the wait. Hopefully it won’t be long, I thought to myself. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I looked around me and decided it wasn’t really so bad inside the trash bin; mostly, it was full of old hospital gowns and paper trash. So I stayed there, squatting inside the dark bin, from 10:00 at night until the early hours of the morning, my M-14 in hand, waiting for one of them to drive up with the next Black Panther in the car.

  My mind wandered as I waited. I imagined the satisfaction I would get mowing their asses down. I imagined seeing the surprise on their faces as they realized they were finally getting their due. I kept thinking about their ugly threats, the obvious and perverse pleasure they had gotten out of beating me. And others. I thought about Hole holding himself while he was beating me, the disgusting image of him like that now burned into my brain. My legs ached from squatting for so long. I got tired of being stuck inside the dark Dumpster; the air was stuffy inside. I kept hoping no one would come with a new load of trash to dump. I wanted to move around, stretch my legs. But I couldn’t. Good thing I’m not claustrophobic, I thought to myself. I waited and I waited. Neither one of them showed up. I went home that night exhausted.

  But I wasn’t done. I staked out the hospital again the next night, still determined to blast a cap in one of them. The second night was a little harder than the first, because I was already a little weary from my all-nighter the day before. This time I knew what was ahead of me for the next several hours, sitting in the bottom of a trash bin as the clock barely ticked. But I was unwavering in my commitment to give those sick bastards what they deserved. I imagined looking one of them square in the eye as he took his last breath. Punk, I would say. Pig scum, I would call him before I disappeared into the night.

  But they were no-shows again. By the end of that second night, I was tired and discouraged. I decided that I was losing too much time and sleep hoping one of them might show up. I wondered if I truly was losing my mind, as G had suggested. I realized that I hadn’t really thought it out very well anyway, so maybe it was a good thing neither of them showed up. I needed a better plan.

  In the meantime, G moved me out of the Watts office to Central Headquarters. He came up to me at the office after my second all-nighter waiting for Hole and Fisher; I must have looked pretty washed out.

  “Comrade Wayne,” he said as he put a firm, brotherly hand on my shoulder, “I think you need a break from Watts. I want you to work out of Central for a while. We need a driver for the Central Committee, Elaine and Masai. I trust you to help make sure they get where they need to go when they are in Los Angeles.”

  “Right on,” I answered automatically, dutifully. “Whatever the Party needs me to do.”

  I didn’t really want to leave my home base. But actually, I was ready for a little change. I could already feel my shoulders start to relax, even as he told me the news.

  He released his strong grip on my shoulder. “Use my GTO and the Party’s yellow van. Ask Elaine and Masai what they need and I will make it available.”

  So just like that, I was operating out of Central and driving G’s GTO. I loved driving that car—it was the hottest car in Los Angeles at that time. When he needed it or when we wanted to be less conspicuous, I would drive the van. G had been right—this was a much-needed move for me, at least for now. I started to feel rejuvenated.

  I was now working for the Party exclusively, driving the leadership throughout Southern California, especially to areas where we had chapters, like Riverside, Santa Ana, and San Diego. I still maintained all of my college contacts, though, as well as my close association with the Black Student Alliance. They always provided me with a safety net and support. I didn’t want to lose those relationships, even though my time was more limited than before.

  I was cool with driving Elaine and Masai around too. Not only did it expose me to inner workings of the Party that I hadn’t been aware of before, but also it kept me out of the office and on the streets, which I always enjoyed.

  Elaine had been pulled into working with the Central Committee at the national level because David Hilliard needed help, so I drove her when she came down from Oakland. After spending so much time together on the road, we developed a mutually respectful friendship. We talked about office work, how to battle the police, and about our intimate relationships. Elaine met Sharon and my daughter, Tammy, to whom she was very sweet. She also tried to set me up with Gwen Goodloe, another sister. It was, after all, the sixties. I thanked her for the thought and then told her, with an appreciative smile, that I already had too many women, and it would be too tough to add another. Elaine just grinned back slyly and winked at me. We had a good laugh over that. But Gwen and I hit it off as friends anyway, and I made an extra effort to drive her to appointments.

  And Elaine, she was one tough sister. When the pigs would stop us, she would get real indignant and challenge them. “Why the hell you messing with us?” she would chide in her smart bossy-girl voice. I always had to chuckle under my breath at her sassy reproaches to the pigs. But at the same time, I respected her for it.

  Masai, though, was entirely different when I drove him. For one thing, he would get real quiet when the pigs vamped on us. His posture was to try to defuse the situation so that we could keep on moving. Unlike Elaine, he was still living in L.A. and traveling back and forth to Oakland. And because his home was in L.A., it was more dangerous for him to antagonize the pigs, especially the vicious L.A. Metro pigs, like Elaine did. They had more access to him. Overall, Masai was just a more even personality than a lot of comrades. He was always concerned that he had justification for what he did. And he was willing to learn from his mistakes. I compared him once to G while we were driving back to headquarters. Masai threw his head back and laughed at that. His bass voice resonated throughout the whole van. It was a good-natured laugh. He knew that G had a volatile nature and sometimes didn’t think things through. He reminded me that G got mad at one of the captains one day and busted his head open with a lamp vase. Then he said that, as a matter of fact, he planned to talk to G about his temper, because if he didn’t, “that Injun’s going to get us all killed.”

