In Desire, on Piety. That night, before the shoot-out, we knew, cause it
was sporadic shooting between us and the police all night. I was always
trained that a guerilla will never allow himself to be conned, you know,
that a Panther never allow himself to be conned. So I was out in the
community, and with many of us, we had dug bunkers under the project. We
felt like this is what we is gonna fight. We had devised mechanism[s] of
getting out, and my contention was let's fight a good battle
and then hijack one of these tugs and go to Kielb, you know, get out of
New Orleans. But Charles in his wisdom said, "No,
uh-uh." He said, "If you fight up in the community,
[you] destroy the people that we
Page 14saying we here to
protect. You know, we have a constitutional right to organize, to
assembly. We have done nothing wrong. We gonna be here in our office,
the weapons we have is legal weapons that we purchased and we have a
right to defend ourselves. That we are not - we will not start it, but
we will defend ourselves." And I told him, I say
"Charles, that might be cool in New York, but in Louisiana, any
time a black pick up a gun against whites, they'll die. You
know. And I ain't gonna let 'em take me out of
this house and then hang me. If they gonna kill me, they gonna kill me
right here in this house." But with his wisdom, you know, it
didn't happen.
The shoot-out lasted about twenty or thirty minutes. Seemed like it was
all day. But the night before, a lady in the community came and put a
prayer cloth on the wall, and said, "If anybody in here
praying, nothing gonna happen to y'all." And you
know, we was all drunk, half-tooled up on weed, we's been
smoking weed, drinking that old Thunderbird wine, so [unclear] said, "Yeah, all right,
maybe, thank ya," cause we all knew that we was gonna probably
die that next morning.
And after the shoot-out, after the twenty minutes of actual gunfire, the
police had an armored car that they would pull up in front of our office
with a 50-caliber machine gun, and just fire. And it was literally set
the walls on fire. Then all of a sudden was a quiet. And I guess they
figured that by then they had killed all of us. The place was full of
tear gas, you know, and they was pumping [it] in. As fast as they shoot
a canister in, we'd throw it out, but it was coming in so
fast that you just couldn't throw them out fast enough. And
there was eleven of us in the house with a hundred police shooting at
us. When it stopped, Charles asked me, he said, "Go to the
rooms, find out how many people is injured, and how many people is
dead." So I was in the second room, the second, the
Page 15third window, and I crawled to the first two and I
asked how many is injured, how many is dead. And they said,
"Nobody's injured, nobody's
dead." So then I crawled to the back, and at each room I would
ask them same thing: How many is injured, how many is dead?
Nobody's injured, nobody's dead. We had made two
bunkers up in our attic, one in the front of the building, one in the
rear of the building, and I went in the closet that we had put the
ladder to go up and down in, and we had two individuals up there. Ike
and Leroy. And I hollered up to them, and they both stuck their head
[Laughter] down to me and I said,
"Brother, y'all all right?" "Yeah,
yeah, man, we all right!"
And so I crawled back and I told Charles, I said,
"Man," I said, "Bro, you ain't
gonna believe this." He said, "What? How many of them
is dead, bro?" I said, "Bro, nobody is dead."
He said, "How many of 'em is shot?" I said,
"Nobody is shot." He said "What??" I
said, "Man, nobody is shot." He said, "Man,
you mean these motherfuckers have been shooting at us"
—excuse my expression, but that's what he
said—"You mean to say these motherfuckers been
shooting at us for this long and they ain't shot
nobody?" I said, "Bro, nobody is shot." And
he said, "Well, then, brother, listen, we done did what we can
in here. Now we gonna take it to the courts." That's
when I told him again, "Hold up, brother, you know, this is
Louisiana. They don't take blacks to court. They
ain't gonna do nothing but kill us, bro. If we gonna die,
let's die in this house." He told me, he said,
"Well, I'm gonna tell you, if they gonna kill us,
they gonna have to kill us but we gonna walk out of this house as black
men and women, and as members of the Black Panther party. We gonna come
out of this house and we gonna come out of here with our heads held
high, and we gonna come out here letting the community know that we are
here and
Page 16that we gonna take it to that next level,
we gonna take it to the court. Whatever happens, gonna happen."
