Assata: An Autobiography (23 page)

At the end of the people's case, our motions for a verdict of dismissal of the indictment were denied, and we put on our defense. Evelyn and Martha Pitts, a good friend of mine, were working around the clock. Since we could not afford to pay investigators, they did all the leg work. Martha, a registered nurse, investigated Freeman's claim of being drugged. Evelyn was running around like crazy after kourt was over looking for witnesses to testify. Most of it seemed futile to me, since i could not conceive of how one finds defense witnesses in a frame-up. By the time we called our first witness, Evelyn was looking smug and rubbing her hands together.

"We've got their ass this time," she grinned. "They didn't use enough dirt to cover their tracks."

And they didn't. Records subpoenaed from the state Liquor Authority proved that the bar was owned by someone else, not by the witness who had testified to be the owner. The real owner testified that he had closed the bar before the alleged kidnapping, that he had visited it every day during the period of time it has hosted the "kidnapping," and had locked the door as he left and had given no one permission to use it. The bar had been closed for one year before the alleged crime. The irrefutable and obvious conclusion was that, in fact, there was no bar, no "scene" of the alleged crime, and, therefore, no crime. Subpoenaed medical records and expert medical testimony showed that Freeman's stomach contained only a couple of aspirin, hardly supporting his testimony that he had been drugged with some drugs he could not identify, which he had been forced to swallow and which had left him knocked out for several hours.

Sure enough, on December 8, 1975, after four months of trial, the jury acquitted Ronald Myers and me.

When i entered Manhattan Community College i fully intended to major in business administration and then graduate into a job in marketing or advertising. Instead, i took only one business course. History, psychology, and sociology interested me more than learning how to sell somebody something.

I had truly lucked up. I had gone back to school at a time when struggle and activity were growing, when Black consciousness and nationalism were on the upswing. I had also lucked up on the school.

Manhattan Community College had a very high percentage of Black and Third World students, more than fifty percent. The level of activity was high, both on campus and off. The Golden Drums, the Black organization on campus, whose president was a principled, disciplined brother named Henry Jackson, was pushing for more Black studies courses, Black teachers, programs more responsive to the needs of Black students, and cultural awareness. They gave all kinds of programs on African dancing, drawing, and more. By word of mouth or by the bulletin board, we were turned on to concerts, plays, poetry readings, etc. The Last Poets, a group of young Black poets, knocked me out. I had always thought of poetry in a European sense, but The Last Poets spoke in African rhythms, chanted to the beat of African drums, and talked about revolution. When we'd leave their place on 125th Street-i think it was called the Blue Guerrilla-we'd be so excited and fired up we didn't even notice the long subway ride home.

If i was running myself ragged before i went back to school, now i was flying. I was learning and changing every day. Even my image of myself was changing, as well as my concept of beauty. One day a friend asked me why i didn't wear my hair in an Afro, natural. The thought had honestly never occurred to me. In those days, there weren't too many Afros on the set. But the more i thought about it, the better it sounded. I had always hated frying my hair-burnt ears, a smokey straightening, and the stink of your own hair burning. How many nights had i spent trying to sleep on curlers, bound with scarves that cut into my head like a tourniquet. Afraid to go to the beach, afraid to walk in the rain, afraid to make passionate love on hot summer nights if i had to get up and go to work in the morning. Afraid my hair would "go back." Back to where? Back to the devil or Africa. The permanent was even worse: trying to sit calmly while lye was eating its way into my brain. Clumps of hair falling out. The hair on your head feeling like someone else's.

And then i became aware of a whole new generation of Black women hiding under wigs. Ashamed of their hair-if they had any left. It was sad and disgusting. At the time, my hair was conked, but the hairdresser said it was "relaxed." To make it natural, i literally had to cut the conk off. I cut it myself and then stood under the shower for hours melting the conk out. At last, my hair was free. On the subway the next day, people stared at me, but my friends at school were supportive and encouraging. People are right when they say it's not what you have on your head but what you have in it. You can be a revolutionary-thinking person and have your hair fried up. And you can have an Afro and be a traitor to Black people. But for me, how you dress and how you look have always reflected what you have to say about yourself. When you wear your hair a certain way or when you wear a certain type of clothes, you are making a statement about yourself. When you go through all your life processing and abusing your hair so it will look like the hair of another race of people, then you are making a statement and the statement is clear. I don't care if it's the curly conk, latex locks, or whatever, you're making a statement.

