by Aaron Dixon
When the pilot announced our approach to the San Francisco International Airport, I looked out the window at the glistening waters of the San Francisco Bay, almost lapping up against the runways dotted with airplanes, some landing and others taking off for faraway destinations. I wondered how this plane was going to land on that thin airstrip.
As we hit the ground, my thoughts quickly shifted to what lay ahead and who was waiting for me. I began questioning the decisions that had brought me to this point. Doubts rose in my mind and my palms began to sweat. Walking down the airport corridor in my Panther uniform, I realized it was too late to turn back, too late to change the circumstances that had led me to my destiny. The time was ripe for me to take my place in the movement.
My hands were clammy, my heart beat a little faster, and anticipation was building with each step. Yet I tried to stay cool, stay calm. In the distance, among the crowd of white faces, I could see a tall, slender Black man in a short black leather jacket. As I approached, he smiled confidently, exposing a missing tooth and several silver crowns. He was wearing thin black sunglasses, the kind we used to call “pimp shades.”
“All power to the people, Comrade Eric,” he said as he extended his hand. “All power to the people, Comrade.”
“It’s Aaron,” I replied, as we exchanged the Black Power handshake.
“I’m Tommy Jones.”
With Tommy was a very stocky, brown-skinned brother with a neat Afro. He quickly introduced himself. “Hey, Comrade, I’m Robert Bay. Welcome to the Bay.”
We walked out to the parking lot. Tommy threw my father’s old suitcase in the trunk and we jumped in Robert Bay’s blue ’65 LeSabre, headed for Oakland.
I sat in the back, excited, exchanging small talk, listening to the sounds of the congas of Mongo Santa Maria blaring on the eight-track, looking at the small, white houses stacked like cards on the San Francisco hillside, the sun shining brightly.
The freeway took us through downtown San Francisco before reaching the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The gray, cold, steel bridge seemed to stretch for miles, yet it was only minutes before we took the exit into West Oakland and headed down Grove Street.
In the distance, on the right-hand side of the street, I could see a group of young Black men milling around, some dressed in the Panther uniform of black leather jackets and black berets. We pulled up in front of the group and got out, facing the National Headquarters of the Black Panther Party. The large storefront windows were plastered with posters. A large one of Huey hung in the middle—Huey was sitting in a wicker chair, a spear in one hand and a long, bolt-action shotgun in the other, looking boyish and pensive, distant, not quite real. This image of Huey with spear and shotgun would become the defining image of the party, a worldwide symbol of Black resistance to US imperialism.
There was also a poster of a young man. I recognized the young Panther’s face—it was Bobby Hutton. The photograph must have been taken not long before he was brutally killed by the Oakland police. He was smiling infectiously, wearing a military-style hat with a military fatigue jacket draped over his shoulders. There was also a poster of Eldridge Cleaver, the minister of information, wearing dark shades and smoking a cigarette.
I was so warmly greeted by the brothers standing out front that I completely forgot my nervousness and apprehension. I met Jimmy Charley and Orleander Harrison, a sixteen-year-old who coolly introduced himself, a toothpick dangling from his lips.
In the office, behind a long counter separating the office from the waiting area, was a tall sister with a large, glistening Afro, who was very busy answering phones and organizing material. She stopped her work briefly and said, “You must be the brother from Seattle. I’m Betty, the national secretary. The chairman said for you to stay with Tommy and he would catch up with you tomorrow.”
After mingling with some of the Panthers out front, Tommy and I split and headed to his pad about two blocks away on West Street. Tommy was much older than me, almost forty, but he looked to be in good physical condition. I was surprised when he told me he was originally from Tacoma, which instantly gave us a connection.
“I joined the navy when I was eighteen,” Tommy said. “So after I got out, I just stayed right here in Oakland. I worked for a while as a cook.” He had also become immersed in the Oakland street life, selling dope and hustling. Now he was a full-time revolutionary.
“The party is the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “I was into all kinds of bullshit before I joined the party. After they killed Malcolm, a lot of brothers started gittin’ involved in shit. Now they done killed Martin Luther King and Little Bobby. These pigs gone crazy, but we got somethin’ for their ass. We don’t take no shit from these pigs.”
Tommy’s apartment was a small, cramped studio full of the comforts for a single man.
“You got a piece, Comrade?”
I stuttered, not sure how to answer, thinking of the rifle from Voodoo Man in my closet at home. “I—I have a .30-caliber carbine,” I replied, “but . . .”
“Right on! Comrade, you need a handgun. You never know when the pigs are going to vamp. You gotta be ready ’cause they will try to kill us unless we can defend ourselves. I’ll get you a piece.”
I could tell that Tommy had taken a liking to me. Maybe it was our Northwest connection.
“This is what I carry,” Tommy said, pulling out a snub-nosed .38 revolver. “You can conceal this piece real easy. I got some automatic weapons buried out in the woods. And check this out.” He pulled out a picture of himself, bare-chested, holding a Thompson submachine gun. “We ain’t going to let them kill Huey in the gas chamber.”
Just then the phone rang. “That was Matilaba,” Tommy reported after a brief exchange. “She’s on her way over to do some studying out of the Red Book. You got a Red Book?” he asked.
“No, I don’t,” I responded.
“Here, take this one. We study Mao’s Red Book. It gives us our ideology and revolutionary principles. We study this every day.”
While I thumbed through the little pocket-sized book with the red plastic cover, there came a soft knock at the door. Tommy opened the door and in walked a beautiful, brown-skinned sister dressed in jeans and combat boots. She smiled ever so sweetly, yet seemed so serious.
“Aaron, this is Comrade Matilaba. This is Aaron, captain of the Seattle chapter.”
“All power to the people,” she said.
I responded, “All power to the people.”
We sat down and Matilaba began to read aloud: “The revolutionary war is a war of the masses. It can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them.”
I listened to Tommy and Matilaba discuss and break down each paragraph, applying each reading to the party and to America. I participated in the discussion whenever possible, even though I knew very little about Mao, let alone Marxist-Leninism.
After about twenty minutes, we concluded our study session, my first political education (PE) class. Matilaba departed like a fresh breeze disappearing into the midday sun. I later learned that she had joined the party at the age of seventeen, the first woman to join. An accomplished violinist and visual artist, she became one of the party’s most important artists. I also learned she was part of a cadre with Tommy and Robert Bay. Cadres were small, informal groups within the party that studied, trained, and carried out missions together.
Tommy and I went over to Robert Bay’s house. His place was on 45th Street, around the corner from National Headquarters. The house was in back of another home, as was common in Oakland. Sparsely furnished, with a chair and a small TV in the living room, it had two bedrooms in the rear and another bedroom adjacent to the living room. Robert shared these living quarters with two lanky brothers, Randy and Landon Williams, as well as a cute young sister named Ora Scott, who was relating with Landon. (“Relating with” was a Panther expression for being involved.) Randy and Landon had both spent time in Vietnam as Special Forces Rangers; now they were captains in
the National Headquarters of the party. Robert Bay had also served in Vietnam.
The older of the two Williams brothers, Randy was very reserved, a man of few words. At times he seemed almost emotionless—a sharp contrast to the younger Landon, who was excited when Tommy introduced me as the captain of the Seattle chapter. The housemates showed me their artillery. Each kept a small arsenal in his room, including reloading equipment for making ammo. The weapons varied from AR-15s to carbines to Robert Bay’s long, bolt-action shotgun, identical to the one held by Huey Newton in the famous poster. They also showed me their handguns. Randy carried a 9mm Astra and Robert Bay carried a snub-nosed .38 similar to Tommy’s, a weapon common on the streets. Landon, in contrast, proudly showed off his big .44 Magnum.
Tommy left to attend to some party business that would extend well into the evening, so I ended up spending the night with Landon and Randy. They took me down to a juke joint in West Oakland near some railroad tracks. The place was full of Black folks drinking and talking loudly and listening to some down-home blues blaring from the jukebox. Landon and Randy, wearing green army fatigue jackets, moved freely through the crowd and appeared to know everybody. They talked to a number of people, with me following behind. Not long after we arrived, there was a loud crash. A fight had started, and someone got knocked through the big front window by a brother who looked really crazy.
Landon, Randy, and I quickly moved outside as the fight continued. People were pouring out of the club, and sisters were screaming in panic. Landon and Randy separated themselves from the crowd by standing quite a distance away, observing the mayhem, and keeping their hands on their weapons. This juke joint was the kind of place where the poor and disenfranchised came to unwind, to release the week’s tensions and frustrations. And things could turn deadly in the blink of an eye. We left to avoid the police, who would inevitably be arriving soon.
The next morning, Robert Bay took me around the corner to National Headquarters, where I waited for a ride to Bobby Seale’s home. When my ride finally arrived, we sped wildly through the streets of North Oakland to arrive at a brown bungalow. Inside, I met Artie Seale, Bobby’s wife, a gregarious, bright-eyed beauty, and their four-year-old son, Malik, who closely resembled Bobby. Little Malik was just as bright-eyed as his mother—full of energy, bouncing all over the place. Bobby Seale walked quickly out of his bedroom, buttoning his powder-blue shirt, dressed in black slacks and black shoes.
“All power to the people, Comrade,” he said. “Did Tommy and the brothers break down for you what the party is about?” Bobby asked. “There is a lot of shit for you to learn, brother. We got a lot of work to do. We gotta keep these pigs from killing Brother Huey. I want you to go up to the jail and visit him before you leave. You dig?”
“Right on, Bobby,” I answered.
“Since the April sixth shootout, the pigs have been vamping on Panthers, bustin’ ’em on a bunch of trumped-up bullshit charges. I want you to stay with me today so you can understand how the party functions. I have to go up to Merritt College and meet with some brothers and sisters.”
We left in a whirlwind, heading to the school, which was located down on Grove Street. Bobby talked to a class of students and met with BSU representatives. He introduced me to a young brother named Larry, the BSU president at McClymonds High School in West Oakland. Larry proved to be instrumental in organizing the BSU on high school campuses across Oakland. I would see him on many of my trips to the Bay Area, and we eventually became good friends.
I rode with Bobby Seale all day, racing from one meeting to the next. Toward the end of the day, we ended up heading across the Bay Bridge to a meeting of the party’s Central Committee at the home of Don Cox, one of the party’s three field marshals.
We drove up to a gray Victorian house. The entrance was a narrow hallway that led into a plush living room filled with books and tasteful furnishings. We were met warmly by a small, young Black woman with a short Afro. “Hi, I’m Barbara.”
“Barbara, this is Aaron,” said Bobby.
“Nice to meet you,” I replied.
“Don will be with you in a minute.”
Don Cox entered from one of the other rooms. He was a light-complexioned, very distinguished-looking man wearing a neat Afro, with touches of gray in his mustache. “All power to the people, Comrade. Welcome.”
Others began to show up. Emory Douglas, the party’s chief artist and one of its early members, introduced himself, then Captain Bill Brent, an older, steely-eyed brother, and Captain Crutch, another fortyish-looking brother, with a processed hairdo and a slight limp. He reminded me of some of the older brothers I knew who were involved in the street life in Seattle. He looked nothing like my image of a revolutionary. We were also joined by a tall, lanky brother named David Hilliard, the party’s national captain, and, to my surprise, Stokely Carmichael, the one who had lit the flame of rebellion in my heart. I learned that he and the other leaders of SNCC had recently been recruited into the party.
The meeting began, and Chairman Bobby Seale introduced me. As the meeting progressed, members debated back and forth, mostly about the need for more rules and discipline in the party. I sat quietly, listening to these older men, these strong, brave leaders of the party.
