PROUD FLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness (2003)

ISSN: 1094-2254

PROUD FLESH Inter/Views: ELAINE BROWN

We rode with Elaine Brown. Up South. Upstate. I-81. We conducted this interview on the run. To the airport. Speeding, for sure. After she spoke, rocked mics and worlds. It seems she's always speaking, dropping science in a militant vernacular. We just finally pressed "record." There were questions worked out beforehand, but there was no place for such stiff formality among us. We give a nod to The Black Scholar's old-school. The Afrikan Revolution, continued. And say, "Free All Little B's!" Come ride with us…

PF: How do think your new book, The Condemnation of Little B (2002), has been received so far? We want as many people as possible to get with this work. But what's your impression?

EB: My book reviews are fabulous. The Washington Post and The L.A. Times were on it. I think they were. That Washington Post guy [Brian Gilmore] compares my book to The Souls of Black Folk [by W.E.B. Dubois], based on the concept of taking the story of Little B and then situating it so that it reflects the situation of Black people in America; talking about this transitional moment where you have this benign activity, as at the time of The Souls of Black Folk, with the Black elite abandoning... He picked up on all those things.

One of the reviewers at Publisher's Weekly predicted this was not going to be the quick commercial success. Black Issues put it out as one of their favorite books of non-fiction for this year. So that was nice. I think that it's a book that will just keep on going and get studied in universities. It will become a text, more than just a commercial book, which is fine with me. It's gonna get taught. That's far more important to me. People will look at it as a study piece. I'm not Terry McMillan. There's a place for everybody. It hasn't been commercially un successful. It sells at Border's Books and all those places. Every time there's some little Black History Month thing, it'll be there. It'll be re-issued. In Atlanta people know this book pretty well.

I was so honored by this comparison with The Souls of Black Folk, obviously. I know that I wrote the shit out that book. I worked on it. I meant to bring into play all the things that I had been wanting to talk about; to give a correct analysis of where we are now in America, Black people in America. We fought back and forth on calling this book New Age Racism in America. But I wanted to call it The Condemnation of Little B. I like Little B. I like the word Condemnation. I like everything about it. You'll see when it comes out in paperback, it'll have the subtitle "New Age Racism in America."

PF: The title hits us right off with some serious Fanonism: The Condemned. The Damned. The Wretched. We see this on every other page, explicitly. You work with all the translations! Was this strategic or simply second-nature thanks to BPP political education classes?

EB: Of course! I certainly did it unconsciously. It's absolutely true that The Wretched of the Earth was our Bible at the time. Fanon talks not only about Algeria, he sets up a situation to talk about the whole colonized world. I love this word Wretched. You're right in terms of my own sense of things. I take this stuff very seriously. You have to operate at various levels obviously (intellectual, academic, theoretical and so forth). But when I see these battered girls trying to get out of prison, this girl who has kids with "toxic mold," and the young woman Shawntello Young, who I write about in my book (her baby died choking on a roach), this is incredible when we think about it. If we don't remember what we're having a discussion about, we'll get lost in rhetoric. So the word Condemnation, having to do with The Wretched of the Earth and our people and the condition of our people, it goes to that. Yeah, I was impressed by Fanon's language. I didn't necessarily do it consciously. It's just part of you!

Language is very important to me, by the way. I'm looking for the word. Flaubert was the mentor of Guy de Maupassant. He used to tell him: "Just don't let any word do." Spend time on saying what you really mean. A friend of mine, Calvin Hernton, my mentor, used to say: "Don't just be sloppy. Is this really saying exactly what you want?" That's where I'm coming from. These words are important, so you feel this. I took copious notes, of course, on the conversations that I had with Michael ["Little B" Lewis]. It's some heavy stuff when you think about it. Right? Always getting you back to remember where we're going with this. This is what we're talking about, this boy; and this boy represents millions.

PF: Talk to us about that New York Times exchange between you and Alice Walker? They had the nerve to call it, "Black Panthers or Black Punks?" (May 5, 1993: A23). Your response to her homophobic condemnation was really amazing: "Can we not unite in revolutionary love? Can we come to understanding and embrace before we are no more? We, Africans lost in America still trying to decide on our name when we still don't have a place to be." Doesn't this piece prefigure your work on "New Age Racism," given Walker's use of Gloria Steinem's Revolution from Within (1992)?

