Out
In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The
Ten-Point Program-The Complete Stories
One-A
Room Of One’s Own
Big Joe Barker (the Big Joe, rather than just Joe earned
from many labor battles along the docks, along the waterfront, going back to
the big one, the Frisco big one in ’34) sat in that Merritt College (Oakland,
out in California, if you didn’t know its locale) classroom, a room like many
another he had sat in over the years, chalky blackboard, wooden chairs and all,
wondering what Bobby Seale, the Chairman of this new Black Panther Party that
had gotten all the notoriety earlier in the year flashing rifle barrel up shot
guns over in the state capitol, Sacramento, and had the white boys all freaked
out, freaked out big time, was going to say about the black nation, about how
he, and his black brethren were going to finally inherit the earth, finally
have a place to call home without ever eye-balling whitey hanging his fat white
ass all over the place.
Funny, Big Joe thought, as he waited for the room to fill a
little and the program to begin, how what goes around comes around. He
remembered way back in the early 1930s when he first heard of the Communist
Party when they had come around the Embarcadero, around Third Street over in
Frisco and were helping him and a couple of the brothers out trying to stop
people from being evicted on his block at the height of the Depression that one
of their comrades had mentioned, mentioned in passing, wouldn’t it be great if
black people had their own nation. That idea, that simple seeming idea, had
drawn his interest since he had been (and his daddy too, his daddy like
Malcolm’s never getting over that first thrill of black-ness, black
righteousness) a fervent supporter of Marcus Garvey and his black- nationalist
movement back in the early 1920s. So at that time he was all ears when that guy
had mentioned something about Harry Haywood and his work on the black nation
question, the question of the right of national self-determination, for their
organization.
And so, like this evening, he had gone to a meeting, a
meeting like this one, chalkboard and wooden chairs included, over at Berkeley,
when Harry Haywood had come to town on a speaking tour touting Communist Party
work, work on the black question as it was then posed. Now this Harry Haywood
was beautiful, smooth as silk, seemed like a “talented tenth” guy (although not
having read W.E.B. Dubois he would not have used that term then), a good
speaker, and fashioned himself out as the “black Bolshevik,” but some of the
stuff he had to say was just pure air. See, he, or someone, had gone to a lot
of trouble, to show on a map just exactly how the right to self-determination
(that’s the way they liked to present the idea, present it in democratic terms)
would look if a black nation was created, created in the south of the United
States where most black people lived then. He had laughed, laughed to himself
that the damn thing looked like a checker board. Moreover, he (and his daddy) had hightailed
it out of the south, the damn Mister James Crow south in the late 1920s to get
the hell away from that crap. If that was the black nation they wanted him to
fight for then no deal, no sale. So while he worked with the Communists in that
’34 Frisco strike, and a few things afterward, sometimes very closely, he
always kept a certain distance event though he had never given up on that idea
of a black nation, or black something.
So he wondered, wondered what this Bobby Seale was going to
say, say about what this right of self-determination was going to look like. He
swore if they brought that old time Haywood map, or something like it, out he
would walk right out. If Seale said let’s take California as our space then he
would give a serious listen. Still, he had learned a few things since those old
days, that the black man’s fate, his fate (or, more importantly his
grandchildren’s) for better or worse, and he hoped not for the worst like
always, was trying to break down the goddam barriers in the whole country,
trying to jail-break out of the whole thing. Still he liked the idea of a black
nation, a room one could call one’s own…
Two-
A Job Of One’s Own
Leon Coleman was worried, worried sick, when he heard rumors
that due to the world oil situation, whatever that was, although as a practical
matter he knew that meant higher gas prices at the pump and more shell out for
ways to get around, get around in cars, the main way, including him, people got
around in America. The reason that Leon
Coleman was worried, and rightly so, was that the world oil situation would
determine whether he had a job or not, at least a good-paying union wage job or
not. Whether people would still buy new cars every few years. See Leon worked
the line, the assembly line, over at Dodge Main in Detroit (really Hamtramck,
over in Polack town) yes, that famous Dodge Main from a few years back, around
1971, when some brothers, some righteous black brothers mainly, closed the
place down over some cracker foreman’s racist slurs and stuff like hiring
brothers in the skilled trades jobs to get them the hell off of the damn
assembly line. And he had reason to worry as well because he had just come off
of a short lay-off about eight months
back and since he was as they say “last hired”
(having only worked at the plant a couple of years altogether) he would
again be among the “first fired.” An old story, an old black story as far as he
knew but he didn’t have anything in particular to back that view up since most
of his people had come north from
Mississippi a while back and they had always had plenty, too plenty, of
back-breaking hot sun work to do on some Mister’s plantation. At least he never
had to suffer that fate, tough as the line was, tough as it was when they kept
speeding the damn thing up.
All Leon Coleman knew was it was tough to be a black man, a
young black man, trying to make something of himself. Maybe just being a man
was tough, especially a man with family and a woman with wanting habits, he
wouldn’t argue that, but the way the deal went down when things went wrong,
anything from the world oil situation to get kicked off the job first a black
man had a burden. Yah, the damn thing was stacked against a black man. Hell, he
could understand why those brothers said enough a few years back (although as a
“new hire” right after that time he was told to, and did, stay clear of any
revolutionary brother stuff) and argued that the way workers were hired and
fired (okay, laid-off but it felt like being fired) had to be changed, that
black men (and women too since they were starting to hire more woman for some
quota thing) should not have to be the “fall guy.” And just that minute he
could see where they were right back then, although little good it would do
him.
Little good too it would do him with wifey, Alberta, sweet
Alberta with her child-wanting ways, harping on him about starting a family.
