Panther Baby (2 page)

As I was crossing a small intersection two cars collided.
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e sound effects were worse than the actual impact. A loose bumper and a dented fender seemed to be the extent of the damage. Two white guys in their twenties got out of one car; a slightly older black guy got out of the other car.
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e men started looking around for a nonexistent stop sign, arguing about who had the right of way. No one seemed to notice that their cars had almost hit me. I stepped back on the curb and watched the argument heat up. One of the white guys was holding a beer can. He threw the can against the black guy’s car. “Come on, we don’t have to do all this,” the black guy protested.

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is seemed to annoy the white guys even more.
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ey pounced on the black guy and slammed him into his own car. He lay across the hood, trying to fend off punches and kicks. “Stop,” he yelled. “Help, somebody help me.”
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en he rolled over and looked directly at me with pleading eyes. “Help me!” he screamed.

“Don’t do that,” I yelled, and then I stepped off the curb and took three steps in the direction of the white guys.

One of them saw me coming and slurred, “You want some of this, nigger?” He took a drunken step toward me. I stepped back. He took another step toward me and I ran. I didn’t look back for fear that the white guy would be behind me. I didn’t stop running until I got home.
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en I sat on the front steps of my building with tears of both fear and shame running down my face. I should have tried to fight those guys. I should have thrown a rock. I should have run for the cops. Instead I just ran. I was lame, a coward, a punk.

I listened to the AM news station on my little transistor radio that night, trying to see if there was a report on a black man who had been beaten to death by two drunk white guys. I heard nothing.
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e next day after school I rode by the intersection on the bus to see if there would be a chalk outline of his body on the street, like the one you see on TV cop shows. But the street was clear. I never told anyone how I ran: not Noonie, not my best friends Roy and John—no one. My shame turned into anger against white people, white men in particular. I began to truly hate my light skin and curly hair.

About the same time black men in suits and bow ties started selling papers near the train station.
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ey called themselves Black Muslims and said that the white man was the devil. Noonie and Pastor Lloyd, from our church, were horrified. “
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e devil is not white,” they said. “He’s invisible and he’s everywhere.” But I wasn’t so sure. Despite the warning, I bought copies of
Muhammad Speaks
and delighted in looking at the cartoons that depicted Uncle Sam, the police, and other important white men with horns and a tail.

Sometimes the comfort of the devil image wasn’t enough; I would need the soul-cleansing ritual of a good fight.
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e problem is that I would often pick the wrong white boy to swing on. Like Carmelo, Mr. Carlo’s (the Italian numbers guy) nephew. He ran home with a bloody nose after I picked a fight with him over whether Spider-Man could beat Batman. Twenty minutes later a
Th
underbird with Carmelo and his two older brothers drove up.
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ey shoved me a couple of times and threatened to kick my ass up and down the street. I was scared but also mad, wishing I had older brothers who would come running to my rescue and beat up these guys. Finally they let me go and drove off. I always wanted to fight Carmelo, to get him back for telling, but every time I saw him near his uncle’s candy store I would just nod and he would nod back.

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e next summer, when I was thirteen, Noonie sent me to visit some of her relatives in Marshall, Virginia. It was my first time around horses and tractors—and outhouses. Imagine my surprise having to poop in an outhouse, that stinky wooden shack in the back of the house.
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ere was running water inside and a water heater that could be turned on a few minutes before you took a bath, but there was no toilet. A two-lane paved road divided the black and white parts of Marshall.
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e whites weren’t rich but had slightly bigger and nicer houses with indoor toilets. As far as I could tell, everybody in town made a living by working on one of the farms or one of the factories. Aunt Cleo and Aunt Mae, the ladies I stayed with, were retired from bookkeeping and domestic work.