EB: She was so vicious! What was that about? What's the real issue here? I'm always going back to the core issue which is really The Wretched of the Earth, as you say. That's where I'm starting from, from day one. If we're talking, that's what I'm talking about. All the other shit really doesn't matter. I talked to you about this girl and her babies sitting up in toxic mold. So now how does that all relate to the freedom of these people? That's the consistent thread. So it's not really about Alice Walker. It's that you had the unmitigated gall to use your name to attack this Party, in such a vicious way too. It was not even necessary. I ain't seen you take nobody else to task like that. You have people like Bush. You could have been cutting him, slicing him up. But you choose to mess with the Black Panther Party, this book that David Hilliard wrote about his experience of going through the hell he went through as a drug addict, and you gon give it some spin like it's a meaningful dialogue. It's not meaningful. You have forgotten what the point was. Now, that's not to say: "Oh, if a brother beats a woman, I ain't gon call no cop. If I get beat by my Poppa..." That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the basis for the analysis has to be, "Where am I going with this?"

This isn't about Alice Walker or Gloria Steinem. You're right, thematically. It does go to the themes of the book. They have abandoned all principles with respect to "feminism" and "women's issues." They're not about "women's issues." The African women ran her out of Paris with her "clitoridectomy" stuff. You know what they told her? "Stay out of the vaginas of African women!" I'm not making this up. It was a cold statement! They had their own kinds of issues. I'm saying that "feminism," assuming this word, which I don't assume (let's just call it that for now, women's liberation, the liberation of all human beings), is part of my agenda. If you take their analysis, as strict analysis, you can end up having a woman like Condoleezza Rice. So they are incorrect in their ideological commitment. Condoleezza Rice would be the ultimate Black feminist icon. So they're wrong. They don't even want to deal with women and children. It isn't a lesbianism. It's an anti-maleism. They're not loving women. They're hating men; and that's alright. But that's not revolutionary activity. It's not even progressive. You just a mad bitch, for whatever reasons. Like I had this girl come up to me and ask if we should enslave white people; I said, "Are you crazy? Are you serious?" And that's how they see it. I'm not against men. I like men from a variety of standpoints. But I'm not looking at them, per se, categorically, as men. That would be like saying, "I don't like all white people," when I know that the people who were our oppressors were white. I can't even go there with you. So how am I gon categorically talk about white people any more than I can about men? But these people are anti-men, I mean to the point where it's almost shocking. So when I criticize Alice Walker, it isn't really about Alice Walker. It is about the fact that you are not really committed to the ideology you claim to be committed to. What you've ended up doing is so much damage; and it comes from a subjective place. It doesn't come from a real compassion and an interest in our people, and the people of the world.

In other words, I am concerned. How you going to be sitting up here talking like you not concerned about the children of Iraq? That's like saying, "Well, okay, the Arabs were our first oppressors," which they were; which is why I tell the people, "How are you going to tell me that Islam is a Black religion? What the hell you talking about?" If it wasn't for the Christians, they'd have continued to beat our ass. The only difference was the European Christians kicked their ass. So it was just some vicious, ruthless motherfuckers walking around kicking each other's ass and we kept taking the brunt of that shit. So my position on that is I don't want to hear nothing about Islam being the religion of Black people. It's the religion of some Arabs who just walked through the majority of Africa; and they set up those slave routes. When we talk about reparations, I'm looking for money from here; I'm looking for money from Ghana; and then I'm going to Kuwait. As a matter of fact, Kuwait might be the first one I go to! But am I gon now legitimize the killing of children in Iraq behind my understanding of all that? I'm not. Because I know on principle it's still wrong.

So that's my point about Alice Walker. It is like being a Black person and saying, "Well, all these white people make me sick; I hate crackers," which is fine. You can say that shit on a personal level. But you can't build an agenda on that; and you can't try to legitimize your personal, subjective anger and rage and call that an act of revolution. Cause it's not.

PF: You promote a "sexual politics" that is not basically bourgeois, in other words?

