My People Are Rising

by Aaron Dixon

  “Do you know where a hospital is?” Big Malcolm frantically asked.

  As they looked inside the car at my badly mangled arm, they shrieked in horror, eventually giving us directions to the nearest hospital. We arrived at the one-story, small country hospital, running inside only to find out there was no doctor on duty. My brown corduroy jeans were covered in blood. I immediately demanded the nurse give me a shot of morphine.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t give you any morphine,” said the black-haired nurse.

  “You better give me some fucking morphine now!” I shouted.

  Patients and staff poured out into the hallway to see what all the commotion was about. I must have looked pretty crazy with my big Afro, holding my badly injured arm, and blood all over the place. The nurse eventually gave me the morphine and prepared me for the doctor’s arrival.

  I was taken by ambulance to the University of Washington Medical Center, where I was admitted to surgery. I remember lying there late that night, sedated, trying to figure out what had happened. I could vaguely make out Poppy in the background. As a soldier in many bloody battles in World War II, he had witnessed much worse, but I imagine seeing his son wounded was extremely difficult for him.

  I heard the doctor talking to Mommy, telling her he might have to amputate my arm, and my mother saying angrily, “No, you’re not going to amputate his arm!” They finally gave me some sodium pentathol, a pain drug used by the Nazis during World War II and CIA in later years. It was called the “truth serum” because it made you want to talk. As the drug’s effects began to take hold, I became relaxed and very talkative, finally slipping into unconsciousness. The next morning I woke up, and as I tried to fight the pain, I reluctantly looked over at my bandaged arm, blood seeping through the gauze. The doctor said that had I not smoked the hash beforehand, I probably would have bled to death. The hash had lowered my blood pressure and heart rate, so the heart was pumping less forcefully than usual.

  The bones in my left arm had been shattered, and the nerves and arteries almost destroyed. They put a steel rod in my arm and two plates on the wrist to hold it together. The comrades came in with posters of Fred Hampton, Chairman Bobby, and Little Bobby Hutton, turning the room into a Panther den. Later that day, Poppy and Elmer came by. They had taken the shells from my bandolier to a lab to have them tested. The shells had been tampered with. The gunpowder had been taken out and replaced with a high explosive. Similar tactics had been used by the Vietcong against American soldiers who carried shotguns into battle, even though it was against the Geneva Convention to use shotguns in war.

  That night I lay in bed in pain, trying to put my finger on who had set me up. Who was the informant? Who was the agent? Who was the pig that participated in this scheme that could have led to my death? When I kept thinking about Big Malcolm and others, I knew it was best to try to put this behind me, not to waste time thinking about who had done this awful deed. There was too much work to do. If anything, this near-tragedy only strengthened my resolve. This was not something I had expected, but in war the unexpected always happens. I could only hope that my arm would someday be okay. After three days in the hospital, I was back at the office with my arm in a cast past my elbow and a sling with some rubber-band gadgets that attempted to keep my fingers straightened. Despite the constant, piercing pain, I could not afford to be away from duty.

  Over the next six months, I underwent four operations in an attempt to repair my badly damaged arm—skin grafts, a bone graft, and a nerve graft. They took skin from both my thighs to replace the skin of my arm. For the bone graft, which was extremely painful, they took bone from my hip and used it to reconstruct my shattered radius bone. After the surgery any movement or even a slight cough sent immense pain emanating from my hip. I even had to walk with a cane until my hip healed.