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e Greyhound bus dropped me near Aunt Cleo’s two-story wooden house. It was morning and I had been riding all night. Aunt Cleo and her grandson, Roger, who was thirteen, met me at the bus stop. Roger showed me where to put my stuff and took me to the outhouse. When I was inside trying to do my business, he told me that snakes would sometimes crawl in there and bite people on the ass. He fell out laughing when I ran out with my dungarees half off. I was ready to fight, but he made me laugh when he drawled, “Aw, come on. Can’t y’all take a joke?” We washed up and went inside for a breakfast of chicken-fried apples and grits. It was a weird breakfast, but man was it good.

I spent the next few days exploring the woods with Roger, swimming naked with four other boys in a lake, and eating peanut butter sandwiches in a secret cave. I was a regular Huck Finn. A skinny, thirteen-year-old girl named Betty, with a pretty face, would always smile at me when Roger and I walked by her front porch.

“She likes you,” Roger said. “She used to like me, but I got me another girlfriend now.”

“No, she don’t,” I said, blushing. I was still real shy when it came to girls.

“She likes you,” Roger insisted. “Maybe she wants to give you some.”

I looked back at the porch and she smiled again. I blushed and kept on walking.

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e next day Roger and I were on Aunt Cleo’s porch when Betty walked by and waved. I waved back.

“Wanna walk me to the store?” she asked.

“Me and Roger?” I yelled back.

“No, silly, just you.”

“She gonna give you some,” Roger teased.

“Shut up,” I snapped.

“Well, go ahead. What? Are you scared?” Roger persisted.

“Hell, no,” I insisted, but I was shaking like I was freezing. I hopped off of the porch and walked with Betty down the road.

On the way back from the store, Betty pulled me into the woods and kissed me. I was tight-lipped, nervous. “Relax,” she said. “Open your mouth a little.” She kissed me again and used her tongue to play with my tongue. Fireworks went off inside of me. If she was giving me “some,” I wanted more. After a few minutes Betty led me out of the woods and back to my aunt’s house. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said. “Don’t tell nobody.” I could hardly sleep that night, thinking about Betty and the woods.

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e next day the black kids and the white kids played softball in the field across the road from my aunt’s house. It was on the white side of the road. A twelve-year-old white kid named Dale bossed everybody around, especially the black kids. Dale called kids names like “stupid” and “blind” when they would miss a hit or drop a ball, and his arrogance and southern drawl really annoyed me. When it was my turn at bat, I swung at the ball and missed. Strike one. Another ball was pitched to me. Strike two. Dale was standing by first base. “Hit the ball, stupid,” he said. “Don’t just stand there like a beanpole.”
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at’s all it took for me to run over and sock him in the nose. I balled my fist, ready for a good fight, but Dale got up, cupped his hand over his bloody nose, and ran across the field to his house.

My cousin Roger came over to me. “Whatcha do that for?” he asked.

“Cuz he came out his mouth wrong,” I replied with my tough New York attitude.

Nobody wanted to play after that. So Roger and I walked across the road to my auntie’s house. I hung around the porch, hoping to see Betty, until my aunt called us in for lunch. As we were eating sandwiches, a car and a pickup truck pulled up in front of the house and six tough-looking white men got out. My aunt went out to meet them.
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e white men seemed angry; my aunt seemed nervous. Roger and I peeked through the front door. Aunt Cleo saw me and called for me to come out of the house. As I walked to Aunt Cleo I saw Dale standing with the white men. “You hit this boy while y’all was playing ball?” Aunt Cleo said angrily. “Apologize right now!”

“But he called me names,” I protested.

Aunt Cleo grabbed my arm and shook me. “Apologize or I’ll beat the tan off you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said to Dale. “I didn’t mean it.” Dale nodded.
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e other white men looked stern.

“Go back in the house,” Aunt Cleo ordered.

I went inside and picked at the remainder of my lunch.
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rough the kitchen window I saw the white men’s car and pickup truck pull away. Aunt Cleo was in the kitchen a moment later. “I’m putting you on the bus today. You’re about to get yourself killed down here.
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em were the Ku Klux Klan,” she said, wringing her hands. “Dale is the Grand Dragon’s son.”

