Recruiting for the Black Panther Party in 1969 during a May Day Rally at Will Rogers Park in Watts on 103rd Street and Central Avenue. Craig Williams, a Party member who worked with me out of the Watts Office, is also pictured. COURTESY OF ROZ PAYNE
There were five Party offices in Los Angeles, but I wanted to operate out of Watts. The office was located in Charcoal Alley, so named because of the large number of buildings in the area that had burned to the ground during the Watts Rebellion of ’65. It was the smallest of our offices in L.A., located near the railroad tracks on 103rd Street, east of Wilmington. Some people considered the area a wasteland, but I didn’t mind at all. I picked the Watts office precisely because there weren’t a lot of people I knew in that part of Los Angeles. In fact, the Broadway office was in the middle of my neighborhood, which meant I was either friends with or associated with most of the guys there. But I didn’t join the Party to hang out with my friends; I came to put in some serious work for my people.
Tyrone Hutchinson had joined the Party a few months before me. He was based out of the Broadway office and couldn’t understand why I was considering working out of Watts. “Man, what the hell will you do over there at the Watts office?” he asked me one day when I stopped by Broadway. “It’s in the boondocks and ain’t hardly anybody there!”
I looked at him and smiled. “That’s why I want to be there. Seriously, Watts needs a lot of work. Recruiting needs to be done. The community there needs our presence.”
“Well, good luck to you, then, brother,” he shrugged.
I looked at him and smiled.
Tyrone was right, though. The Watts office suffered from a manpower shortage, with only six or seven of us operating from there on the regular. It was hard to get cats to volunteer to work in Watts. Vacant lots were everywhere. The big shopping stores, like Kress, were gone or gutted out. The closest market was a few miles away from the center of the city, so people shopped at mom-and-pop stores or went to Compton. Even the satellite police station on 103rd Street was being phased out. No matter what reasons local officials and the police claimed, we knew the truth was that the station couldn’t defend itself against the wrath of local residents.
“Broadway is popping, Central is popping, even Adams,” Tyrone added. “You should come join us at Broadway or at least work where you can see how things are really being done and get yourself groomed for taking on a leadership role.”
I joked, “In Watts, I’m developing the Party’s model for ‘Food and Finance Management: How to keep your belly full when your pocket is empty.’” I explained to him that between the twenty-cent hot dogs at the Chinese spot and Pappy’s twenty-cent hamburgers, a brother could win the war on hunger hands down.
“Right on, brother,” he said with a laugh as I turned to head for the door.
“Right on,” I replied with a nod. “All power to the people.” I left Tyrone and went straight to the Watts office, my mind made up.
The building was an unassuming one-story storefront with an ugly iron gate surrounding its perimeter, and it had a bad paint job to match the gate. Party offices were always open to the people, so I just walked in. James Wilson greeted me. Originally from Watts, James was a dark-skinned brother, muscular, and about a year younger than me. He was sitting at the desk in a black leather coat, reading the Ten Point Platform. He looked up at me and immediately started talking. “Power to the people. Come on in, brother,” he said invitingly, standing up to greet me.
“Absolute power to the people,” I shot back, not missing a beat as I stepped inside.
“When the people have power, then we can make this earth civil and humane,” James nodded.
“I agree,” I retorted. “So every day that the people are out of power brings just another day of the madness.”
“Right on, right on,” James said, clenching his fist and raising his arm toward me in the black power salute. “So, what can I do for you today, brother?” he asked.
“I’m here to learn more,” I replied. “And maybe join.”
As I engaged him in dialogue, I simultaneously checked out the layout of the office. I noticed three desks, but other than that, it was relatively empty. The room was divided by a partition separating the area with the desks from a large open area that I learned was where the political education classes were held. There were two windows—one on the door and a larger one in the front area covered with a collage of the Party’s leaders, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Included in the collection was the famous picture of Huey sitting in a wicker chair and a picture of Bobby Seale holding a shotgun with a string of bullets across his chest. Besides the posters covering the window, the revolutionary artwork of Emory Douglas, the Party’s minister of culture, was taped to the walls. Of all Douglas’s images, I identified most with the iconic one of a pig, going “oink, oink.”
