Nine Lives of a Black Panther Read online

  When Roland left Los Angeles he was enthusiastic, but he returned sorely disappointed. I asked Roland, “How did it go?” I couldn’t wait to hear all about Huey.

  With a look of disgust on his face, Roland said. “Man, when I got with Huey, he acted like I was a nuisance. He invited me up there to meet him and then treated me like he wasn’t interested in even talking to me.”

  With raised eyebrows, I said, “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah. I think he was high the whole time,” Roland continued. “And guess what else? Them niggas had an icebox full of food. They were eating real good. Nobody was hungry. Here we are, down here scrounging for the next dollar while they’re up there living high on the hog.”

  “Damn, that shit ain’t right,” I said.

  “Hell naw!”

  Another reason I became disenchanted with Huey was the way he handled the situation with Jonathan Jackson, the brother of communist revolutionary and Black Panther Party field marshall George Jackson. Jonathan Jackson was a high school student in Pasadena who wanted to get his brother out of prison by any means necessary. Comrade George had gone to prison in 1961 for a gas station robbery. What was so cold about it was that George didn’t even rob the station; he was just in the car when it went down. But the state gave him an indeterminate prison sentence of one year to life. In 1969, a racist prison guard was killed. The pigs blamed George and two other inmates for it, and they became known as the Soledad Brothers. If the Soledad Brothers were convicted of killing the pig—which seemed likely—they would be given the death penalty. Angela Davis became part of the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee.

  During George’s time in prison, he transformed into a revolutionary and joined the struggle. He worked actively to convince other inmates to commit to the revolution and bring unity to the prisoners. He explained to them that they were all being exploited and brutalized by the same enemy, regardless of race.

  I met Jonathan Jackson in the middle of July, when the Los Angeles Panthers had a rally at a church on 108th and Grand. Roland and I were in the security detail, and Angela Davis was the featured speaker. I noticed a young man with a serious look on his face hanging in the back of the church. Of course, I noticed him because I could tell he was carrying a gun. It was Jonathan Jackson, and he was Davis’s personal bodyguard.

  A few months earlier, I had met Lester Jackson, George and Jonathan’s father. My mother knew Lester from working at the post office, and she asked him to talk to me about my involvement in the struggle for black liberation. She knew of George’s problem and Lester’s concerns about his son’s freedom and safety, so my mother drove me to Pasadena to meet him at the courthouse there. “Hello, son. I am so glad that we will have the chance to talk.”

  “Hello, sir. I am sorry to hear about your son.”

  “That’s what I want to discuss with you,” he replied. “Your mother is very worried and asked me to let you know the kind of trouble you can get yourself into working with some of these political organizations.”

  Lester Jackson asked me to go into one of the courtrooms, where we met one of his friends, a white judge. Sitting on the judiciary bench, Mr. Jackson and the judge spent about an hour talking with me about the politics of the “new left” and the real trouble I could get into if I remained in the Party. They told me that I needed to leave it.

  I spent about an hour with them and respectfully listened. I told Mr. Jackson that I recognized his plight and that I appreciated the advice of he and the judge. Even though I had no intentions of leaving the Party, I remained deferential. I felt bad for Mr. Jackson. He was trying so hard to save his sons, and if he couldn’t save them, he would save other young men like me. In this case, it was for the sake of my mother.

  The day of the rally, I approached Jonathan Jackson. We had a brief conversation, during which I acknowledged my respect for him and his brother. I also let him know that I had met his father. It was obvious that he truly loved his brother. George told him it was important that he learn from Angela. I wished him well and he thanked me. Two weeks later, on August 7, 1970, seventeen-year-old Jonathan entered the Marin County Courthouse with guns to capture hostages to trade for the release of George. At the end of that day, the judge, the district attorney, and two prisoners were killed. Jonathan, whom George referred to as a man-child, was killed too, shot multiple times in the getaway van in the parking lot of the courthouse. It was a “shoot-in.” All power to the people!