It was a matter of simple statement for me. This is who i am and this is how i like to look. This is what i think is beautiful. You can spend a lifetime discovering African-style hairdresses, there are so many of them, and so many creative, natural styles yet to be invented. For me, it was important not just because of how good it made me feel but because of the world in which i lived. In a country that is trying to completely negate the image of Black people, that constantly tells us we are nothing, our culture is nothing, i felt and still feel that we have got to constantly make positive statements about ourselves. Our desire to be free has got to manifest itself m everything we are and do. We have accepted too much of a negative lifestyle and a negative culture and have to consciously act to rid ourselves of that negative influence. Maybe in another time, when everybody is equal and free, it won't matter how anybody wears their hair or dresses or looks. Then there won't be any oppressors to mimic or avoid mimicking. But right now i think it's important for us to look and feel like strong, proud Black men and women who are looking toward Africa for guidance.

I wasn't in school but a hot minute when a brother in my math class told me about the Golden Drums. After a couple of meetings i was hooked. They addressed me as sister, were glad to see me at meetings, worried about how I was making out in school, and were really concerned about me as a person.

The subject of one of the many lectures scheduled by the Drums was about a slave who had plotted and planned and fought for his freedom. Right here in amerika. Until then my only knowledge of the history of Africans in amerika was about George Washington Carver making experiments with peanuts and about the Underground Railroad. Harriet Tubman had always been my heroine, and she had symbolized everything that was Black resistance for me. But it had never occurred to me that hundreds of Black people had got together to fight for their freedom. The day i found out about Nat Turner I was affected so strongly it was physical. I was so souped up on adrenalin i could barely contain myself. I tore through every book my mother had. Nowhere could i find the name Nat Turner.

I had grown up believing the slaves hadn't fought back. I remember feeling ashamed when they talked about slavery in school. The teachers made it seem that Black people had nothing to do with the official "emancipation" from slavery. White people had freed us.

You couldn't catch me without a book in my hand after that. I read everything from J. A. Rogers to Julius Lester. From Sonia Sanchez to Haki Madhubuti (Don L. Lee). I saw plays by Black playwrights like Amiri Baraka and Ed Bullins. It was amazing. A whole new world opened up to me. I was also meeting a lot of sisters and brothers whose level of consciousness was much higher than mine-Black people who had gained knowledge not only by reading but by participating in the struggle, who talked about Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, Cinque, as well as Nat Turner, because they had gone out of their way to learn about our history and our struggle.

Many of us have misconceptions about Black history in amerika. What we are taught in the public school system is usually inaccurate, distorted, and packed full of outright lies. Among the most common lies are that Lincoln freed the slaves, that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves, and that the history of Black people in amerika has consisted of slow but steady progress, that things have gotten better, bit by bit. Belief in these myths can cause us to make serious mistakes in analyzing our current situation and in planning future action.

Abraham Lincoln was in no way whatsoever a friend of Black people. He had little concern for our plight. In his famous reply to editor Horace Greeley in August, 1862, he openly stated:

My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it and if i could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.

Lincoln was elected president in 1860. Immediately afterward, South Carolina had a convention and unanimously voted to with draw from the Union. Before he had even been inaugurated, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas followed suit. In his inaugural speech on March 4, 1861, Lincoln said that slavery was legal under the constitution and that he had no right and no intention to abolish slavery. He further promised to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, which permitted Southern slave owners to "reclaim" their escaped slaves in Northern states. What the law actually did was give any white man with a "certificate of ownership" the right to kidnap any "free" Black man, woman, or child in the North and force them into slavery. Because of this position, Lincoln received a great deal of criticism from Black abolitionists. Ford Douglas, a runaway slave who accompanied Frederick Douglass on his anti-slavery tours in the West, blasted Lincoln's position, saying,

In regard to the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, Abraham Lincoln occupies the same position that the old Whig Party occupied in 185 2… Here, then, is Abraham Lincoln in favor of carrying out that infamous Fugitive Slave Law, that not only strikes down the liberty of every black man in the United States, but virtually the liberty of every white man as well, for, under that law, there is not a man in this presence who might not be arrested today upon the simple testimony of one man, and, after an ex-parte trial, hurried off to slavery and to chains.