“I see you’re reading the Ten Point Platform,” I said to James inquiringly, as I nodded my head toward the papers on his desk.
“Yes, brother,” he replied. “The Ten Point Platform is as important as the Ten Commandments. It gives the people the blueprint needed to build and sustain our community. If one understands the Ten Point Platform, then he will know the kind of foundation necessary for political education, awareness, and revolutionary action. Can you dig?”
“That’s exactly why I am here, because I can dig it,” I said decisively.
He smiled. I thought he was probably glad to have some potential new recruits.
“I was just over at the Broadway office and was saying how I really preferred to come here with the Watts crew. I’m in this area a lot already, from hanging out with my boy from Harbor College, Joe Thompson.”
“That’s good, man,” James responded, “because we can use all the help we can get.”
“So what’s the state of affairs?” I asked. “What needs to be tackled first?” I was ready.
James cleared space for me by his desk and motioned for me to sit. “Well, first,” he said as I settled in, “let me tell you who’s working here out of the Watts office. There’s Larry Scales, who’s the captain here. Larry’s originally from Watts, right up the street. He doesn’t take no shit. He’s for real about the business.”
“Right on,” I nodded. A stick-to-business man. Sounded good so far. “Who else?”
“Al Armour is the section leader in charge of our office. His job is to run the office, recruit, hold political education classes, and make sure papers get sold. Al is from the Westside and so is Luxey Irving, who is in charge when Al is not here. Al and Lux are both book crushers over at UCLA.”
I laughed. “I’m a student, too, at Harbor.”
I later learned from James about other comrades stationed in Watts, such as Nathaniel Clark and Craig Williams. Nathaniel was light-skinned and thin. He had a thing for red devils, but he was always ready to defend the office; he had guns and wasn’t afraid to use them. Craig was from Compton and served diligently, selling papers and recruiting. Nathaniel and Craig didn’t show up every day, but everyone knew their work.
I met Al and Luxey at the Watts office later that week. Al was serious and dedicated. He was another light-skinned brother and stood a solid six feet. He stood out because he had such bad feet, which gave him a funny hop to his walk. One of his quirks was that he played with his mustache, and when you were talking to him it could be distracting. He was from the Westside, and his family lived in the Venice/Buckingham area of Los Angeles, which was a mixed working-class neighborhood of houses and apartments. I liked Al.
Luxey, who preferred that we call him Lux, came from middle-class parents. His father was an entrepreneur who owned a barbershop in Watts on Central Avenue. Lux wore glasses with thin wire frames like Malcolm wore; they gave him a studious, deep-thinker look. He, too, was dedicated, friendly, very calm, and controlled. No matter what we were up against, I never saw him fly off the handle. I learned that Al and Luxey were recruited by Bunchy, who then sent them both to the Watts office. I guess Bunchy wanted these Westsiders to get their hands a little dirty.
The more time I spent there, the more I liked working out of the Watts office. It was off the radar and kept me away from the intrigue at the headquarters on Central Avenue and away from the jackanapes and clowns who joined the Party to get girls or some other kind of attention. I soon developed a close working relationship with James and Craig. We worked well together as a team, building support for the Party and our office. Our practice was to hang out in the ’hood and persuade people to drop by. Al and Lux didn’t have the same street credibility as us, but they took care of their responsibilities well—making a lot of runs to Central, handling Party business, and recruiting at UCLA.
Although we recruited throughout Watts, we focused on those who lived in the housing projects of Imperial Courts, Jordan Downs, and Nickerson Gardens. The projects were established and funded by the state and federal government to provide affordable housing for poor people during World War II. Initially, a diverse group of people lived there, including whites. But after years of neglect and inadequate funds for maintaining the buildings, the projects became slums: a wretched sight, with rats and roaches running amuck, and children running around hungry. The public image of the projects was dilapidated centers of poverty and crime.
