by Aaron Dixon
Since its inception, the Black Panther Party had attracted a rough breed of men and women into its ranks, particularly in the early days. Some were hustlers, ex-thieves, and crooks. These men had felt the direct effects of police brutality. They had seen up close the crookedness and corruption of the police authorities. Huey and the party not only provided them with a vehicle to address their just grievances but also allowed them to play a role in building an organization dedicated to confronting the oppressor and protecting the community. The party gave them pride and confidence, a sense of power and purpose—things most of them had never tasted.
Under Huey and Bobby, strict discipline and ideological correctness enabled many of these brothers to flourish. But with Huey’s imprisonment and the party’s explosive growth in the face of vicious attacks from the government, it was difficult to monitor and control all the new additions to the organization. The party asked total commitment and dedication of its members, but there was no way in those early days to provide comrades with money or the essentials needed to survive. In some cases, comrades resorted to old habits, infused with the power of the party. Some comrades took what they wanted when they wanted or needed it, robbing stores or banks.
In Seattle, the situation was worse. Willie Brazier, our lieutenant of education, was arrested for the robbery of a grocery store. When he asked me where the bail money was, the puzzle pieces began to fall into place. Curtis Harris, the one who had appointed himself “assistant captain,” had secretly formed an outlaw posse of the most illegally minded comrades. Under Curtis’s direction, they engaged in armed robberies of banks and businesses. He told his posse most of the loot from the robberies was for the party and that he was turning it over to me. When I learned about this I was totally thrown off guard; I had been utterly unaware of what was going on. These illegal activities went against what the party was all about.
Nationally, in response to illegal activities conducted by party members, Huey issued a decree calling for the expulsion of all members involved in criminal activity. Many people were expelled. Even Robert Bay had been involved in a holdup and was purged, to be later reinstated by Huey. In Oakland and elsewhere, the purge extended to comrades not involved in illegal activities, exiling many innocent party members due to paranoia and the uneven hand of Chief of Staff David Hilliard. Some of the decisions made by David and his brother, Assistant Chief of Staff June Hilliard, eliminated some of the best soldiers from the ranks. If you even had a close association with purged party members, you, in turn, could be purged and exiled.
One day while at the office, I received a call from Tanya that some people were waiting to speak with me in the front of the house. While approaching the house, I saw a group of former Panthers from Oakland. Three I considered my very close comrades—Matilaba, Orleander Harrison, and Tommy Jones.
We greeted each other and Tommy began to speak. “David and June and the chairman are doing some fucked-up shit. They assassinated one of our buddies who wasn’t in the party, and when we spoke out about it we got expelled.”
As I listened, I got a sick feeling in my stomach. I knew deep down inside these were some very good comrades, dedicated brothers and sisters. I also knew there was probably some truth to their accusations. Unfortunately for them, I had become hardened with the events of ’68 behind me. I also was beginning to develop blindness to some things that did not quite seem right. I could not support their protest against the party. It was unclear to me exactly what they wanted me to do. But in the end, it was my commitment to the Black Panther Party that fueled my decision not to participate in their efforts to redress the expulsions.
This interaction was a sad moment for me. Tommy had been like a big brother to me, and Orleander, at sixteen, had accompanied Bobby and the other Panthers to the iconic demonstration in Sacramento. We had all been together that night in West Oakland less than a year earlier, backing down the cops at 7th and Wood. And Matilaba—the first woman to join the party—a sincere, soft, sweet, dedicated sister, fled Oakland, fearing for her life. She later joined the Nation of Islam in Chicago. The party would never be the same with these comrades and others dismissed from the ranks. I would never see Orleander Harrison again. Tommy and Matilaba I would see only many years later.
But I could not linger for long on these losses. I faced difficult decisions in Seattle, decisions I was reluctant to make. Section leader Buddy Yates, Curtis’s right-hand man, had robbed a Safeway, jumping through a glass window in his escape, only to be captured. Curtis had even conspired with the president of Seattle’s first Black-operated bank in a robbery scheme in which four Panthers robbed the bank and then split the money with the bank president. A week later they robbed another bank, which led to a wild chase and shootout, ending with the arrest of the renegades. All the participants were expelled from the party, including LewJack and Willie Brazier, at one time two of my closest friends and most trusted comrades. LewJack received twenty years and was sent away to a federal prison in Oklahoma, never to see freedom again; he died in a knife fight in prison. Willie also received a twenty-year sentence and was imprisoned at nearby McNeil Island. Oddly enough, Curtis went free, never doing a day in jail.
I sent Elmer and a goon squad to Curtis’s house to administer a good ass-kicking to that fool. As they were leaving, Curtis ran out to his front porch with a pistol, ranting like a madman. A shot was fired back at him, barely missing Curtis’s head. Death should have been his end. He did a tremendous amount of damage to the Seattle chapter, tarnishing our image forever in the minds of many people.
These were some of my most difficult times. Comrades I had counted on to assist me in building the Seattle chapter had either been expelled or left on their own, out of fear, or were disappointed and disillusioned. I had started drinking more, relying on the alcohol to pull me through, to give me some courage to face another day.
There was one bright light during those dismal times. On April 15, 1969, my first child, Aaron Patrice Lumumba Dixon, was born into the world.
Above left: My paternal grandparents, Elmer and Mildred Dixon (left), and two unidentified friends, dressed for swimming at the shores of Lake Michigan, Chicago, 1920s.
Above right: My maternal grandparents, Roy and Josephine Sledge, with infant Frances, Chicago, 1925.
Left: My maternal great-great grandmother, Emma, born in 1868. She is about eighty-two in this photo and lived to be ninety-four. Chicago, early 1950s.
Press conference in front of the Panther office after the murder of Welton Armstead by the Seattle police. Front row, left to right: Earl Brooks, Bobby White, Curtis Harris, me. Back row, left to right: Michael Dixon, Artis Parker, Chester Northington, Browning, LewJack. Photo credit: Vic Condiotty, Seattle Times, October 1968.
Pamphlet distributed after my arrest for the stolen typewriter. Photo credit: Gil Baker, 1968.
Meeting with Washington State Governor Dan Evans at the Seattle Center, 1968. That’s me in the foreground.
Clockwise from top left: Poppy and his friend Madison Morrison shortly after the end of WWII, Chicago, 1945; Mommy with me as an infant, Chicago, early 1949; Grandada and I in our Seattle backyard. I’ve just caught my first fish, in nearby Lake Washington, 1963; Mommy and Poppy in downtown Chicago, 1945.
Elmer at my typewriter trial, Seattle, 1969.
Supporters at my trial regarding the stolen typewriter. Left to right: Michael Taylor (obscured, edge of photo), Jim Groves, my sister Joanne (Dixon) Harris, unknown, Willie Brazier, Kathy Jones, and attorney Mike Rosen, Seattle, 1969.
Valentine Hobbs (foreground) being arrested by the Seattle police at the airport for supporting Black contractors in a construction dispute, 1969.
Seattle Panthers on the steps of the capitol building in Olympia. Left to right: Anthony Ware, Clark Williamson, Wayne Jenkins, Elmer Dixon (front), Steve Phillips, Larry Tecino. Olympia, Washington, spring 1969.
Cindy Smallwood at a campaign event, 1973. Photo courtesy of Bill Jennings.
Bruce "Deacon" Washington and his son at the Oakland Community School, 1974 or '75. Photo courtesy of Clarence "Stretch" Peterson.
Serving breakfast to Madrona Elementary School students at the Madrona Presbyterian Church. Photo credit: Greg Gilbert, Seattle Times, 1969.
The Seattle chapter’s community center and free medical clinic, Seattle, mid-1971.
Dr. John Green and a patient at the Sidney Miller People’s Free Medical Clinic, Seattle, 1969.
With Lola’s daughter, little Natalie Wilson, 1976.
Poppy and I in our Seattle home, 1972.
Me, Vanetta Molson, and Big Malcolm at the LampPost, 1974.
Leslie Seale (left) and Valentine Hobbs (right) at the LampPost, 1973.
Lola Wilson at the LampPost, 1975.
Cointelpro Is Unleashed
Jake Fidler (left) and Nafasi Halley (right) carrying posters of Chairman Bobby Seale after his kidnapping by the FBI, Seattle, August 1969.
18
COINTELPRO Is Unleashed
The President, he’s got his war Folks don’t know just what it’s for Nobody gives us rhyme or reason Have one doubt, they call it treason
—Les McCann, “Compared to What?,” 1969
In June 1969 President Richard Nixon, flanked by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General John Mitchell, held a press conference. They announced that the Black Panther Party was “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” COINTELPRO, the FBI counterintelligence program created in 1956 at the height of anticommunist hysteria, now geared up to focus almost solely on destroying the Black Panther Party and other radical groups. Although we didn’t think the governmental repression could possibly get worse, it did.
Black Panther Party offices were raided from coast to coast. In Denver, Captain Landon Williams and Rory Hithe, two of the party’s most important organizers, were wounded and arrested. In Nebraska, two Panther leaders were arrested, their office blown up, and the two leaders imprisoned for life. In New York, twenty-one of the leading members of the New York chapter were arrested and imprisoned on a variety of trumped-up charges. They became known as the “New York 21,” and it took two years for them to be acquitted of the charges.
In mid-April 1969, the Frisco chapter had been organizing for a May Day “Free Huey” rally at the San Francisco federal courthouse. For weeks the comrades had been out in the community, passing out flyers, talking to people, and driving through the Fillmore, Hunters Point, Pattero Hill, Sunnydale, and Mission neighborhoods in a truck mounted with a loudspeaker, advertising the upcoming rally. The San Francisco pigs had been harassing the comrades for weeks, stopping the truck for petty reasons. Days before the rally, the pigs surrounded the truck in front of the Panther office on Fillmore and pulled their guns, sending the Panther comrades running into the office. They then fired tear gas through the office windows. Although the comrades were able to get out through a hole in the back wall, they were confronted there by armed pigs. When one sister began to collapse from the tear gas, Field Marshal Don Cox (“D. C.”) ran to her aid. A pig known as Big Red yelled at D. C., “Didn’t I tell you to put your hands up?” D. C. answered, “She’s fainting!” Big Red responded by firing two rounds at D. C. The bullets passed through D. C.’s big Afro, just barely missing the head of the field marshal. All the comrades were arrested and released, except for D. C., who remained in custody, a marked man. And this was only the beginning of the repression.
The movement had expanded in many communities across the nation: the Brown Berets in Southern California; La Raza Unida Party (RUP) in the Southwest; the Red Guards and Los Siete de la Raza in Northern California; the American Indian Movement in the Midwest and on the West Coast; and white groups such as the Chicago-based Young Patriots and the Weatherman. Looking to the Black Panther Party as the vanguard of the movement, these organizations were determined to fight injustice in this country and US imperialism abroad, and in turn we all became targets of the US government. The antiwar movement also had spread to every college campus in the country. The government was determined to crush these radical leftist groups.
The party led the formation of a coalition with many of these groups, kicked off with the three-day National Conference for a United Front Against Fascism, held in Oakland in March 1969. I took a squad of Seattle Panthers down to help with security. People from all over the world were in attendance. There were speeches and rallies and an exclusive screening of Z, a film by Costa-Gavras about state control and a Greek assassination conspiracy. I was assigned to a security detachment of about eight people. We were given weapons and orders to mingle with the crowds, traveling in a van from event to event.
