Nine Lives of a Black Panther Page 20

  I replied, “They didn’t ask for anything; they came in shooting.”

  Then G told us, “They claim they had search warrants for a few people, but I know they were looking for George Young, you know, Duck. You remember that day he pulled a gun on one of the pigs and told them to leave Central Headquarters.”

  “I see. Well, Duck wasn’t even there. All they had to do was ask for him.” I was thinking out loud now. “Man, the pigs went through all of that and didn’t kill any of us. When we surrendered, we saw hundreds of cops. Their feelings must be hurt,” I snickered.

  Ike chuckled.

  I continued, “The night of the shoot-out was the first time I had seen Roland in almost a year. But we pulled together as a formidable team. We were able to hold them off for hours, and I know we hit a few of them.”

  “Who all was at Central with you?” asked Ike.

  “Roland just happened to be at the house because he was dropping Peaches off, so she could hang with Paul. They stopped at the office, got into a rap session, and Roland ended up staying. Will Stafford, Bernard Smith, Robert Bryan, Lloyd Mims, Gil Parker, and Cotton were there because they were working on the tunnel. Pee Wee was there too. I don’t know if you know him, he’s not a Panther, but he is from the neighborhood and helps out at headquarters from time to time. Robert and Paul Redd were serving as security. Tommye was there too.”

  All of a sudden, I was aware of a loud racket and a clamor of voices down the hall, and I realized it was our cellblock buddies warning us about the guards. Just like that, our conversation was over and we were back to doing nothing but sitting around in our cells.

  Although I was confined, it felt good knowing I was with my comrades. We maintained our posture, and even our work, as Black Panthers. Through the bars of our cell doors, G led our activities, keeping us active physically and our spirits high. We talked about the support we were receiving outside. We applauded Elaine’s organization of several mass rallies, with thousands of people taking off work to protest police repression. Civil rights organizations like the NAACP and professional groups like the Black Nurses Association came to our defense. There were meetings at black churches arguing that the police were silencing dissent by these kinds of raids. The Reverend Thomas Kilgore, pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Los Angeles, brought together community leaders young and old. People on the left side of politics, like Angela Davis, attended that meeting alongside people in the center, like an aide sent by Congressman Augustus Hawkins. While the community was organizing in our defense, our comrades used those opportunities to raise bail money too.

  We also received reports of how the community had organized to clean up Central Headquarters after the raid. We heard there were all kinds of people who showed up to help, a real show of unity. Unfortunately, however, the cops showed up, too, to forcefully stop the community’s actions. Police clubbed even state senator Mervyn Dymally in his effort to be helpful. It lifted our spirits, though, when we got word about how much our community understood what we had gone through and that they were fighting for us.

  While in jail, we held political education and black history classes to keep ourselves sharp. G or I would lead the discussions, lecturing out from our cells, addressing the steel bars in front of us. Even though we couldn’t see each other, the sense of camaraderie was thick in the air during the modified PE sessions. We even realized we didn’t need to see each other—it was a good exercise in strength building. You could just feel the concentration, like those pin-drop moments. Periodically, a brother would holler out a question or a comment. Political education and black history were the kinds of things we didn’t mind the guards hearing—in fact, we figured they might learn something!

  “Now, we gon’ let college boy lead the class today,” G would say.

  There would be a chorus of laughter as they encouraged me to speak. “Yeah, Wayne, give us some of them facts you gave the BSU!”

  I was honored that G was asking me to help lead the discussions, and it was a good partnership too—the two of us balancing out each other’s strengths and buoying each other’s energies.

  During one of my presentations, I brought up my family history in Gibson, Louisiana, to illustrate a point I was trying to make.

  G cut me off. “I knew you were from Louisiana, but not Gibson! Do you know that my family lives not too far from there, in Morgan City?” he asked animatedly.

  “What?” I exclaimed. “Yeah, I know that area; it’s not far from Bayou Blue. My family isn’t far from Bayou Black. For those of you who don’t know, Bayou Black is a curve in the bayou.”