  G had known of Jonathan’s plans and told me he was going to the Bay Area to help. But at the eleventh hour, Huey called off all Panther support because he thought the move was suicidal and could have easily brought more heat to the Party. Jonathan moved forward with the plan by himself anyway. I felt that Huey could have talked Jonathan out of making that deadly move and offered him alternatives to support his brother. But instead Huey just stopped the Panthers from helping Jonathan that day.

  James Carr, George’s right-hand man while he was in Soledad, went to see Huey about what happened to Jonathan. Comrade George referred to James as “the Jackal Dog and the baddest motherfucker in the world.” They founded a group called the Wolf Pack in prison. It was an ideological and warrior group they used to organize and politicize inmates, but it also taught and advocated self-defense. The rumors about the meeting between Huey and the Jackal Dog were floating throughout the Party. I heard that there was an altercation between the two and that the Jackal Dog punched or slapped Huey. In retaliation, Huey placed a hit on Carr. The Jackal Dog was killed eight months later, in April 1972.

  Despite the disputes going on in the Party, I had three kids to support and no job. My babies needed milk, food, and toys, and I was providing very little of each. Obviously, the stress and strain of my situation was showing on my twenty-year-old face, because as I was walking by the projects one day, an old friend of mine stopped me and said, “Damn, Wayne, you look like you are broke.” It was Lester, whom I had met organizing for the Party. He was a good brother but had a little man’s complex so he was always getting into fights. Lester was sitting on the steps with another brother named Gary, drinking beer.

  I answered Lester, “Yeah, man. I am broke.”

  Then Lester said, “Well, we broke too. So what we gonna do?”

  I leaned against a wall. “I don’t know. What’s the plan?”

  Gary, who I learned was a Vietnam vet, started talking then. “Hey, let’s just start walking and find an opportunity.”

  As we were walking, we saw a couple of Mexican bars on Alameda and rolled over a few drunks outside until we were chased away. Then we took off walking on Imperial, westbound toward Vermont. Lester and Gary tossed up a brother and robbed him. I didn’t take part in that. As I watched them, I could tell that these two brothers had heart but no sense. So I made myself the leader of this group.

  I was ready to do what was necessary to feed my children. With the money I made hanging with Lester and Gary that day, I was able to buy some turkey, bread, milk, and other items for the house. I also bought a little weed and wine. I wasn’t out of the Party, but I needed to carve out some time to make some money. I had learned from my captains about how to liberate what was needed for the Party, and it was time for me to use those skills for myself. We had a good Christmas.

  I wasn’t proud of it, but I knew what my short-term future would be like. I started a hustling and robbing crew, and we were making moves every night: stealing, robbing, and selling clothes and weed. We were doing it! As the leader, I showed the group how to use the freeways and efficiently plan our hits. I had given all of my guns to the Party and the pigs had confiscated the rest, so I didn’t have heat. Gary made a solo move to help resolve that problem. He showed up one day with a 20-gauge double-barrel shotgun. He also had a bullet lodged in the middle of his hand because he had gotten shot while trying to get away. We cut the bullet out and patched him up, something else I had learned how to do from comrades in the Party. Now, we had Gary’s pistol and a sawed-off
20 gauge, which allowed us to take more risks. For instance, we cased the Ace-Hi Motel. One night Lester heard a dope dealer’s girlfriend say she was going to the store to get drinks and smokes. When she drove off, we made our move. The night was foggy with little visibility, which is not uncommon in Los Angeles. We knocked on the door and told the dealer that his girl was in a car wreck and to come at once. When he opened the door, Lester coldcocked him and he fell on the floor. I ran in and stuck the gun in his mouth. We demanded the money, and he gave it up without a fight. I didn’t want to hurt him, and we didn’t have to. A lot of our moves went that way. I became so bold that I would rent my guns out to people. They would take care of their business and return the guns. Of course people probably did all manner of things with those guns. We didn’t care. We were stupid.

