Revolution is about change, and the first place the change begins is in yourself.
I wondered how i would feel going into some museum and seeing the houses and stolen artifacts of my people stuck away in some exhibition hall. As i spoke i realized that most of the “history” i had been taught about the Indians was probably lies invented by the white man.
I knew i didn’t know what the hell communism was, and yet i’d been dead set against it. Just like when you’re a little kid and they get you to believe in the bogeyman. You don’t know what the hell the bogeyman is, but you hate him and you’re scared of him.
What made me maddest was the media treatment of the BPP, which gave the impression that the Party was racist and violent. And it worked. The pigs would burst into a Panther office, shoot first, and ask questions later. The press always reported that the police had “uncovered” a large arsenal of weapons. Later, when the “arsenal” turned out to be a few legally registered rifles and shotguns, the press never printed a word. The same thing goes on today.
He was the only witness who claimed he could positively identify me, because i “had spent weekends at his house.” But he didn’t know the color of my eyes.
One little girl broke up the whole kourtroom when she asked out loud, “Is that the fascist pig, Mommy?” pointing up at the judge.
The world, in spite of oppression, is a beautiful place.
When the judge learned i was sick and unable to come to kourt, he had a fit. He acted like i had gotten sick just to delay the trial.
That was one of the things that always happened to me after long periods of solitary confinement: i would forget how to talk.
I’m not quite sure what freedom is, but I know damn well what it ain’t.
Fidel, in a speech, had told the people, “We are all Afro-Cubans, from the very lightest to the very darkest.
Before the Civil War, the northern industrial economy was largely dependent on southern cotton. The slave economy of the South was a threat to northern capitalism. What if the slaveholders of the South decided to set up factories and process the cotton themselves? Northern capitalists could not possibly compete with slave labor, and their capitalist economy would be destroyed. To ensure that this didn’t happen, the North went to war.
And i had turned into a crochet fiend. My poor mother was the unfortunate recipient of my early “creations.” Brave, devoted person that she was, she thought they were pure genius.
The panel was selected from the voting rolls, and, since candidates running for office seldom represent the interests of Black and poor people, Blacks and the poor don’t vote. But failing to vote means they don’t sit on juries.
Angela Davis was running for her life. They had hooked her up with Jonathan Jackson, charged her with kidnapping and murder at the kourthouse, even though she was nowhere on the set.
When Angela Davis came to new jersey to do a speaking engagement on my behalf, the new jersey prosecutor’s office ambushed her and her party, harassing them until the moment they left the state.
Every time we went to kourt the judge made a point of reading into the record that i had refused to stand up for him. He was one of those racist white dogs who really believed he was massa.
I thought about it all the way home. Of all the things I had wanted to be when i was a little girl, a revolutionary certainly wasn’t one of them.
As far as i was concerned, the police in the Black communities were nothing but a foreign, occupying army, beating, torturing, and murdering people at whim and without restraint. I despise violence, but i despise it even more when it’s one-sided and used to oppress and repress poor people.
One sticks his fingers in my eyes. I don’t know what he has on his fingertips, but whatever it is burns like hell. I think I am gonna be blind forever. He says he will keep doing it until i am completely blind.