But the Black Panther Party considered the project residents our people, part of the lumpenproletariat, people who might see the usefulness of the Party. The lumpenproletariat, as opposed to the proletariat, who formed the basis of Marxist theory, had been excluded: Marx thought they had no revolutionary potential. According to Marxist theory, the proletariat was made up of the working class, who would overthrow the upper classes and the oppressive forces of government to create a new and just society. But when we applied Marxist theory to our situation, we realized that our blackness and minority status in the United States made us different from the general working class. Our folks lived at the lowest basic level, even lower than the working class. These were the people who took the most menial jobs, those even the “working class” didn’t want to do. Some of them had given up on work altogether, were hooked on drugs, or just couldn’t make enough money no matter how many jobs they worked. They were the people who might snatch a woman’s purse, rob a liquor store, engage in prostitution, or sell illegal goods to get by. These were the people who had given up on the system altogether. They were the ones who could really understand the need for revolution, once they were educated about their position in society and the nature of capitalism.
Each project in Watts had a section called the parking lots, where most of the outside activity on the grounds took place. People hung out in the parking lots, engaging in daily craps games or selling and buying drugs. The police would always go there first if they were looking for someone. But now we were there too, to get to know the residents and, we hoped, recruit them into the Party. As they got to know us, we began to earn their respect. Soon, they were coming to our political education classes. And at the office, we began to take calls and settle disputes between people who didn’t want to call the police.
One day, a woman named Anne, whom I had met a few times in the Jordan Downs, called during a fight with her husband.
I happened to answer the phone. “Hello. Black Panther Party, Watts office,” I said into the receiver.
An agitated voice yelled at me from the other side. “Can I get some help with this crazy motherfucker over here?” It was a woman’s voice, but I had no idea who she was.
“Whoa, sister, slow down. What’s going on? Relax. Take your time and tell me what’s going on. Where are you?” I said coolly and calmly.
“This punk-ass nigga actually slapped me. Can you believe that? After all I do for his no-good ass, he gonna actually put his hands on me!”
“Where are you? Who is this that you’re talking about?”
By now, she was screaming. “I’m in the Downs! Apartment 3-G. Y’all betta come get this motherfucker—I don’t wanna call the police up here. They might be haulin’ off a lotta folks around here—you know how that goes. They just need to come get this half of a man, this no-good-ass S.O.B.!”
I could hear the man she was referring to in the background, speaking with an angry tone. “How the hell you gonna be calling somebody on me?” he was raving. “Who the hell you callin’, Super-Damn-Man or somebody? Tell whoever it is to fly they ass over here, so I can give them some of what I just gave you,” he growled.
We took down her address and left right away, headed straight to the apartment.
When we arrived, we knocked on the door and the woman who made the phone call immediately opened it. I saw that it was Anne and said hello.
“I’m glad y’all came,” she said excitedly. “Thank you, because this motherfucker done lost his mind. I don’t want my family from Mississippi to have to come all the way up here and deal with his ass.”
About that time, a burly brother, standing about six foot two and weighing about 250 pounds, appeared in the doorway. He had a daunting presence and hovered angrily over the front door. “Who the fuck are y’all?” he snarled. “Are y’all the Superman squad her ass calling on me?”
“We’re members of the Black Panther Party,” I said, firmly but politely. I could see an immediate change in the brother’s demeanor. “There’s no need to continue fighting. Why don’t you step outside and just talk to us? Perhaps that can help calm things down a bit.”
After some back-and-forth, eventually her husband agreed. He grabbed a shirt and stepped outside with us, slamming the door behind him as Anne tried to position herself to watch what was going down.
“What’s your name, brother?” Craig asked.
“Jerome,” the man replied, and then immediately began trying to justify his actions.
“Look, Jerome, we’re men too,” Craig began. “We understand how things can easily get out of hand, but hitting on sisters just ain’t cool, no way we slice it. These are the queens of our community. They bear the children for the nation, so we need to find another way to solve our conflicts.”
With that, Jerome had no comeback. He scowled in thought, not really knowing what to say, but I could tell he was considering the wisdom of Craig’s words.
