Episode transscript

Sirena Riley as Assata

It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose, but our chains.

Frank B Wilderson iii

It was December 1969 And I was 13. Jocelyn would be 14 on the first of the year. I would not be 14 until April. Still, it seemed that she was two generations older than me. This unnerved me and tied my tongue like a pair of old shoes tangled on a wire. not only did it seem that Jocelyn Brown had grown 26 years in the past 13 But she was quiet spoken and wise in a way that was neither showy or strange when she said, "Hello, brother Frank." She sounded as grown as those soft talking Muslim women are those surefooted women in the Panthers, those grown black women who touch your face or hold your hand and speak your name like they know how bad you heard inside because once upon a time, they were hurting inside just like you. And now they're into a movement that takes away their pain, something you always wanted to be part of, but couldn't name.

That's how Jocelyn brown sounded when she spoke to me. Something inside me felt warm and loved and something else inside was all shook up and running scared. I was speechless, in the face of such integrity. Maybe we called him wolfman on account of his hair that made him look like Jimi Hendrix. Or maybe it was because unlike any of the other boys at St. Mary's, he was already shaving. Or perhaps it was because he was the only eighth grader who was taller and bigger than any ninth and 10th grader. Word was the high school coach wanted him to start at middle linebacker as soon as he hit ninth grade. No Junior Varsity for Wolfman. His father was not in his life. His mother was white. This Wolfman told me one day from the depths of a reefer haze was the same as having no pants at all. Wolfman was politicized in a way few other kids at St. Mary's were except Jocelyn. He knew black folks were on the move, and he was ready to seize the time. This strain relations between him and his mother. "Black folks are on the move." Wolfman used to say "Whitey better get with it and get behind us." His mother, however, was not convinced that her destiny was to follow her son into nation time. Rather than waste this precious revolutionary period trying to tell her what time it is. Wolfman explained to me. "I spent as much time as I can away from her." To which I would nod and say, " I know that's right. It's the same should I go through with my mom, and she ain't even white. At least your mom's got that melon tonic pigmentation thing as her excuse. You know what I'm saying?". I may have been the only one who could offer such erudite commentary on his mother without getting knocked into next week. We will stand in the shadows of St. Mary's school yard and talk about our pants and talk about Huey P Newton and Eldridge Cleaver and try to decide who was right between the two of them. And talking about Mao and Ho Chi Min , it's and try to decide who was the baddest between the two of them. We'd be so high. We could predict the exact date the exact time and exact place that would set off revolution our repartees were so righteous and the reefer was so good that we forgot how cold it was. and where were it was we were supposed to be.

Flint Taylor

Panthers led tours of the apartment for that 10 day period.

Frank B Wilderson iii

I got it in my head that we should have a look. See. To my surprise, Jocelyn said this was a good idea. At which point I panicked. I get home not only late, but late at night. The beating that waited for me would have two justifications is that a one disruption of a Roman Catholic ritual in a patriotic pledge that morning in homeroom coupled with my violation of Frank and Ida Loraine's curfew. As anxiety bubbled up inside me, I stayed cool and copacetic I displaced "your mom would teer into you if you went to the scene of a panther police shootout." "No she wouldn't. Olivia has been involved in talks between SNCC and the Panthers, They might even merge." "Well what I mean is you've been a girl and all she probably be all up in your shit for being out so late. Not like dudes, you dig who can just come and go and nobody trips." "My mother rarely comes out of a bag. She said matter of factly and she doesn't whoop me". for a while. I walked in jealous silence. "Your parents whoop you?" She asked. " shit they ain't crazy". I looked away. "Your pants down with revolution?" She wondered. "Of course. I'm surprised you'd ask me a question like that everybody at my crib is down with revolution. my four year old brother be shouting off the pigs on his way to nursery school." "I didn't ask you about your baby brother asked you about your parents." "And I told you they're down with all that shit. Even took us to Jesse Jackson's church for Operation breadbasket rally. The cannibal addley quintet played at the break." Olivia said, "Jesse Jackson is no Fred Hampton. And operational breadbasket is not the Black Panther..." "Fine." I say. My parents aren't down with revolution. We reached the corner and waited 300 years for the damn light to turn green." Since King died", I confessed. "I don't know if they're down with anything."