With us was a sixteen-year-old sister named Marsha Turner. Marsha was one of those rare persons with amazing beauty and the kind of enthusiasm and dedication that came along only every once in a while. She had a light, peach-colored complexion, a black, mid-high Afro, and high cheekbones. She had graduated from Berkeley High School at the top of her class and joined the party at age fifteen. In that short time she had risen to become national coordinator of the party’s recently launched Free Breakfast for School Children Program. She could also outshoot most men in the party, which is why, at the conference, she was disguised as a prostitute, roaming the crowds with a big, snub-nosed .357 Magnum stuffed in her purse, keenly observing the crowd while Chairman Bobby and other well-known leaders spoke. And Basheer, a comrade from New York, led a goon squad on members of the Progressive Labor Party, who were foolishly attempting to disrupt the conference.
Out of this three-day conference came the establishment of an umbrella organization, the United Front Against Fascism, which opened community centers in white neighborhoods, led by white radicals, as well as new community centers in Black neighborhoods, led by the party. The Central Committee decided after the conference that there would be no more new Black Panther Party chapters; new offices would be identified as Communities to Combat Fascism centers. Existing chapters would remain as they were, with some exceptions.
A short while earlier, the party had launched the Free Breakfast for School Children Program, designed to provide a nutritious breakfast to hungry elementary schoolkids. Conceived by longtime Oakland Panther Glen Stafford, this program would also give party members something tangible and relevant to contribute to the community beside the focus on guns and self-defense. A number of brothers felt that such an activity was not revolutionary in nature and thus refused to participate. Most of those dissenters joined the ranks of the purged.
As part of organizing the Breakfast Program, Panthers were assigned to procure donations from businesses inside and outside of the community. One of the large stores we solicited was Safeway, but they refused to donate to the Breakfast Program. In response, the party ordered a national boycott of Safeway stores. The Seattle boycott of two Safeway stores in the Central District was so successful we ended up closing them down. Rather than donating to feed hungry kids, they decided to close their doors and move. There was not another Safeway store in the area for the next forty years. Their closing cleared the way for small, community-based stores to flourish instead, particularly Richland’s Grocery, owned by Jack Richland, a Jewish man who not only donated regularly to the program but also became a longtime friend to the party.
Much of our attention that summer also focused on raising our distribution and sales of The Black Panther. We had discovered that the Northwest rock festivals were often good for selling up to a thousand papers in a matter of hours, so when a rock promoter, the husband of a good friend of Joanne’s, asked if we would provide security for the Seattle Pop Festival at Woodinville, Elmer and I jumped at the opportunity. Not only would we be able to unload our weekly shipment of papers, but also Elmer and I would be paid fifteen dollars an hour for sixteen-hour days. For Elmer and me, it was a wonderful break from the intense year of being Black Panther Party members. Both of us had literally dropped every aspect of normal life as an eighteen- or nineteen-
year old. We had been under constant stress from continuous battles not only with the police but also within the Seattle chapter itself. These three days at Woodinville would give us a little time, a little space, to breathe deeply, to mingle with the outside world and halfway detach ourselves from the constant battles on the revolutionary front.
On our first day, roaming through the tent city at Woodinville, Elmer and I strode through the grounds in our leather coats with our .357s tucked in our waistbands. Given that we were the only form of security for more than fifty thousand participants, it was amazing how orderly people were and how loving the atmosphere was. Throughout the whole three days, there was not one act of violence. After all, the hippie movement was based upon love, respect, communal sharing, and living freely. We also got to enjoy performances by the likes of Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Ike and Tina Turner, Chicago, Santana, and the Doors. As we strolled through the campgrounds the first day, people invited us into their tents, trailers, and campsites to share their wine, weed, and hash; they gave us mescaline and THC, which we deposited in our pockets. We even made some money on the side, selling tickets that a sister working the ticket booth had given us.
The last day, Elmer and I decided to enjoy ourselves, popping some acid, riding the roller coaster, and renting horses, which we rode through the throngs of concertgoers. Later that night, we manned the barricade separating the crowd from the stage in anticipation of the final act, Jim Morrison and the Doors. I had always been a fan of Jim Morrison, and to be so close to him as he performed “Light My Fire” was one of my best memories during this turbulent time. The crowd was going crazy, and only Elmer and I, a handful of ushers, and the wooden barricade stood between the band and the fifty thousand screaming fans.