Jesus, lord. As he thought about what loomed ahead he thought back to the days
before he got his first serious job at the auto plant (before then for real
jobs as a teenager he had worked in a low-rent car wash and flipped a few
burgers at different places but mainly he didn’t work) when he was “running the
streets” with his corner boys, stealing stuff, midnight stealing stuff, a
couple of armed robberies (never picked up for) and at the end, dealing dope
(and sniffing to, bad stuff, dealing and sniffing too, because you take too
many chances when you are dope-addled), dealing dope to high heaven (and
picking up a couple of arrests in the pursuit). It was the last arrest, the
last arrest when they were going to step him off for a few years at state
prison that his mother (father, Leon too, long gone, a Mississippi rolling stone, whereabouts unknown) stepped in, made
some connection with a union rep relative to get the auto job, made a deal with
the judge, and he walked, as long as he kept clean. And he had, and Alberta,
whatever her wanting ways, had made sure of that, after they had met at some
whiskey joint out on Six Mile Road. So he harnessed himself to the work, kept
straight during that lay-off time and grabbed all the overtime he could when he
got back. He just wished it wasn’t so tough being a black man, a young black
man, and that he had a job that he could call his own …
Three-
A Shop Of One’s Own
“Doc” Jackson (first
name William but nobody, including his wife, Lucille, ever called him anything but Doc, so Doc) had been
dispensing pills and sundries and notions (not one knew what that mean,
including Doc, but it sounded good, good to the tongue, when one said it
reading it off the front door sign) at his corner drugstore for over thirty
years in that spot at the intersection of
First Avenue and Grand Boulevard
and Third Street in the high Detroit Southward neighborhood, what some called the “colored
section” when he first started out back just a few years after World War II,
others, black and white, called “niggertown” showing some contempt or
self-contempt in the snarly way that they pronounced it, still others,
reflecting the new sociology of the 1960s called it by some seemingly
pathological name, “ghetto,” and he called just plain ordinary vanilla home.
See Doc had lived over that drugstore of his for all the time that he had been
dispensing those pills, those sundries, and those notions. That apartment’s
value and an adjacent rented one had helped when money was tight, when things
were slow, or when the neighborhood and the times changed. He was proud that he
had held on, held on tight.
He had seen some changes, from the high side money coming in
during the “golden age of the automobile” when everybody was looking, looking
hard to upgrade to a new car every few years (he had even caught the bug going
from an old Packard, to a Chevy, to a high-end Buick, the one sitting out in
the back of the store just then) to the hard time’60s when they, those bastard
black brothers, burned everything they could get their hands on after Doctor
King was assassinated, and almost got the drug store and its environs but the
neighbors, his black and brown neighbors, had drawn a line in the sand and
said, no, no more. And now, he was seeing some very disturbing signs that the
town was going to be further devastated because they, as a result of some world
oil situation which even he didn’t understand, were going to close Dodge Main,
a place where in good times and bad, a lot of the neighborhood worked, or had
somebody working.
Worst though, much worst, was that his old clientele was
pulling up stakes, or was dying off he hated to admit and so his old seven in
the morning to ten at night speedy service of those in need of their medicines
(or their liquor, which he carried for those with prescriptions, and those
without, but the less said about that the better) and he was being squeezed
out, squeezed out by the new chain drugstores, the new one they want to build
right on his corner spot. And there was nothing that he could do about it. See,
despite what everyone believed, even Lucille, he didn’t actually own the
building, the apartments or anything but had leased them from Mister Reed, a
good white man who had run the drugstore before him and seen the neighborhood
change and seen that Doc was someone who could be trusted to keep the place
going, long ago. Mister Reed, who had recently died, had a son who, as sons
will do, wanted to convert his legacy to cash and was willing to sell out to
that Osco Drug chain. So here he was now with nothing much to show for a
lifetime of work, of sweat, of service except to rekindle his dream of a shop
of his own somewhere, anywhere to close out his days…
Four- A Home Of One's Own
Lettie Morse had been sitting on the rim of the world. Lettie , all of eighteen, and sweet child-
mother of three young children (ages, if you can believe this, and you will
once the facts become known, two girls four and three and a boy, one) was just
that moment sheltered against the rawness of life, if just for that moment,
over at that Sally ‘s Harbor Lights safe house (Salvation Army for those not in
need of their facilities and only familiar with their operations at
supermarkets and the like ringing bells and seeking dollars at Christmas) in
the deep South End section of Boston
over by Blackstone Park. And like all
such citizens caught up on the rim of the world Lettie had a story, and a dream
too. Not a long story, not at eighteen, and not when one is on the rim of the
world when just getting by from one day to the next, hell, just one step in front
of you to the next, took up your hours, and not the stuff of story, or parable
either.
See Lettie, sweet child-mother Lettie, considered herself,
and was considered by friend and family alike to be, how to put it kindly, an
ugly duckling (although motherhood became her as she held forth black
Madonna-like in facing that one step after the next day), the runt of the
litter of seven children when Vernon and Eleanor Morse (yes, named after the
former First Lady, Mrs. Roosevelt, for her kindnesses toward the Negro people) when they had come up from
Clarksville down in the Mississippi delta after hearing that Boston was the
“land of milk and honey” and had landed smack dab in the recently constructed
Columbia Point Housing Project over by the waters of Dorchester Bay. As so
whether that was a wise or foolish decision (probably wise given hellhole
Mister James Crow Mississippi goddam) the “projects” was where Lettie came of
age, came of age fast, too fast.
She would not speak of her troubles adjusting, adjusting as
best she could, to northern urban life, bunched up in a shared small corner
room with two other pretty sisters slightly older, of the slow heavy as
molasses drawl she inherited from her maternal grandmother and which drew howls
of laughter at the junior high school that serviced the projects, or of the
cruel ugly duckling taunts from boys (and a wayward girl or two). Like a lot of
not pretty girls (and maybe pretty girls too but that is best left for another
story, today we are on the rim of the world with black Madonna Lettie) she
substituted being sexually available to the boys for anything else she might
have felt. And they, as boys will, when the midnight whistle blows and they
hear of some “easy piece” had their way with her, and then left her, left her
that first time, well not exactly empty- handed, but with child, one of them
anyway, and hence Christine .
Things went along okay for a while in that “projects” Morse home, she making room for her baby in
her shared room, but Lettie, got a little restless as young girls will, and a
boy, a not from the projects boy, took an interest in her. What she did not
know was that he was selling reefer like crazy to the kids over near Uphams
Corner (a school nearby the central point of sales) and eventually got busted,
busted flat and sent away to reform school for a while. However, not leaving
her empty-handed and thus Shana. That episode broke the camel’s back in the
Morse household as fragile as it was. Lettie was unceremoniously told to pack
her bags and she did. And so with two small children, no money, no home and no
prospects she hit the streets, the mean streets. Lettie said to tell you no
matter how bad things get, no matter how rough you think life is stay away from
Mister’s streets, from his trick streets, from his walking daddy hustler’s
streets, from his pimp daddy streets. She learned that lesson the hard way
although she was not left empty-handed and hence Robert, father unknown, maybe
unknowable.