  It was an exciting discovery—knowing our families were in the same vicinity instantly made the sense of kinship between G and me even stronger. Now I knew why I was able to understand G so completely; he was just like all my relatives.

  As I continued on with the point of my presentation, I noted that the military drafted lots of guys from the southeast part of the country: East Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama. I guessed aloud that they did this because the weather conditions in the Southeast were very similar to that of Vietnam and Southeast Asia, so therefore they thought we could withstand the heat better than others.

  “Even though many of us came from some of the most racist areas of the country, we were still willing to fight—and die—for this country,” G expounded.

  “So many brothers felt that way,” Craig chimed in.

  “But we found out the hard way that the racism didn’t end because we were overseas, fighting together,” G finished. “In fact, I think Muhammad Ali summed it up quite nicely: ‘Ain’t no Vietcong ever called me “nigger.”’”

  “Yeah, that does sum it up pretty well,” I agreed.

  Eventually, Roland was released from the hospital and joined us in High Power. He had a cast on his arm, but he arrived in good spirits. Like the rest of us, he was glad to be around the people he had shared a life-and-death experience with.

  Now we knew we had to focus on how to maneuver our legal situation. In fact, we expected serious charges to be leveled against us, like attempted murder. Thankfully, we had a powerhouse legal team who offered to work on our cases pro bono. As the others were, I was charged with a range of offenses: attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, possession of illegal weapons, and resisting arrest. Leo Branton, an outstanding African American civil rights attorney, served as our lead counsel; we didn’t know how lucky we were. Branton was well known for his defense of so-called subversives or rebels, including the Hollywood Ten, the screenwriters and directors who refused to cooperate with government officials during their communist purge of the entertainment industry. Later, in 1972, he was also on the team that defended Angela Davis against murder charges, and it was his moving closing argument that famously helped convince an all-white jury to acquit her. Branton worked diligently on our behalf. He had a positive outlook and told us he would make sure we were not convicted of any of the serious charges. We were grateful for him.

  Luke McKissack, a criminal defense and civil rights attorney, also worked with us for a while. Similar to Branton, he defended society’s outcasts, rebels, and in his case even the notorious. Perhaps most noted was his legal work for Sirhan B. Sirhan, the man convicted of killing Robert Kennedy.

  We met with our attorneys at the jail and before our court appearances. It was during our legal meetings that we learned more about SWAT, the Special Weapons and Tactics team, formed as a special unit of the LAPD to deal with subversive groups and high-risk situations. The LAPD was the first to organize this kind of unit, and, we learned, it had been formed specifically to deal with us! Considering all the other shit going on in society, we thought this obvious fear of us was laughable. We were feeding hungry people and giving poor and sick people medical care, things our government had promised but failed to do. In addition to that, though, we just weren’t going to continue taking the undeserved beatings and murders the racist LAPD liked to dole out—and for that
they formed SWAT.

  We knew we were fighting an uphill battle. The judge even said in court that we were engaged in “armed anarchy” and that we needed to stand for attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, possession of illegal weapons, and a host of other charges. We were also aware that the weapons we had used had been confiscated, so they were now in the possession of the pigs.

  Going to court required us to move first from High Power to the old county jail and then to court. We went for arraignments, bail, and preliminary hearings. After completing our business with the court, we were sent back to High Power, because they still wanted to keep us out of the general population. At High Power, sometimes we were moved to different cells or modules unexpectedly: the deputies didn’t want us to get too comfortable, so they tried to keep us off-balance and confused. It was also a way they could keep us from trying to escape.

  We arrived at the Los Angeles Hall of Justice for our preliminary hearings on Tuesday, January 6, 1970. There were demonstrators everywhere around the building, rallying to our support. People were shouting our slogan: “Power to the people!” Speakers, microphones in hand, cried out about the injustice we had suffered, noting that it was not separate from what was happening to black people everywhere. “The Black Panther Party is the party of the people,” they said. People in the crowd, black and white, young and old, large and small, were holding up their placards of protest, black power fists in the air, and “eyewitness news” cameras were there to record it all. Elaine, we later found out, had organized the protests under the newly formed group Committee United for Political Prisoners. Masai, Elaine, and civil rights groups were stridently speaking out on our behalf.