  I chuckled, too. But I couldn’t disagree.

  Driving Masai was quite an experience, in fact. For one thing, he was a true ladies’ man, so I often drove him to visit women he had special relationships with—many of whom were very high-profile, like Angela Davis and actress Jean Seberg. Angela was easy on the eyes. I always enjoyed it when Masai instructed me to drive to her house. She was a striking beauty, tall and long-legged, with a big, beautiful Afro and a smile that wouldn’t stop. When she walked into a room, you stopped whatever you were doing—she just had that kind of presence. But besides her good looks, the other thing you noticed about her right away was how intelligent she was, and yet she had a warm personality. At the time, Angela lived in a house near Vernon and Main. When we arrived at her place, we would all go inside and make small talk for a while until eventually it was me by myself waiting for them while they were in another room.

  With Jean Seberg, however, I would wait outside. Jean lived in Beverly Hills. She was a stunning beauty, too, a blonde Audrey Hepburn and a real Hollywood type. I never saw her in any of her movies, but I sure knew who she was. She was svelte and petite and carried herself like a movie star. At the same time, she seemed real down-to-earth and
sincere, and I got the sense that she truly understood that equality for blacks was never going to happen without revolution. She became a well-known supporter of and financial contributor to the Party.

  Masai had a lot of respect for Jean’s ability to move away from the comforts of Hollywood to support our work. But because of her support for us, she became a target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO, which embarked on a smear campaign to ruin her. Based on a false story, “credible” newspapers and magazines reported that Jean was pregnant with a baby not by her husband but by an official of the Black Panthers, insinuating it was Masai. The incident was so upsetting to her that she miscarried shortly after the story ran. She insisted on a funeral with an open casket to prove that her baby was white. She was stalked and wiretapped and endured other forms of harassment. Then she stopped getting good roles in Hollywood. Jean eventually committed suicide; some say that it was after her relationship with Masai was exposed, while others related it to FBI bullying because she was raising so much money for the Party. She had been ruined for associating with us.

  One day as I was driving Masai somewhere, the discussion in the car turned to my strategy for using the sewers, both to set up ambushes on the police and for protection. Masai already knew about my idea and seemed ready to pursue it further. He asked me all sorts of questions—How would you do this, and what if that? The conversation went on for some time, and then we moved on to another topic. But I was glad it had come up.

  I pulled back into headquarters and went to turn off the engine. It was the end of the day, and we were ready to go home. Masai, however, wasn’t getting out of the car. I turned to look, to see what was wrong. But there was nothing wrong. Instead, I could see that he was lost in serious thought. “Comrade Wayne,” he said, “let’s make a run into the sewers. I want to check your plan.”

  “Right on,” I smiled. Good, I thought. This is important.

  The plan was to drive Masai that night. We didn’t want to arouse the suspicion of the pigs by riding in the GTO or the yellow van, which they would have noticed right away, so I got a car from a friend. I arrived at Masai’s house after dark, and we left his place right away. Both of us were wearing army boots and military-style pants, ready for the giant rats and whatever else lurked below.

  I decided to take Masai in at Central Avenue and 120th. The tunnels in that area were large enough to walk through, and from where we started, I was able to show him the main drain and then the four corner lines where the water ran in. We walked for a while and then crawled up the drainpipe so we could look out and see where we were in the city. We watched cars and a few people go by.

  Masai turned to me with a frown. “OK, comrade, I’m checking this out, and I like it. But what’s the plan?”

  Good. He liked it. We needed to move forward on this. “From the four lines,” I explained, “we can set up ambushes from different corners, and we can use it as an escape route from Central Headquarters.”

  “That sounds good,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Which part?” I asked. “The ambush or being able to escape from Central?”

  He turned to me with a serious look on his face. “Both!” he exclaimed with a wide grin.

  I didn’t need to say a thing. I just smiled back and nodded.

  “Comrade,” he continued effusively, “this shit is major. You got to keep at this. I also think you need to draw some maps, so when the time comes, everybody involved can be ready.”

  “Good idea,” I replied in agreement. But I knew as I said it that I wasn’t drawing any maps. I was afraid they might end up in the wrong hands. I didn’t want a paper trail.

  As we continued walking through the underground, I showed Masai how to maneuver, and I fleshed out for him the possibility of the plan working. We stayed down there about two hours before we finally came back up, right where we left the car. Perfect.

  From that point on, throughout my time as his driver, Masai and I would strategize about how and when to use the sewers. It almost became a reconnaissance adventure for him, but it encouraged me to continue pursuing the project.