We went on talking, trying to reason with him in a nonthreatening way. We pointed out that, besides the importance of taking care of our women, Jerome wouldn’t want to run the risk of going to jail. He was somewhat agreeable, finally calming down. It took us about half an hour, but by the end of our little chat, he was smiling and happy, assuring us he would go back inside and take care of his queen.
These kinds of interventions were not uncommon for us, and that first one with Jerome was a good experience for me. It was incidents like this that taught me how to talk to people respectfully and sincerely listen to what they had to say.
Many times these encounters left such a positive impression on the neighborhood that we became more effective in recruiting and mobilizing. In fact, the Watts office became one of the most productive offices in Los Angeles. Al Armour was so impressed with my work that he soon began letting me run the office. To this day, I am thankful to Al for that opportunity, because I carried those experiences with me throughout the rest of my life. Everything I know about managing an office I learned while I was in the Black Panther Party.
Most party members sold the Black Panther newspaper to raise money. For me, selling the newspaper was one of the best parts of my work because it required me to leave the office and go into the community and interact with people. I also sold papers at Harbor College, which helped me to maintain my connection with the students. Other times, I would drop them off with a BSU member and come back later to pick up the proceeds.
Russell Washington was in charge of distributing the papers. We connected immediately the first time he came by the office to pick up the leftover papers and collect the money from our sales. I was in the office with my head deep in some paperwork when Russell walked in. “Is this the place where they’re selling them revolutionary papers?” he queried boisterously. “I heard it was.”
“Sho ’nuff,” I replied. “You ain’t never lied. How many bundles you want to buy, good brother? That’ll be the best thing you ever did for the community,” I finished with a hearty laugh.
Russell broke out in a wide grin, then strode over and gave me a vigorous black power handshake: two strong moves where we first clasped our hands together with thumbs on top, then pulled each other’s fingers as we drew our hands apart. From that day on, the two of us just found it easy to flow with one another. We just clicked like that.
Sometimes I’d even roll with Russell on his collection runs. Afterward, we liked to sit down over a drink and share political analyses, including our ideas about how the Party could continue to move forward. Russell liked to drink what we called Bitter Dog, sometimes referred to as Panther Piss, a combination of white port wine and lemon juice. It was popular with a lot of the brothers. It was an old-school ghetto drink that would get us high and didn’t require us to dig too deep into our pockets to get there. Personally, I was more into beer, particularly Country Club Malt Liquor, but in its absence I wouldn’t turn down some Piss. Before we took a swig, we’d always pour a little for the brothers who weren’t there—dead or locked up. I admired Russell. He knew the streets of Los Angeles very well, including all the shortcuts for getting around town.
For me, the work for the Party didn’t seem like work; it was a commitment, my raison d’être. At times, though, I had a lot of fun with my comrades just blowing off steam. For instance, Nathaniel, Lux, and I would sometimes hang out at Al’s graveyard-shift security job in the twenty-four-hour funeral home located on Forty-Eighth and Avalon. The place stayed open ’round the clock to serve people who wanted to visit their deceased loved ones at any time of the day or night. Nathaniel’s fool behind would actually play with the corpses, which scared the daylights out of me. The first time I saw him do it, I thought it was just plain creepy. I said to him, “Man, what is wrong with your crazy ass, playing with dead people?”
“Yeah, man,” Lux chimed in, “somebody’s relative is gonna come in here one night and find your ass playing with their mother, then whup your fool behind.”
“Aw, man, chill out,” Nathaniel said as he tickled one of the bodies. “We just having a little fun. Besides, the dead, they don’t mind at all.” With that, he busted out in laughter, thinking he was witty.
Staring at us, shaking his head with an I-don’t-believe-I’m-watching-this grimace, would be Al, nursing his Piss, looking from one of us to the next, as if he were sitting in a comedy theater.
Even though I loved those nights we hung out at Al’s gig, I was a little nervous about being around dead people. I could swear I heard noises in the coffins sometimes, even when I knew it wasn’t Nathaniel joking around.
