My People Are Rising Read online

  “Aaron, you’re going to have to get a job or go to college. You can’t be sitting around here all day,” Mommy said while sweeping the living room. Even though I was eighteen and now a high school graduate, I still pretty much respected my parents’ words. I knew I was going to have to do something. But what, I did not know.

  Without school and without a job, I had no sense of direction or purpose. Leroy Fair, one of the fastest football players in the neighborhood, and I had signed up to crew on a survey ship that traveled from Seattle to Hawaii and Alaska, but Poppy would not let me go. This made me terribly distraught. It would have been a childhood dream come true, an opportunity to travel the high seas and explore exotic, exciting new places. It seemed that every time I reached for a dream, either suddenly or gradually it disappeared from my grasp, leaving me empty and unfulfilled.

  Slowly, I began to go into a deep retreat. I spent many lonely days walking the beaches of Lake Washington, sometimes in the rain, feeling empty and purposeless, yet sensing there was something in the distance, on the horizon, waiting to fill up my life. But I could not find any answers or guidance. Searching within, I only ran into my inner anger, my inner rage that also seemed directionless.

  Joanne got married to a cat named Curtis Harris, who used to hang out at the Madrona basketball courts—he had a hell of an outside shot. In the meantime, Joanne moved out and Mommy and Poppy let me move into her room, which I appreciated, as I was finding that I needed more time to be alone.

  Some days I just lay on the bed, thinking, contemplating, sometimes gazing out the window at the cold, light-blue mountains of the Cascades. Slowly I began to write down my thoughts. The thoughts turned into poems, and the poems began to fill up pages. Mommy and Poppy bought a new hi-fi and gave me the old one, and I started listening to a song I had heard Poppy play, “My Favorite Things” as recorded by John Coltrane. The rhythmic sounds of McCoy Tyner on piano and the melodic play of Coltrane on soprano sax seemed to touch a deep, inner part of my self. I borrowed more records from Mommy and Poppy, and even bought my own jazz records, listening to more Miles Davis and more Coltrane. The sweet, haunting sound of Miles in Sketches of Spain seemed to hold a hidden message, a profound piece of information that I somehow had to transcribe, translate, in order to move on with my life. I spent my days writing and listening, listening and writing, coupled with lonely walks, trying to decode the confusion, trying to understand the world and the endless, confounding contradictions in our society.

  At times I seemed to be sinking into an abyss, a bottomless pit of despair and sadness, sometimes crying for no evident reason. The idea of death became a close companion, and I began writing about it, wondering about it, about the other side, wondering if that was where I belonged. Maybe there, in eternity, I could make the connection, decode the signals, find myself, find out who in the hell Aaron was and what he was doing here on earth.

  That summer I signed up for a part-time job with a theater group presenting skits that dealt with stereotypes. The theater group was one of the poverty programs initiated by President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. I worked with actors around my age, putting on improv skits with characters we created such as slaves, watermelon-eating coons, white racists, uppity Negroes, and Uncle Toms. Calling ourselves The Walking Stereotypes, we performed all over town at community centers and for other poverty programs. I enjoyed doing those improv skits immensely. After they ended I started hanging out with Aaron Dumas, a playwright and one of the actors from the group. He was three or four years older than me and had written several plays. A smallish, round-shouldered brother with bug eyes and a goatee, Dumas looked like a young version of the playwright LeRoi Jones.

  Dumas’ first play, General’s Coup, was about a Black revolt led by a mad Black Nationalist general, who stormed the White House with his troops, and his son, who was also his lieutenant. Dumas played the role of the general and I played his son. The lieutenant son was the voice of reason trying to convince the mad general that it was not necessary to kill all the whites, particularly a young white girl befriended by the lieutenant. Toward the end of the play the general is near insanity, while the son tries to control his father’s rage. On our own, we performed this play all over Seattle, on university campuses, in coffeehouses, and at community events. Sometimes Dumas got carried away performing the fight scenes. At times he jumped off the stage and pretended to attack whites in the audience, yelling, “Kill all the honkies!” as I tried to hold him back.