  My clique was growing. James and Bon-Bon had just gotten out of prison, and they wanted in. Joe, Shaheed, and Richard were disaffected Panthers, and they wanted to work with us too. Richard, whom I had known since kindergarten, worked with the Black Panther Party on the Westside. He had married Pat Fredericks, a young lady who had helped to establish the BSU at Jordan High. Pam and Pat became good friends, so we used to see them a lot more than some of the others. It was a good friendship because they were both down with supporting our work in the streets. Sometimes Pat would even drive us. The original crew of Gary, Lester, and me had expanded to the point where we could go out with different crews with us as lead.

  By this time, I had moved in with Pam. I felt better about myself because I was able to help us sustain our two-bedroom upstairs apartment in the projects.

  One day, Lester answered a knock at my door and said some insurance men wanted to see me. I walked in the room and could tell right away it was the FBI. I couldn’t believe it. I was committing crimes with a fool that couldn’t tell the difference between insurance men and the FBI! There were two of them, and they were in my home. Of course one did all the talking, while the other did the looking around. The talkative one said they had been looking for me; they thought I was dead. I didn’t say much. Then they looked around the apartment and offered to pay me $300 a phone call if I called them with information about the Party, especially details on a potential split that could be going down. With as much sarcasm as I could muster, I asked, “$300 whole American dollars?” Mr. Talkative said yeah. I told him that I could make more money than that in one day, selling weed if I wanted to. He said they’d see me again. Yeah, right.

  Looking back, I believe that if I had been older or more mature at that time, I probably would have made other choices, but the people I trusted were no longer available to me to help keep me on the right path. If they weren’t locked up, they were in Oakland, like Masai and Elaine. And I wasn’t even sure of what I could say to them at that point, considering my feelings about Huey. I didn’t even know if G had communicated to them that Roland and I had made captain. I was drifting away from the Party. Just like Huey, there was no one to challenge my decisions.

  One of my neighbors in the projects was Mike Clark. He was recently released from Soledad State Prison and lived with his wife and two kids. We began to hang together because we both enjoyed boxing. He was a griot too and could talk endlessly about the history of the ghetto, inside and out. Mike was built like Joe Frazier and boxed with a lot of aggression, just like Joe. He taught me some of his boxing techniques as well as how to steal cars and trucks. We specialized in tires from Volkswagens because it was one of the most popular cars of the time. Once I got the technique down, we could take a tire in about thirty seconds. We frequently met our goal of stealing ten tires a night. We got most of them from the colleges, like UCLA, USC, Cal State Los Angeles, or any one of the junior colleges. We sold the tires to a fence on Alameda. The money was good and coming in easy.

  I was rolling in dough, and eventually Huey and the leadership in Oakland received word about my success. I don’t know how they found out about the money, but it is possible that one of the guys in the clique was talking too much and to the wrong people. The Party decided that they wanted a piece of the action, so they sent Red, who had been going back and forth to Oakland, to demand some of the money.

  Red was a fitting name for Saundra Pratt. She was light-skinned and wore a short red Afro; some would even call her a redbone. Red was about five foot six and had a well-put-together body. She wasn’t lacking for attention from men. Roland and Ronald Freeman knew Red growing up, as a leader of the Westside gang called the Rebel Rousers. They all grew up together and used to hang out at the skating rink on Washington and Arlington. Red was down, an original gangster who would rob, boost, pull credit card scams, and sell dope and even herself.

  I had first met Red at Central Headquarters with G. She was outgoing and dynamic in her own way. Although Red was in the Party, she wasn’t a Party worker who sold papers and manned an office. She did things on the same level as G. She was his woman.

  One day, Pam and I were at home when there was a knock on the door. I opened it to Red and five or six brothers. Obviously in charge, Red said, “What’s up, Wayne? We need to talk.”

  I could tell she came to discuss something serious, so I sent Pam and my sons upstairs to a neighbor’s house.

  “The Panthers want to know: what are you doing these days?”

  I answered, “Just handling my business.”

  “They sent me here to collect some of the money you’re making.”

  I wasn’t expecting to hear that. “I don’t see why. The Party is not involved in what I’m doing. I’m not using Party cars, guns, Party nothing.”

  “If you don’t support the Party, then we have been ordered to render discipline.”

  I knew I was going to have to fight when I made my next statement. “This is a shakedown. I’m not giving up any money.”

  The five or six chumps who had showed up with Red jumped me in the living room of the apartment. Luckily, I fell in a corner of the room, so they weren’t all able to effectively get at me. If they had attacked me two or three at a time there wouldn’t have been much I could do, but because they were all trying to get at me together, they jammed themselves up, so I was able to move quickly and strike a few blows for freedom every now and then. After a couple of minutes of this action, Red called them off. She even said they were getting the worst of this deal. “Wayne, we’ll talk later.” We exchanged a few more words and they took off.

  To be honest, I knew the brothers could have really harmed me, but I think because of the respect they had for me because of my role in the shoot-out and in Watts, they went light. I had bruises on my arms and legs, but it could have been much worse. Really, I had my ass whipped previously by professionals, so I wasn’t crying about that pretend beat-down. Still, I was pissed off—and Pam was wild with anger.

  About a week after I had been jumped, Jimmy was driving Masai in Watts and stopped me in the street to talk. It was obvious that Jimmy had my previous job, driving Central Committee members when they were in town. Masai and I hadn’t seen each other in a while, so even though I was hesitant because he was working in Oakland with Huey, I was glad to see him. We gave each other the black power handshake that indicated we were cool with each other.

  Masai said, “Comrade, I’m glad we ran into you. I have been thinking about checking on you for a while.”

  “I’m doing good. Just trying to make it in these streets. What’s up with you, brother?”

  “Still working in Oakland, trying to save black people.”

  We started talking about my position on the Party. I was honest. “I think the Party is moving in the wrong direction, Masai. I hear G and the brothers underground are not getting the proper support.” I also told him that Huey’s people came down to “discipline me” as a cover to shake me down for some money. “I am going to be straight with you. I think Huey is an egotistical fool, and I don’t want to see any more ‘Huey-ites’ in Watts.”

  Masai had always been straight with me. He agreed that what hap
pened to me was wrong and echoed my sentiments about Huey’s ego. I told him that he should think about getting away from them Huey-niggas. Masai told me, “I’m always going to do what’s right.”

  We parted ways in good standing, and I had barely said a word to Jimmy.

  A couple of weeks later, the smell of fire permeated the air. I looked across the street and saw the Watts office up in flames. It had been a dull green in the morning, but that night the color of the building was changed to black with gray smoke-like tinges next to the green that was left. I could see the firemen working to put out the flames, while the police were keeping people away from the building. The building was charred in big spaces and was burned so badly that the office could no longer be used. The rumor around town was that the police burned the office, but what really happened was that my clique didn’t like that move made against me by national headquarters so they set fire to the office on 113th Street to ensure the Party had no access in Watts.

  It became increasingly clear to me that Huey wanted to destroy the Southern California chapter of the Party. He had sent G and some of the brothers to the South with little money or resources for living expenses. When they called the national office for help, they were sent a pittance of what they really needed, and after a while no one with any authority would take their calls.

  By this time, Roland Freeman, Cotton, Will Stafford, Will “Captain” Crutch from Oakland, and George Armstrong had joined G. Cotton, who was sent to join G, gave him the message that Huey would meet them in Marshall, Texas, to work everything out. But Huey didn’t show up. Cotton then informed the group that Huey wanted them to go to Dallas to meet him. While all of this was happening, Huey and Roland were in contact with each other. As a result of those discussions Roland met the group in Dallas. He had only been there a few days before they all got busted. It was obviously a setup.