  The strangest and most terrifying experience was in preparation for the nerve graft. I remember slipping into my hospital bed late that night after going out and drinking with my old friend Mike Dean. The next morning the nurse gave me a shot of something to “relax” me for the procedure. The orderly came up and wheeled me down to the operating room, placing my gurney in a corner until they were ready for me. It seemed that I lay there waiting for a long time. When I decided to ask a question regarding the start of the procedure, to my shock and horror, I realized I could not speak or move. It was unbelievably frightening. I was totally defenseless, and for an enemy of the state, it was about the last situation you wanted to be in. After I had lain there, watching scores of nurses and doctors passing by without acknowledging my existence, and struggling mightily to say something or to catch someone’s attention, the orderly reappeared and took me into the operating room. The anaesthesiologist held up a gigantic needle-like contraption and told me he was going to stick the needle into a bundle of nerves in my neck in an attempt to deaden the main nerve leading to my left arm. He must have stuck me four or five times until he gave up on finding the nerve. They wheeled me back up to my room. My face was completely numb but they had been unable to find the nerve to my left arm. Later they made another attempt and succeeded in stitching the nerves back together. The chief physician was a short, bespectacled Austrian man with an accent. He was one of the best orthopedic doctors in the country. I have him to thank for saving my left arm through his innovative surgery.

  In the spring, we were contacted by a congressional committee member regarding a hearing that the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was conducting on the Black Panther Party. I sent Elmer to meet with him, and from that meeting, the congressman surmised that Elmer would be a cooperative witness. As a result, Elmer was subpoenaed to Washington, DC.

  We contacted National Headquarters to inform them of Elmer’s subpoena. John Seale connected Elmer with a party attorney in DC. Elmer flew to DC and spent the night at Panther headquarters. The following day, after meeting with the party attorney, Elmer appeared before Strom Thurmond and the other members of HUAC. After giving his name, Elmer took the Fifth Amendment fifty times, frustrating and angering Strom Thurmond, who banged his fist and yelled after Elmer’s every reply according to the attorney’s instructions. The hearing went on for months as they investigated other chapters around the country, trying to find reasons to proclaim the Black Panther Party a dangerous and un-American organization.

  That same year, Elmer had also been sentenced to five years in the Oregon State Penitentiary and was waiting to turn himself in. Back in the winter of 1969 I had sent Elmer to Eugene, Oregon, to troubleshoot some problems the comrades were having down there. As he was about to return, he was arrested by the Eugene pigs for armed robbery, accused of trying to take someone’s leather coat at gunpoint, even though Elmer himself was wearing a full-length leather coat at the time.

  Before Elmer left for prison, I found myself in the middle of a fight between Elmer and Valentine that nearly tore up the office. Valentine did not like a particular disciplinary measure that Elmer had given to a sister Valentine was involved with. Both of them were hot-tempered—I remember Valentine leaping from a ladder onto Elmer as they fought from room to room, from desk to tables to chairs, and with me, recently out of the hospital, still in pain, trying to call a truce between the two best comrades in our chapter. Finally, I was able to separate the two of them. Shortly after that fight, Elmer was gone, exiled to the middle of nowhere in central Oregon.

  It was difficult to lose a comrade who played such an integral role in the day-to-day operations, let alone my brother. However, we always had to be prepared. Valentine assumed the next-in-command role, and Jake Fidler, Elmer’s assistant, stepped in to take over some of Elmer’s duties. As part of the reconfiguration, we closed the Tacoma branch and brought Tee, the coordinator, and three other comrades to Seattle. In Eugene, the Anderson brothers decided that the continuous attacks by the sheriffs and local vigilantes were too dangerous, so they closed down the chapter and headed back to Los Angeles. We brought two of the Eugene comrades, Bill and
Alice Green, up to Seattle to help us mount a campaign to win Elmer’s freedom. We had “Free Elmer” buttons and posters printed up and began a petition drive.

  A year later, Poppy, myself, and several of our attorneys met with the Oregon governor in an effort to get an early release for Elmer. After several months, we received word that the governor had agreed to a full pardon for Elmer. It was a great triumph and probably represented the only pardon given to a Panther during those very turbulent times. In a sea of continuous battles and internal conflicts, it was only one small victory, but these small victories seemed to provide us with a little more optimism to face the upcoming battles. Still, Elmer would not be released for another year.

  A Party Divided: The Split

  Aaron Patrice, age three, at the Oakland Community School, 1972.