So things kind of went downhill from there for a while, as
Lettie tried to keep her little family together, tried to get off the streets,
tried to get off the rim of the world, and so she landed at the Sally’s safe house. She would stay there as long as
it took for that promised apartment in the Orchard Park Housing Authority to
come through. And that thought, the thought of
getting off the rim of the world, that thought of fixing up a home, a
home to keep her children safe, a home of her own kept her focused…
Five - A History Of One's Own
What James “Big Daddy” Dixon did not know about history
would fill a book said his boyhood friend Anthony Hilton. What Anthony meant by
that, or what James thought he meant by that was the saga of the American
experience was a book sealed with seven seals for him. James, not usually one
to suffer a slight with a shrug of the shoulders, and he took the remark as a
slight, a kidding slight, not to be avenged but a slight nevertheless, wanted
to know more about what was on Anthony’s mind that cold February 1964 morning.
Normally, James would not give a rat’s ass (a popular expression picked up by
the kids, James and Anthony included, in the rat-filled tenement house on the
corner of Washington Street in the high Roxbury ghetto where James and Anthony
had grown up, and had come of age together before they parted company to go
their separate ways in in this wicked old world) about what Mister George
Washington did, or did not do, at Valley Forge. Or what madness Mister Andrew
Jackson brought down on the English in front of New Orleans or whether Mister
Davey Crockett was ill-advised to make that terrible, fateful last stand down
in the Podunk Alamo or whether Mister Abraham Lincoln (Father Abraham in his
grandmother’s home, a place where he was dumped more often than not when his
late mother had her wanting habits on, wanting men habits on) meant to free the
slaves or whether Mister Woodrow Wilson sincerely, hah, wanted to “make the world safe for democracy”
when he send American boys (including a grand uncle) over to Europe to do some
hellish fighting in a war that lasted forever some years back or whether Mister
Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, or did not, sell out to Mister Joseph Stalin at
Yalta in the last big war or wherever it was that he was supposed to have done
the deed.
James relationship to history was more up to date, more
existential if he had known the word, or had asked Anthony what it meant (and
if he had known the word then six-two-and even that Anthony would have known
what it meant, Anthony always knew what the words meant, always). His world
history was based on how much liquor had been served at his High Hat Club the
night before (and how much he had been clipped for by those thieving negro
brothers he had running the place), how his numbers runners were doing and
whether the latest shipment from Mexico with that grade A reefer, that Acapulco
Gold, would get here this month. And he expressed those world historic concerns
to Mister Anthony Hilton (as he had done on other occasions) in no uncertain
terms. What concerned him just that moment was whether Mister Honky (and he
used that name freely in front of, and behind the backs of, his white
associates) was going to continue to protect his operations in the neighborhood
or not. And as he began to explain to Anthony (as he had also done many times
before) the historical facts of his place in the sun in the Roxbury world
Anthony stopped him short with this.
“James, doesn’t it matter to you that you could be descended
from kings, from great warrior -kings back in Mother Africa, back before
bondage times and that our people could erect great works before the bloody
honkys could figure out how to use a spoon to eat with(Anthony too , although
college educated and ready to become a professor within a few years if things
worked out right, maybe at Howard, could
speak the language of private black rage when he was among kindred, and James
was kindred), doesn’t it matter that our history has been denied us. Not only
that we were warrior- kings, but that we more than paid our dues when we came
to this land all shackled up and bedraggled, that we built this country as sure
as hell. That we fought our share, our freedom share with old Nat Turner, and a
thousand other slave revolts, that our brothers stood with that old prophet
angel John Brown at Harpers Ferry fight to make Mister Whitey red with rage,
that our proud forbears right in this city formed a regiment, the Massachusetts
54th, to avenge our shackles in Civil War fight, and that we have
put our brand on American culture from ….”
With that James, who also knew, knew from deep in his
brethren soul, that Anthony was prepared to give him the whole entire panorama
of the black experience on these damn shores if he didn’t stop him right then
and there did so. Did it as he always did with his right arm extended out hand
palm up- stop. And Anthony knowing the sign, ever since that one time fight to
determine who was the king hell king of the tenement night, knew to stop. As he
prepared to go James stopped him, handed him ten one hundred dollar bills from
inside his suit pocket and said, “Use that for that damn Negro History project
you are working on over a Boston University.”
After their good-byes and had Anthony left, and after James
had figured up the previous night’s receipts and determined that those thieving
negro brothers had only nicked him a little, he, in the quiet of his office,
thought about what Anthony had said, about the warrior- king part of it, for in
truth that was the only part he remembered. And the next time Anthony came by
he was going to ask him more about that, a lot more and for just that minute
James “Big Daddy” Dixon wished he had a known history, a history of his own…
Six – A Peace Treaty Of One's Own
Jamal
Pratt, Boston Boy’s English High School Class of 1965 (touted as the old public
high as such in the country ahead of Boston Latin in that regard), was crazy to
go into the military right after high school come June, a plan that he had been
mulling in the back of his mind for the previous couple of years. In addition
to that intense desire to prove his manhood, his righteous black manhood, to
prove that he had what it took to step off with the tough guys, the tough guys
when and where it counted, he was having troubles with Ma at home (rolling
stone Pa, a blur when young, was long gone, gone with some other woman in some
other town as far as his mother and his paternal grandmother knew).
You
know the steady drumbeat of what are you going to do with your life (he had
only vaguely alluded to that service career which she might have freaked at if
he explained it in too much detail), why were you hanging out with who you were
hanging out with, don't you know those corner boys of yours will just get you
in trouble the universal mother drill (in fact she was only about half right
about that since Junior was headed for college and Roy the Boy had military ideas
too, although Jesse and Preston were slated to do time, black time, for some
cheap jack robberies). Moreover he had no steady girlfriend since Sheila had
moved back down south with her grandmother after her parents split up and he
was just keeping his head above water when it came to that corner boy midnight
shifter stuff his mother kept harping on (he was under Jesse’s spell in
particular just then). He was desperately in need of a change of scenery, no
question.
Besides
he wanted, English High proud wanted (the glass case in the front lobby
exhibited many of the servicemen and others who had distinguished themselves in
service to the country in the long line of campaigns this country has conducted
as befitted the oldest public high school in the country, both fact drummed in
the boys from day one of grade nine), to do his duty for his country against
the communist menace that it was facing, besides big dog Red Russia, from a
place called Vietnam, a place where, from all the reports, the citizenry was growing
wild, and getting wilder and would take down the whole region with it. That, of
course was part of it, part of what any red-blooded American, black or white,
feared and Jamal thought rightfully so, although he was loose, pretty loose, on
exactly what the hell was happening there. The big part though was that Jamal
Pratt was smitten by a John Wayne Army Special Forces action film, The Green
Berets, having seen it several times and having bored, bored there was no
other word for it, his corner boys as they hung around nights in front of his
apartment house over on the corner of Washington Street and Geneva Avenue in
the high Roxbury neighborhood of Boston.
