The Savage City (36 page)
Authors: T. J. English
“What's the trouble?” one of the cops asked.
The man standing by the trunk was Kuwasi Balagoon. The other man was Sekou Adinga. Behind the wheel was nineteen-year-old Joan Bird. All three were members of the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party.
They all glanced at one another. “No big deal, Officer,” Balagoon told the cop. “Just engine trouble.” Then he and Adinga pulled out guns and started firing at the cops. The cops returned fire, hitting the Dodge Dart and shattering the windshield. One of the cops was hit in the hip, but the bullet was stopped by a thick pouch on his belt. The cop retreated back to his bike and called for backup.
The two shooters ran off, disappearing into a wooded area.
Screaming sirens and flashing cherry-tops converged on the scene, nearly a dozen police cars in all. A swarm of officers spilled out and slowly approached the vehicle, guns drawn. Inside, scrunched down on the floor, was Joan Bird. “Don't shoot. I'm not armed,” she said.
The cop who'd been hit in the pouch grabbed Bird by the feet and pulled her from the car. The cops cuffed Bird, then searched the car. In the trunk they found a .308-caliber Winchester rifle.
Later that night, Mrs. Charles Bird, Joan Bird's mother, was called to the Thirty-fourth Precinct station house. When Mrs. Bird, a Jamaican national, arrived, detectives recounted a version of what had taken place. As they were talking, she could hear her daughter screaming somewhere in the station house. When she was eventually led to a back room to see her daughter, she was shocked. Joan Bird had a black eye, her lip was swollen, her face bruised.
“Dear God in Heaven, who did you like this?” asked Mrs. Bird.
The daughter, crying and trembling, nodded toward the arresting officer, the one who'd been hit by a bullet and then pulled her from the car.
Bird was sent downtown to central booking, processed on charges of attempted homicide and assault, and released the following night.
The incident was the latest ball of confusion: a photo of Joan Bird's face with black eye, bloodied lip, and multiple bruises was printed in the
Black Panther
. The Panthers claimed Bird had been tortured; the police countered with a statement claiming that Bird had told them she'd injured herself during the shoot-out, banging her head on the steering wheel as she ducked to the floor when the shooting began.
By now, BOSS had penetrated most local Panther branches. Through their network of informants, they were told that Bird, a former VISTA volunteer, had volunteered to drive that night to prove herself and earn her stripes as a Panther. They had parked the Dodge Dart by the side of the road to set up a sniper post. The Panthers had supposedly rigged a bomb to go off later at the Forty-fourth Precinct station house, across
the Harlem River in the Bronx; the idea was that, after the bombing, Balagoon and Adinga would open fire on the cops from across the river as they came flooding out of the station house.
Stories like this, which were passed along from Panther informants to police supervisors and then spread through the rank and file like wildfire, fueled a kind of police hysteria about the Panthers. Never mind that no bomb was ever found planted at the Bronx precinct. Never mind that, from the location of the supposed “sniper post,” there was no clear shot at the door of the station house or anywhere else where cops might come running out of the building. The story defied logic, but that didn't seem to matter. It fed into an anger and fear among the NYPD about what the Black Panthers represented: a Communist-inspired black vigilante group looking to exact revenge on local symbols of law and order by blowing up station houses and sniping at policemen from riverbanks and rooftops.
As one of the leaders of the Panthers' Harlem chapter, Dhoruba immediately recognized the value of the Joan Bird incident as a propaganda tool. He had copies made of the photo of Bird's bruised and battered face and had them posted all over the city. Frustrated by the California-based
Black Panther
's inattention to events in New York, Dhoruba created his own grassroots pamphlet called
It's Time: Cadre News
. Written and mimeographed at the Harlem office, it was distributed through the Harlem-Bronx ministry of information. In the very first issue (vol. 1, no. 1, January 1969), under the heading “OUR JOB,” Dhoruba wrote, “It is the duty of those that profess to be revolutionaries to grasp revolutionary principles and apply them in the form of revolutionary action. The duty to the people's struggle impels us now to raise the conscious level of Black people within the confines of Gomorrah, this whore of the west. We must educate the people through propaganda. With this goal of political education, the people can best deal with this Pig Power structure. The method of education that the Black Community responds to best isâ
action
.”
