Panther Baby: A Life of Rebellion & Reinvention by Jamal Joseph

Author:Jamal Joseph [Joseph, Jamal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Cultural Heritage
ISBN: 1616201290
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2012-02-07T06:00:00+00:00

10

Revolution in Our Lifetime

It was spring in Harlem, and people were in bloom on the streets. Children playing and beautiful women doing African ballets just by walking down the block. Hustlers and gangsters, challenging the eyes with green and yellow silk suits and red and gold Cadillacs.

I walked down the street with Raymond Masai Hewitt, who was the Panther minister of education in California. He liked walking through the community whenever he visited a local chapter. I had become part of the Panthers’ National Speakers Bureau. The senior leadership had seen me rap at various local fund-raisers for the Panther 21 and decided to make me part of the national speaking team. Masai taught me to walk through the poorest part of town anywhere I was appearing so I could talk about the local problems and issues in my speech. Many colleges and universities border poor communities, and we would try to fire up university students about conditions of poverty and police brutality that existed near their classrooms and dormitories. So in the shadow of Columbia University and the sunrise of the Apollo, Masai and I hung out with Harlem community folk; “the grassroots,” as Malcolm called them; “the lumpen proletariat,” as the Panthers called them.

There were two men—“lumpen brothers”—fighting on 120th Street. A small crowd was watching. I ran through the crowd and jumped in the middle of the action. Gently, but firmly, I pushed a short dude and a muscle-bound cat apart, without thinking, doing it like I did it all the time. “Don’t fight, brothers,” I shouted. “That’s what the oppressor wants us to do—kill each other.” Those words and my Black Panther buttons were usually enough to cool the situation. If there were no fellow Panthers present to help me, someone from the crowd usually stepped forward to help me keep the combatants apart. This time no one moved.

Masai yelled, “Jamal, he’s got a knife.”

I turned to see that “Shorty” had pulled a hunting knife and was starting to swing at “Muscles,” the guy I was holding. Swoosh. The blade swept by my ear as Shorty tried to leap over me to get his thrust in.

Common sense should have made me jump out of the way and run. But what young Panther has common sense? Instead I walked toward Shorty and his ten-inch blade.

“You want to kill somebody, brother? Kill me. That’s all the pigs want to see is another dead nigga. Any dead nigga will do.”

“But I ain’t got no beef with you,” Shorty snarled. He sidestepped me so he could lunge at Muscles.

I pushed his knife aside and yelled at Muscles over my shoulder, “Split, man. Run!” Muscles blended into the crowd and made his retreat. “It’s over, brother,” I yelled at Shorty. “He’s gone.”

By this time Masai was at my side. Shorty had lowered his knife, but I was still worried that he would run Muscles down and stab him.

“Why don’t you let me hold the knife?”

“What?” Shorty barked, like I had just asked for a kidney.

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