What
got to Jamal was how smooth these guys were, these Special Forces guys (and how
they he heard also got plenty of action from the girls around North Carolina
and places like that who were ready to do just about anything to get their
kicks with a Green Beret), how they were able to take on about ten gooks (yes,
that was the term he used for them and a term of common usage, Charlie only
came later when the deal went down in –country, and the more respectful Mr.
Charlie even later) and whip their sorry asses before they knew what hit them,
about how they saved little rice-growing peasant village after little
rice-growing peasant village when those crummy cowardly commie bastards tried
to stake out their claim, and about how cool their weapons were that made quick
victories possible (especially that quick-action M-16 that every guy got to
carry, later he would pray, pray to high heaven for a sweet AK-47 that Mr.
Charlie had at his disposal when his goddam M-16 would jam at the wrong
freaking time ).He wanted in, wanted in bad on that action, and since he had
not planned to go to college anyway for lack of money and interest he figured
that when he signed up down at the recruiting station on Tremont Street he
would try his luck as a Green Beret recruit even though his physical aspect
(thin and short) was just inside the stiff Special Forces regulations. He figured
if that didn’t work out, although he was pretty sure he had the stuff that the
Green Berets were made of, he would pick a skill school, maybe carpentry or
plumbing like his uncle, and be all set for when after he got out.
Well Jamal’s dream, like a lot of
things, and not just black things, in this wicked old world, didn’t pan out,
the Green Beret part (strangely he couldn't pass the hearing test, although,
strangely too it did not disqualify him from the military as a whole), although
he did gain a skill school, not exactly the one he had planned on, partly any
way. He was assigned to be 11-Bravo, a grunt, a foot soldier, cannon fodder
(although that thought term only came later, grunt was the word his used to his
friends back on the block when he came home on leave the first time). He did
take advantage of an opportunity to go to jump school, paratrooper school, down
at Fort Benning in Georgia and was thereafter sent to Fort Bragg (where the
Special Forces units were also located) down in North Carolina to be part of
the 82nd Airborne Division.
As
luck would have it 1966 was a year that the action was getting hot and heavy in
Vietnam and so units, including his unit, of the 82nd were ordered
to that hot spot as President Johnson acceded to every request from the general
in charge, General Westmoreland, for more and more troops (that’s when he first
heard the term cannon fodder but he did not connect it with himself then). As
stories started coming back in about the actual fighting situation in Vietnam
and as he gathered from the training he had received in how to kill gooks by
the score (although that Mr. Charlie designation and constant rumors about how
the night belonged to him was becoming more and more the term of usage among
his fellow soldiers whatever term was
being used on the streets or in the barrooms) Jamal started getting more
anxious, anxious for a very good reason since he had met a girl, Tonya, from
Fayetteville, the town outside the fort, and they had plans to marry and all.
(Apparently girls, girls around Fayetteville anyway, were just as happy to get
their kicks with airborne guys as with Green Berets or any other elite military
units but that attraction is a question for another time).
Jamal did his time in 'Nam, did his
rotation (a year and a month’s R&R in Hawaii where Tonya met him on the
quiet since she wasn’t supposed to do so), although he never did want to talk
about it that much, about the killing (the constant firing part, the fields of
fire part, although he would go on and
on about that damn jamming M-16 and when he complained about it being told by
the sergeant that he must not have cleaned it properly, Jesus, he could clean
it in his sleep), about the burning down of villages to save them (although he
never asked the reason for doing so he just heard that some colonel from his
brigade had said that was the reason), about having black sweats every night
every single fucking night on the perimeter waiting for Mr. Charlie to come
back and take his back (and some black sweat nights later in the “real world”
too, for a while), and a few things he swore he would never tell anybody about
what he had done there, about what he had seen done there, and about who these
peasants really were anyway.
What he did want to talk about was the
sea-change in his own attitude, him and some of the brothers (a few white guys
too but not from the 82nd they, the white guys anyway, were still
gung-ho), about how Cassius Clay turned Mohammed Ali was right-“that no Viet
Cong ever called him nigger,” that he had no quarrel with those yellow-skinned
people, that this red scare thing was a white man’s idea, a white man’s war,
taking down poor black, brown, yellow-skinned peoples and making them like it,
or trying to make them like it. He read some stuff given to him by a guy, a
fellow soldier, whose brother was what he called a Black Panther, a black
hell-raiser out on the streets of Oakland in California, some stuff by a guy
named Fanon, a West Indian guy, a doctor who had been all wrapped up helping bring
down the French in Algeria (the same French had been kicked out of Vietnam by
Mr. Charlie he found out when he started looking into stuff). Some of it made
sense, some just flat-out didn’t (like the hokey black nation thing, he already
knew about what that looked like, just walk down Washington Street and Geneva,
Jesus.
Well, when he got back to the "real world" he and
a few brothers decided, after hearing their unit might be going back to take on
Mr. Charlie again , that they didn’t like it, didn’t like it enough to say
something about it, say it out loud, and say it in public. At that point, that
1968 point, especially after Charlie went wild during his Tet earlier in the
year, a number of guys, dog soldiers like him, were raising hell, white guys too,
but mainly brothers because wouldn't you know the brothers were taking an
immense amount of the burden in all those hellish fire-fights that was burning
up the dreaded Vietnamese countryside. And so they wound up, fistfuls of
service combat decorations and all, in that dreaded Fort Bragg stockade for a
while before some publicity-conscious general decided that the best thing to do
was to get him and the brothers out, give them undesirable discharges and be
done with it. He didn’t like the deal but he took it (he would later fight to
change it, get it upgraded when that was possible). He had had enough of
Mister’s war, enough of killing, and enough of losing everything he held dear
(his Fayetteville girl heeding her army father left him in the lurch too) but
he had made his peace, his personal peace treaty with the world…
Seven –A Defense Of One’s Own
All hell was breaking loose in Mississippi in 1964 after
they found those boys, those civil rights worker boys over in some ditch in
Philadelphia (hell was breaking out before and after too but that year got
everybody’s attention North and South, abolitionist and redneck, because a showdown was coming no question). Even Jacob
Block knew some hard-ass stuff was coming down as isolated as he was from white
folks (and other black folk too) on his poor excuse of a share crop farm about
fifty miles outside of Hattiesburg. As he thought about it afterwards, after
all hell had broken loose in his little world and its environs, he should have
known it would come to that, come to a confrontation with Mister, or Mister’s
rednecks acting in his name. Hell, his great-grandfather on his mother’s side,
Ezra Bond, had jumped his plantation over near Savannah, Georgia, to walk down
and join Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s 2nd South Carolina
Volunteers and raise some hell with the boys in grey. And later some cousin had
been lynched right in broad daylight down near Biloxi, a big feisty rabid white
crowd watching on, watching on with glee from what he had heard just because
that cousin had tried, shotgun in hand, to defense his woman when some white
rascal got his lust habits on. Yes, he should have known, known it was in the
blood that when the deal went down he had to do something, had to defend his
own, his sweet Martha, and the little ones.