By now, Dhoruba had become one of the Black Panther Party's most vocal and visible leaders in New York. He gave speeches throughout the city, at colleges, political rallies, fund-raisers, and symposiums. He had adopted the Panther lookâblack leather jacket, turtleneck, and neatly trimmed goateeâand adopted the Panther rhetorical style, a torrent of in-your-face language, liberally peppered with quotes from Marcus
Garvey, Karl Marx, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, and other revolutionary thinkers. As field secretary, Dhoruba traveled to Baltimore; Washington, D.C.; and New Jersey to oversee the setting up of chapters and settle disputes. For the first time his life had focus and purpose.
Dhoruba's high profile inevitably brought him to the attention of NYPD undercover officers and FBI field agents, who were tripping over one another in their efforts to monitor the Panthers' daily activities. An FBI COINTELPRO report from January 1969 noted:
On January two nineteen sixty nine [a confidential informant] advised that at a meeting of the Black Panther Party political education class in Harlem, New York, it was stated that all Panthers are to obtain “a piece” (meaning a gun) by the middle of Januaryâ¦. Some Panthers are to leave for Texas (no place specified) in order to secure several pieces, one of those believed traveling to Texas is Diruba (ph)â¦Subject, also known as Richard Moore, was heard making inquiries as to where he could obtain grenades and other explosives. He is quoted as having expressed a desire to kill a law enforcement officer. In a speech, he called for revolution by the black raceâ¦he was observed carrying two pistols. IN VIEW OF SUBJECT'S EXPRESSED DESIRE TO KILL A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER, AND HIS POSSESSION OF FIREARMS HE SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS.
In later years, Dhoruba and other Panthers would contend that much of the overheated and incendiary rhetoric at political education meetings was deliberate; they knew it would go directly into the files of law enforcement. In a propaganda war, the idea was to keep the other side in a state of paranoia. If the cops believed that the Panthers were out to kill them, they could be kept off balance. But it was a dangerous game for both sides. Confidential police and FBI reports from early 1969 show that law enforcement not only felt threatened by the Panthers but also felt the movement was predicated on murder and revenge. Every black nationalist rally, black cultural gathering, or statement of black liberation by the Panthers was recorded and seen as part of a conspiracy to kill police officers.
Ralph White was one Panther whom Dhoruba stayed away from. Dhoruba suspected that White was an informant from the day they first met. At PE meetings, White was usually the most vocal and militant in his calls for violent action against the police. Throughout early 1969, White had begun stockpiling material to make explosives, laying out plans for what he called “a day of terror” in New York City. Years later, Dhoruba remembered, “He was full of shit. I mean, the party had many people who talked a good game. They were usually the least likely to follow through. Ralph White was often high or drunk, talking 'bout blowing up buildings or monuments. He was a classic agent provocateur. I suspected he was either a spy or a bullshit artist.”
One member Dhoruba
didn't
suspect was Gene Roberts. Having knelt alongside Malcolm X seconds after he was riddled with bullets at the Audubon Ballroom, Roberts had a pedigree that seemed beyond reproach. He was older than Dhoruba and the others, a veteran of the movement who no one suspected had been working undercover for almost four years.
Early in 1969, Roberts was assigned to the Panthers' security section, where he would work directly with Dhoruba. From January through late March, Roberts, Dhoruba, and a few other Panthers made a series of weapons procurement or TE (technical equipment) runs to various locales around the country. These were among the most perilous activities a Panther could undertakeâdriving under cover of darkness to Texas, Louisiana, or Virginia, buying handguns, rifles, and machine guns from local dealers, loading them in the trunk, and driving back to New York. In his unpublished memoir, Dhoruba described these missions as an almost spiritual undertaking, a metaphorical visit to what he called “The Church of Saint Nat Turner What's Happening Now.”
We traveled like shadows trapped behind enemy lines intent on making it to the nearest border and sanctuary before the light of false dawn. That was the script; the way we flowed. There was a distinct difference between “revolutionary theater” and theaters of revolutionary operations. We fully identified with the perception that ever since Plymouth Rock, Africans in America were behind enemy lines.
