My father wrote the book, A Panther is a Black Cat. Of course I wanted to know how he first met the Panthers. As with everything else in his life it was almost organic. He knew, hung out with, and kept the company of people who were looking and thinking and acting in ways that were designed to make the world a better place.
So the NAACP is done. You’re not working with them because there’s nothing you can do. When do you start rubbing feet with the Panthers?
Eldridge Cleaver
That was a different thing. The Panthers were a funny kind of a set-up actually. I have to back up on the Panthers. Eldridge (Cleaver) came out of prison in October of ’66. We had just come back from Europe. I met him at Beverly’s (Attorney Beverly Axelrod) and we talked a bit. Prior to his coming out of prison I had been one of a number of blood brothers that Beverly had recruited and sent us stuff to read. And we read it and started getting together a petition and so forth.
So he came out and Beverly and Eldridge of course hooked up. Your mother and I were headed up the coast. We had seen Beverly and Eldridge before we left. We got as far as Fort Ross and we were marching around Fort Ross and we looked up and there’s Beverly and Eldridge heading back south. So we crossed paths. We talked. That was kinda hip. So I had a couple meetings, a couple of talks with him.
I knew all the people who called themselves paper panthers, I knew them already. That was a group of people who called themselves the Black Panther Party for SF in San Francisco. The Black Panther Party headed by (Huey) Newton was based in Oakland.
James Baldwin
In the meantime, Jimmy (James Baldwin) came to town. (Jimmy always stayed with at our home in the Haight Ashbury district when he came to the Bay Area.) I talked Jimmy into meeting Eldridge. He said okay. So Connie (Owner and chef of Connie’s Caribbean Restaurant on Haight Street.) was having a party for Jimmy. Connie at the time lived on Haight and Masonic.
Eldridge was going to meet Jimmy and come by himself. When the bell rang there’s Eldridge and Huey (Newton). Gloria (James Baldwin’s sister) is there too. We all decide that we are going to walk from Belvedere to Connie’s. As we hit Haight Street folks are coming up. And every time somebody would come up Huey would preen and they would go right past Huey to Jimmy. It was something else.
Eldridge spent the rest of the evening kind of cowering in the back room. Huey and Jimmy got together and they were friends from then on.
And that was the beginning of his friendships with people who were or became members of the Black Panther Party.
The blog on how my father became friends with James Baldwin can be found here.
The blog on the why and what of my “Journey with the Tapes can be found here.