Panther Baby

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by Jamal Joseph


  One night I came back from the mess hall to find a box of cookies and a couple of packs of cigarettes on my bunk. I thought they were intended for Manny, left on my bunk by mistake. He occasionally made figas or knuckles for one of his Latino homeboys and got paid with commissary. “Yo, Manny, I think somebody left these for you,” I said, pointing to the commissary.

  “That’s for you,” he nodded. “That dude, Lefty, from the house gang, left that shit.”

  Lefty was a muscle-bound, cross-eyed black inmate who was captain of the house gang. He was a bully with a devastating left hook that he used to knock out inmates he had a beef with. Lefty and Merciful and a few other inmates would sometimes come around to talk to me about the Panthers. I even started a small PE class where I would explain the Ten-Point Program and other aspects of Panther ideology. Lefty would listen, watch me intently, and walk away. I knew Lefty was a big-time juggler and thought he was offering me some commissary credit. Manny straightened me out, explaining that Lefty was a notorious booty bandit who was trying to gift me before he set me up to take my “manhood” (the Rikers term for being seduced or raped).

  A wave of shock, anger, and fear rolled through me as I jumped to my feet. “Take my manhood,” I said. “I don’t hang out with that dude.” I had been taking Manny’s advice and keeping to myself, mostly doing calisthenics and reading, except when guys came up to me to talk about the Panthers.

  “That don’t matter to a snake like Lefty,” Manny replied. “In fact, half those dudes that are coming up to talk to you are plottin’ on ways to get you alone so they can jump you. And your boy Merciful is down with them.”

  Manny could see that I was reeling, trying to figure it all out. “This shit ain’t really none of my business,” he said quietly, “but the only way to back a dude like Lefty off of you is to sneak up on him with a mop ringer or a figa and fuck him up real good in front of everybody. And while he’s on the ground bleedin’ you yell at that motherfucker so that everybody can hear you, ‘I’m a man, motherfucker. I ain’t nobody’s bitch, motherfucker. Anybody try to take my manhood is getting wasted.’ The guards are gonna fuck you up and put you in the bing for a couple of months, but when you come out the dudes is gonna know that you ain’t to be fucked with.”

  The guards turned the cell lights out and Manny hopped into his bunk. “You can use one of the figas if you want to—just let me know so I can get rid of the rest of my shit when they lock you up and come to shake the cell down.” With that he rolled over and fell asleep. I stood staring into the cell block night. For the first time since I was arrested I realized that I was alone. My fellow adolescent Panther Katara was in another unit. And my other Panther comrades were in different jails. Whatever reputation the Black Panther Party had as an organization wasn’t going to protect me from the young gladiators in the Riker coliseum.

  I tried to picture myself splitting Lefty’s head open with a mop ring, or jabbing him in the lower back with a figa. I saw a fig do a lot of damage when two Latino jugglers jumped on a white boy who failed to pay his cigarette debt. They stabbed him eight times in the blink of an eye. The white inmate ran to the front of the cell block and collapsed. The guards hit the alarm and ordered an emergency lockdown. An army of goon-squad guards shook all the cells down and the Latino jugglers were taken away in handcuffs. We heard through the grapevine that the white inmate died the next day.

  I couldn’t make it work in my head. I couldn’t see myself attacking another prisoner, no matter who it was. That was what our captors wanted. As long as they kept us divided and fighting, we were easy to control. I joined the Panthers to fight the enemy, to battle the pigs, not to go to war with others who were oppressed just like me.

  The next day I went to Lefty’s cell and handed him the cookies and cigarettes he left on my bunk. “Look, brother, I think you got the wrong idea,” I said, trying to portray as much strength as I could. “I want to be cool with you, but I don’t go that way.”

  Lefty cracked a sly smile. “I got plenty of girls on the outside. Just like you do. This is just something to do to get through this bit. Ain’t nobody got to know nothin’.” He stroked my cheek.

  I knocked his hand away. “I’m telling you I don’t play that,” I barked, half settling into a fighting stance.

