If you see me walking down the street
And I start to cry each time we meet
Walk on by, walk on by
—Dionne Warwick
“What am I doing in the heart of the Soviet with a mad-assed Chinaman like you?”
Good question. RG could be the firecracker that kicks off the war, unhinges the split. Causes an international malfunction. But shit, don’t let it happen until they’re on the right side of the line. Didn’t they agree to go with Albania?
Panther fiddles with the stickers on a pack of Russian cigarettes. Manages to coax one up for himself, then offers up another to RG.
What does RG know about Russian revisionism? “I don’t know what’s Albania. Where the hell is it? That shit confuses me. We got our own problems to take care of in the belly of the beast: Chinatown, Amerika.”
But isn’t that the point? It’s the spark thing. RG produces the match, but Panther wants to be the spark. What was he doing two days after MLK was shot? He was trying to trigger the revolution. Now he’s wandering the international scene in exile, aiming for the spark long distance. When he gets to Vietnam, he’ll arrange to free American POWS in exchange for Panther POWS: Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale.
He rubs his pharaoh’s chin. “Supposed to be Akagi here.”
Now Akagi, he knows his political shit, the correct line through Albania and so forth, but he’s caught up with the bullshit trying to free Huey. Taking care of business. How long Akagi been corresponding with Robert F. Williams? First from Cuba, then from Peking. It was Akagi said it was too bad the ministers were going to miss Brother Robert, who’s gone from China by the time they arrive.
Panther points at RG. “Akagi recommended you. Said Asians got to go to China. If we don’t bring you, we got no credibility.”
“How come you let that Japanese Akagi into the Black Panthers? You didn’t let us in.”
Now that’s a story.
This story’s got to be told with Dionne’s mellifluous voice wafting through those uneven teeth and walking on by. Get you in the mood for growing up in West Oakland. How many kids like little Mo Akagi walk with their folks out past the barbed wire of American concentration camps like the one at Tule Lake in 1945? Walk into the can at age five and get paroled at age nine. Find themselves on the other side, but it’s still the desert. Got to trek on back to the cities to find out if there’s still a house, still a business, still some possibility for a future in the American landscape. West Oakland’s still the same ghetto. Before the war Akagi family had a noodle shop, but that’s all gone. Old man died a broken heart in Topaz when his son went No-No and left for Tule. Future dried up in the desert. Mo’s the grandson, but what does he know of that? Raised in his early years in dusty wooden barracks, shitting on communal pots and running free between guard towers. What’s West Oakland but another concentration camp? Covenants don’t let you out. Difference is that Mo leaves his house on Twenty-sixth and Poplar, he’s got to fight his way back and forth to school. Gets in a fight with this punk kid.
What kinda name is Mo?
How’s he gonna explain? If he’s at the Buddhist Japanese school, he’s Momotaro. If he’s going for jujitsu, maybe it’s Mo-kun or Mochi. If he’s at the West Tenth Methodist for Sunday school, he’s Moses.
Punk kid and Mo work their baby fists into battering machines. Go at it like fools. Turns out punk kid’s name is Huey Percival. Huey P. Newton. Like Alfred E. Neuman. Shit. Who you boxing for the worst name on the block? This here’s Mo Bettah. Both live on the wrong side of the tracks. Got to stick together. In time, got to run with gangsters, get their reversible silk jackets, and fight over the ladies. Line up with bats and knives and go at it. Goddamn bloody mess. Turn eighteen and it’s time to use those fighting skills against a real enemy: Communism. Hey Mo, the buddies come around to send him off to the army. Kill a Commie for me, will ya? Akagi was going to set the family story straight; real heroes were the 442nd, not the No-No kind like his dad. Got to do right by the nation. But Korean War is over, and Vietnam hasn’t started. Training for the war that was and could be. Who’da thought it was going to be back in his own backyard? West Oakland.
“So they go back. So what?” RG shakes off Dionne’s reverie and acts miffed.
But back up, brother. There’s more. So Akagi gets out of the army and takes his G.I. points to college. It’s 1964. Free Speech at Berkeley. Starts reading. Everybody’s reading Marx. What’s this communism he’s been fighting to protect the homeland? Meets up with another old buddy from the days who’s back from the same stint in the military. He’s making use of the G.I. bill too. It’s Bobby Seale. Then there’s David Hilliard. Lived two blocks down. Huey was around Thirty-fourth.
“No shit.” Puffs a donut into the air.
One day, they all check into the Muslim Temple around Third Street and get ready to join up with Elijah Muhammad. But wait, you got to give up smoking, drinking, and women. Can you live on sweet potato pies? Someone says: I could give up women, but not smoking! Brothers reconnoiter. News is, Malcolm’s moving out anyway. Do the Muslim thing minus the religion plus the politics.
Akagi’s at UC Berkeley, so he’s the minister of education. Builds a curriculum. They all got to study up. It’s Marx, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, and Robert F. Williams. But what’s this Cultural Revolution People of China thing? If there’s a black thing, what about a yellow thing? That’s a lotta colored people marching to the revolution. Akagi checks out China Books in San Francisco for some research.
He’s remembering the army with these little easy-to-read books with everything you need to know: your rank, your duties, the Geneva Convention. Keep that baby in your breast pocket. Could be it’ll even stop a bullet to your American heart. This little red book: Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung looks just like it. Buys out China Books. Then goes looking for a wholesale distributor. Finds out Canada has diplomatic relations with the PRC. Sends a Canadian friend to the Vancouver dock to pick up the shipments and smuggles them into Berkeley.
You know the rest. Sell those thirty-cent red puppies for a dollar each to the boujwah Berkeley students at Sather Gate. Get your Little Red Book! Pretty soon the whole campus walking on by with their pocket-sized Maos.
And the brothers? Making their money to finance the Party. First off, it’s a business proposition, but hey, check this out! Page 88: The People’s War. Page 99: The People’s Army. Page 170: Serving the People.
Armed with Mao’s Thought, Chinese People are Invincible—Down with Soviet Revisionist Social-Imperialism!
—Eldridge Cleaver
The Black Panther
March 23, 1969