After the meeting, Don Cox went into a back room and came out with several rifles.
“Hey, Chairman, I want to show you something. We got a big shipment of these in. They’re called Santa Fe Troopers.”
I marveled at the rifle. It looked almost exactly like an M-14 but shorter and more compact, and it used the same ammo: 7.62mm cartridges. This weapon was later dubbed “the Panther Special.”
“Right on, brother,” responded Bobby.
The next morning, a ride took me to the Alameda County Jail to visit our leader, Huey P. Newton, a requirement for all new chapter captains. I felt unprepared for this face-to-face meeting with the leader of the Black Panther Party. I tried to figure out what to say, how to present myself, and what he’d think of me. I signed in and waited for my turn to go up in the elevator to the twelfth floor of the jail. As I got off the elevator, I noticed how small and cramped it was up there in the visiting section. The place was jammed with Black people trying to visit family members and friends for a precious, limited time. The room was painted a dull, off-gray color, giving it a very dreary look.
Finally, my name was called and I made my way up to the window, which had a small metal piece that the visitor had to raise up in order to be able to speak into the cell. There, sitting in a tiny space on a metal stool, was a short, thin, light-skinned brother with responsive eyes.
It was Huey. “All power to the people, Comrade,” he said, raising his clenched fist.
“All power to the people,” I said as I awkwardly bent down and attempted to speak while giving the power salute.
“How are things going in Seattle, Comrade?” asked Huey.
“They’re going good. The movement in Seattle is growing day by day,” I responded, hoping my answer sounded revolutionary.
We exchanged small talk for a few minutes. I was nervous, not quite sure how to respond to this emerging hero of the movement. Huey offered up defiant words of encouragement. “Comrade, the pigs are going to intensify their attacks on the party, so you have to be vigilant, Comrade, and you have to work on the comrades’ discipline, and remember to never turn your back on the pigs. They will not hesitate to shoot you in the back.”
After that final statement, we both raised clenched fists.
I felt strange about leaving our leader behind—I had only just met him, yet I felt an almost paternal connection to this boyish-looking hero of the Oakland streets, the soon-to-be hero of the worldwide Black revolutionary movement.
We then both said, “All power to the people.”
As I was departing, Huey added, “Stay strong, Comrade,” again raising a clenched fist.
There really wasn’t much else to say. After all, he didn’t know me—I was just another brot
her joining the struggle for Black liberation. But the visit did give me an immediate connection with the leader of the party, which was quite different from seeing his picture on a poster at headquarters. It didn’t seem right that the most important man in the movement was sitting in limbo in an Oakland jail. I would not see Huey again for another three years.
Later that day, I accompanied Bobby Seale and a bunch of other Panthers down to DeFremery Park, which the party had named the Bobby Hutton Memorial Park. At the park giving a speech was Bobby Kennedy, who was campaigning for president. Bobby Seale started his own spontaneous, small rally nearby, challenging the red-haired Kennedy to call for the release of Huey Newton, and protesting the murder of Little Bobby Hutton. We had no inkling that in three months, Bobby Kennedy would be the victim of yet another political assassination, the fifth in eight years, with more to follow.
The following day, while I was standing in front of the office talking with Jimmy Charley and Orleander Harrison, Tommy drove up, leaned over, and through the passenger window said, “Hey, Aaron, I got something for you.”
I hopped into the passenger seat. Tommy reached beneath his seat and pulled out a semiautomatic weapon.
“Here, Comrade,” he said, handing me the brown-handled pistol. It was a Spanish Llama 9mm. “You know how to put a bullet in the chamber?” Before I could respond, he took the gun, put in the clip, pulled back the slide, and let go. “This is the safety. Make sure you keep that on. Here’s a shoulder holster.”
I put on the holster and slid in the dark silver gun. Immediately, I felt different—more complete, more a part of this cadre of new friends. We walked around the corner to Robert Bay’s house to show off my new piece. “Aaron, you drink?” asked Tommy.