  In the meantime, I had to deal with that pig, Hole. He had a serious vendetta against me; he would look for me and then follow me. Each time he saw me in a car, he and his partner would pull me over and make me step out of the car. Usually they would surround me and put their hands on their guns. “Are you packin’?” he would growl.

  “Not today,” I would answer smoothly.

  Always the same. Always lookin’ for something or some reason.

  Hole, in fact, continually tried to make some big scene and do some old cowboy shit as if he were going to draw his gun, like Wild Bill Hickok or O.K. Corral stuff. I sure wanted to take his ass out. But he had me at a disadvantage. He always knew where I was; he was everywhere. He was Metro; he didn’t work out of one particular station. That meant the only way I could get at him would be to stay packed all the time, which didn’t make sense, because they were looking for any reason to arrest me. Things got so bad, in fact, that unless I was driving for the Central Committee, I tried to avoid riding in cars.

  I felt bad for the new crew in Watts. They had only been in the Party a few months, and already most of them had suffered three or more arrests: they’d experienced the wrath of billy clubs, saps, choke-holds, and guns shoved in their faces. The billy clubs hurt like hell and could do a lot of damage, but those saps were a real bitch. Those suckers could exact a lot of damage on flesh and bones. With all their government-backed weapons and resources, Metro was inflicting serious harm on the Party collectively and on most all of us individually.

  The pigs at Metro Squad were determined to exterminate the Southern California chapter of the Black Panther Party, and they used all of the resources at their disposal: weaponry, intelligence, and city, state, and federal government. They hunted, chased, and confronted us day and night. They were willing to put themselves in danger just to get at us. They understood that when one of us was killed it was a big, devastating loss for us—one we could ill afford. They could easily replace their losses; we could not. And we weren’t getting at the real pigs anyway, just their soldiers.

  In July, some of the new Watts crew, including Lux, Touré, Craig Williams, and a few other comrades, were at the Watts office when the cops invaded, claiming they were looking for somebody. Of course, they drew their guns, forced everyone to their knees, and then arrested them all. Then in August, Chip, Hasawa, Virgil Smith, Tony Quisenberry, Bobby Davis, and Henry David Christian were at the Nickerson Garden Projects, working and singing with some children. The cops came and started busting them in the head with clubs and heavy-duty flashlights. They arrested Hasawa and Henry and beat them all the way to the hospital. Then they drove them to the Seventy-Seventh Precinct, where they were charged with resisting arrest and other made-up bullshit. These kinds of incidents didn’t happen to the comrades just once or twice. They happened all the time.

  The presence of danger was now our reality more than ever before. With the exception of Rachel, within two months of my getting jacked by the police, the four others with me that night were involved in police activity that cost them either their lives or many years in prison.

  It also became obvious to us that Metro had assigned officers to each of us individually. We soon developed a common refrain: after walking outside in the morning, we reminded each other to “shake your tail.” If we didn’t lose our assigned officers, we could be harassed throughout the day, arrested, and even tortured for hours like I was. It was a game for the pigs but real life for us. All of us had the skills to kick their asses one on one, but they came in pairs, with weapons and the authority of the state. Armed with the knowledge that we were dealing with a bunch of punks, some brothers, especially in the rank and file, independently decided that it was time to make their own moves against the pigs. In fact, at the end of a hard day, that kind of thinking was becoming more and more common.

  One night, a group of us were sitting around t
he kitchen table, talking and drinking, trying to calm our nerves after another stressful day of defending ourselves against the pigs. The dingy yellow light from the bulb hanging overhead was thick and hazy from all the smoke, and the mood in the room was just as heavy. The table was overflowing: empty bottles of beer, ashtrays spilling over with cigarette butts, half-empty glasses, and plastic cups full of Bitter Dog. I upended my glass, drinking down my last swig of the signature drink. Touré was sitting next to me. He slammed down his cup and cleared his throat. We all got silent, turning and looking at him.

  “You know,” he reflected somberly, “we’ll never be able to focus on education and liberation until we stop these pigs. We’re spending all our time on fighting them and defending ourselves against those bastards.”

  Bruce spoke up in a determined but quiet voice. We all strained forward to hear. “Yeah, I’m tired of playing defense,” he proclaimed. “At some point, we need to go on the offensive.”

  We all nodded in agreement.

  “I wouldn’t mind taking the heads of Fisher and Hole,” I added. “I actually went looking for them one night. G thought I had lost my mind.”

  Touré shot me an understanding glance. His voice was low but firm. “Sometimes, I think the leadership don’t get it. They want us to let them handle it, but I didn’t become a Black Panther to get clubbed and have guns put to my head on a regular basis.”

  He was referring to the orders from G, Ronald Freeman, and Long John that said we didn’t need to engage in independent action against the pigs.

  “The leadership can’t handle all of the issues that are coming at us daily. Shit, they got their own issues,” Bruce said resolutely. “They’re constantly going back and forth to jail too.”

  “Remember,” I added, “Huey said as a member of the Party, we must never let a pig take our guns.”