We cross the street. "Tonight. They're going to beat me for what I did this morning in homeroom." "What we did", she said.

She held my wounded hand, and I welcome the pain of her grip. I began to cry. We were standing at the bottom of the stairs, part of the long iron tracks of Chicago's L train. "We should run away together." She said, holding me in her arms trying to stop me if not from crying, then at least from shivering. "crash at the Panther pad till we've saved enough money to go find my sister Olivia in New York." The Rock and tumble of the train rambling above our heads ceased. "Or you could come live at my house." She led me by the hand of the stairs. "Mom's was always saying we need a man around the house. And you're just the kind of man she means I know it. I just know it."

On the train, she reads from a letter she received from my sister. Olivia writes her all about SNCC and the growing pains of an organization that started off agitating for voting rights and integration and now finds itself struggling with the next phase. The revolutionary phase. Olivia is angry about the murder of Fred Hampton. She asks if there were really 90 bullets holes in the apartment. Jocelyn is emboldened she has a task. She has a responsibility to get hold of vital information, and then pass it on to her big sister. At the end of the letter. Olivia says that she's writing from New York with the Panthers and snick are holding talks. She says that she visits the United Nations whenever she can, and that she might send for Jocelyn. Next summer. She writes that she met a man from South Africa at the UN. And he was as distraught by the murder of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, as she was. The brother is from a place called Guinea Bissau, where the revolution has matured. He informed me that the ANC that stands for African National Congress has written an official letter of revolutionary condolences in solidarity to the Black Panther Party and all black insurgents in the United States. As we come to our stop, Jocelyn unfolds a letter and asks what the ANC is and how they had heard about us.

As Jocelyn and I left Hyde Park on the air. I didn't know that snick was dying as an organization that the Voting Rights Act and federally mandated busing have thrust her sister's organization to the brink of a crisis of purpose. Jocelyn brown knew all the names of SNCC leaders Stokely Carmichael, Bernice Reagan, Kathleen Cleaver, who is now a panther, Julian Bond, Marion Barry and James Foreman. She knew the songs and she told me she had Pictures those black and white photos of SNCC demonstrations and meetings in her room. Looking back on our journey to the house of Fred Hamptons assassination, I have one regret, one biting regret. I wish that I had had the confidence of a grown man, and not the shy anxiety of a 13 year old boy. And that forward motion as we stood beneath the columns of bolted steel that held the rambling train above us to draw her close and kiss her. Instead, I asked her if she had changed or tokens for the train.

It was music, sweet soul music that saved us from ourselves. It came from within a place that would not have announced itself as anything more than a beauty shop, a barber shop, or a storefront church, if not for the speakers clipped to the awning, and the sound of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas painting the sidewalk with watercolor love. In Detroit, I developed a new theory of evolution. The way I saw Barry Gordy created the world. On the first day he made the temptations. On the second day he made the supremes. Day three it was the Four Tops then came smokey, followed by Mary wells. And when on the day six Marvin Gaye stepped out of his cloud, old Bary stopped for a moment to catch his breath. On the seventh day, the world got down.

