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Pre-Panther Days: Meeting Bobby and Huey My joining the Black Panther Party was about being in the right place at the right time—or the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how you look at it.1 Had I gone directly to [UC] Berkeley, I would have missed out on the greatest political opportunity of my career because Merritt College was a hotbed of Black nationalism.2 That time was the beginning of racial polarization nationally, and at Merritt it started to be really extreme. Donald Warden’s Afro–American Association was perhaps the first Black cultural nationalist organization in the Bay Area, and it drew some of the mightiest, young African American intellectual revolutionary nationalists—from Merritt College, UC Berkeley, and San Francisco State. But many of them left to join more politically oriented groups.3 It was through another Merritt College student group, the Soul Students Advisory Council, that I got to know Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. They went on to start the BPP because of the limitations of these Black cultural nationalist groups. I was really impressed when I first met Bobby because Bobby, to me, was a poster child for Booker T. Washington’s model of a man, being vocationally skilled and having all the talents. He was a carpenter, a sheet metal worker, he could read blueprints. Plus, he’d been in the military, gotten married , and was a student at Merritt to uplift himself. But there was a difference in Bobby’s case. He was not just satisfied with the Booker T. Washington model of uplifting. He was thinking politically. At one point he joined RAM, the Revolutionary Action Movement. RAM was founded in the early s by Max Stanford and their base of strength was Detroit, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. The word on the street was they were a clandestine, underground organization. Bobby’s alliance with RAM was brief due to the fact that he opposed the clandestine   “The Greatest Political Opportunity of My Life” political thing.4 Now Bobby was easy to get to know because he’s basically a friendly guy. About the same time I met Huey Newton. Huey initially came across as a young thug, running the street. I think Bobby was far ahead of him at that time theoretically.5 But Huey had this thirst, even though he was barely literate upon graduating from high school.6 Then Bobby told me about the donnybrook Huey had with a local thug, who I had grown up with and gone to Berkeley High School with. This thug belonged to the baddest gang in the East Bay, a gang I wouldn’t even take the Saints against in my wildest dreams. They were smaller than the Saints, but as a group they could clean the Saints out. I wouldn’t even dream about taking on their warlord. The lieutenant of this warlord was the guy that Huey took on. I was stunned.7 So one day Huey and I are drinking wine and we decide to go to Stubby’s Pool Hall, which we considered the local Colosseum. Some of the most legendary battles among thugs occurred at Stubby’s. So Huey and I walk into Stubby’s and there’s a half dozen dudes in there, a little younger than we are, and Huey starts playing the dozens with one of them. I’m saying, “I’m going to see some action now!” Huey, being quick of mind, swiftly gets the better of the guy. I see the guy getting ready to do his number. He’s halfway through the West Oakland bit when Huey hits him with a blow that I didn’t see coming. Bam! Took him down. Now that surprised me a little bit. I’ve always prided myself on being fast, but that was one of the few times I’ve seen somebody faster than me. Unfortunately, this guy’s friends started getting nasty and jumped Huey. What am I going to do? So I jump into the picture. Huey and I end up battling half a dozen dudes. We know we got to get away. We fight our way out to the sidewalk, back to back, side by side. We’re trying to get to my car across the street. We’re doing a good job, we’re not going down, but we got six dudes on top of the two of us. This is getting a little bit tiresome...

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