  25

  A Party Divided: The Split

  Staring down reality don’t do me no good

  ’Cause our misunderstanding is too well understood

  . . . I’ve really got to use my imagination

  To think of good reasons to keep on keepin’ on

  —Gladys Knight and the Pips, “I’ve Got to Use My Imagination,” 1973

  With so many strong personalities in the party, it’s a wonder there weren’t more physical confrontations between members. There was the fight between Elmer and Valentine, and I remember an altercation between June Hilliard and Willie Dawkins. Party rules and principles as well as the sense of duty and camaraderie kept most disputes in check, but we were about to experience a different kind of clash that would have an irreversibly damaging effect on the party.

  Eldridge had been living in Algeria with Kathleen and their two children. He and the party had been granted diplomatic status by the Algerian authorities, who provided him with a villa and gave him travel privileges to North Korea and other socialist nations to garner support for the party. Even Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Liberation Organization visited Eldridge in Algeria, bringing along a case of AK-47s. Other party members eventually joined Eldridge in Algeria, including Field Marshal Don Cox, who had chosen to go into exile with his wife, Barbara, rather than face the murder charges leveled against him by the Baltimore police. Pete O’Neal, the deputy minister of defense of the Kansas City chapter, also chose exile over a four-year prison sentence for a bogus gun-smuggling charge. He was joined by his wife, Charlotte. Another couple who found their way to Algeria were Michael “Cetewayo” Tabor, from the New York chapter, and Connie Mathews, originally from Jamaica, who had lived in Copenhagen and worked as the party’s international coordinator. Together, these comrades in Algeria comprised the International Section of the Black Panther Party. Their objective was to develop contacts outside the United States to help forward the party’s agenda.

  Many African liberation organizations were offered headquarters and support from the Algerian government, including organizations from Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. But none of their offices compared to the compound provided for the Black Panther Party. At the party’s compound, the International Section entertained revolutionary fighters from all over Africa and the Middle East. Don Cox even attended PLO training camps.

  Like most of the party’s prominent leaders, Eldridge had his own disciples. Many comrades respected and admired Eldridge. He possessed great oratorical skills and was one of the fieriest writers in America. He often romanticized about the revolution, and was the chief proponent of guerrilla warfare as the main tool for destroying the rotten, imperialist US government. However, Bobby, Huey, and the Central Committee understood that, in reality, Black Americans—let alone the American people as a whole—were not prepared to engage in guerrilla warfare themselves, and were also not politicized to the level necessary for supporting a guerrilla fighting force, which requires the strong backing of the people to survive.

  Bobby, Huey, and the party made it very clear that the Survival Programs would be the tool for deepening the party’s close relationship with the community. The programs would help the people meet their day-to-day needs, and through these programs, we could educate the people as to why it was necessary to challenge and change the status quo.

  These two divergent ways of thinking had always been present in the party, and were not uncommon to other grassroots struggles. This same clash of ideas had led to Little Bobby Hutton’s death, because Eldridge and others had wanted to attack the police after Martin Luther King’s assassination. We experienced the same conflict in Seattle, when some comrades had unrealistically wanted to attack the police. Had Huey not been in jail at the time, maybe these incidents could have been avoided.

  Unknown to us at the time, as part of COINTELPRO the FBI had initiated a campaign of sowing dissent among Black Panther Party leadership, taking advantage of the ideological differences within the party. These covert actions had been under way for some time already, but accelerated now that Huey was out of prison. The FBI forged derogatory communiqués to Eldridge, supposedly from Huey, and sent inflammatory letters to Huey, supposedly from Eldridge. With Eldridge and Don Cox thousands of miles away, Huey was surrounded by California Panthers, and was very distrustful of many of the new faces in the party, especially some of the New York Panther leadership.