EB: There is state violence, that these women don't deal with. They build a whole movement on hating men, having no other ideology, and then will defend Clinton! Why, it was just incredible to me that Gloria Steinem would defend him. He done put this child all up under the desk. She gon write a piece. Keep it in the context of Monica Lewinsky, the little narrow moment. Here is "The President of the United States." What could be more bizarre than him having her up there sucking his dick and using that little girl the way he did. They didn't even support Monica. I would have supported Monica if I followed their little line. They're not even consistent in their own shit, is what I mean. If they had been consistent, they would have at least denounced him for exploiting a young girl. Isn't that deep? Think about it.

PF: Many readers seem stunned by your exposé: Clinton, as a "New Age 'Massah,'" married to a "New Age Miss Ann," worse for Black people than Reagan and Bush I combined. Does this surprise you or simply prove your point?

EB: Oh, he bamboozled these niggers. Let me tell you something. When I tell Black people, "I know a lot of Negroes love Clinton," they go: "Yeah, I was one of them." But they don't want to admit it. That's why I talk hard, too. Sometimes, people don't hear. In my book, I have all kinds of stuff going on. But spoken word is obviously different. Each forum is different. For me, I have to tell these people: "That's right. That was 'Master Clinton.'" Now, I done cut all through your shit. You should have seen it in the beginning when I used to talk about Colin Powell. But now they got it. Before, people would be like: "Gosh, he's been on Ebony magazine covers. He's a great guy. We're so proud." You know, Juan Williams actually said that. I put that in my book. I called his ass out, too. You know he needed to be slapped. They got on me about it. But when you look at the principle, then you'll understand everything I'm saying. I don't care nothing about Juan Williams when I'm looking at Little B. Right now, while we're in this car, having this nice conversation, he sitting up in the joint. Okay? He's on store restriction for 180 days. That's 6 months. He ain't gon get no little Christmas packages this year, again. So he's sitting up there in a prison right now while Juan Williams is having a debate about some shit or Cornel West or whoever these motherfuckers are. It's not that I don't care about them. It's that they're not relating to what is the core issue, in my understanding of what should be the core issue should be: The Wretched of the Earth. The Condemned. The Damned. Our People. The Oppressed. As long as they not relating to that, and they betray that!?! See, if they just sat on the sidelines in a nice university and did some economic studies on some shit, I'd say: "Okay." But they actively go out and fuck us up. Here's Juan Williams denouncing Coretta King for opposing the war in Iraq, talking bout she should be proud of Colin Powell. Actually saying this shit! Having a voice in The Washington Post to say it. The three niggers that can't get at The Washington Post, all of them supposed to be talking bout revolution, some kinda way slipping some shit in. Now we realize they can't come out and say, "Let's take down the government." But they should be gearing shit.

PF: Spooking? We must give props for these new formulations: "New Age House Negro," "New Age House Negress," "New Age Nigger Driver!" But they should be spooking. Right?

EB: There you go. They should be spooking. Instead, what they're doing is not only adhering to the agenda, they're promoting it, the agenda that is oppressing our people; and that is why they have to be taken to task. They're in the way. We need Juan Williams's slot for you or me. We need somebody up in there that's gon write some shit. At least let's have a Black Bob Woodward. The white folks have Woodward and Bernstein. They at least did something with their time there. They exposed some shit that was happening. You think these niggers would have once. He could have printed or reprinted Gary Webb's San Jose Mercury piece.

PF: So folk in "Chocolate City" could read about it, C.I.A. crack dealing!

EB: He could have promoted that! But instead he gon denounce Coretta King and talk about, "We should promote Colin Powell." You see my point? It's a principle question. Remember, the whole book is about Michael. Howard Zinn [author of A People's History of the United States: From 1492 to Present] said he could not believe that a person could write a book about a thirteen-year old boy, who hasn't lived long enough for a book to be written. Until he read it!

PF: Evelyn Williams, aunt and lawyer of Assata Shakur, and author of Inadmissible Evidence: The Story of the African-American Trial Lawyer Who Defended the Black Liberation Army (1993), has written: "I believe that all African-Americans prisoners are political prisoners, whether or not they label themselves as such, because of the circumstances that got them into jail as well as the harshness of sentencing applied only to them." Do you share this position?