In addition to the work we did at our offices, all comrades were required to go to the Panther headquarters once a week for office meetings. The headquarters was located on Central Avenue, one of the most popular and famous streets in Los Angeles. During the 1940s and ’50s, jazz clubs populated the area, along with black businesses such as insurance companies, hotels, and the offices of African American physicians. It was also the place where jazz artists from all over the country would play, including greats like Louis Armstrong, Charlie Mingus, and Lionel Hampton.
The Black Panther Party headquarters at 4115 South Central was the hub of all Panther activity around the city. The office was a two-story brick building that at one time had served as a store. On the side and up a flight of stairs was 4115½, where we had more offices. In order to enter that part of headquarters, we had to go outside and walk up the stairs along the outside of the building. Altogether headquarters had plenty of space, about two thousand square feet. In the downstairs area were the general office, the gun room, and a large room with a back door. Located upstairs were the meeting rooms and areas for communications and printing. In addition to Central Headquarters, Party leaders operated out of apartment buildings and other houses to throw off police.
James hipped me to the chain of command that governed the Party. “It’s rather simple to follow,” he explained. “There’s an order of leadership at the national level, and this same order is replicated in each of the Party’s local branches. There are ministers, as you already know, at the national level, and all local chapters have ministers as well. The ministers at the national level are organized into a Central Committee that governs the organization. All local ministers, of course, are subordinate to the Central Committee.”
Having already done extensive research on the Party before I joined, I knew a lot of what he told me. I didn’t want to offend him, though, so I nodded attentively to everything he said.
He continued, “For example, in the L.A. branch of the Southern California chapter, Bunchy Carter is the deputy minister of defense, which corresponds to Huey’s position as minister of defense on the Central Committee.”
“Who appoints those lower in command at each office?” I asked.
“It’s the minister of defense’s responsibility to give members their rank,” James explained. “So Huey gives rank on the national level, and consequently Bunchy gives out rank at our local level. Does that make sense? You see the parallel?”
“Yeah, I see it clearly. Bobby Seale is chairman of the Central Committee and Shermont Banks is deputy chairman here. Eldridge Cleaver is the minister of information nationally, and John Huggins is the deputy minister of information locally.”
“Yep, you got it down cold,” James said with a look of approval. “Also remember,” he added, “that political awareness and dedication to the cause would get someone appointed section leader by Bunchy.”
I nodded my head, wondering if that was what James was aiming for.
I had already had a brief encounter with Deputy Minister John Huggins before I joined the party, the day I had gone with the brothers up to UCLA. To me, John didn’t really look like your average Panther. He wore the kind of clothes you would expect to see on a white hippie, thrift-store stuff, sort of mismatched clothes. He was a light-skinned dude with a big curly Afro. He had come to Los Angeles from Pennsylvania with his wife, Ericka, to join the Black Panther Party. That day at UCLA, he welcomed me to the meeting with the words, “Glad to have you, comrade.” I had smiled and clasped his hand. I could tell that Huggins was easygoing and had a friendly personality, and I immediately liked him.
Elaine Brown, a beautiful sister with deep, soulful eyes and a smile that could light up a room, was the secretary of the Southern California chapter. Elaine was always busy, and I could see that she was deeply committed to our work. Ronald Freeman and Long John Washington were field secretaries. Their job was to travel throughout the Southern California region to check on the offices and the work of all Panthers. Whenever they showed up, they were in charge.
There were also several captains operating out of Central Headquarters. I was already familiar with two of them before I joined the Party: Frank Diggs, who was nicknamed “Captain Franco,” and Roger Lewis, whom everyone called Blue. I knew Captain Roger “Blue” Lewis from the neighborhood, going back to when I was a kid, but I didn’t know him well. He was a clerk at a shoe store, and I used to run into him regularly. He was a dark-skinned brother who had a disarming smile and a real charismatic personality, real easygoing. I respected him.
I had met Franco in the neighborhood when he tried to recruit me into the Party. He wasn’t a big guy, about five foot nine with kind of a medium build, but what he lacked in size he made up for in intensity. Tyrone introduced us to each other. We were just leaving a party one night when Frank strolled on up.