On April 12, 1861, Southern troops fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, thus starting the Civil War. The response of the Northerners was electrifying. Millions who had been indifferent or lukewarm to the secession of the South jumped on the bandwagon to defend the Union. But the enthusiasm was short-lived. They already viewed Black workers in the North as competitors for their jobs, and the white Northerners, for fear of losing even more jobs to the Blacks, refused to enlist in sufficient numbers for the North to win the war. When the draft law was enacted, tens of thousands of white workers in New York City took to the streets and brutally beat and murdered every Black person they could find. It has been estimated that between four hundred and a thousand Blacks were killed as a result of the so-called New York draft law riots. Draft riots and the murder of Blacks also took place in other Northern cities.

Lincoln had originally opposed Blacks fighting in the Civil War, stating:

I admit that slavery is at the root of the rebellion, and at least its sine qua non…I will also concede that emancipation would help us in Europe…I grant, further, that it would help somewhat at the North, though not so much, I fear, as you and those you represent imagine…And then, unquestionably, it would weaken the Rebels by drawing off their laborers, which is of great importance; but I am not so sure we could do much with the Blacks. If we were to arm them, I fear that in a few weeks the arms would be in the hand of the Rebels. (History of the Negro Race in America, Vol. II, p. 265.)

Northern whites were more than happy at the prospect of Black people fighting in the war. A popular verse published in the newspapers of the day reflected the sentiment of many Northerners:

Some say it is a burnin' shame
To make the naygurs fight
An' that the trade o’ bein' kilt
Belongs but to the white;

But as for me upon me sowl,
So liberal are we here,
I'lI let Sambo be murthered in place o' meself
On every day in the year.

It was not until 1863 that Lincoln in fact issued the Emancipation Proclamation. But the document had very little immediate effect. It freed slaves only in the Confederate states; the slaves in states loyal to the Union remained slaves. Lincoln clearly did not believe Black people could live in the u.s. as equal citizens. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, he stated:

If all earthly power were given to me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves and send them to Liberia-to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me that, whatever of high hope…there may be in this, in the long run its sudden execution is impossible…What then? Free them all and keep them among us as underlings? It is quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery at any rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this, and, if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of whites will not.

Lincoln was a firm believer in the massive exportation of Black people anywhere. In 1865, at the end of the war, he asked General Butler to explore the possibility of using the navy to remove Black people to Haiti or to other areas in the Caribbean and South America.

It's also important to understand that the Civil War was not fought to free the slaves. It was a war between two economic systems, a war for power and control of the u.s. by two separate factions of the ruling class: rich, white Southern slave owners and rich, white Northern industrialists. The battle was between a plantation slave economy and an industrial manufacturing economy.

An industrial revolution was taking place in the years before the Civil War. Inventions such as the cotton gin, the telegraph, steamships, and steam trains completely changed methods of manufacturing, transportation, mining, communications, agriculture, and trade. The amount of goods produced was no longer deter mined by the number of people working in the process but by the capacity of the machines. Amerika was no longer a country that produced raw materials for the manufacturing nations in Europe. By 1860, the census reports that 1,385,000 people were employed in manufacturing and that one-sixth of the whole population was directly supported by manufacturing. The number was much higher when clerks, transportation workers, and merchants were added.

As manufacturing centers began to grow, European immi grants were imported as a source of cheap labor. More than five million entered the u.s. between 1820 and 1860. Although the South had many cotton mills functioning, the factories were small and their numbers grew slowly. In 1850, the value of manufactured goods produced in the Northern "free" states was four times the output of the Southern "slave" states. And with the rise of industry came the rise of economic crisis and the threat of industrial col lapse.

Even though there had been economic crises in the past, people had generally lived on farms and the economic depressions didn't create such a great hardship for the masses. But with many people living in cities, economic crises meant unemployment and no way to pay for food, clothing, and shelter. The first big crash came in 1825, followed by further depressions in 1829, 1837, 1847, and a severe depression in 1856. The recession in 1857 almost completely destroyed the early labor movement. The poverty in Northern and Southern cities was staggering. Rags, filth, squalor, hunger, and misery were words used to describe the ghettos of the 1800s.