Within two hours my suitcase was packed and I was standing by the roadside Greyhound bus stop near my auntie’s house.
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e bus came. My aunt and my cousins hugged me and I got on. As the bus pulled off I saw Betty walking down the road. I knocked on the window. She smiled and waved. Damn, I thought as the bus headed up the highway, the South is crazy.

3

Finding the Panther Lair

I
walked into a Panther office in Brooklyn in September 1968. Dr. King had been assassinated in April of that year. Riots and anger flared in ghettos around the country. The feeling on the street was that the shit was about to hit the fan. “Black power” was the phrase of the day, and hating “whitey” was the hip thing to do. From street corner speeches to campus rallies, whitey had gone from being “the Man” to being “the Beast.” Young black students were trading in their feel-good Motown Records for the recorded speeches of Malcolm X and the angry jazz recordings of Ornette Coleman.

I went down to 125th Street in Harlem the night that Dr. King was assassinated. Protesters and rioters swarmed the streets, clashing with cops, overturning cars, setting trash can fires, and hurling bricks at white-owned businesses. One of the storefront windows was shattered by an airborne trash can. Looters ran into the store and started taking clothes, appliances, and whatever else they could carry.

Not everyone looted—in fact, most of the crowd continued to chant “
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e king is dead” and “Black power”—but it was enough for the cops to start swinging clubs, shooting their pistols, and making arrests. A cop grabbed me and threw me against the wall. Before he could handcuff me and put me in the paddy wagon, a group of rioters across the street turned a police car over.
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e cop told me to stay put and ran toward the rioters.

I was scared, but I wasn’t stupid. I took off running in the opposite direction. I blended in with a group of rioters and tried to figure out which way to go. A group of cops headed toward us. Some of the rioters ran into a clothing store that was being looted. I followed.
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e cops entered the store swinging clubs and making arrests. My heart pounded as I ran into the back of the store and found a back door leading to an alley. I gasped for air as I ran down the alley and was stopped by a wooden fence.
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e cops came into the alley. “Halt,” they yelled. “Put your hands up.” In my mind I froze, put my hands in the air, and turned around to face the cops with tears in my eyes. But my body kept hauling ass. I grabbed the fence and scurried over the top like a scared alley cat. Two shots rang out. One splintered the wood on the fence near my butt.
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is gave me the fear/adrenaline push I needed to flip over the fence, pick myself up off the ground, and scramble out of the alley.

When I turned out on the street, I kept running, right past two other cops who tried to grab me, but I jerked away. Turning the corner, I almost collided with a group of twenty or so black men in leather coats and army fatigue jackets, wearing Afros and berets, standing on the corner in a military-like formation. “Stop running, young brother,” one of the men with a beard and tinted glasses said. “Don’t give these pigs an excuse to gun you down.” I doubled over, heaving, trying to catch my breath. I didn’t know this man, but his voice sounded like a life raft of confidence in a sea of chaos.

Moments later two cops ran around the corner.
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ey stopped in their tracks when they saw the militant men.
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e men closed ranks around me. “What are you doing here?” one of the cops demanded. “Move aside.”

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e black man with the tinted glasses didn’t flinch. “We’re exercising our constitutional right to free assembly. Making sure no innocent people get killed out here tonight.”

“We’re chasing looters,” the cop retorted.

“No looters here. As you can see, we’re a disciplined community patrol.”

“You have guns?” the cop asked, a tinge of fear in his voice.

“
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at’s what you said,” the man with tinted glasses replied. “I said we’re exercising our constitutional rights.”
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e cops took in the size and discipline of the group for a moment and walked away.

By this time I’d caught my breath, but I was speechless from what I had just seen: black men standing down white cops. “Go straight home, young brother,” the man with the tinted glasses said. “
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e pigs are looking for any excuse to murder black folks tonight.” With that, the black men walked on. I scooted down to the subway and rode home. When I entered the apartment, Noonie was sitting on the couch watching images of Dr. King on TV. Tears fell from her eyes. She didn’t even ask me where I had been, which was unusual since I was about two hours late getting home. I sat next to her and put my arm around her, and we watched the TV reports of the assassination and the riots.