  His face went grim. “You can’t beat me, nigga. I’ll take that booty if I want. It’ll be shit on my dick or blood on my knife in this motherfucker.”

  I balled my fist ready to do my best against Lefty. I was slightly taller, but Lefty had three tough street years and twenty-five pounds of muscle on me. He stared me down for a tiny eternity and then laughed. “I’m just bullshittin’. I ain’t gonna do nothin’ to you. But a bunch of these other foul niggas is about to take you off. You better let me look out for you.”

  “Naw, that’s all right,” I said.

  I stepped out of Lefty’s cell and saw some of the dudes from the house gang hanging around. I could tell from the look in their eyes that they were checking to see if anything had gone down between Lefty and me, be it sex or violence. I walked to the back of the cell block and started doing calisthenics. A little while later, Merciful walked up and asked if I was all right. I told him I was cool and kept doing sit-ups. Merciful could tell I was angry and explained that while he wasn’t part of Lefty’s crew, he couldn’t really get involved if Lefty was trying to press me. “I know,” I replied. “I gotta handle it myself. Jailhouse law.” Merciful just nodded and walked away.

  There were no direct come-ons from Lefty for the next few days, but his body language and the looks he gave me were a clear sign that he was going to make a move.

  Two weeks later the guards took me out of my cell to go to court. I was handcuffed and placed in the back of the “hell wagon,” which drove from Rikers Island to Manhattan Supreme Court escorted by two police cars. As we pulled up to the court building, I heard a crowd chanting, “Free the Panther 21. All power to the people.” I peeked through the grated window slit and saw a hundred or so Panthers standing in military formation in front of the building. Directly behind them were several hundred demonstrators—white, Latino, black—a rainbow of people pumping their fists and shouting. I knew that twenty-one of us had been indicted (although three or four eluded arrest on the morning of April 2), so this demonstration was for us. We were the Panther 21. I shouted “Power to the people!” through the vent in the window as the hell wagon sped by the demonstrators.

  The cops turned me over to court officers who led me to a courtroom. I saw Afeni, Lumumba, Dhoruba, and the rest of the incarcerated Panther 21. We greeted each other with clenched fists. We were flanked by William Kunstler, Gerald Lefcourt, and several other lawyers who had become part of our defense team. The court clerk read off the counts of the superseding indictment. More conspiracy charges and overt acts had been added. The lawyers asked that our bail be lowered. They related stories of neglect, abuse, and torture that had been inflicted on members of the Panther 21. Many were being held in dirty isolation cells and denied visitors. Several had been attacked by guards. Lee Berry, twenty-four, a Vietnam vet who developed epilepsy from wounds received in combat, had experienced a series of seizures and had been denied medical treatment.

  The judge denied all motion for bail reduction as well as any change in prison treatment. At this point Lumumba called the judge a fascist and asked, “Why don’t you just sentence us right now and get it over with since we’re being railroaded.” Dhoruba and other Panthers shouted out Panther slogans and insults.

  The Panthers were unmatched in ability when it came to verbal assaults and kung fu dialogue. Signifying, sounding down, or playing the dozens was an oral and cultural tradition in the black community. Verbal sparring could break out at a party, on a street corner, or in the subway. The person who delivered the sharpest, funniest, and most degrading lines about their opponent’s looks, relations, or status won. “I’ll slap the taste out your mouth, you tree-jumping, welfare cheese-eating, nobody-
wants-your-greasy-ass jackrabbit son of a bitch.” The Panthers combined the blunt-force gut shot of a dozens-style insult with a razor slash of revolutionary politics.

  So when presiding Judge John Murtagh, a white-haired conservative racist who liked to present himself as refined and scholarly, was called “a foul-breathed, lynching, grand-dragon-looking, fascist pig,” he was stunned. Defendants weren’t supposed to speak in court, especially not his court. They were supposed to communicate through their lawyers, especially if they were poor black defendants who were facing hundreds of years in prison. They were usually docile because they were genuinely afraid or because they were playing the role of “repentant” before the all-powerful white courts. But Murtagh now had a courtroom full of “uppity niggers” who felt nothing but contempt and rage for a system that denied them their rights and treated them like animals.