“Captain Franco, what’s up? I want you to meet my homeboy Wayne,” Tyrone said, slapping me on the back. “He’s a Broadway Slauson and also a student out at Harbor College. But he’s not letting all that book knowledge blind him to the reality of our struggle for the people.”
I nodded at Franco coolly.
“Sounds good,” Franco said forcefully. “We always need brothers with their heads on straight. So have you joined the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense?” he pressed.
“Thinkin’ about it, brother,” I replied.
“And I do put emphasis on the self-defense part, Brother Wayne,” Franco finished, in an official sounding tone.
“I’m seriously checking it out,” I calmly replied.
“Well, don’t wait too long, because whitey ain’t waiting at all to put his foot down harder on the necks of our people. Study long, study wrong.”
I looked at Franco without saying a word, deciding to back off. I realized then that he had what seemed to me a crazed look about him, and I didn’t want to push any buttons. Who knew what might have resulted from that.
Right on cue, Tyrone said, “All right, Captain Franco, we gonna push on. We’ll catch you later.”
“All right then, brothers,” Franco answered. “But remember, the black man will never be free until he can look the white man in the eye and kill him. Especially them fuckin’ pigs, who think they can’t die or something.”
As we walked away, I stole a long look at Franco and made a note to myself to always be alert when he was around.
Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt was another captain who operated out of Central Headquarters. G, as we called him, was a commanding presence, and I could tell immediately that he had military training by his stance and demeanor. He was medium brown, short, and bowlegged, with an air of physicality about him, always in motion. Word was that he fought in Vietnam but returned to challenge racism because he had seen so much discrimination by his fellow US troops. Bunchy had given him the name Geronimo ji-Jaga, indicating that he saw Geronimo as part of a tribe of strong and feared African warriors.
G and I met after a political education class at Central Headquarters one day. The meeting had already broken up and most people were gone. I noticed him, Long John, and Blue competing against each other in a knife-throwing contest that stabbed several holes in the office door. I sat quietly, watching them, entertained by their competitiveness.
After the contest, G walked over to me and said, “Right on, brother. Thanks for joining the organization.” Apparently, someone told him that I was a new member.
“All right, man, power to the people,” I replied. I was pleased that he took the time to acknowledge me, because I knew he was a major player in the organization.
Later, back at Watts, I asked James about him. He explained, “Blue, G, and Frank are all captains under Bunchy.”
After listening to other comrades rap about the three captains, I got the sense that they also did some of Bunchy’s dirty work—or rather, if Bunchy had a problem and didn’t want to handle it himself, he could rely on one of them to handle it for him.
After two months in the Party, I had met so many new people I thought my head might spin off trying to remember them all, and my life had changed drastically. What was I thinking? I wondered when I thought about all I was trying to do. I was serving as the elected president of the BSU at Harbor and working heavily with the Black Student Alliance on other college campuses and training students to become activists. And then I was a Panther.
In my student life, I was closest to Jerry Moore. I thought he was one of the most politically astute of the student activists. He was a few years older than me and a former Baby Flip from Slauson Village. I knew Jerry and his sister from Edison Junior High, and now he was a student at Pepperdine University, studying law. Jerry and the BSA supported the Black Panther Party and often supported our members who were underground. Aboveground, Jerry had a job at the Ascot library on Broadway and Seventy-Eighth, and he allowed the Black Panther Party to use its facilities to hold meetings.
Jerry was affiliated with the United Front and various organizations designed to uplift people suffering from race and class oppression. It was through Jerry that I developed a relationship with Diana, a Hispanic activist whose family owned a restaurant on Alvera Street. She introduced us to the Brown Berets and other Hispanic radicals. Meeting activists of other races and nationalities was good for me, because it just reinforced the idea that black people weren’t the only ones suffering and that working with other groups was essential.
Baba and Yusuf were BSA members who went to Southwest College; they were also strong figures in our activist crew. Both had done time before, but instead of going back to street life they enrolled in school. Baba, Yusuf, and others, including Wendell and Jackie, used to stop at Jerry’s house for political conversations. We were always debating, and we had great discussions. I really looked forward to those discussions because they were so stimulating. In fact, I began to hang out at Jerry’s place so much that eventually I moved in.