EB: Absolutely. No question. I say that all the time when people tell me, "Free Mumia!" I say: "Free all political prisoners and every last one of them in there." I've said this many times. I always say it. Especially when they roll up like Mumia [Abu-Jamal] is the only issue on the planet. Right? When Geronimo [ji Jaga] was in prison, people said to me, "Well, how do you feel about that?" I said: "I want to see Geronimo out of prison; I want to see Mumia out of prison; then I want to see all the other political prisoners." As far as I'm concerned, all Black people that are in prison, as a matter of fact, the entire prison population, are political prisoners. Because it's a set-up.

Let's talk about dope, the drug crimes, the drug possession crimes. It just goes on and on. That's the latest wave of it, that's adding to the others. The George Jacksons. Why do you roll up in a store just to take $80? Because you don't have anything. So my attitude, as I say, is: "I'm all about being a thief." I think it's an act of revolution to go and steal from these motherfuckers. As a matter of fact, I think it's almost reactionary to have goddamn job! When the roll is called and the shit goes down, which side are you jumping on? I think you gon be on the side of "Massah." That's who's paying your check. So that's why I say even getting a check might be a reactionary activity, in that way. See, "thug life" is a political life for me. That's a political statement cause these niggers choose not to kiss too much crack.

Yeah, I think everybody in prison is a political prisoner. I have trouble with the child molesters. But then I say, I understand they were probably hurting. We'd have to repair them. They'd have to definitely get a re-education program. But I also say that America created this ambience. The whole puritanical sexual orientation has fucked up people. That's why there's so much sexual abuse in this country. They create this ambience. You just don't have this many people doing this kind of shit everywhere in the world. There's a uniqueness to this situation here. How are you gonna have prisoners when you have a paradigm that is reactionary? We can't tell who should be punished anymore. If we were to go by laws, we would have to put Bush and them in prison right away. They are murderers.

PF: Mass murderers!

EB: Mass murderers on top of that.

PF: Now, how is Michael, Little B? What's happened with his appeal?

EB: There's been no appeal. I'm trying to raise the money. I'm looking for money for Michael. I support him and do all that stuff with my own money. I have a lawyer. It's a long story. I have $18,000 out of $25,000. I found this other woman. She's going to help with the appeal. I'm just trying to piece together the appeal process. See, he's not really in appeal. Technically he's never had a motion for a new trial heard, which is actually good. That's where we are legally. Once I pay this guy the last of the money, he will begin to file for a hearing on the motion for a new trial, based on incompetence [that is, the incompetence of defense lawyer Gary Guichard].

PF: At this point, can we see a certain political consciousness developing in Michael, Little B? You mentioned once that he wanted to rap; and we've all heard jail or prison defined as "Black Man's College."

EB: It's sad. You really can't do very much. They don't really have many resources at that prison. But one day (and I wrote down the date and have this recorded, because I said to myself, "Wow!"), he said to me: "Say, do you know this guy Fidel Castro? I wanna meet that guy. I wanna go to Cuba. I wanna meet that guy because he's the only person that stood up to this country." I said, "You like that?" He said, "Yeah."

Another thing he said was, "You see how this crackers do, don't you? Remember when Farrakhan was trying to get that money from Quaddafi? They wouldn't even let him." I said, "Wait a minute, where are you learning this!?!"

So then he tells me, "You know, I know why I'm in here. You know why I'm in here? It's like Coca-Cola. They'll go to the government and say, "We'll make a jail for you if you just pay us some money. Then Coca-Cola will put up the money for the jail. But then they have to fill it up; and they find people like me to put in it." He said that shit, just in the language that I'm saying it in.

That day his sister [Ta-Ta] and I were like, "Whoa!" Because he went on for like an hour about everything. All of sudden, he understood. "I know why I'm in here," he tells you. "I didn't kill that man." But I told him from the get-go, I don't care if he didn't. Here's my bottom line.

PF: It's immaterial, powerfully immaterial. Doesn't The Condemnation of Little B, like George Jackson's Soledad Brother(1970), make it clear that what we're dealing with is Neo-Slavery?