By July 1968 the country was still smoldering with the hot embers of social change, but in the hills of Camp Minisink, located in upstate New York, kids and teens from Harlem were just happy to enjoy campfires and swimming in a lake, miles away from the melting asphalt of their home. Camp Minisink was the oldest African American camp in New York State. I had a job there as a junior counselor. I was also part of one of Minisink’s youth organizations known as the Order of the Feather.

Young men who wanted to join the Order of the Feather had to pledge six months before becoming “Feathermen,” earning the right to wear the coveted maroon and white varsity-style sweater of the organization.
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e fraternity was modeled after the Boy Scouts Order of the Arrow and after black college fraternities. Although we were young, becoming part of the organization was a tough, disciplined, and challenging rite-of-passage process.

We “pledgees” had to wear white shirts and maroon bow ties as uniforms, march in a precision line, address all Feathermen as “sir” or “big brother,” and do push-ups and other forms of “creative punishment” when we failed at a task or bungled an assignment. We had to read black history books (or “Negro” history as many in the community still called it), turn in written assignments, bring in our report cards, and attend career and education workshops. Pledgees were not allowed to go to parties, have girlfriends, smoke, or drink.

I took the pledgee oath in Minisink’s Harlem Community Center along with 150 other young men. By the time we got to camp for the last few weeks of the training process, there were only thirty-five of us. A lot of guys quit or had been dismissed from the line by the older Feathermen for being slack.
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e idea was that if you could cross “the burning sands” of the pledge process and become a Featherman, then you could meet any challenge that life held for you as a young Negro man, and you could succeed. Most Feathermen went on to college and became successful in professions ranging from teaching and medicine to law enforcement.

But a lot of us pledged because the Feathermen were so damn cool. All the cute girls in camp wanted to date Feathermen. Plus the Feathermen could order the pledgees to grab their food trays, do their cabin chores, and sing off-key circus songs to make their girlfriends laugh. How cool was that?

For me and a lot of other teenage boys, the Feather represented a path to manhood. In fact, the Order of the Feather founders created the program in 1946 as a way to challenge the gang epidemic in Harlem.
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eir alternative was simply this: you could go through a one-night gang initiation, receive your gang jacket, and go through life ducking and dodging the cops and rival gang members, or you could go through a rigorous but positive six-month initiation and proudly wear your Featherman sweater at school, church, or any place in the community. While the Feather program didn’t eradicate the gangs, a number of boys left or avoided gangs to become Feathermen.

Two older Feathermen who lived in my neighborhood, James, nineteen, and Eric, eighteen, gave me hell while I was pledging. I had to go to their house to do their chores and pick up their food trays in the high school lunchroom.
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ey also made me run up to girls around school, then bend on one knee and recite corny sonnets.
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e girls giggled as I earnestly recited the lines the big brothers had instructed me to deliver in my best Shakespearean style, all of it romantic and silly and very, very innocent.

When the school bus full of pledgees and Feathermen arrived in the rolling hills of Camp Minisink, things got worse. As a junior counselor I worked all day but would often be pulled from an exhausted sleep at night for push-ups and work details given by James, Eric, and other Feathermen. In a final rite-of-passage ceremony called Tap Out, we pledgees stood bare-chested around a large bonfire and received an initiation tap in the chest by Feathermen dressed in Native American and African costumes.
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e next night we received our Feather sweaters at a banquet in the camp dining hall. James and Eric were among the first two Feathermen to embrace me and welcome me into the organization.

“You guys gave me hell,” I said, confused by the sudden warmth they showed me.

“
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at’s because we like you,” James replied. “If you like a dude, you always pledge him harder. Plus you made us laugh.”

From that night on I hung out with James and Eric. When they weren’t on duty as counselors, they swapped their camp T-shirts for African dashikis and hung out in their cabin featuring Black Power posters, incense, a stereo that played Miles Davis and Malcolm X records, and a red lightbulb that gave their cabin the feel of being a black militant speakeasy in the woods.

