Early in 1967, Huey heard Eldridge on the radio.
"Damn! Who is this cat?" Huey kept saying. "This cat is blowing, man! He's been in prison!" Huey related to Eldridge as a Malcolm X, coming out of prison. Huey always respected the brothers that came out of prison. He felt that he could relate to dudes who came out of prison. That was his whole key. Huey heard that: "This cat's been in prison, man, for nine years!" That wrapped him up. We ran down to the radio station that night, because Huey said, "I'm going to talk to this cat."
He said to Eldridge, "Man, look. You got to be in the Party! It doesn't make any difference what the name is. This is where it's at! We need you. We want you." He knew Eldridge could rap, and he'd heard that he could write, that he was writing for Ramparts. Huey couldn't write, but you could get Huey cornered, get all his ideas out of his head, and put them on paper. He'll write if you corner him, but the shit travels fast. Huey understands the need for a media. Huey understands skills being functional for black people. That's what Huey wants. He pushed for a Panther newspaper.
That's why we got ahold of Eldridge when we heard him on the radio that night. Eldridge told us, "Look, I just got out of prison, and I'm checking around. I'm trying to see what's happening." I said to Huey, "This nigger from prison, this nigger is tired of shit. This nigger is like a Malcolm X to us, and voom! This nigger can write." One day a few months later Huey and I were in Eldridge's apartment. Eldridge had a leather jacket and a beret on. He said, "Fuck it, I'm in the Panther Party. That's all there is to it." I didn't know him then. I was looking at him, and I was saying, "Well, fuck it, this is just another nigger saying he's in the Party." But, boom! We get to pounding out that first little leaflet, and that began to mean something. Next thing I know, we're over at Beverly Axelrod's house, and we're pounding out a paper, man!1 So I said, "This nigger here is where it's at."
Huey related to Eldridge more than I did, initially. I just had a tendency to follow Huey. I was never ashamed of the fact that I always followed Huey. I just followed him, and listened to him, and tried to understand what he was saying. If I disagreed with him, I tried to
disagree properly.
Eldridge later told us that when he came out of the penitentiary, he was wired up behind Malcolm X. Malcolm was teaching that it was necessary to pick up the gun. Eldridge had been running around repeating what Malcolm had said, but he didn't know that there were some niggers that had already picked up the gun. He didn't know it until February when we started planning for sister Betty Shabazz's visit. Marvin Jackman and all those dudes were hiding it. They wouldn't tell Eldridge about us.
Eldridge said that when he saw all us brothers with guns, all ready and organized, it didn't take him any time at all to relate to that. The only thing he didn't want to give up was the name that Malcolm X had for his organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, OAAU, but then he said the name thing was complicated because Malcolm's sister had taken it and incorporated it. There was so much confusion and so many phony people had gotten involved in the OAAU, that when he tried to organize the Black House, he was sick of it already. So he just started moving with the Party, going everywhere, making all the scenes. He was relating to it and functioning, but he still had some reservations.
Eldridge just couldn't understand how it could happen - how we pulled this shit off or why niggers would be crazy enough to go out there in the streets. It looked unbelievable. Eldridge said it scared him, that's what it did. Scared Eldridge! He said that when Malcolm was teaching, he was just dealing with rhetoric about how we had to organize a gun club, we had to do this, we had to have these guns, etc. He said it was abstract and he couldn't visualize it. Or if he did visualize it, he visualized a whole army, the black race armed. But then, when he saw us out there in the process of organizing, he saw about ten, twelve dudes with some guns, and he saw all those pigs. It looked like we didn't have a chance, it looked hopeless, but then many times it looked so beautiful and inspiring, that he just had to relate to it. What turned all that around for Eldridge was that first scene, when the brothers escorted sister Betty Shabazz from the airport, and came by Ramparts. That had a huge impact, a huge influence on him. He said he didn't believe it, even after he witnessed it. He said it was like observing pure instinct. What was so important to him was that when those pigs came by there, there were sisters and brothers on the street, and the Minister of Defense stepped forward, the shield between his people and the pigs, jacked off that round into his shotgun,
and put his life on the line. "That was it," Eldridge said, "that was me there."