Jocelyn took my hand and we went inside. A handsome Slender Man with conked hair came from the back room and lean on the counter. A toothpick balanced between his teeth. The sign above him read Jimmy Max 45's back to back. She walked over to the register and kissed him on the cheek. "Hello, uncle Jimmy." "How you make him brown sugar?" "Mussolini Vamped on me." She said, "Why my sister sent you to that school? I swear" he said. Then he looked at me and broke into a 52 teeth grin that embarrassed us both. "So when's the wedding and brown sugar." She gave him forget you wave of the hand. He walked to the end of the counter, where the Martha Reeves 45 was scratching and round and round in the groove. He lifted a needle. "Ain't got to be J Edgar whoever to see you too in love. Yes, indeed his son. You're going to marry my niece." I almost had a heart attack. "Don't mind him. Johnson said he can be as tired as a $2. Bill. That's what Mama says." "It's a question son. $2 Or no $2" "You're embarrassing him Uncle Jimmy. embarrassing him. That blippity blop." He searched the shelf for another 45 he found what he wanted. He kissed the record. Then put it on and said "you two lovebirds groove on this." It was Martha Reeves and the Vandellas my baby loves me. a sultry,soltry sure enough, slow down. "Don't you have any sly stone?" Said Jocelyn "I said groove on this unless you want me to keep at your little man here. Gone Girl. Take jody in your arms. He's showing gotta come to you. Just look at him." "His name is Frank. Frank B Wilderson the third. And he's from out of town." Her indignation? tickled Jimmy Mack. "You don't mean the Frank B. Wilson the third? The big time shipping tycoon from out of town. Where are you from? Boss, New York? La?" "I'm from Minneapolis, Minnesota. " I said proudly. That toothpick flew from his mouth and he laughed. "And you mad because I called him jody." "He's probably High"Jocelyn whispered will dance just to humor him." "But I can't dance. " I whispered. "Now don't lie jody" He shouted over Martha's searching moans "you black ain't you? then you can dance. What you do up your way the snow shoe. Go ahead on and do a little snow shoe for me. I swear girl you're gonna marry this fall and have a rhythmless baby".

She helped me and we slow track. "Just ignore him" She said "he talks more shit than a radio. He'll turn out in a minute or two." "You wish." Jimmy called back. Jocelyn and I held hands on one side and drew each other close around the waist with the other we moved slowly and easily as though we done this before. The record was reaching of soulful crescendo. And all the while Jimmy Mack was leaning on the counter smiling, chuckling to himself. Singing backup as Martha Reese had signed him as the fourth vendela when the record stopped, Jimmy Mack told us not to move. We were fine with that. We liked holding each other and it gave us an excuse to keep holding each other. He put on Etta James at last so effortlessly. You think he had it up his sleeve? Who slowed danced Lord have mercy, how we slow down as I took her in my arms, no hand holding now. I held her like I wanted to hold her under the L. We turned slowly twining into each other with all the longing we could muster until at last Etta James called down from heaven and told us to stop.

We didn't walk from Jimmy Max 45 Back to Back to Fred Hamptons house. We glided. We soared. We sailed. Once in a while we landed on a runway next to some unknown someone's snow tapered steps. We refueled with kisses, hungry, grown ass kisses, and an unknown someone's grandma raised the window and said Stop all that filthy McNasty carrying on you too aint grown. We were still holding hands chirping like sparrows when we ran up against the backside of a middle aged couple. The man and a woman turned abruptly. They look like Mississippians who had fled Jim Crow with one way tickets on the Illinois essential. The man's face soured as he looked down at us. But the woman smiled discreetly. She spoke sternly to us. "You children need to stand in line quietly. And wait your turn. This ain't a playground. Two men have died inside, brutally murdered." I peered around him. We were indeed at the end of a line that was almost a block long. A line running up the stairs and into the building. The whole community had turned up and the icy cold evening was chilled, like awake. I was not prepared. When I saw inside Fred Hampton's apartment. I remember a voice ringing in my ear, a distant and incessant voice from across the room. The voice of a young black panther explaining the procession as it flowed into one room and out the other. The pigs had vamped in the wee hours of the morning when the folks inside were asleep. How they came with murder on their minds how they shot Mark Clark in the heart through the door he was going to open for them. How they burst in and scrambled over his body with machine guns blazing. How another contingent came up the back stairs across the porch into the kitchen and then broke into the bedroom and lit the bed up. The bed where Chairman Fred's slept with his pregnant wife lit that sleeping bed with bullets, like fireworks lighting up the sky. Did he say that? Did he really say they fired into the bed of a sleeping man and a pregnant woman? Tell me he didn't say that. The yanked her from the bed and threw her up against the wall in the kitchen. They went back and shot him in the head. He's dead. Did they say he's getting dead now? I held Jocelyn's arm and looked around the room with the voice of the guide folded over me like veils of water. I saw the bullet holes 99 bullet holes, machine gun shotgun handgun bullet holes in the walls in the door in the bed. That flood red bed where Chairman Fred was pronounced good and dead