  Our radical attorneys were not much better. When Judge Murtagh would instruct them to quiet us down, they would press the case for lower bail and humane treatment, emphasizing that we (the Panthers) had a right to be outraged at our treatment. Over a chorus of “Power to the people,” “Death to the pigs,” “Get your motherfuckin’ hands off me,” Murtagh banged his gavel and we were escorted from the courtroom.

  The lawyers were able to convince Murtagh to allow us an attorney-client conference in the holding cell. Tempers were still running high when the guards opened the cell door and let in the attorneys, along with Afeni Shakur and Joan Bird from the women’s cell. It was now clear that this wasn’t just a trumped-up “meatball” of a case that was going to be dismissed. They had arrested the entire leadership of the New York Black Panther Party and were trying to put us away for the rest of our lives. I learned how the cops had pointed guns at children and hit Panthers with gun butts during the April 2 raids. The content of apartments and homes had been trashed and destroyed during the searches. Wives and children were struggling for food and shelter while their mates and fathers were in jail.

  Members of the Panther 21 provided for their families with jobs ranging from community organizer (Afeni Shakur) and transit authority worker (Kwando Kinshasha) to computer engineer (Sundiata Acoli) and biochemical researcher (Dr. Curtis Powell). In our ranks were a visual artist (Dhoruba Bin Wahad), a poet (Kwesi Balagoon), a writer (Cetewayo Tabor), a film lab technician (Shaba Om), a laborer (Baba Odinga), and a military veteran (Ali Bey Hassan).

  The Panthers formed a fearsome military column when they lined up in black berets and leather coats. Beneath the berets were young men and women who had come to realize that their individual problems were connected to all oppressed people. Students, veterans, ex-convicts, young mothers, workers, street people—the composition of the Panther 21 reflected the broad membership of the Black Panther Party. They were the folks that Malcolm X called “the grassroots” and that Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth,” coming together to study, work, and sacrifice in a movement that articulated their frustration, their rage, and their need for positive action to change the conditions around them.

  “What the hell is going on with these trumped-up charges?” the Panthers wondered out loud as we huddled around our attorneys. The lawyers still didn’t have a clear picture of District Attorney Hogan’s case against us. They had been frustrated at every turn at their attempts to get information even with the court rules of pretrial discovery. But one thing they had learned was that the New York chapter had been infiltrated.

  “There are two undercover cops who say they were there for all of the meetings and all of the training,” Gerald Lefcourt said. “They are part of a special undercover unit known as BOSS—Bureau of Special Services. One of the cops’ name is Gene Roberts.” I knew who Gene was. Brother Gene, as we called him, had been a Black Muslim and Malcolm X’s bodyguard. He was three feet away from Malcolm when he was shot at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. There was a photo in Life magazine of Gene Roberts giving Malcolm mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as Malcolm’s body lay on the stage covered in blood.

  “Brother Gene is a pig? I can’t believe it,” one of the Panthers said.

  “The other cop is Ralph White.”

  “Who the hell is Ralph White?” someone asked.

  Gerry read another name from the court papers. “The name he used in the Panthers was Yedwa.”

  Time stopped when I heard Yedwa’s name. Head spinning, heart pounding, brain contracting. Yedwa was a cop? He was my teacher, my mentor, my big brother. The father I never had. He came to my house and convinced Noonie to let me come back to the Panther office. How the hell could this be?

  Afeni broke the silence that had numbed the room. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “Yedwa always acted like a reckless agent provocateur. I knew he was a pig.” Afeni was a fiery Panther leader who never held back her opinions or edited her feelings. She and Yedwa had often argued about his brazen comments and reckless behavior. We had considered Yedwa a “crazy nigga”; Afeni considered him dangerous, and in the open forum of a stormy Panther meeting had called him a pig. Lumumba censured Afeni, saying that she was being “overemotional” and that such accusations should not be made between comrades without concrete proof.