Jacob did not know how he had first found out they were
coming, about the redneck rampage, maybe something overheard in Otis Junction
when he went to get his monthly provisions, maybe from somebody at the Lord’s
Worship Baptist Church over in Oxbridge that time he went for Jim Jackson’s
daughter’s wedding. But no question either that they were coming, coming to
throw the worst fear into every last “nigger” (their term, always their term
even when directly speaking to a negro, just one more way to put the black man
behind the eight ball) within one hundred miles of Hattiesburg once they heard
that some blacks were going right to the farms to get other blacks, farmers and
small town dwellers alike, to register to vote, to exercise their
American-given right to have a say in things. He had never voted, never cared
if he voted, and never even really tried once he had gotten wise to Mister Jim
Crow and his ways even though he could, mother taught, read and write as well
as any white man in the county, hell, maybe in the state of Mississippi. He
wanted no trouble, wanted no part of Mister, no part of confronting Mister Jim
Crow and just wanted to be left alone. And that was that.
That was that until he heard about those Philadelphia boys,
and until he had heard that they had, that white trash that had been put up to
it by Mister and his damn White Citizens Councils, burned down Jack Lewis’
place, his beautiful little shack that he had spent half a life time trying to
fix up, when he decided to lead his fellow church people to Hattiesburg to
register to vote. Jacob still did not care whether he voted or not, registered
or not, but since he was, the way things were going, to be targeted anyway just
for being black, poor and nothing but a sharecropper well that was enough.
Enough to get him and a few fellows, young bucks, sons of farmers he had met
over the years although he did not know them or their sons well, and get ready
to defend their land, come hell or high water, defend the land like some
avenging angels arms in hand like they were heeding some ghost call from that
old black abolitionist rabble-rouser Frederick Douglass with his call “to arms,
sable warriors, to arms, the hour is at hand” to fight for freedom one more
time.
Yah, it had come to that, come to simple black manhood time,
time to either keep that lifetime head bent down, or walk on two black feet.
And when it came to that showdown they were ready as Ebby Johnson’s son,
William, a veteran of Korea, showed them how to use their shotguns to effect.
And that knowledge came in handy one night, one night when they heard that a
gang of whites was heading up Traversville Road about ten miles from Jacob’s
land in three cars shooting and slowly setting fires at random and watching
their handiwork. Probably drunk too Jacob (and William) figured. So they set an
ambush around Tyler Road, dark, with high ground and easy escape. And that
night, whether it ever got recorded, reported, or noted, a small cadre of black
men, black avenging angels (no niggers, nigras, or even negroes now) sent a
fusillade of shotgun fire down at the three cars coming up that black night
Mississippi road. And, you know, no marauding rednecks ever came within twenty
miles of Jacob Block’s land again. And while he never took the time to register
to vote when that became easier later he was always at pains to tell everybody he knew that one sweaty fearful
night he had done all the voting he
needed to do…
Eight –No More Jail Cells
Jesus, how did he, let’s leave him nameless at his request
but his story is legion, legion in black ghetto America and brown Latino barrio
America too ever since Mister and his damn cop justice system decided to go
after drugs, small change drugs really, get caught up in the dragnet this time,
just as he was starting to get things in his life under control, a little. His
teenage years had been one hell after another once his father left, left
rolling stone left with some woman not his mother and was down south somewhere
according to his paternal grandmother and his mother had taken up, undivided
attention taken up, with some Johnny Blade (not a bad guy really but not his
father, no way, not a guy to talk to about his troubles since as he made plain
his undivided attention was to his mother).
First thing was that first “clip” bust at thirteen
(laughable when he thought about it now, some damn onyx ring, snagged under his
shirt so cool he thought from over at Mister Earl’s junk jewelry two- bit joint, a two-bit joint which
had been in the neighborhood for as long as anybody could remember, even his
grandmother over on Warren, now with a
big old monitor cruising the premises, that he just had to have for Shara’ s
Valentine present, long gone and now forgotten Shara), then a couple more small
robbery, burglary things (stealthy midnight creeps through back alleys and
shimmied windows in the neighborhood apartments, close to home stealing ), then
dropping out of school (that too to spent time with some Shara, although that
was not her name, name now not remembered), then a “go to jail or go to the
army, or else” thing from the that old whitebread judge who thought he was
doing him a favor, getting him out of the hard streets harms’ way when he and
two other confederates (who took the time, and had been taking time ever since
for one thing or another) did one too many midnight creeps.
The judge favor turned out being that he had two little
purple hearts from two- tour Iraq courtesy of Saddam Hussein’s boys, or
somebody nasty in Baghdad. Then back to the streets the down streets of Boston,
really Roxbury, you know around Washington Street and Geneva his old home turf
and its change from just a neighborhood, the ‘hood of child remembrance to
something else, a free-fire zone of a different kind.
And you know too that a guy, a black guy, even a purple
heart black guy, without any real education, without some serviceable skill
(nothing but a damn 11-Bravo to tout, nothing), and without some luck, real
luck was up against it, up against it when the cops were always looking you up
and down for just walking since he got back to the “real world” (he had been
eye-balled and stopped twice right after he got back from Iraq and hell he was
in uniform one time and they could see the damn purple hearts). So, you know,
he took up “the life” again, the life this time meaning no small time Mr. Earl
cheap jack jewel clips and midnight creep robberies (kids’ stuff) but working
his way up the chain in the burgeoning local drug scene.