EB: Yeah, yeah. I told Michael, "Don't work." That's it. That's the other thing. When Huey was in prison, he said he would work if he got paid the minimum wage, or at least he'd consider working! But since they weren't paying him minimum wage, he was not working. Michael started out by saying, "They want me to clean some pots and pans. I don't wanna clean no pots and pans." I said, "You don't want to? You better not! I'm telling you not to do it [Laughing]. I would be upset if you do it [Laughing]." So then I tell him about Huey; and I tell him why he shouldn't do it. They're not paying you to work. If you were being paid for you labor, then I would say you have to make some decisions about that. At least they'd be paying the minimum wage for work time. But you're being asked to work and clean the prison for free. The other element is that the taxpayers of the state of Georgia are paying approximately $25,000-$30,000 a year to keep you in prison. And part of the deal is the prisons get cleaned. So that's all the little fees. There's maintenance, guards, food, and so forth and so on. So I feel like they're getting double return on this. Not only are the taxpayers of the state of Georgia paying to clean the prisons, but they want you to do the free labor. So where's the maintenance money going? There's that bigger issue. But as for you as a young man, trying to hold onto your humanity: "Hell no! You better not work."

So he just didn't work anymore. He just refused to do it. But nobody bothered him until this one guy in the new prison, Phillips (Michael got moved out of Alpo earlier this year), tells him: "Lewis, get over here and clean these toilets!" He said: "Clean it yourself. I don't clean toilets. I'm like Huey Newton. I work if I get paid the minimum wage." They put him in the hole. He can handle it now. Let me tell you. He is not scared. I told him: "Look, all you gotta do is hold on. Do not let yourself fall into any of the institutionalizations. Don't let them kill you. If you can take the hole, take the hole. But don't let them kill you." I called up the head of the facility, a Black man who likes to think he's a Brother. He says, "Well, you know, we can require prisoners to work." I said, "Well, let me put it like this: You in constant violation of the 13th Amendment in my opinion. I'll start encouraging everybody in the whole goddamn system not to work. The whole prison will shut down."

It's like Bob Dylan says, "They say sing while you slave and I just get bored." You want me to be in prison and then be happy and content to do work in the prison? Work that promotes the prison? You want me to clean the prison so you can keep me in it? Hell motherfucking no!

PF: Well, we don't have to ask if you still sing songs of liberation. After your talk at SUNY-Binghamton, you took to a piano in the corner and started banging! We had introduced you with a Hip-Hop line from Lil' Kim ("Queen Bitch") & Styles P: "They say: 'You too violent.' I say: 'You too silent.'" You dropped two LPs of hardcore lyricism yourself. Correct?

EB: You can find them? Have you heard them?

PF: Yes, Seize The Time! (Vault, 1969) and Elaine Brown (Motown/Black Forum, 1973) are actually auctioned on eBay quite a bit.

EB: I love those albums. I'm proud of that shit!

[Singing]

"Have you ever stood/In the darkness of night/Screaming silently/You're a man? Have you ever thought/That a time would come/When your voice would be heard/In a new nation? Have you waited for so long/To your unheard song/And stripped away your very soul? Well, then/Believe it, my friend/That this silence can end/We'll just have to get guns/And be men."

PF: You wrote an Atlanta Journal-Constitution piece on Imam Jamil Al-Amin, formerly H. Rap Brown, called "Black Panther Party Long Victimized by Campaign of Lies" (March 25, 2000). Hasn't this same state campaign spread through academia as well?

EB: Exactly. It's the same thing I say about this business of, "Let's discuss Martin Luther King and whether or not he had a white woman the night before he was killed." What you do is take away from the core issues. You haven't studied King. You haven't found that these people seriously study that last year of his life when he became so radical. He reached the point of certainly being a revolutionary in ideology, talking about redistribution of wealth, as far as I'm concerned.

The people who have the duty to straighten this out are the academics, and the Black academics in particular. That's why I have to go after the Williams Julius Wilsons, and all those people, because they have a duty to set the record straight, to clear the history, make it relevant, to bring these pieces together. You should be talking about what was the relevance of that "Poor People's Campaign" to today's issues. You shouldn't be telling me about Martin Luther King sleeping with a white woman. First of all, it's not even academic work. It's just a gossip piece.