  Dumas and I became good friends, spending our free time listening to Eric Dolphy, Gene Ammons, Alice Coltrane, and Yusef Lateef, often discussing the musicians and their personal histories. Dumas knew a lot about jazz and the musicians who played it. Jazz seemed to contain so much within its chords. Listening closely I could make out words and hear stories of lost loves, hopes and dreams.

  After we finished with General’s Coup, we presented another play by Dumas, this one about an interracial affair, a topic extremely rare in 1960s theater. This time, we recruited other actors for the production. Our group was the forerunner of Black Arts/West, Seattle’s first Black theater company (formed later, in 1969). Through my work with Dumas, I also got a part in the play Tom Jones with a small professional theater company in town, run by a white woman who lived in a Victorian house. I found that I enjoyed performing onstage. Even more, I enjoyed writing, and decided that someday I would go off to New York and become a famous playwright like LeRoi Jones—later known as Amiri Baraka—whose plays and books I had seen and read.

  That September, three of my high school friends—Chester, Tony, and Courtney—and I were recruited for a new program, sponsored by the Urban League, designed to help Black students get into the University of Washington. They provided full scholarships, part-time employment, and tutors. A Jewish woman, Mrs. Richman, whose daughter had graduated from Garfield in my class, ran the program. This opportunity came along right after I had received a rejection letter from Tennessee State, where Poppy’s sister Aunt Doris had graduated. I had thought I would go there, but my GPA was not high enough. Everyone I knew who went to college had gone away to Black colleges and universities; I had always thought I would get my higher education on an all-Black campus, like Tennessee State. Although I was disappointed, it seemed it was not meant to be.

  When we started in September 1967 at the University of Washington, there were only thirty Black students. And it wasn’t long before my three buddies dropped out. Sometimes, as I walked through the campus that fall, I was on cloud nine. I could hardly believe I was there. It was picturesque, with the leaves changing colors and all the big, drooping trees. When I walked into my English class, I was surprised to see Mrs. Hundley from Garfield. I was really glad to see her because, with the exception of Mrs. Green, my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Hundley was the only teacher who had truly believed in my abilities. Finally, everything was working out. Mommy and Poppy were very supportive and loving. College actually seemed easier than high school. My GPA was higher than it had ever been in high school, and I met a girl, Brenda Dunge, who became my first real love. Originally from Ohio, Brenda was a senior at Franklin High School, and sometimes she came to the UW campus to surprise me.

  I continued writing poetry, improving with each new poem. Soon I was participating in poetry readings around town and won second place, including a $500 scholarship, in a Links Arts program. When the Watts Writers Workshop, a group of extremely gifted writers, came up from Los Angeles to do readings and workshops, I was the only local poet they asked to read with them. Slowly I began to fill up some of the emptiness inside—writing had become my lifeline. Gradually I began to see my possibilities, my hopes and dreams, coming to fruition.

  For my sociology class I had to write a term paper. With the help of my tutor and advisor, Dr. Bodemer, I decided to write a paper on Malcolm X. I spent many days with Dr. Bodemer, a short, stocky, gregarious white doctor who taught at the UW Medical School. He taught me the fine art of research, compil
ing information and organizing that information in a structured manner in order to create a finished product. I met with him at his home in Madrona, becoming good friends with his wife and young kids, and developing a friendship with this easygoing doctor.

  For the first time I learned about Malcolm X in depth—his difficulties while growing up, his transformation from thug to righteous militant, and his powerful speeches on the racism of white America. I read about his further transformation upon traveling in the Middle East and how he returned with a broader perspective on the world as whole, rather than only Black America. I was enthralled with Malcolm and his dedication to making the uneven even.