  While there was a lot of activity outside the courthouse, I noticed that the inside seemed dormant. It became obvious to us as we walked in that the courthouse was on lockdown, and security was extra tight. There were deputies all over the place, but very few people in the courtroom. I thought, Is this really because of us? Only one entrance to the courthouse was open, and the door to the stairway was locked so that people had to take the elevators with armed guards. The only people allowed in the building were employees and others on official business. Interestingly, it was at the preliminary hearing that the judge finally allowed a medical team in to see us.

  The bulls hated us, of course. Fighting against the police had made us heroes to the other inmates, but we were targets to the bulls. In the jail, we had gotten into a few scuffles with them over petty and not-so-petty issues, like trying to get them to deal with the rat infestation. We reported the rodent problem to the bulls, but they ignored us, so in court we reported it to the judge. The bulls told the judge we were lying and there were no rats on the cellblock. So, not surprisingly, nothing happened. After that, tired of putting up with the vermin and the lying guards, we took matters into our own hands. What we did was ingenious, I thought. We used the nasty red jelly that was put on our food trays to make rat traps. We called the jelly “red death,” because we really didn’t know what the hell was in it, anyway. Over the course of one weekend, we caught four or five rats. Roland, whose arm was still in a cast, put the dead critters in his cast before we went to court the next Monday. Claude Worrell, the lawyer for Pee Wee, complained to the judge again about the rat problem, and again one of the guards jumped up and called us liars in court. Then, in a dramatic showing up of who the liars really were, Roland stood up. He pulled the dead rats out of his cast, one by one, and held them out for all the court to see. Everyone in the room was stunned and disgusted. The judge immediately ordered us relocated. We considered that move a victory for the Southern California chapter of the Black Panther Party.

  Finally, after we had been in jail for about two months, a court date was set for bail hearings. We were brought down from the holding cells to the court line, where we waited seemingly forever to leave for the courthouse. We were put in cells while we waited. In this area, prisoners were getting dressed for court, and some were coming and going from court back to jail and vice versa. There were probably two to three hundred people there at any given time; it was crazy and hectic. Sometimes there was food for us, usually sandwiches, which sat on a cart near the front of the room. If we could get to them before they were gone, we’d grab some up and eat them or tuck them away in our shirts for later.

  While we were in the court line that day, we spotted Ronald and Blue on the other side of the room. They were there fighting a charge of attempted murder. We were glad to see them, and we started hollering—discreetly enough so as not to call attention from the guards but loud enough so that, we hoped, Ronald and Blue could hear us amid the chaos of the room. After trying for several minutes, we still couldn’t get their attention. So G decided to get himself over to them; somehow he made his way into the section where Blue and Ronald were being held.

  Then, out of nowhere, one of the bulls yelled out real loud, “Inmates! I have a cheese sandwich missing from the cart!”

  Some of us stopped and looked at him, but mostly he was ignored.

  But this deputy was not about to be disregarded. He became adamant about getting to the bottom of the so-called missing sandwich issue, and he started making a big deal over it. I couldn’t understand why this chump was looking for a tasteless cheese sandwich, anyway. It didn’t even make sense, because the food was for us. I knew he was just trying to start some shit.

  The guard zeroed in on Blue, Ronald, and G and made a beeline for them. “Did you hear what I said?” he shouted angrily in G’s face. “Who took the goddamn sandwich?” he pressed, his fat white face getting all puffed up and turning a bright cherry red.