  The Jim Dunbar talk show in the Bay Area arranged a live satellite interview with Eldridge and Huey on March 4, 1971. Their exchange soon turned contentious, leading to an argument and charges being leveled on the air by both Huey and Eldridge. Eldridge demanded that the Hilliard brothers be expelled, mainly because of the heavy hand they had used in expelling and disciplining members of the party, including the New York 21. He made other accusations against the Hilliards as well. Huey refused to expel the Hilliard brothers and, instead, expelled Eldridge on the talk show right on the air.

  This division between Huey and Eldridge became known as “the split.” The next issue of The Black Panther listed all the chapters that aligned with Huey. Not on that list were three: Berkeley, San Francisco, and New York. This came as another huge shock in the middle of our day-to-day struggle for survival. We lost many good comrades, who now became our enemies.

  Valentine and I were called down to Oakland to Central Headquarters, as it was now called. Valentine had a patch on his eye as a result of having gone through the windshield of a car, and I had a cast on my arm in a sling. We looked like two disabled war veterans. The headquarters were now on Peralta Street, in a Victorian house in the middle of a block in West Oakland. Many comrades were present from around the country. A great amount of tension and uncertainty was in the air, much more than before. The comrades were surprised and confused about the recent events, even though no one displayed any outward signs of discontent. Zayd Shakur, the deputy minister of defense of the New York chapter, was there, as was John Brown from Frisco; however, the following day they had disappeared, eventually resurfacing in New York, having defected to Eldridge’s side. Most of the New York Panthers and many of the Frisco Panthers, as well as the Berkeley Panthers, headed by John Turner, sided with Eldridge, and the remainder of the chapters, including Seattle, stayed faithful to Huey. When a revolutionary, paramilitary force splits into ideological factions, one of the results will almost always be violence. People were killed on both sides of this crazy intra-party war.

  Robert Webb, a longtime Panther from San Francisco, had been sent by the Hilliard brothers to organize on the East Coast. He was a very dedicated member of the party and one of its key organizers. Comrades loyal to Huey gunned down Robert Webb on the streets of San Francisco.

  The greatest loss for our side was the torture and murder of Sam Napier. Sam was the skinny little dude I had seen in the summer of ’68, standing out in the street selling Panther papers while others stood around and socialized. He had risen to circulation manager, increasing the sales of the paper to 350,000 and finding ingenious methods to thwart the FBI’s attempts to stop its distribution. Sam was probably one of the most dedicated party members, a very gentle and serious person. For him
to die the way he did, in the Corona office in Queens, was unforgivable. He had been bound and tortured before he was killed and the office set ablaze. Although there was retaliation for these acts, it did not come close to making up for the loss of one of the most beloved Panthers.

  Before the argument between Huey and Eldridge, the party had planned a large rally at the Oakland Auditorium as a fundraiser for Chairman Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins, who were on trial in Connecticut. Kathleen Cleaver was returning from Algeria—unlike Eldridge, she was able to travel—and was scheduled to be the featured speaker. Posters and flyers had been put up all over the Bay Area and an announcement featured in The Black Panther. Despite the split, the event was still scheduled to happen.

  Many comrades from other chapters were summoned to Oakland to fortify the offices and strengthen the party in the Bay Area in case of reprisals, as well as to assist at the fundraiser. I was assigned to the West Oakland Center to work with Sam Castle, known as “Center Sam,” a young brother from New Orleans. Valentine stayed at Central Headquarters and worked in some of the other facilities. Center Sam and I built up the West Oakland Center, starting Free Clothing and Free Food Programs, and sponsoring an open house with free barbeque, which gave me the opportunity to use my grandfather’s Kentucky recipe. Center Sam and I made a good team. I really enjoyed working with this true New Orleans brother.

  About fifteen comrades from around the country were assigned to the West Oakland Center, including John L. Scott, who had recently been released from prison for his participation in the shootout on April 6, 1968. John, who had joined the party at seventeen, had been away for three years and had missed out on a lot. I could tell he was unsure about all the changes rapidly taking place. We often sat up at night while on security, listening to Freddie Hubbard’s Red Clay and talking about many things. John didn’t stay long, and soon left the party.