  Writing that paper on Malcolm X created a desire in me to know more about the plight of Black people. In junior high and high school I had learned absolutely nothing about Blacks, other than that we had been slaves. I remember how embarrassed I felt every time a history textbook opened up and there was a picture of a slave in tattered clothing, looking lost and disheveled, helpless and hopeless. These images did not correspond to the strength and confidence I experienced in my family and the Black community. I couldn’t believe these few images of slaves represented the sum total of the historical Black experience in America. I would slide down in my chair, wishing I could disappear. Or, when the class was mostly Black, someone might crack a joke about the pictures.

  I began to read James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Julius Lester, and others—books such as Baldwin’s Blues for Mr. Charlie and Notes of a Native Son, The Spook Who Sat by the Door by Sam Greenlee, and Nigger by Dick Gregory. Some days I went up to the little Garvey Bookstore on 23rd and Union to browse for some good Black books. I sat with the proprietor, Mrs. Daisy Boyetta, and listened to her stories about Marcus Garvey and her involvement with the Garvey Movement when she was young. Garvey was America’s first true Black Nationalist, active in the 1910s and ’20s. His movement focused primarily on empowering Black people, and advocated for Black people in America ultimately to return to Africa. I knew very little about that history. Daisy Boyetta was like an old griot, sitting in her little bookshop surrounded by pictures of Marcus Garvey and other Black leaders. She could sense that something was coming, that Blacks were getting ready for the next big push for social justice. Like many Black young seekers who came to her store, I sat quietly, listening to this little old Black lady with her short natural haircut. There was a bitterness about her. Maybe it was disappointment about the unfulfilled potential of the Garvey Movement. Maybe it was the unceasing fight against racism. Maybe it was her own unresolved personal issues. But through these conversations with us young people, she could reinvigorate herself, discussing the injustices committed by the white man and suggesting ideas to counter these injustices.

  Some of the older Black students on campus, including Larry Gossett, were starting up a Black student organization at the UW and asked if I would be interested in joining. Larry Gossett had been a basketball star at Franklin High School, one of Garfield’s rivals. I began attending meetings of the organization, soon to be called the Black Student Union (BSU). I listened to long discussions about Stokely and Martin Luther King Jr., about Blackness and what it meant, and about the direction of the movement to change America.

  The BSU also sponsored guest lecture sessions with out-of-town speakers. One of these lecturers was a young city councilman from Berkeley, Ron Dellums. He was the most engaging Black radical I had met, and he carried himself in such a distinguished manner. There was also a sense of urgency in his talks, as if he were prepping us for an as-yet-undefined mission. Berkeley seemed to be a place on the verge of a social and political transformation. We were always energized when Dellums came to the campus. I and the others around me gradually shed our young, soft skins and began to grow a new, stronger covering, developing a new way of thinking, which energized us with purpose, moving toward a mission even though we didn’t yet know what this mission would be. Sometimes I felt as if Dellums were speaking directly to me.

  Elmer also began to make a transformation, as did so many other youth. We started hanging around each other again. He left behind his skateboard and sandals, David Booth and Mark Sprague. He had continued playing the trumpet and was by now quite accomplished. I can take partial credit for that because I was always playing Hugh Masekela records while he was practicing, and after a while Masekela, the great African trumpeter, could be heard coming out of Elmer’s horn, giving him a unique sound compared to the other trumpet players around town. It seemed that everybody who could play an instrument was in a band, and it wasn’t long before Elmer had his own group. They were called the Regents, with Biggy Lewis on guitar and Dennis Blackmon on keyboards, Gary Hammon on tenor sax, and Ralph Brooks on drums. These cats were one hell of a band. Most would go on to make names for themselves. As a matter of fact, the Central District was loaded with great musicians. There must have been eight or ten bands in the area, each with its own unique sound. I sometimes traveled with Elmer’s band on their gigs and developed a close friendship with the sax player, Gary Hammon. He went out and got a soprano sax and started teaching me how to play. Sometimes we would go to a dusty, funky little jazz club, both of us carrying our saxes. While Gary played a few numbers, I wished for the day that I would get good enough to sit in.