And he was doing okay for a while until one night they, and
you know who the “they” was, came smashing down the door at the safe house over
on Norfolk (somebody had snitched, somebody not alive right now if you want to
know) and he was taken in. He did a year at South Bay for that one. It was
there that he got “religion.” No, not some damn Black Muslim thing, or god holy
roller thing, jesus, no, but, you know, wise to the hard fact that if he was
going to make thirty (a milestone for a young black man according to some stuff
he read from some report some foundation did while he was in and reading a
magazine from the library after GED classes were over one day) his life flow
was going against that prospect. And so he changed, changed a little, got a job
through the VA, not much of a job, but steady, a short order cook and was
moving along. Then this night of all nights he decided that he wanted to see a
friend, not being exactly sure why but maybe a little wobbly on that straight and
narrow, from the old neighborhood, yes,
bad move, the guy he visited related to the drug trade and he was just present
when they came storming in. Thirty ain’t looking so good tonight…
Nine –To Be Judged By One’s Own
No question, no question at all that Robertson Edgars,
twenty-two, all sable warrior tough,
six-two, two hundred and forty pounds, who had played some ball in high school,
a rumbling, tumbling, stumbling break back fullback, the worst kind, who devoured opposing linemen, was every
white man’s nightmare, every white man’s nightmare dream that if he, Robertson
Edgars, came into that white man’s range, say his neighborhood at dusk or dawn,
never mind into his curtilage anytime, that he would sweat, sweat like hell,
about what to do with the bastard, especially if the wife and kids were there
to see him sweat, sweat death fear sweat. And no question either that every
white woman, every white women, mothering woman, feared, feared that black
night fear when she came within fifty feet of a monster like the brother. (Well,
maybe not everyone since Brother Edgars had had a bed full of white chicks,
white chicks who status conscious in high school craved amazing break-back
fullbacks and others later craved that ersatz black man experience when the
times dictated that as a rite of passage experience among certain white
educated women, and a few not so well educated too, although nothing steady,
that was strictly black stuff, strictly, some educated, some not)
So Robertson’s lawyer, his mother downtown red brick textile
sweat shop crimp and save bought lawyer, Jim Everett, was surprised (and in fact had tried like
hell to argue him out of the decision, tried to explain one more time the what
and why of the white man’s justice system that even he, an honored white man,
knew, knew not just in his bones but through his pile of black convictions and
the many years prison time was stacked again him) when he had told him that he
preferred to have his case, his burglary case tried before a jury rather than a
judge (the judge in this case, Judge Abbott, notorious in the Court of Common
Pleas, for his quick dispatch of young men into the Texas prison system night
with heavy terms, and fines too).
And here was the rub. In Macomb County even though blacks
outnumbered whites about three to two the jury pool would probably wind up
being majority white. Robertson’s argument that a few black mothers empaneled
might take pity on him since he actually was innocent and had an alibi (a black
alibi but an alibi nevertheless) and although he had some priors (a couple of
drug busts, a couple of DUIs, kids’ stuff really) he thought he could survive
that information if the situation came to that since those mothers would
perhaps have had their own crimp and save son in trouble woes, or knew of such
doings) time came for that. His back-up was that maybe some black father
(although not Robertson’s, his father had died in some stinking jungle hellhole
in Vietnam in 1971) worried about his own son might see where Robertson had
been framed, framed like a million other black kids. Jim thought he was foolish
to believe that might happen but he kept it to himself once Robertson made it
plain he was adamant on the question.
On the day set for trial Judge Abbott, according to Jim
Everett, seemed to be in a particularly bad mood. He was known to be
ill-tempered even on his good days and was deliberately rude to Jim when he
requested dismissal of the charges for lack of evidence, some standard Jim
argued not met by the prosecution, and he ruled that motion down in about two
seconds with no arguments heard. This action by the judge only confirmed in
Robertson’s mind the wisdom of his choice. Shortly thereafter the jury
selection proceeded and from the start things went badly when a young white
woman was dismissed for some cause and then a young black woman who looked like
she was making eyes at Robertson (neither of those two women would be picked,
or have survived challenge, under any circumstances, black or white, being
young was a bar to selection, an unwritten law). By noontime the jury had been
selected and Robertson almost, as big as he was, cried. Not only in three to
two black Macomb County was the jury all- white it was ten men and two women.
And the two women might as well have been men because they looked and acted
like they were prison guards at the women’s prison or some such thing.
Robertson reached back as he was walking outside for a cigarette before the
start of the trial itself that afternoon and said out loud to himself Paul (his
black brother alibi) better come through, he had better come through…
Ten–A Nation Of One’s Own?
Jackson Pulley had been doing his Saturday morning soapbox
spiel in the environs of Lenox Avenue and 125th Street in high
Harlem up in New Jack City for as long as anyone could remember. Some
grandmothers would tell their grandchildren whom they were minding or raising
as their own while passing by doing the Saturday morning shopping that they
could remember when their own grandmothers of blessed memory had taken them to
that very same Saturday shopping not to listen to, not to be bothered by
Jackson’s big boom voice, and of his hand-held mic that could be heard far
above and below the avenue. And Jackson Pulley’s spiel had not changed much
since he had first given voice to his project back in the late 1920s. His basis
idea was that the black people in America, his people, his sweated, kicked
around, abused beautiful people, someone later would call it the “beloved
community,” due to the white man’s inherent racism, needed a country, a nation
of their own. He would moreover argue his conceptions through good times and
bad, against all comers, from old black knight scoundrel Marcus Garvey through
the Communist Party turns for and against the black nation, through the “new
negro” stuff in the 1950s through to the Doctor King and Malcolm X knock down
drag out fight and right up until recently when the Black Panthers gave the
idea of a black nation a whirl for a while. Old Jackson kept his main idea
front and center and would as the “false” challengers arose kick them like tin
cans down the road.
Jackson had had no truck with old black knight Marcus Garvey
seeing in him just another black hustler working the ignorant West Indies
immigrant black janitors and black maids and down and out southern
slave-branded sharecroppers out of their hard earned dough. He had been right
as rain on that man when he first started seeing that blacks needed a new
homeland. The pivotal event though that drove him to his position was seeing
one of his own kin lynched right after World War I down in the great state of
Georgia while the whites watched with red-heat passion bordering on lunacy.
Later before heading north he bore the full brunt of Mister James Crow and his
equally savage ways. No, it was time to separate, long past time.
He had had some respect for the Communist Party and their
black nation idea. In fact he had been in a study circle with some brothers in
the African Blood Brotherhood before some of them went over to the party. He
could not go with them since he refused to belong to an organization that
allowed whites in. Besides those reds didn’t follow that black nation policy
except when they wanted to use it to recruit blacks in hard times. That “new
negro” stuff was a joke as far as he was concerned, something out of W.E.B.