As a member of the Black Panther Party and a student activist, I would speak at campuses about the Party. It got to be something I was pretty good at, standing and rapping as a crowd would begin to gather.
“Listen up … I need to rap to y’all for a minute. Need to put something on your mind. Something that can help you find clarity about all the craziness you see around you. Things like why black and brown people are always down and whitey and his pigs are on the top. What’s that all about, huh? Somebody tell me. What’s that all about? Well, the Black Panther Party can tell you what’s it’s about and what you can do to fight it.”
I would talk about the Black Panther Party’s Ten Point Platform, telling my audience that it made a lot of sense. I would explain the nature of racism in the United States and then discuss the need for black people to have the ability to determine our destiny.
“Some have accused the Party of being racist. The Party is not a racist organization; we believe in Black Nationalism and self-defense as laid down by Malcolm X, but we also believe in power to all people! The Black Panther Party works in solidarity with all people for the common good.”
In some of my speeches, I emphasized the injustice and racist nature of the war in Vietnam. “What does power really mean? It means the ability to say no to war, especially no with our precious lives: the lives of our brothers, uncles, friends, and neighbors. Why the hell should we travel to the other side of the world to kill and be killed? What’s in it for us? Not a damn thing. You know that. I know that. The Black Panther Party knows that. If somebody just rolled up in your living room, shooting up your house, destroying your hard-earned stuff, you would deal with them, wouldn’t you? You’d have to, or be offed. That’s exactly what the yellow peoples of Vietnam are doing. They are dealing with invaders, attackers, thieves, destroyers, and robbers, strangers who have come to take their stuff—their land, their wealth, their self-governance. We black people can’t be caught up in the middle of whitey’s craziness, especially when it means our well-being and our lives. Get the hell out of ’Nam, whitey. Power to the people.”
Recruiting for the Black Panther Party in 1969 during a May Day Rally at Will Rogers Park in Watts on 103rd Street and Central Avenue. Craig Williams, a Party member who worked with me out of the Watts Office, is also pictured. COURTESY OF ROZ PAYNE
Nanny and my mother were fully aware of my decision to join the Black Panther Party. When I joined, I didn’t make a grand announcement of it, because I wasn’t the type of person who would talk a lot about my personal thoughts, nor would I bring my outside issues into my family. But I think my disposition must have changed shortly after I joined and began to incorporate the Black Panther Party into my life. I know they noticed. I became more intolerant of mainstream stuff, like entertainment on TV. Shows that I might have stopped to take in or accepted as just killing time before, I now had total disdain for. This attitude left me out of some conversations with my family. I didn’t want to be antagonistic or anything, but who gave a damn about Jackie Gleason, Lawrence Welk, or any other tired-ass aspect of cracker culture? Surprisingly, this extended all the way to sports and athletes too. I wasn’t able to just jump in and jive about the latest matchups like I did in the past. My always-on analysis kept me keen on the exploitation involved.
My mother had serious concerns about my involvement with the Party. She would catch me when no one else was around. “Wayne, think about what direction you are heading with your life. Think about your future.”
“Yeah, Mom, I hear you. But somebody has to stop those in power, who are destroying our communities and our people.”
She would shake her head and walk away. Then she would come back with more ammunition. “There are a lot of different characters up in there,” she’d scold. “All of them are not the same, and all of them don’t have the same intentions in mind. You don’t want to have to suffer because of somebody else’s mess.”
As for Nanny, she wouldn’t say much while others were around. But when we were alone she’d make sure to give me her words of wisdom, too. “Listen, Wayne, good people always start off doing right, or wanting to do right, but somewhere along the way they sometimes get turned around. Before you know it, they’re crossing lines they had no intention of ever crossing. They’ll bring other people down when they fall.”
“I know, Nanny,” I’d insist reassuringly. “I can tell the difference.”
“Good people,” she’d emphasize, peering at me with a hinting expression in her eyes.
Nanny was always on my side, though. She had faith and confidence in me and never directly questioned my decisions.
I told my mother and Nanny not to worry. I knew what I was doing.