  Even so, my lifelong love of music and my newfound passion for writing and the theater were slowly giving way to my studies and the demands of the BSU. Elmer and his classmate Anthony Ware organized the first high school BSU in the Northwest at Garfield. SNCC had also sent organizers to Seattle with the intention of organizing a chapter. It wasn’t long before Elmer, Anthony, and I joined up with SNCC. We bought dark-blue jackets and had “SNCC” stenciled on the back. We attended SNCC/BSU study groups, usually led by E. J. Brisker and Carl Miller. E. J. Brisker, a cat from Washington, DC, could play some basketball and was also extremely intelligent. He was the only person I had ever met who read while walking. At the drop of a hat, he could break down Julius Lester and James Baldwin or discuss the death of Patrice Lumumba. He talked rapid-fire, like a machine gun, puffing constantly on Kool cigarettes, looking down over his wire-rimmed glasses. His protégé, Carl Miller, was from New York. He had good leadership skills and was elected BSU president. Under the guidance of those two and Larry Gossett, the BSU and the new Seattle SNCC chapter began organizing the youth on campus and in the community.

  In time, though, Elmer, Anthony, and I started to grow weary of all the meetings and the dissecting of racism in America. Each successive, momentous world event pertaining to freedom and the rights of the oppressed—combined with the deaths of Che Guevara and Patrice Lumumba, both engineered by the CIA; the wars of liberation breaking out all over Africa and South America; intensifying American protest against the war in Vietnam; the student revolts in Mexico City; and the race riots here in the United States—made it increasingly difficult to resist taking action. We felt there had to be some type of message conveyed to the white power structure that if things did not change drastically, we too were going to explode—just as in those other big US cities.

  One night Elmer, Anthony, and I decided to make a statement. Carrying a small container filled with gasoline, we sneaked into Broadmoor, a gated private community not far from Madrona. With its fine homes and private golf course, Broadmoor was a place where Black and brown people were not allowed to reside, but they could come in to clean the homes of their white employers. It was a place where young Black boys, many of them my friends, went to carry golf bags and retrieve golf balls for well-to-do white men. That was a job in which I never had any interest. We crept along quietly, looking at the expensive homes, hoping the inhabitants were fast asleep. We found a spot right in the middle of the manicured green lawn of the golf course. Hurriedly, with sticks we carved “Black Power” into the grass and poured gasoline onto the dirt words. We threw a match on the fuel and took off. We never heard of any response to this action. But deep down inside we must have known this would be the first of many
acts of rebellion we would carry out in the coming years.

  These were very tense times in the United States. There was an edge and a tinge of anger in the air, particularly in interactions between young Blacks and older whites, and especially with the police. I had never experienced police misconduct firsthand; I knew only the experiences of others. But that changed one night as I was leaving my sister’s apartment. In front of the apartment building, I observed five police officers accosting my brother-in-law Curtis and his friend Calhoun. The cops threw Curtis down and began to beat him and Calhoun with their batons. I yelled in vain for them to stop. They paid no attention to my young voice. In shock and horror, I turned and sprinted the four blocks home. I opened the door and went into the dining room, grabbed my father’s bolo knife from the Philippines, and yelled to my parents that the police were beating Curtis.

  As I attempted to run out of the house with the knife, my father grabbed me and said, “Aaron, you can’t leave here with that knife.”

  I suddenly burst into tears. The drama had caught up with me. In frustration and helplessness, I ran back down to Joanne’s apartment. Joanne told me that the police had arrested Curtis and Calhoun for some minor traffic violation, and they were already long gone. I walked back home solemnly, resolving never again to experience those emotions. I never wanted to feel that vulnerable or that helpless again.

  Not long after that incident, I visited Daisy Boyetta at the Garvey Bookstore. She told me about a brother that was in town. “Aaron, you heard of Voodoo Man?” she asked, peering at me over her wire-rimmed glasses.

  “No, I haven’t,” I answered.