Akua Njeri

He's good and dead enow.

Frank B Wilderson iii

Sensing it's something frightened and chaotic in my demeanour, the sour faced man from Mississippi touched me and said "breathe. Just breathe". Then he said we got to move into the kitchen. let the folks behind us come through. He nodded toward Jocelyn. "You got to protect her". I looked down and said "yes sir."

I wish I had a different memory of my arrival home that night. than the one I have. I wish I remember telling my parents about Jimmy Mack's jokes and Fred Hamptons blood, about the bullets inandthe sorrow, but the clamor of the L Train That is not the memory I have.

I enter the flat to find them fierce with worry over my whereabouts in beside themselves with fury over my refusal to pledge allegiance and pray that morning in homeroom. The belt and the yardstick lay on the dining room table, like a court room exhibit. The rituals of preliminary words became the words needed to anoint the moment with enough resolve to commence flogging. Then they set upon me with their implements. I would like to say that I took the beating in my revolutionary stride my back straight. My eyes dry, the searing pain on my thighs and buttocks melting into water and rolling off. One thing I can say in my defense, however, is that I walked into every one of those beatings with my eyes open. It could even be said that I provoked them. I knew that acts of political defiance at school will precede such evening rituals as a Gulags what some people call home. And I was not a passive victim for I could always find a way to get my licks in that evening was no exception.

At last, they are spent and exhausted but still very much upon me with about a splintered yardstick, they stalk me to my bedroom, they chat they're tired, dreary chats. Better not do this, better not do that. Better be the first to pledge and the loudest to pray. Better straighten up and fly right. I stumbled before them crying my eyes off, snotty at the beak. My siblings peek through their crap doors political lackeys, cowered by kickbacks of candy, chump change and Saturday morning cartoons. I give them the evil eye. State collaborators.

Richard Daly's two goons follow me into my bedroom. My teeth are chattering. As I sit on the bed, I suddenly know how I'm going to get my licks in. It's been tapped to my wall for weeks just waiting for me to wield it as a weapon. As I look at the wall, so does my dad. What are you signifying? He says. It's a photograph from Life magazine. A middle aged Chinese man about the same age as my father. beside him is a Chinese girl, maybe three or four years older than me. The man is kneeling. The girl is standing for life photographer has synchronized the opening and closing of his shutter with the pull of a trigger with a plume of flint from the pistol she holds. She's blowing the band's brains out. "Play with me if you want to. Uh huh." That's right. "Play with me if you want to." My father says I am lucid. I look him right in the eye. "It's a picture from the Cultural Revolution" I tell him. The man owns a lot of land, avaricious businessman. The girl is a member of the Red Guard. He refused to divide his land with all the people who are poor and need to eat." My parents are perplexed. They look at the picture and look back at me. They still don't get it. How am I going to get my licks and if the lesson is over their heads, I break it to them gently.

"The man is a counter revolutionary" I say. "He's also her father." Now they get' it. They get it big time. Dad's eyes go wild. "Haven't you had enough? I guess that's slick. I think. "Do I have to beat the living daylights out of you?" Go for what you know. I think I stare back at him. Only one of two things can happen here. I will break this stare down where I will get more of his rage." he's stone crazy" Mom intervenes with a critical observation. "I'm tired. Let's go to bed." They make their way to the warden's quarters. They are no longer there. upon me