My People Are Rising

by Aaron Dixon

  Within a few months we had recruited twenty new members and opened up a branch in Tacoma. Elmer continued coordinating the Breakfast Program, expanding it to five locations, mostly in housing projects. Many mornings we would get up at 6 a.m. to head out to the Breakfast Program sites. Afterward, we would go down First Avenue to the Pike Street Cafe to eat our own breakfast of hash browns and sausage as we planned for the day. Eventually, we were able to get mothers in the community to take over the duties of cooking breakfast and feeding the kids, leaving us to make sure the food supplies were there.

  Elmer handed distribution of The Black Panther over to a new recruit, Jake Fidler, who increased the circulation of the newspaper to more than three thousand copies a week in the Seattle-Tacoma area. On Friday nights, five to eight of us would go down to 14th and Yesler or up to 23rd and stand in the middle of the street, selling papers like hotcakes. The youngest Dixon brother, Michael, began working on the Busing to Prisons Program with new recruit Melvin Dickson. This program helped maintain the bond between the incarcerated and their families by providing free transportation to prisons. Someone had donated a thirty-passenger bus, helping us to expand our Busing Program to four prisons within the state. We also organized local bands to perform at the prisons. Eventually, we started a Panther chapter in Walla Walla Penitentiary, run by Clemen Blanchy, an inmate who had been down for a number of years.

  One of our most important new recruits was a brother from New York named Valentine Hobbs. Valentine loved to fight. As a matter of fact, we first encountered him at one of our political functions when he tried to start an argument with a guest speaker, Preacherman, from the Young Patriots, a white, working-class militant organization based in Chicago. At the time, Valentine did not have the political understanding as to why the Black Panther Party worked with white people, but in time he came around. Valentine, who’d always had aspirations of becoming a doctor, was assigned the task of working with Dr. John Green on the project of opening up a free medical clinic. By December 1969, we had opened the Sidney Miller People’s Free Medical Clinic out of our community center, eventually moving it to a separate location. It was the first free medical clinic in the Pacific Northwest.

  Asali Dickson, Melvin Dickson’s wife, took on the party’s administrative work and also facilitated art projects, such as assisting Deon Henderson, an art student at the UW and a volunteer from the community, with painting a mural on the concrete retaining wall in front of our office. Another new hometown recruit, Vanetta Molson, started preparing for our summer Liberation School, procuring food donations in advance and planning classes. A program for many of the kids who attended the Breakfast Program, the Liberation School was scheduled to open that summer at two housing projects. Anthony Ware led a more consistent political education class for the chapter, something that had fallen by the wayside the previous year. Anthony made sure we met at least an hour a week for PE, sticking to required reading by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, and others. We also required everyone to participate in weekly target practice and weapons classes. Using plastic caps, we were able to hold target practice in the basement of one of our three living quarters.

  New recruit Tyrone Birdsong, originally from Pittsburgh, had found himself deposited in Seattle after being discharged from the military. He became the coordinator of our new Tacoma branch. Along with his Chicana wife, Rose, he recruited Larry Ulmer, a comrade named Marcus, and Teresa Britt. Another new Seattle recruit, Vietnam vet James Redman, brother of Joyce Redman, was a former Golden Gloves boxing champ and one of the baddest brothers in Seattle to join the ranks. We also had a cadre of Garfield High School student Panthers—Carolyn and Marilyn, who were twins, and young Tony. From Franklin High School we had Loretta Williams. Also recruited were Bob from Baltimore, Robert from the South, Bo Lang and Aaron Pierre from New Orleans, and Willy Ship from Arkansas. These rank-and-file comrades played a valuable role in reestablishing the Seattle chapter.

  It wasn’t long before the Seattle chapter was running smoothly. We launched seven Survival Programs in less than a year. With our guns put away, we became the champions and the voice of the people, working tirelessly day and night to respond to the most critical issues facing Black people, as well as the Asian, Latino, and Native American communities. The adage that a small, dedicated cadre was much more potent than a large army of undisciplined soldiers would prove the truest of words.