  But now the truth was undeniably and disgustingly upon us. Yedwa was a pig. I wrapped myself in anger. The feeling of betrayal was too hard to process. I mumbled something like, “Yedwa is a traitorous pig,” as the guards came to take us back to our various jails. Like a zombie, I allowed myself to be handcuffed and loaded into the paddy wagon. By the time I was processed back into Rikers it was 1 a.m. I fell into a deep, coma-like sleep.

  8

  When Prison Doors Open, Dragons Fly Out

  I was still numb when the guards woke us up the next morning by turning on the cell lights and blaring the “Get ready to lockout for breakfast” announcement on the loudspeakers. I had a dream about the Panthers ambushing the armored hell wagon on the highway and breaking me out, the assault team led by Yedwa, who explained that he was a double agent who infiltrated the police force on behalf of the revolution. The clanging of cell doors opening brought me back to reality. “Yedwa is a pig!” I declared to myself. If you see him, then it’s SOS, which was Panther terminology for “shoot on sight.” I stepped out of my cell a different person. I felt detached from my surroundings. Like I was in prison, but not. Like I was alive, but not.

  Yedwa, Kinshasha, and other Panthers who were combat veterans talked about the “I don’t give a fuck whether I live or die” attitude necessary for survival on the battlefield. Soldiers who cared about living and making it back home alive were usually the ones who got wasted. My cell partner, Manny, talked about the “don’t give a fuck” attitude as it related to doing time. “Dudes that walk around worried about what their girl is doing on the outside and whether or not they’re going to make their parole date always draw bad luck,” Manny said. “They usually get jacked up by somebody because they’re thinking about the street instead of concentrating on doing time.” I walked down the tier as cool as can be. Anyone checking my face would have seen a vacant, combat look in my eyes. I had been arrested, beaten, betrayed and was probably going to get a life sentence. What more could they do, other than kill me? The last twenty-four hours had bitch-slapped the self-pity and fear out of me. I was a young soldier now. This was war. My mission was to make revolution, and I no longer gave a fuck.

  Ho Chi Minh, the leader of North Vietnam, wrote, “When prison doors open dragons fly out.” I adopted this as a personal mantra along with Malcolm X’s quote, “The Penitentiary has been the University for many a black man.” Adolescent boys usually left prison as jail-hardened men who learned to be better thieves, robbers, and drug dealers from their fellow prisoners. I was determined to be a better revolutionary and to create an army of dragons who would be ready to fly out when the prison doors opened or were broken down. I managed to smuggle back some Black Panther newspapers and several books in the stack of legal documents the lawyers had given each of us in court. The guards
that strip-searched you when you returned from a court trip were more interested in finding drugs, money, or filter cigarettes than written materials, and I was able to sneak in more books and literature with each court trip. Soon I had a small library ranging from Frederick Douglass to Che Guevara. I organized study groups and political education classes. We tutored the guys who couldn’t read and started martial arts classes. All this happened after I did thirty days in the hole for attacking Lefty.

  I WALKED INTO the day room the day after I learned about Yedwa. The day room was a large recreation room that contained a Ping-Pong table, card tables, and chairs set up in front of a mounted television. I stood near the back of the rec room watching the evening news. Lefty was at a card table playing blackjack for cigarettes.

  “What’s up, baby?” he said, squeezing his crotch as he smiled at me.

  “My name is Jamal. All right?” I answered in an annoyed voice.

  Lefty and the other inmates at the card table chuckled and went back to their game. I watched the news for a few more minutes and left.

  Lunch the next day was mashed potatoes, gravy, and ground meat patties, or “murder burgers,” named that because they were so hard to digest. I came off the mess-hall line carrying my tray and passed Lefty who was sitting at a table with the rest of the house gang.

  “What’s going on, baby?” Lefty called out as I passed.

  I froze, stomach curling into a tight knot. “I told you my name is Jamal.”

  “Yeah, all right, baby,” Lefty said with a sneer, “or maybe I’ll call you Panther baby.” He laughed and took a bite of his murder burger.

 

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