PF: What are your thoughts then when you hear talk about a "split" within the Black Panther Party? Or accusations that "Elaine Brown" and "God-Knows-Who-Else" were FBI "agents" even? Unfortunately, there's an underlying anti-Huey agenda in Kathleen Cleaver's otherwise valuable collection Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party (2000). Is this COINTELPRO continuing to work still?

EB: Do you understand how powerful what you just said is? Of course. It is a continuation. It's the same thing with any of these people that do this: these other, ex-Panthers and former and never-were and would-have-been and might-have-been and knew-somebody-who-was Panthers. These things do continue the agenda of COINTLEPRO. J. Edgar Hoover reaches back from the grave.

When people ask me about Kathleen, I just pass on that. If anybody ever asks me (and they don't) about the so-called "split" (I always say the so-called "split"), I say what the Party said in our newspaper. This is what David Hilliard and I try to do, to bring people back to the context, the time period and what was written. It doesn't matter what I say. It doesn't matter what Kathleen says. Let's go get the newspapers. Let's identify the issues. Well, the issue was that Eldridge Cleaver decided that the Black Panther Party had become "reformist," or some word to this effect, which was really quite inappropriate or an inaccurate description. Huey had said we are not only going to de-emphasize the gun, we're going to give greater emphasis to the survival programs. So Eldridge is wrong on point. Remember, this is an ideological and a principled issue. He was sitting in Algeria doing whatever he was doing, which was really nothing at all. Our organization was saying, "You have to stop saying this stuff." He comes on a national broadcast and says that the Party is reformist, denouncing the Party; and that he represents the "left-wing." So we said you don't represent any wing; you're not in the Party; you're just now out; you're expelled: you, your wife and everybody that follows you. And that's when we got into this debate. So it's not a question of if there was a wing or a tendency or a movement or anything because that would mean you could take over; and they didn't. There was no "they." So you represent the Eldridge Cleaver party? That's alright. But identify yourself. Don't try to say you represent some wing of the Black Panther Party because when you denounced the Party, you were expelled. What you came to represent is your organization and you didn't seem to make one.

Kathleen didn't have anything to do with the BLA [Black Liberation Army]. Nothing. First of all, she wasn't gonna pick up the gun anyway but for TV cameras. That's just on a basic level. She ain't Assata. Now Eldridge, remember, is sitting in Algeria and ain't doing shit. Him and Kathleen got maids and stuff while they out here telling these niggers to blow up buildings and shit!

Eldridge wasn't about nothing anyway. He ain't no hero or nothing. He announced his own participation in a shoot-out, alleged participation in a shout-out, in San Francisco in Hunter's Point. That's his whole claim to fame, thirty-five years ago. What had he done since he'd been sitting in Africa? Nothing. All they can do is sit in the wind somewhere whining about their irrelevance because of Huey Newton. That's it. Where were you going? If you don't know, you really don't have an ideological base, any community base, any organizational base. You not no revolutionary. You just a murder-mouthing, unsuccessful thug. That's my position: What do you represent? What do you represent? "I used to be in this Party for ten minutes and I was involved in a shoot-out." We were all involved in stuff. But we continued to stay in the organization. Now what made the organization relevant? This is what Huey talked about. He said Eldridge defected from the Party but the Party had defected from the Black community. For me, the real question is what is the correct analysis of some type of revolutionary struggle. You can measure then what the rest of this is about.

What is it that Kathleen is talking about? They went to Algeria. Why did they go to Algeria? They went to Algeria because Eldridge was kicked out of Cuba. Why was he kicked out of Cuba? Because he was screwing everybody in Cuba and insulting Castro and everything. They literally asked him to leave. The choices he had were Albania and Algeria. Those were the only places that were going to take his ass. Nobody wanted him. Bob Shear, all his little white radical friends, were the ones who arranged this. What's that got to do with the Black Panther Party and the base of struggle? That's just some swashbuckling story you wanna tell the rest of the world. When he goes to Algeria, he gets lucky and meets the North Koreans. He tells Kim Il Sung's people that he's going to publish all of Kim Il Sung's work; and they finance him. Every single person he brought there was not Black except me. That's the other thing she has to wrestle with. She wasn't a part of that contingency. She was sitting in North Korea having this second baby that he was accusing her of having with somebody else.