  Sometime in October 1969, a man from the local justice department called and asked to speak with Elmer and me. Of course we refused. He called several more times, each time stating it was a matter of life and death. Finally, we decided to meet him on the corner of 5th and Madison, downtown, several blocks from the federal courthouse.

  He was a distinguished-looking older Black gentleman. In fact, he reminded me of my maternal grandfather, Bop Bop, in the way he was so neatly dressed. He was very polite. He acted as if he knew us, and I’m sure he knew more about us than we realized at the time. What he told us was simply that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and the FBI had plans to raid our office, with the purpose of killing us. We thanked him and departed, never to see or speak with him again.

  Elmer and I had already been through so much in a short time. For us, this was just something else to prepare for. One thing was certain: if they wanted to come get us, we were going to make it as difficult as possible. Over the next two months, we shifted into high gear in preparation for the attack.

  The first task was the fortification of our office. Thanks to Michael’s organizing efforts at the UW, we got BSU members to volunteer time on our sandbag crew. Out at Alki Beach, they teamed up with the comrades on disciplinary duty—anyone who violated party rules was required to put in extra work—and filled sandbags all day for almost ten days. After a couple weeks, we had completely sandbagged our office upstairs and downstairs, with double the bags in the front part of the office. The inside of our office soon resembled a military bunker.

  We put steel plates on the front and rear doors. We also sandwiched steel plates in between sheets of plywood, attached hinges to the plywood, and hung these over the upstairs windows. The hinges enabled us to raise and lower the protective steel over the windows. We also placed an intercom outside the front door. When it was left on, we could hear any sound outside within a twenty- to thirty-foot radius.

  From the back pages of Soldier of Fortune magazine, we ordered bulletproof vests as well as a bunch of gas masks. An older white man from the Communist Party came by and built us a trap door with a ladder so we could get from upstairs to downstairs of the duplex without using the external staircase. We updated our list of supporters and kept it in the front desk in case we were attacked. We also put the office on “red alert,” which essentially meant that on every shift, two people were on security duty.

  It was around this time that Elmer and I received our final student aid checks from the UW, for $1,400 dollars apiece. We spent every cent on weapons and ammo. We also considered buying some automatic weapons from a dude Valentine and I had met during a brief jail stint as a result of a run-in with a pig. The dude said he belonged to a motorcycle gang, and they had some machine guns for sale. Valentine and I met him and some others out in a wooded area. Over the past year I had learned to trust my instincts more strongly, and things at that meeting did not feel right. I knew that a brother in the Chicago chapter, Olabatunda, had a similar meetup with some bikers for the same purpose, only to be tortured and murdered on some lonely railroad tracks. I found out later that the Hell’s Angels had contracted with the ATF and the FBI to disrupt Black Panther Party networks and kill Panthers. “Sonny” Barger, the Hell’s Angels leader, had a directive to kill Eldridge and “bring him home in a box.” At the last minute, as badly as we needed some automatic weapons, I pulled out of the transaction. It had become more obvious this was likely a setup.

  As the pigs were going crazy throughout the country, Panthers were catching hell as a result. But we moved forward as
if nothing could stop us, opening up medical clinics, Busing to Prison Programs, ambulance services, Pest Control Programs, and more. All the while, Panthers were constantly being arrested, constantly going to jail, and sometimes being outright murdered. It was as if we were in a race against time, fate, and the US government. We were bound and determined that we would eventually be victorious, despite the deaths, despite the imprisonment of Huey and Bobby, despite Eldridge’s exile, despite the threats of what lay ahead.

  Our work ended only when sleep came late into the night.

  21

  The Murder of Fred Hampton

  Mother, mother, there’s too many of you crying Brother, brother, brother, there’s far too many of you dying You know we’ve got to find a way To bring some lovin’ here today, yeah

  —Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On,” 1971

  December 4, 1969, was like most mornings—waking up with sand in our sleeping bags, rubbing sleepy eyes from the late night hours spent on security, and putting away the shotguns and handguns for the day. The comrades began preparing to go out and make breakfast for hungry ghetto kids. I stayed behind to hold down the fort, strapping on my shotgun bandolier and grabbing my new Riot 18 shotgun. I went up to the second floor to have a better view of the street so I could keep my eyes out for the pigs.