  G calmly looked him in the eye, and before anyone could blink, he hauled off and punched the fool, knocking him straight out. Not surprisingly, Ronald and Blue jumped into the fracas, kicking the shit out of this bull. Guards started coming from everywhere, yelling and shoving and grabbing inmates and hauling them out of the room. A bunch of the guards jumped on G and fought with him until they eventually subdued and handcuffed him. They brought him back over to our side of the room and threw him into the cell next to us. Before one of the bulls could get the door shut, though, G jumped back up and kicked him dead in the ass. The guard spun around on his heels, only to be greeted by a big, fresh dollop of G’s spit—right in his face. Part of me loved it, secretly cheering G. Right on, brother … get that bastard! But part of me saw exactly where this was leading. “G! G! G!” I hollered. “Calm down, man! Cool it!”

  G heard me and cooled out, thankfully, avoiding escalation and further provocation to deadly violence from them; they had guns, we didn’t.

  After the melee over the cheese sandwich settled down, the guards stayed on us, trying to goad us into a fight. The deputies were young like us; it was obvious they wanted to rumble.

  As Black Panthers, we believed in self-defense; it didn’t matter to us if it was on the streets or within the confines of a prison cell. So immediately after the incident, we set about doing what we needed to do: arm ourselves. We made jailhouse knives—called shanks—out of the clothes hangers that held our suits for our court appearances. First, we straightened the wire out. Then, quietly, we sharpened the tips by scraping them across the concrete floor. Then we waited.

  As we knew would happen, a handful of guards eventually came and cleared the area of the remaining inmates, so all that was left were deputies and Panthers: about ten or eleven of us and maybe the same number of them—though who knew how many more lurked close by. We positioned ourselves in the holding cells, our hangers wrapped around our fists. The deputies had handcuffs and chains. We were braced for the next move from the bulls. The tension was high; no one was talking. We waited.

  Next thing I knew, the watch commander was in the room, his big chest heaving as he barked at his deputies. Fortunately for us, he quickly sized up what was happening and immediately acted to defuse the situation. “Everybody hold it!” he roared.

  As we watched, they all grudgingly cam
e to attention, but they were still watching us out of the corners of their eyes. Things stayed tense. The watch commander continued to yell orders at them. He made the deputies put their chains down first. Once they had backed off, we gave up our shanks.

  After the excitement of the morning, we still had to go to the courthouse. But because of the altercation, the deputies took extra precautions—designed, I guess, to further secure their safety but also to humiliate us. They shackled us from ankles to waist and chained us together, just like slaves. They brought us out of the cells one at a time, although we were still chained together. Then, we were led outside together, put on the bus together, and led into the courtroom together. Once we were out of the building and into the bright of daylight, I looked up and saw snipers standing along the roof and back into the hills. Damn! I hope nobody trips and falls—they’ll light us up like the Fourth of July, I thought. Once we were in court, the prosecutors immediately asked the judge to raise our bail, citing the jailhouse fight that had started over the so-called missing cheese sandwich. Surprisingly, the judge granted us bail and told the prosecutor that he would need to file new charges.

  It took half a year, but by the end of six months, we were all finally bailed out. My mother put up her property to use as bail for me. She even helped with G’s bail. I was very moved that she would sacrifice so much for me and grateful that she loved and trusted me so much. My mom was hoping that this would be the last time I would ever be incarcerated.

  I was released in March 1970, and as soon as I got out I went straight to Mom’s house. It felt amazingly good to be home, sleeping, eating recognizable and edible food, and being with my family—Nanny, Mom, Sharon, and my sweet little Tammy. I spent two days either in blissful slumber or sitting at the kitchen table with heaps of home-cooked food piled in front of me, soaking up the R & R.

  In a scene reminiscent of slavery and Southern chain gangs, Los Angeles Black Panthers are led from the county jail to a bail hearing at the criminal court building at Temple and Broadway. Our hands and feet were shackled and we were chained together at the waist. Lloyd Mims is in front. UCLA CHARLES E. YOUNG RESEARCH LIBRARY DEPARTMENT OF SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, LOS ANGELES TIMES PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVES