Nine Lives of a Black Panther Page 4

  So I got on my bicycle to ride to school. But the winds were so strong, they kept blowing me back; I was fighting to pedal, but I just couldn’t pedal against the winds. The wind was pelting me, and it hurt too.

  “Come over here!” A voice called out through the shrieks of the wind. It was one of our neighbors, who saw me struggling to ride my bike against the hurricane winds. “Boy, you tryin’ to go to school?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said politely, exhausted.

  “You done rode past my house three times already. At the rate you going, school will be over by the time you get there! Come on, put your bike in the back of this car. I’ll take you.”

  I did as I was told. Although I didn’t know the lady well, I sure was grateful to be in her car! After school, I went back to the lady’s house and she drove me home.

  After the hurricane passed and the water receded, a lot of my older cousins got jobs from white folks to kill snakes. The hurricane brought many of the water snakes to grasses and drove others from their hiding spots in the woods and weeds. I asked Honey if I could get a job killing snakes too, but she told me I was too young. My cousins were happy to have a chance to earn extra money. I remember thinking that black folks must be OK to white people if they needed us. It didn’t occur to me until later that the white folks would rather have blacks kill the snakes because it was dangerous.

  3

  FIGHTING INTEGRATION

  We moved into our new home in the dark of night. I was back in California, and my mother wanted to minimize our presence to avoid the possibility of conflict or even violence; but instead of outright physical brutality, FOR SALE signs started popping up along our street after neighbors noticed we were there.

  My mother had purchased a five-unit building on the Westside. It was on 107th and Normandie, a street that had no black people on it until we arrived. On our lot, there was a three-bedroom front house, two single apartments, and two one-bedroom back houses. We lived in the three-bedroom house in the front. It was a nice investment for a single woman who, two years earlier, had served white folks as a domestic and now worked at the post office. Our new home was painted an understated beige, which helped us maintain our low profile. But still, my mom was finally living her dream; she had renters.

  By 1962, segregation in Los Angeles had loosened. The restrictive covenants that required blacks to live only in the South Central portion of the city had been declared illegal. After violent outbreaks resulting from the attempts of black families to move into neighborhoods once considered off-limits, many whites began to accept the reality of desegregation.

  After returning from the South, I had reenrolled at South Park Elementary School in the fifth grade. It was off of Avalon and Manchester, about a twenty-block walk from my home. Small, Spanish-style stucco homes lined the streets of my neighborhood, along with every kind of fruit tree one could imagine—orange, peach, plum, apricot, and even kumquat. There was so much fruit, people couldn’t even pick all of it. Every summer my friends and I raided the fruit trees and sometimes ate until we got sick. I was a likeable kid, so I had easily reconnected with relatives and friends. But now, we were moving on up to a better neighborhood.

  Although I was unsure about this new neighborhood, I liked my new room. It was painted a pale shade of blue, and I had bunk beds for sleepovers. I also had a bookcase, which I treasured because it held my favorite books. My mother placed a lot of emphasis on reading, and so I had a pretty good library. My books transported me to a world beyond the four walls of my bedroom. I visited Mexico in Captain Cortes Conquers Mexico; I peeked into the mind of Hitler in Mein Kampf; I encountered sheer genius in Italy when I read about Leonardo da Vinci; and I witnessed the Civil War in the American Heritage series on the subject. Through my readings, I learned about the struggles of people all around the world.

  Although I was a “city boy,” I had become schooled on “gun culture” in the South. I came to know the importance of guns, and in fact, the idea of protection was implanted in me long before I joined the Black Panther Party. My uncles and cousins hunted animals for food. They would go deer hunting and bring the animals back to the meat market to skin, clean, and cut up. They would catch smaller animals like possum or rabbits and prepare them for our meals at home. That’s how we ate.

  In the South, it was no big thing to give young boys guns as gifts; in Los Angeles, the men in my family continued that tradition. When I was twelve, Bill Pharr, my father’s uncle, gave me a .25 automatic.

  Uncle Bill had diabetes and was very ill. One day he called me over to his house. “Look in that closet over there,” he pointed with his shaky hand. “Get that shoe box at the bottom and bring it to me.”

  My curiosity was spilling over and trying to come out of my mouth. “Yes, sir.” I bit my tongue, trying to hide my eagerness.

  He straightened his droopy shoulders and took a long breath. “Take this here.” He handed me the gun while looking me square in the eyes. “This ain’t no toy, you know that. You keep this, and don’t you let nobody mess with you,” he said.

  “Sure, Uncle Bill,” I replied in the most somber tone I could muster. But inside I was ecstatic. I couldn’t wait to go admire my new gun.

  Uncle Bill was also in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s, and this was his parting gift to me. During the time he had left, I would go and see him, and he would show me how to work the gun and take care of it.

  I was fascinated with my new gift, and I saw it as an instrument of survival and self-defense. I would spend hours studying it, taking it apart and putting it back together again. I learned every detail about it, every function. I even managed to get off a few shots in the backyard—while my mother was at work, of course! Eventually, though, my mom found the gun and took it away from me. It had been in the top dresser drawer in my bedroom.

  Little did I know that the time I spent learning about my .25 automatic would be extremely useful a few years later, when I decided that I needed another gun. Without having access to a real one, I built my own. Back then, we called them zip guns. Basically, zip guns may or may not look like real guns, but they fire real bullets or projectiles. Some of my partners from junior high school—Little John, Leroy Williams, and others—and I would use iron pipe to make the gun barrel and Mattel cap guns because they had an actual trigger, unlike toy guns, which weren’t meant to fire. I would put a real bullet in the chamber or down the barrel; the toy gun already had the trigger, so I would stretch a rubber band from the front point of the barrel all the way to the back end of the barrel, just above the handle. That would be the hammer, or help the hammer hit the bullet or projectile that would then shoot out of the barrel. Sometimes the zip gun actually fired; sometimes it didn’t. Even when it didn’t fire, the zip gun could still serve its purpose. I could just flash it and guys would leave me alone because I had a zip gun and they didn’t.

  I started junior high school at Edison, which was in the same neighborhood as South Park. Edison was down on Sixty-Fifth and Hooper, right in the center of what we called Slauson Village. But after we moved to the Westside, I had to change schools. My new school was called Henry Clay, and located on 122nd Street and Western Avenue, miles away from my old neighborhood and school. Moving to the Westside was costly for me. Edison was predominately black at that time, but Henry Clay was primarily white. Clay had modern facilities and equipment, and the campus was really nice and clean. Edison didn’t have the same material wealth as Clay, but Edison is where my learning took place. I learned how to type, read, and do math; and I learned about black people.

  As national leaders and the adults in my family touted the benefits of integration, “moving on up” only made my daily life difficult. While I was trailblazing for my generation into the outward expression of upper mobility, I was in conflict with white kids almost every day.

  On my first day at Henry Clay, this white boy came up to me and stared. “Ain’t your mama on the pancake box?” he sneered.

 
“What?” I asked, stunned.

  “You heard me,” he snickered.

  We were standing at the top of some stairs when he said it. Without even thinking about it, I “helped” him lose his balance—I shoved him and he took a really bad fall. The kids’ grapevine carried the news all over the school. Everybody heard what had happened and knew there would be a showdown to exact revenge. I was scared, but I knew I had to stand my ground. I would not betray my uncle Edwin’s instruction to not “let anybody mess with me and never back down.”

  It was around lunchtime when the kid’s big brother and cousin showed up to retaliate. But they were in over their heads and didn’t even know it. I knew a trick or two from having lived in South Central that those white boys hadn’t seen yet. So, when that little white boy’s brother and cousin came to fight me for shoving him down the stairs, I was prepared. I was not a bully, but I was a fighter and could handle myself if trouble came my way. I also had heart, which meant I could stand up to a challenge. Like the time when Uncle Edwin had a stroke. My mother and Nanny sent me to Oakland to bring him down to Los Angeles so they could take care of him. That is how I learned how to drive—bringing Uncle Edwin down Interstate 5 by myself from Oakland, over the Grapevine in his green 1956 Buick.

  The time I spent in the South, coupled with the images of Emmett Till’s mutilated corpse, instilled in me a peculiar fear. The idea that a black man could have his fingers cut off, get castrated, or be burned at the stake haunted me. I could really feel it—and I knew we wouldn’t get any mercy. That feeling stayed with me, so being confronted by white boys at school meant that I had to fight for my life. I needed to make these white boys understand that I was not to be messed with, so I had to establish my reputation. But because I was not a physically imposing guy, I had to be crafty and cunning.

  By lunchtime, the whole school was eager to see the new nigger get beat down. I positioned myself on an embankment on the field where the boy’s brother and cousin would have to run up to get me. I had folded my trench coat over my arm so I could toss it over the head of the first one who tried to run up on me. The guy’s brother was red-faced and foaming at the mouth.

  I was just about to handle my business when a physical education coach came out and surveyed the scene. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

  The kids started running in every direction possible. The coach broke us up before we got started and took me in his office located inside the gym. As I sat in the chair directly across from him, my adrenaline was still pumping and my heart was still racing. The coach pushed back in the swivel chair and looked me square in the eye. I didn’t know what was coming.

  “Why does a chicken cross the road?” the coach asked.

  “Huh?” I answered, a confused look washing over my face.

  “Why does a chicken cross the road?” he repeated.

  “I don’t know,” I told him.

  “To prove to a possum it can be done!” he said.

  He laughed loudly at his own joke and then told me two or three others, laughing at every one. He finished by asking me to please not fuck up any of his students.

  “What’s your name, kid?” he asked.

  “Wayne,” I replied.

  “Well all right then, Wayne,” he said, “Starting today, you are in charge of all those basketballs over there.” The coach then put me in charge of the gym and the equipment room. The heat was off me for a while after that.

  Still, I had to face the wrath of the Spook Hunters, a racist white gang that made their hatred for black people a badge of honor. Fred Yankey, a blond-haired, freckled-face, racist eighth grader, was the leader of the group. One of our biggest fights occurred after President John Kennedy was killed. The Spook Hunters saw Kennedy as friendly toward black people. During lunchtime one day shortly after Kennedy’s death, Yankey walked up to me and a few other black boys who attended the school, taunting us. “The nigger-lover is dead!” he jeered.

  I didn’t have to say a word. I knew the fight was on. My boys and I knew we would throw down with Yankey and his gang after school.

  The bell rang and a large group of students hit the yard. My homeboy Willie Turner threw the first blow: he walked up to Fred, coldcocked him, and he dropped like a sack of wheat. Then about ten of us, five on each side—for and against Kennedy—started throwing punches. The teachers came out and broke it up by separating people and pulling us apart. By the time it was over, a few white boys were bloodied up real good, and one had gotten knocked out during the rumble. Eventually, we all went home. No one was suspended or even punished for the fight; the teachers wrote it off as children being upset about the assassination of the president. The next day at school, things were really quiet.

  As integration became more common, the balance of power began to shift at school. I had more help fighting the racist white kids because more black families were enrolling their children at Henry Clay. We also got a few black kids who had been expelled from other schools. I hung with a crew of about five or six people, and we ran the yard. My partners included guys like the Stinson brothers, whose fighting skills were legendary, and the Blackshear brothers, who were athletes and could hold their own in a street fight. Walter Stinson, who had been expelled from another school, was my best friend. People knew not to tease him about his pigeon toes; he was still a couple inches taller than most people and not to be played with. With Walter at my side, I didn’t have to worry about backup.

  We hung tough and had fun. Talking trash and playing the dozens was part of our bond. I loved playing the dozens. “You so po’, I opened up the bread box at your mama’s house and the roaches were having a prayer meeting,” I would say with a laugh.

  Sometimes we rhymed as we were walking down the street. “I was walking through the jungle with a stick in my hand, the baddest little nigga in the jungle land. I looked up in a tree and what did I see? A white muthafucka trying to piss on me. I picked up a rock and hit him in the cock and the stupid motherfucker ran twenty-four blocks!”

  Sometimes playing the dozens with other crews would lead to fights. But I was always watchful and ready if it came down to that.

  Devil’s Dip was one of the spots where we would hang out. This huge open field was located at Imperial Highway and Western Avenue, near our school, where both motorcycle and bicycle riders would tear through the trails. The Dip was also a spot where we would fight away from school property. Sometimes people traveling on Western Avenue would stop and watch us fight. Soon, we stopped having problems with most of the white kids. Some even became friendly and cool.

  Though our relationships with the white kids began to cool out, my interaction with some of the white teachers unfortunately did not get better. Some of them openly showed their resentment of integration. Other teachers were not philosophically opposed to integration but tried to keep the peace between the races, often at my expense.

  Academically, my grades began to fall at Clay. I was getting Fs on everything although I didn’t deserve them. I needed to show my parents that I was being discriminated against, so one day I asked my stepfather, Mr. Morgan, to do my homework with me. The next day, sure enough, the homework I turned in received an F. Even my stepfather, Mr. Morgan, a math teacher, got an F!

  And then there was the time I was humiliated in English class. My teacher had given us a writing assignment: a short story on any subject we chose. I wrote a story called “The Attack of the Yetis.” It was about an expedition to South America I had read about, where I learned of this band of Yetis. I spent a lot of time researching and putting together my report, and I was proud of my work. Mr. Taylor agreed, giving me an A on it. After receiving our graded papers, he asked us to read our papers in class. Students all around me were called, and I sat there patiently waiting my turn. The clock kept ticking, and as the end of the class period became near, I knew there would be no turn for me.

  The bell rang and the class left. It was just Mr. Taylor and me. “Wayne, go ahead and read your p
aper out loud.”

  I didn’t know what to do; I was embarrassed. I was also very hurt. I had been ready to read my A paper in front of my classmates, but the opportunity had been taken away from me. I read my paper self-consciously, then turned and walked out of the classroom, my ego stung.

  Over time, conflicts with other students and teachers began to take their toll on me. After school one day, I went to my mom and told her we needed to talk. She was in the kitchen preparing dinner. “Mom,” I said imploringly, “I need to go back to Edison.”

  “What’s your reasoning?” she replied quizzically as she pulled a stack of dinner dishes from the cupboard. I took the dishes from her and helped her set the table as I chose my words. “These white people are so unfair. You’ve seen how hard I work and the grades that I get, and you saw how even the homework that Mr. Morgan did with me got an F.”

  She turned around from the counter and studied me, considering what I’d said.

  I put the rest of the dishes down and looked at her squarely. “They blame all of the fighting on me, even though everybody knows about the Spook Hunters.”

  She sighed, a long, sad sigh. “You’ll go back to Edison in the fall.”

  4

  LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCES

  Suitcases in hand, I knocked on Mr. Morgan’s door. He opened it and shook my hand. “Welcome, son. Come on in and let me show you around.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, trying not to show my excitement. My mom was all right, but she couldn’t understand what it was like to become a man.

  “I heard you had some trouble,” he finished as he led me down the hallway to my new room.

  “Yeah, but I handled it,” I said with pride. I wanted Mr. Morgan to know that I had held my own.

  He ignored my bravado. “Well, you won’t have to worry about that at Edison.”

  It was one week before school was to start and my mom had agreed to let me stay with Mr. Morgan in order to be closer to Edison. And he wasn’t just closer, he also taught there. Though he and my mother had separated, they had made the decision to raise me together, which I thought was a great move.