  The phone rang. I answered, “Welton Armstead Community Center, may I help you?”

  “Comrade Aaron, this is June. I am calling to inform you that Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton was killed by the pigs this morning in Chicago.”

  I hung up the phone. I did not want to believe the words I had just heard. It was without a doubt the most devastating piece of news I had heard since joining the party. My head began to reel. A great sadness rolled through my body. I could hardly stand. My body was shaken from the implications of this death. I felt a heavy anger and despair.

  Fred Hampton was the most important member of the Black Panther Party still on the streets. Although only twenty-one, he was fast becoming the brightest star on the horizon. Those who knew Fred Hampton knew intuitively that he was the next great Black leader in the United States. He was the most unselfish, the most principled, most prolific Panther around. He was eloquent and powerful. When he spoke, you heard the Southern Baptist tone of Martin Luther King. You heard the profoundness of Malcolm X. He had the bravery of Huey P. Newton. It was Fred who got the two largest gangs in America—the Black Gangster Disciples and the Blackstone Rangers of Chicago—to call a truce, ending decades of gang warfare. It was Fred who reached out to the Puerto Rican communities and the poor white communities to create the Rainbow Coalition, which would last for decades. It was Fred who had the Chicago Panthers up at 6 a.m. doing calisthenics, shouting, “I am a revolutionary. I will die for the people!” It was Fred who disarmed a Chicago policeman, handcuffing him to a fire hydrant. It was Fred who awakened the poor people of Chicago to the point that the people came out with guns to defend the Chicago Panther office against police attacks. It was Fred who worked tirelessly, which prompted his comrades to tie him down in a chair just so he could rest.

  On the evening of December 3, Fred met with his staff. The meeting ran into the night and everybody stayed over, which was not unusual for Panthers. As with others, the Chicago chapter had been infiltrated. Fred Hampton’s security chief, William O’Neal, was an FBI informant. He had given the FBI a layout of Fred’s home. He also put some seconal, the main compound in red devils and other downers, into Fred’s drink on the night of December 3.

  At 3 a.m. on the cold morning of December 4, a young captain, nineteen-year-old Mark Clark, the lone comrade on security duty, went to answer a knock on the door while Fred and his wife slept in their bedroom and twelve Panthers slept on the living room floor. When Mark, clutching his shotgun, asked, “Who is it?” several shots were fired through the door, killing young Mark instantly. The ATF and the Chicago pigs burst through the front and rear doors. The pigs charging through the front door lined up the Panthers who had been sleeping on the floor, machine-gunning several of the surprised comrades, including Panther Doc Satchel, who directed the Chicago Free Medical Clinic. The pigs coming through the back door ran directly to Fred’s room, lowering their .45-caliber Thompson submachine guns as they entered. Fred’s six-months-pregnant wife, seeing the barrels of the guns, attempted to wake Fred, then rolled off the mattress as the pigs began firing, killing Black America’s last great leader, the next Black messiah, just as they had scripted.

  I looked out onto the streets, clutching my shotgun, wishing a pig would show up so I could blast away. I began beating the wall with my fist, kicking over chairs and tables, crying without tears. For the remainder of that day, it was hard to function. It was as if a dark cloud had descended. The death of Fred Hampton would reverberate through Black American history for many years to come. We would make posters in honor of Fred just as we had done for Little Bobby and as we would do for our other fallen comrades, and as we had done for our imprisoned and exiled leaders, in the hope that the memory of their deeds would never be forgotten.

  Two days later, early on the morning of December 6, the pigs attempted to raid the Los Angeles office of the Black Panther Party as well as several Panther houses. The pretext was the same as the murderous raid on Fred Hampton’s home: a search for illegal weapons. But the Los Angeles comrades were prepared. They had built a sandbag bunker inside the office and stacked chairs and tables on either side of the entrance. The pigs, meanwhile, had cordoned off the entire area surrounding the building so no one could get in or out and there would be no witnesses to their attempt at mass murder. Residents near the office were kicked out of their homes so the buildings could be used as cover for the pigs.