Dubois’ “talented tenth” and just another way to buy off the natural leaders of
black people. Stuff them harmlessly out of the way like some old time Toms and
Mister Whitey brought them out when trouble brewed to be “reasonable,” see
things in the long perspective, take a little at a time if that was what was
offered. Bullshit, excuse his English, his slave language English (he only
swore in his own home for out on the streets he was more respectful learning
that lesson the hard way when one irate grandmother swung an umbrella at him
when he was young and not street talk savvy and sworn while her grandchildren
were within earshot).
Jackson got serious when Malcolm X arose like a phoenix out
of the ashes but he had no truck with Elijah Mohammed seeing him as a less
clever Marcus Garvey with all that religious mumbo-jumbo that never did anybody
any good. Just another fast-talking preacher hustle, except not Baptist hustle
like he knew about while growing up. The Black Panthers of course demanded
respect, respect as black warriors ready to stick their necks out for the black
community, but they had been taking a
beating of late trying to stay in America, in the cities. Were taking a beating
from whitey and his bad ass cops who went crazy when they saw black men with
guns ready to defend their own. Still they were righteous and had an idea of
what black people needed to get the hell off the eight-ball.
When pressed Jackson like he was this Saturday by a young
black brother who seemed to want to know more details about how it would work
he would say that what blacks should fight for is a place like Idaho, a place
with lots of land and far away from the vast majority of whites. Although he
himself had never been there he was sure it would do, and equally sure once
black people had had enough of the white man (and increasingly the white woman)
on their necks they would be flocking there. But the young man seemed to say by
the shrug of his shoulders like one grandmother said as she passed Jackson
Pulley and his soapbox for the hundredth time to her grandchildren “Don’t pay
old Jackson any never mind.”…
Eleven-In
the Beginning
…they came out of the hard okie/arkie white trash Hell’s
Angels- dominated mean streets of Oakland, Oakland out in sunny California at the
end of the American continental line. The place where the staccato faux -Spanish
style (speaking unknowingly of earlier conquistador invasions) was to close out
dreams, dreams of plenty, dreams of an ocean’s worth of good times. They came out of the cop- infested army of
occupation on those dark 1960s negro streets (the streets that they wanted to
make black, proud black, devouring that old Spanish negro alien word, and
deed). They came out of the mid-1960s hard reality that while their brothers
and sisters in Selma, Montgomery, Lake Charles, Albany (GA), Greenwood, and all
points south, south of the American slick democracy had gained something,
something worth fighting (and dying) for that they, Oakland, Watts, Harlem,
Cleveland, Newark, and all points North and West, north and west of American
slick democracy, had been left behind. That they too had to face down their own
copper nightmare, their own ghetto-imposed wanting habits nightmare, wanting
some decent sweat-less non-grinding job, wanting their own cozy bungalow (white
picket fence optional in the laid-back Frisco Bay night), wanting their own
take a vacation out in the high Sierras, wanting above all to stop being cop
looked at every time they went onto the white streets of town, hell the black streets too, and to get
rid of their own subtle damn neighborhood (and maybe not so subtle when they
started to rile up the okies and arkies) Mister James Crow.
And so they, okay, okay, Huey and Bobby they, started
putting together a little group, a little group of students and the young bucks
from the ‘hood (neighborhood , okay, but
who else would you expect to start stuff like that, insurrection kind of stuff,
out in sunny blood-stained California, even a California by that freaking
fog-bound bay ), corner boys really, under a simple proposition-voting and the
such might have been okay in that all point south night down in America but in
land’s end that didn’t mean jack. What meant jack was to get that damn down
presser man, the guys in blues, the almost totally white guys in blue off their
backs, and let the brothers and sisters breath. And so they, black proud, and black smart,
decided after looking at history a little, fog-bound black history as fogged as
that rusted colored golden gate bridge once Mister Whitey got through with it,
that the only time that Mister Whitey paid attention was when proud black warrior-savants
pressed the issue, defended themselves against that slave market and jim crow
night. And so they looked to the mighty 200,000 strong of the Union black army
in Civil War times, hell, even the brothers who bled arms in hand with that
prophet angel-avenger Jehovah John Brown at Harpers Ferry fight, and the mighty
southern struggle Robert F. Williams over across the land in Monroe, North
Carolina just a few years back and said enough. So they righteously armed
themselves. And said in some small recess of the brain they knew that this too
was worth dying for.
Twelve
-Sacramento, 1967
…there is a famous picture of them, of the Black Panther
core, Huey and the Bobbys, all black proud and black smart, not just street
smart that day, but all the way smart, kind of
“turn whitey’s rules back on him” smart, in May 1967 over in Sacramento at the State Capitol, arms
in hand, shotguns, serious business shotguns if the occasion arose, arms and
shotguns uplifted away from any thought of placing anyone in harm’s way like
whitey’s law book said was okay, just fine out in the cool blue-pink American
West night. It might not have worked in Cambridge or Peoria but out when the
cowboy lands ended, real and faux cowboys, anything went, went with whatever
small uplift proviso the local government attached to it.
That day though all black proud, armed, berets tilted
slightly showing a sign of determination and not just show, black leather
jackets, sharp, yah, uniform sharp and leaving that same uniform sharp
impression any serious uniform brings up (soda jerks, McDonald ‘s burger
flippers, and gas jockeys step back, step way backs serious uniforms are in
town). That day too those brothers evoked, evoked proud black manhood, evoked
memories of Africa slave-catcher revolts, evoked memories of maroon fights down
in Caribe islands, evoked old Nat Turner come and gone plantation fires, evoked
old Captain Brown and his brave band at Harpers Ferry fight, evoked the memory
of those two hundred thousand blue-capped, blue-uniformed, yes, uniformed,
sable warriors who made Johnny Reb cringe and wish he had never been born.
Evoked too, Africa freedom struggles, and desperate fights to break the down
presser man’s will, his fortitude, and his hunger to keep what was never his.
And evoked no more turning the other cheek stuff, no more waiting on whitey,
even leftie, and more, much more, the great white fear…negros with guns,
jesus.
