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Of Black Panthers and U.S. Soldiers A processional of old guard Black Panther Party members marched down the aisle of Wheeler Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus. While their graying hair betrayed their age, they carried the spirit of the party in the large banner they held featuring a black panther over a red star, pronouncing Richard Aoki to be a “People’s Warrior,” and in the black leather jackets, light blue shirts, and black berets they wore. Thus began the weekend filled with memorial services for Richard Aoki. More than five hundred people attended this service on Saturday, May , , in UC Berkeley’s largest auditorium. The extensive program featured speakers from across Aoki’s life, with particular attention to the activist period of the s–s. Bobby Seale, Tarika Lewis, Ericka Huggins, and Mike Tagawa spoke as former Black Panthers. Famed Japanese American activist Yuri Kochiyama was a cherished speaker. A host of others spoke about Aoki’s activism in the Asian American Political Alliance and Third World Liberation Front, his professional work in the educational arena, and his recent life. There were musical performances, a martial arts demonstration, and clips from the documentary on his life, making for a lengthy, four-hour program. Aoki would have chuckled at the irony of his memorial being held in Wheeler Auditorium, the same building that burned at the beginning of the Third World strike forty years earlier.1 The next day, some two hundred people crowded into the Chapel of the Chimes crematorium and columbarium in Oakland, where part of Aoki’s ashes remain, alongside his father’s and other Aoki relatives.2 This more solemn service, while still featuring many activist speakers, focused more on Aoki’s personal life with remarks by childhood friends and family members. A lifelong friend since high school, who was on the phone with Aoki three  Epilogue Reflecting on a Movement Icon to four times a week for years, talked about their childhood love of PingPong , their frequent escapades to Sweets Ballroom, and their current sports team betting and annual vacations to Reno. A young Asian brother, himself from West Oakland, spoke about a time when Aoki came to guest lecture in his community college class. He was expecting another boring speaker but was surprised by the dynamism of Aoki’s talk, which kept him engaged for an hour. He commented on Aoki’s ability to see people’s potential at a time when he needed a second chance. A former professor and father figure to Aoki disclosed that after his wife died, Aoki took him to the shooting range. He wondered why it was important to Aoki to teach him self-defense, but saw it as Aoki’s effort to protect him. The main speaker, a woman minister who met Aoki thirty years earlier, saw Aoki as a compassionate and untiring fighter for justice as well as a rather traditional person in mannerism and in his high regard for order and respect. A young activist relayed how Aoki could sell an event like no other. After a call from Aoki, you thought the event was the most important in the world. Toward the end of the program, two U.S. Army color guards, one Asian American, the other Latino, dressed in formal uniforms complete with white gloves, fastidiously unfolded and refolded the American flag before a large portrait of Aoki, as “Taps” played. Following the formal program, a long line of speakers gathered for the open mike segment, in which a former Panther led the audience in reciting the BPP slogan, “All Power to the People.”3 Predictably enough, some in the largely activist audience, most of whom came of age during or after the Vietnam era, were surprised and offended by the presence of the U.S. flag and “Taps” ceremony at Aoki’s memorial. They saw Aoki’s politics in opposition to U.S. imperialism and militarism, symbolized by the U.S. flag. But the memorial organizers recognized that in Aoki’s closet, among the few material possessions kept all these years, hung two neatly maintained uniforms—his Black Panther leather jacket affixed with a Free Huey button and his U.S. Army uniform with an American flag in its pocket.4 At both memorials, Richard’s work in the BPP, AAPA, and TWLF were emphasized, and his BPP uniform hung on Aoki’s large portrait with no army uniform in sight. At the Chapel of the Chimes...

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