So I went and got everyone, told Leroy and them to jump down from up in
the attic, come on down, and all of 'em was saying the same
thing: "Man, Charles, the law sits by, we gonna walk outta
here, these people [Laughter] once they
see that we ain't got no guns, they gonna kill us."
So Charles gave one of the most inspiring speeches that I had ever
heard. He said, "Well, if they gonna kill 'em, let
'em begin by killing me cause I'm walking out
here," and he walked to the door and raised up his hands, [and]
hollered, "All power to the people!" and came on out.
I was the last one to come out, and after we came out, the people in the
community wouldn't leave, that's the reason why
they wouldn't kill us. And a couple of 'em was
asking me to, cause we had to come out some winding stairs, and some of
them was keeping the police attention, a couple of them was telling me
to run under the house. And I think I could've made it if I
would have went under the house but I didn't. Many times
where I was sitting in jail I thought about what I shoulda did, but I
didn't. Cause I couldn't abandon my comrades, and
we went on, we left from there. They brought Ryan and I, we was the
biggest members of the party, made us go back in the house, and
that's when we really saw just how blessed we was, and what
we had survived. Then they took us from there straight to court. We was
all charged with five counts of attempt murder, and I don't
know why, to this day, why we was just charged with five counts. But we
was all charged with five counts for murder on police officers, and
after that arraignment, we was taken straight from there to Death Row.
And we stayed up on Death Row until after the second shoot-out.
Page 17
The second time, when they went to shoot out, it [was] probably cause as
soon as they took us to jail they re-opened the office. Out there,
Francois, my wife at that time Barbara, Carol, these sisters, and Crack,
Noels, Head , these was the brothers from out of the Calliope project.
Cause most of us had hung them projects. We had the only chapter of the
Black Panther Party that was basically made of ninety percent people
from out of public housing.
They re-opened the office. Now, Head and 'em, they was from
out of the Calliope. Shelly Baptiste, one of the most courageous black
men I ever had the privilege to be around, he was from out of the
Magnolia. So we had St. Bernard, Magnolia, the Desire, and we did things
that never happened before in the history of New Orleans, cause never
before had you ever had people from public housing going to another
housing development and do anything. Or even be accepted, but we was
embraced. And protected by residents from the Desire housing project,
when we only had two members then, and both of them joined while we was
in Desire—Brokie, he's deceased now, who was a
cook, and was able to cook his way into the party, because we had our
bunch of women, but none of 'em could cook. My ex-wife left
much to be desired at that time. But Brokie came in and he cooked, and
next thing you know he cooked his way into becoming a member.
We was all up on Death Row that night, and that was my first time I met
Moonlandrew cause that night, while we was all on Death Row, he came
around just to tour us. I can remember Ed telling him,
"Man," cause he wanted to say something to Ed, and Ed
told him, "Man, this ain't no damn zoo."
You know? And that was my first time ever seeing him.
Page 18
By that time, right before the second shootout, we had told Crack and
'em what they could expect, but Bread was with 'em
and Bread was the true essence of a guerilla. He was with the Black
Liberation Army. He was in there with 'em for the second
shoot-out. That's only time I remember the Panther Party here
in New Orleans was shot, a sister by the name of Betty Toussaint, the
second time. When they first tried to raid our office they came with a
battle tank. The city had bought a battle tank. So I said,
"Now, boy, here they bought a tank and there's
nothing but about, I mean, it was never over forty of us."
When they came to raid the second time, the community surrounded the
office. That's a picture of it, right there, and I always
keep that to remind me, you know? And they wouldn't allow
'em to raid the office. Cause they refused to move. And the
police was steady trying to force 'em to move, and that was
in the act of non-violence defiance, because we was hopin'
that all those young guys was gonna pick up guns, you know, but they
didn't. And they stood there, without guns, and stood before
the police, and said, "No, you ain't raiding our
office, you ain't going in there and destroy our community,
and if you going do it, first you gonna have to kill us." I
could remember sitting in my cells. "Man, what in the world is
wrong with those guys?" Boy, you know the police
don't kill 'em. But it forced them to wait
through.
Now they came in and raided the office, but they came in dressed as
priests. They had some priests from Loyola that had been working with us
off our free breakfast program. They was coming around, cooking food
with us and all this, and then