And they freaked, those whites guys freaked like they always
did, like they always did when even the idea, no, even the thought of an idea
of armed black men touched their radar. Hence death this and death that slave
codes, hence Nat Turner brutal ashes, hence no quarter given, no respect, no black honor respect before Fort Wagner fight
when black men bled red for freedom and on a hundred other battlefields, hence
Robert F. Williams flights. So that day, that freaked-out day a sort of cold
(soon to be hot) civil war was a-brewing. And whitey, maybe not so smart but
afraid of armed black men and ready to act forthwith on that decided that maybe,
just maybe, the wild west needed a little taming, just in case the brothers
decided to aim those guns straight at someone.
Thirteen-
The Sons Of Franz Fanon
…he took the lashes, took the bitter lashes, the sable slave
lashes in Pharaoh times, he took the ocean swells to the bottom unnoticed,
Mister unnoticed, in Middle Passage time, he took the ebony lashes again in
Mister Mississippi goddam plantation black code time, a time to make him
studied ignorant, or else, ignorant of his history, of his past, of his kin
except for hot sun cotton fields, and more hot sun cotton fields, he took the
rope, he took the no hope, he took the Mister walk here, not there, sit here,
not there, stand here, not there in Jim Crow time, he took his down-turned head
in “talented tenth” time when he was not of the better sort, hell, he even kept
that head down in “new negro” times when they were separating out the small pie
portions. He, hell, he had had enough, enough of broken down internal rages,
enough of unchallenged Mister hurts, enough of okie/arkie nobodies chanting jim, get backs, enough of every kind of glad
hand indignity. Enough.
And then he found his way out, or a way out, then he
remembered, if he remembered rightly, that all over the world in the old days in
Russia cold places, red guard arms in hand, when he was just a kid in China
places, people’s army arms in hand, right now, right this minute now, in Vietnam
places where they were raising holy hell with Mister, with arms in hand, some
of Mister’s own too, and above all in great Mother Africa, arms in hand, they
were shoving Mister to the sea, if they let him get that far. Above all he
remembered Algeria struggle, Algeria which he knew about from some brother
telling him that this West Indian guy, this doctor, this head doctor, said that
in the end if you didn’t pick up the gun, if you did not make a sacrificial
act, if you just waited around for Mister to give you bread and butter that you
would never right Pharaoh wrongs, Middle Passage wrongs, Mister plantation
wrongs, Mister James Crow wrongs, hell even talented tenth and new negro wrongs
(who were they to decide anyway). That anything that he was given without a
righteous cleansing struggle would turn to ashes in his black-skinned
mouth.
And so he picked up the gun, picked it up easily, laughingly
(like armed Mister laughed) held it barrel to the blue sky in public, learned
to shoot the damn thing, and felt himself purified, slave purified for once in
his down presser man life, and walked with a certain swagger, an angel swagger,
and when some Johnny Reb okie transplant tried to take his measure he just
showed “the colors.” Beautiful to see
that white ass turned, turned way around. And funny too others picked up the
gun to avenge ancient hurts and they formed a brotherhood, solid, and declared,
declared among themselves at first, until Mister heard it through the
grapevine, that stinking new negro grapevine, war on that foreign country that
he lived in, that Algeria in America country, like that head doctor talked
about. And then things, thing started to get interesting, and bloody…
Fourteen
-“Lord, Lord They Shot George Jackson Down”
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/27/Book_cover%2C_Soledad_Brother_by_George_Jackson.jpg
…he, nameless, he legion, he young restless mischievous
roamer of those mean, as the 1950s “beat” saint poet called it, negro streets,
name the city, Chi town, Beantown, the Big Easy, Frisco town, New Jack City,
those hard corner boy, homeboy (before homeboy name stuck) streets, he doing a
little of this a little of that, a jack roll here a clip there, just enough to
keep body and soul together, later some whack here some heist there, the stuff
of lumpen legend, the stuff that kept the corner boys, uh, the brothers, on
their toes, and playing hopscotch with the law. He, George Jackson, to name
him, to take him out of the nameless numberless savage lumpen night (yes,
savage, those old time 1871 Paris Communards were right to hang the slogan
“Death to Thieves” very high on their democratic tree of liberty) went toe to
toe with the law, went toe to toe one too many times and thus played the
hopscotch into stir, the lumpen world in big print, the, as someone explained
it all in sociological terms, the “prison-industrial complex,” and later, a
later sociologist called it “the new jim crow,”
Mister James Crow for modern times. He, they just called it stir, and
counted the days, the freedom days.
Then he, George Jackson, fully named now removed from savage
lumpen nights, got “religion.” No, not some hocus pocus stuff, some Nation of
Islam stuff very hip in negro-filled jails back then, back on those mean negro
streets, but looking around him, around his world, his whole world (and with
time, plenty of time to read and think), he saw how he was part of big fellahin (although he would not know that
word, not know that dark dirt from some ancient soils word, and need not know
it) world that was exploding out against the Mister imposed rules, the “hey,
fellaheen (or fellaheena if that is the way to express the female part of the
ordering but not so noticeable) sit here, walk there, eat across there, stand
in the next lane” rules. With arms in hand. The mighty thump of Africa up and
down (except blighted South Africa fight), bleeding Algeria twisting in the
wind, armed success in China and Cuba, hell, little island Cuba, for god’s
sake, and rumbles, plenty of rumbles at home.
So, he, George Jackson immersed himself in his new simpatico
fellahin world, began to organize, organize the brothers, the hermanos, the
blancos, whoever wanted to breakout of the six by twelve desolate nights. And
he imbibed, hell, inhaled, Father Fanon, latched his kin name to that father,
began to speak of heroic revolutionary acts, began to speak of the cleansing,
soul cleansing, revolutionary acts of purifying violence, the struggle to
regain Mister-taken manhood, and began to link the dots, prison, courts,
lawyers, cops, no dough, mean streets, down presser man streets, and the need,
the desperate need to push back, to spring like a panther, and take back the
night, the day too.
But all that wisdom, all that righteous wisdom, ran smack
against the hard reality that he was in a box, a prison box, yes, a
court-imposed box, yes, a lawyer pushed box, yes, a cop- cuffed box, YES, a no
dough box, yes, a still mean streets box, yes, and down presser man streets, box,
yes, and so he, he who liked to take a chance or two, fell before he could find
some way, some way to spring like a panther and take back the night, and the
day too. Lord, lord they shot George Jackson down, and so others would, will
have to wake up the fellahin world…
The Ten Point Program
The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:[39][40]
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.
We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.
2. We want full employment for our people.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.
4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.
5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.
6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.
We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.
7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.
We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.
8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.
We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.
We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.
10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