Because of James and Eric, I got into the fashion side of black militancy first. I grew a big Afro and dressed in bell-bottoms and dashikis. My skinny fifteen-year-old butt looked like a five-foot-eleven black Q-tip. At the end of the summer, H. Rap Brown came to speak at a youth conference at Camp Minisink.
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e younger campers had all gone home and the cabins were now filled with high school and college students who were up for the weekend attending youth leadership workshops. H. Rap Brown was the conference keynote speaker. He was often in the news as a militant leader who dismissed integration and stood for black nationalism.

I was blown away by his whole style: the ’fro; the shades; the finger that jabbed the air like a Zulu spear when he spoke, slicing up white America. Wow, man, Rap could rap. “You been brainwashed. You wear white to weddings, black to funerals. Angel food cake is white cake. Devil’s food cake is black. White magic is good. Black magic is evil. In cowboy movies the good guys wear the white hats and the bad guys wear black. Even Santa Claus. I mean, tell me how in the hell a fat, camel-breath redneck honkie can slide down a black chimney and still come out white? I’m telling you, you been brainwashed.”
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e crowd of three hundred high school and college students attending the conference went wild; we cheered Rap Brown like a rock star.

Right then and there I decided to embrace militancy. My friend Phil teased me on the way back to our cabin that night. “You can’t announce you’re going to be a black militant like it’s a career choice. It’s a belief, not a job.” But my mind was made up. Rap Brown lived in the South, but I would find other black militants to hook up with when I got back to New York City.

I came from camp with an Afro, wearing a dashiki, and inserting “black power” in every sentence I could, even if I was ordering ice cream. (“Give me some of those black-power sprinkles on that cone, my brother.”) I started looking for a black militant organization to join, going about it the way high school seniors scope out colleges. Since I had no real political consciousness, I entertained and rejected organizations for the most subjective reasons.
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e Black Muslims? Nah, I don’t really like bow ties and I do like a piece of bacon every now and then. SNCC (Student National Coordinating Committee)? No, that sounds too close to “snake,” and my friends who love to play the dozens would have a ball with that.

One night, while sitting on the couch watching Noonie’s old black-and-white TV, I saw a news report on the Black Panther Party. Footage was shown of the Panthers, with guns, storming a session of the California State Legislature. California was about to change its laws by making it illegal to carry firearms, and the Panthers burst into the room calling the legislature racist for wanting to take away black people’s constitutional right to arm themselves for the purpose of self-defense.
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e old white politicians I saw on the TV screen looked scared to death.
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e cops who moved in on the Panthers looked confused and subdued as the Panthers shouted, “Go ahead and arrest me, pig, or get the hell out of my face.” Since the guns were legal, the only thing the police could do was eject the Panthers from the legislative chambers.

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en a reporter came on the TV talking about the Black Panther Party as an ultramilitant, dangerous organization. He cited an incident earlier that day in which the police had found a trunk full of guns and communist literature in a Black Panther’s car. My jaw dropped as I watched the news report. Look at those dudes, I thought.
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ey’re crazy.
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ey got black leather coats and berets, carrying guns, scaring white people, reading communist books.
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ey’re
crazy
. I immediately wanted to join. I hopped around the living room, freaking out with excitement. I had found my organization, my cause. Now all I had to do was find out where the Black Panthers were in New York.

Like a plantation slave seeking passage to freedom on the Underground Railroad, I put out the word that I was looking to hook up with the Panthers. Not that my network was particularly sophisticated, but I did ask anybody and everybody who I thought might have a lead: the bad dudes who hung out on the corner and on the basketball courts; Mr. Sunny, the neighborhood numbers runner; Mr. Pete, the neighborhood wino; and Blue, the neighborhood junkie. Word about the Panthers came back in hushed tones.
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ey were extreme militants who existed in secret. You didn’t choose the Panthers.
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ey chose you. So I walked around acting extra cool and extra militant, hoping that some Panther secret agent would tap me on the shoulder and guide me to their headquarters.