  When the SWAT team charged through the door, Cotton, one of the chapter’s military leaders, let loose with a volley from his Thomson submachine gun. The other Los Angeles comrades followed suit, opening fire on the retreating SWAT team. The attack lasted five to six hours. The fighting was intense as the comrades defended themselves, battling in close quarters upstairs and on the roof of the office, where the comrades had a machine gun nest. The pigs used tear gas, helicopters, and armored personnel carriers, similar to tanks but without the cannon. They threw everything at their disposal at the Panther soldiers trapped inside. Finally, with the emergence of daylight, and the media and the people gathered out on the streets, the revolutionaries chose their time for surrender. They put up the white flag. Several comrades had been wounded, including a sister who had been shot in both legs. Eighteen comrades were beaten and arrested and charged with attempted murder.

  The pigs also raided several Panther houses, including the house where Deputy Minister of Defense Geronimo Pratt, Elaine Brown, and others were staying. The pigs had machine-gunned the house. Luckily, nobody was standing up; they would have been shot dead. Thanks to the military expertise and foresight of Geronimo and Cotton, no one was killed. The Southern California chapter had lost at least six comrades since its inception. Right-wing elements had taken over the Los Angeles Police Department, bringing it as close to the Gestapo as you could get in America, which made the Los Angeles Panthers the toughest bunch of niggas in the country. Later, we would learn that Cotton, who had overseen the fortification of many offices around the country, had turned police informant after the raid.

  Several days later, the ATF came to Seattle and met with the mayor in preparation for their final assault. However, they ran into a roadblock in the form of Mayor Wes Uhlman. The party was embedded in the psyche of not only the Black community but also Seattle as a whole. We were well known by everyone, and after the bloodletting in Chicago and Los Angeles, Mayor Uhlman could not politically afford to allow such an assault to go forward, nor did he want to have our deaths on his conscience.

  He told the ATF his informant had reported that we did not have any illegal weapons in our office, contradicting the ATF’s assertions that we possessed illegal weapons—the same pretext used in the Chicago and Los
Angeles invasions. Uhlman went on to tell the ATF that if they attempted to raid our office, he would dispatch the local police in our defense.

  It would be many years before we learned that J. Edgar Hoover had sent a memo to the offices of the Justice Department ordering the elimination of the Chicago, Los Angeles, and Seattle Panther chapters. The older Black gentleman from the Justice Department we met with had known of this memo, sharing with us only the information about the attack on Seattle.

  Prior to the raids in Chicago and Los Angeles, the FBI had also raided the New Haven, Connecticut, office, arresting seven members of that chapter on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, including Captain Lonnie McLaine and Deputy Minister of Information Ericka Huggins, the wife of slain John Huggins. They also had the audacity to charge Chairman Bobby Seale with the same. Earlier in the year, an agent provocateur named George Sams had instigated and carried out the murder of Panther Alex Rackley, who, according to Sams, was a police informant. At the time of the New Haven raid, the chairman had not even completed his trial in Chicago, where he had been bound and gagged, beaten, and held under deplorable conditions. In the courtroom, he was even chained to his chair. He was eventually exonerated in Chicago and then shipped to Connecticut, where he was held for almost two years.

  It wasn’t long before raids were carried out in Kansas City and warrants issued for the founder of the Kansas City chapter, Pete O’Neal. Fortunately, Pete and his wife, Charlotte, slipped away, eventually resurfacing in Algeria before moving on to Tanzania. A warrant was also issued for Field Marshal Don Cox in the murder of a police informant in Baltimore, where D. C. was assisting in the fortification of the office. As field marshal, D. C. traveled to chapters around the country. After the warrant was issued, he also went into exile in Algeria. D. C., Pete O’Neal, and many other exiled Panthers never returned to the United States.