He tries to make himself relevant by creating this so-called "International Section." What did the "International Section" do? Absolutely nothing. This was all self-serving. What are they doing? What are they accomplishing? They're going to build an assault team in Algeria? To do what? They insulted everybody that we met. Absolutely shameful. When we fire them, they have no legitimacy anymore. The Algerians kicked them out; the Koreans kicked them out, because they didn't represent anything. That's why. So then they run to Paris. Well, there's a revolutionary act! And they're just really hanging on. He's screwing everybody, beating her up in Paris. This is just their little life. What has this to do with the Black Panther Party? You can't legitimize that.

Then we get into the really heavy stuff with the cod-piece pants. Then we get into, you know, "I saw Jesus in the moon." Remember that? Then he became a Moonie. Then he became a Republican. He came back to the United States. Next thing we know is that they were escorted back by the FBI. This is ironic that you would be saying anything about me! He was escorted back on the plane, not arrested but escorted. He goes to Washington D.C. later on and testifies before Congress that the Black Panther Party started that fight with the police in 1968 that he ran from; and he was never re-arrested for that case. Let's look at facts. Let's not talk about what I think. Let's ask a question: What was your husband doing before the United States Senate, denouncing the party and avoiding and evading prison? "Killer" Wells was sitting up in prison; David [Hilliard] was sitting up in prison; and he's sitting there talking about the Party had instigated that incident and, as a result, never went to prison. You're on the road with G. Gordy Liddy! I'm not making this stuff up. The audacity of these people saying this stuff about me is just so funny. That's why I don't even care about it. The record is there. They have to live with the record, not me. Her father was in the State Department, on the ambassadorial staff in the Philippines.

There was only one Party and the Party had a structure. Now you didn't have to belong to that Party. But if you claimed to be in it then you were under that structure; and that structure operated out of the Central Committee, where the Party's base was, which was Oakland, California. You have to know that there was not a "split." If you say there was a "split," then that means that they were two groups in the Party. There were not. The Party could only be one organization. Those people who chose to leave with Eldridge left. The party moved on. Bobby Seale was in the Black Panther Party. They want to historically re-write that. You can't re-write that. They want to claim George [Jackson] but they have to fix him up. See? So that's how they end up with me. I'm the easiest one. But I'm not the one! Just like I survived Eldridge, this ain't nothing.

I'm not going to be playing with these people anymore. I'm still principled when I'm asked about these people. I said what I had to say in my book. That book was about my life and the evolution of one Black woman. It was a slave narrative, as far as I'm concerned. It was a slave narrative. It was my book about my life and how I saw things. It was not the history of the Black Panther Party. It was a view from my perspective, but, there weren't any lies in it. The libel lawyers went crazy with me on that [Ron] Karenga thing. They were like, "Oh, no. We can't say this shit." So I said, "No, we're going to say this shit." I virtually said that Karenga was an agent. I was hoping for a lawsuit; I didn't get it. Kathleen was just upset, for whatever reason, but really I don't even care. I'm not going to allow them to trick me down into that place with them. I don't debate this, publicly. I do not debate this. I'm not gonna give them that much credit. But I will shut that shit down when you say I'm an agent. That part really upsets me.

Yes, of course, it's a continuation of COINTELPRO.

PF: Okay, is there a movie being made of A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story (1992)?

EB: Yes. Ask Suzanne de Passe what year that is going to happen. I need to call about that right now. I'm a little upset about it, about the fact that there's been nothing done with respect to it. But, in theory: Yes. I've talked to Jada Pinkett [who's slated to star in the film]. She and I hit it off. She's pretty cool.

PF: Finally, a lot of folk approach "movement memoirs" as "one-hit wonders" of the book world. You certainly break this mold in myriad ways. What will your next work be on?

EB: Black love.

Appendix: The Cast of New Age Racism

© 2003 Africa Resource Center, Inc.