In the early-morning hours of April 1, 1969, Dhoruba was in the backseat of a car returning from a gun-running mission in the Baltimore area. Also in the car were Roberts and fellow Panthers Kwando Kinshasa (aka William King) and Cetewayo (aka Michael Tabor), who was driving. Dhoruba dozed off, and when he awoke, Gene Roberts was behind the wheel. The first thing Dhoruba saw was the Pentagon Building straight ahead. Apparently, Roberts had made a wrong turn off the expressway and got “trapped in a traffic loop to possible oblivion.”
The vast parking lot around the Pentagon loomed ahead deserted and lit by powerful security lights, and there we were: four Harlem Panthers in a car loaded with weapons, albeit purchased legally, who had lost their way and wandered into the parking facilities of the most powerful military establishment on the planet. A tense moment to say the least. After getting back on track and pointed in the right direction, the discomfort I felt over the incident and our new driver never fully subsided.
For the first time, the thought entered Dhoruba's mind that Gene Roberts was an undercover agent or a spy. He let it pass, figuring it was a product of the mix of suspicion and paranoia that was endemic to life as a Black Panther.
Dhoruba got home at dawn and slept most of the next day. He and Iris had recently moved from their apartment near Harlem Hospital to a larger apartment on West 142nd Street near St. Nicholas Avenue. That night, there was tension between Dhoruba and Iris. Dhoruba's deepening involvement with the Panthers was taking him away from home for longer and longer stretches, and the relationship was suffering. It didn't help that Dhoruba had been sleeping around with Panther women, and Iris herself had begun to stray. They were still living under the same roof, but the marriage had drifted down the priority list in both their lives.
In the early-morning hours of April 2, Dhoruba and Iris were sound asleep in bed. Suddenly, there was a loud banging on the front door. From the other side of the door, someone shouted, “Welfare agency! Is Iris Moore home?”
Welfare agency at 4:30 in the morning?
Dhoruba thought.
I don't think so
. He got out of bed and approached the door in his underwear.
At first I didn't answer, realizing that to do so might invite a fusillade of gunfire through the front door. But the pounding grew louder, more insistent. Between the pounding on my front door, and the adrenaline rush of anticipation, anxiety, fear, and impending combat, I got quickly dressed. Standing to the side of the door, I boomed back, “Who is it?”
There was a pregnant silence, then a Black voice responded, “Police. Open the door.”
I knew the disembodied voice was that of a Black man. I eased around to the peephole and sure 'nuff, hovering over the peephole was a sweaty black faceâ¦.
“How I know you're police? And what you want anyway?” I shouted back.
“Police! Open the door or we'll break it downâ¦. Police, open the⦔
As I unlocked the door, I couldn't help but think that if I lived through the next few minutes, my life would never be the same.
A phalanx of more than twenty cops in commando gear burst through the door. Dhoruba was pushed up against a wall and cuffed. Iris, disheveled, in her underwear, was told to sit on the sofa and not to move. The cops proceeded to ransack the apartment. They found an unloaded pistol in a dresser drawer, which made them search even harder. To Dhoruba, they seemed disappointed to find only that one gun on the premises.
I was pushed, shoved and half dragged down four flights of stairs and thrown into the back of an unmarked police cruiser. The street outside was teeming with uniformed copsâ¦. Sirens blaring, I was sped downtown squeezed between two Old Spice smelling detectives in the back seat of an unmarked police car. The ride downtown was pregnant with tension and the silence broken only by the sporadic crackle of police chatter over the car radio.
From the radio chatter, Dhoruba got the sense that something heavy was going down. He was right. That night, similar raids and arrests were
taking place all around Harlem, Brooklyn, Queens, and the East Village, executed by a team of more than one hundred well-armed Emergency Service officers. Doors were busted down, Black Panthers chased down hallways, rousted from bed, cuffed, and thrown in the back of paddy wagons and cruisers. When it was all over, twenty-one people had been arrested; one further suspectâSekou Adingaâescaped capture down a tenement drainpipe and disappeared into the early dawn. (He would resurface weeks later in Algiers alongside Eldridge Cleaver.)