The song on the radio switched from something electronic and fast to a guitar playing by itself. This was the song in many that has not been pop or rap on this long, long car ride to California. Bob Dylan’s familiar voice starts the equally familiar song-
“Come gather 'round people, wherever you roam.”
Just as I start to smile, my 15-year-old granddaughter reaches over to change the radio back to her modern pop music. I catch her eye as she does so.
“Oh, do you like this song, Grammy?” I nod and her hand returns to its place in her lap.
“I can’t believe you can even tolerate this song anymore after all the times we played it as kids, Mom!” my lovely daughter calls back. I just smile and nod, as is my usual reaction. I learned a while back that kids, even adult ones, don’t like hearing what us old people have to say. Our temporary teen must see something in my eyes that intrigues her, though, because she asks me what I’m thinking.
“Well, I was just remembering how much has changed since the last time I was in California.”
“Whatcha’ mean?
“The chance won't come again, and don't speak too soon”
Just as I’m thinking I’ll brush off her question, I hear the lyrics that must have inspired many to take that chance that won’t come again. I guess I’m not as young as I once was. Knowing that she will only ever think of me as her grandmother, just a flat character to be in the background at pageants and recitals will make this story a harder one to tell, a harder one to believe. This may be my last chance to tell this teenage child how life used to be.
“Grammy?”
“Sorry, dear, just gathering my thoughts. You know that I lived in California since I was yomnung, right? Well, that’s where it started. Hmm…. I suppose it started changing for me when I went off for college in 1946.
“What started changing?”
“Okay, well, a lot of things were stirred up at that point. To start, my father, your great grandfather, had to warn me to not put my name on anything relating to the Communist Party!”
“Woah….seriously, Grandma????”
I laugh and tell her about when the Black Panthers came to my church in Oakland.
“They came in to talk about the programs they had. They were invited by Grandpa Fred to talk about how they fed the children in the mornings, their clothing centers, the whole social network between their friends in Oakland who were really living in poverty. At that point in my life, I couldn’t quite understand how anyone would see blacks as anything but people and friends. While I respect them and know to not call them by things they see as offensive, I see no difference between us.”
She nods and smiles, encouraging me to go on. Thoroughly enjoying myself, I continue.
“They were invited by my husband to talk about how they fed the children in the mornings, their clothing centers, the whole social network between their friends in Oakland who were really living in poverty. When they showed up at our church, they were in two very big, powerful, black cars and they were all wearing black leather and they all had big Afro hairdos-do you know what those are?”
“Oh, like the big fuzzy ball? Like, really big?”
“Yes, it is big hair, very big. They were just a very scary group when they showed up. When they got out of the cars, they left one of the cars at the exit. They fully expected police to be there (they were not) or for it to be a trap and they might very well may be attacked so they even brought a few of their machine guns. Although we advertised their coming, they did not bring one of their major leaders, Huey Newton.”
“Huey Newton?! Grammy, he’s in my American history book for school! He’s famous! Why didn’t they bring him? Did they bring anyone else?”
“I’m not sure why they didn’t bring him, whether because he was in jail or feared for his life because there were assassinations going on in their hierarchy, but they did send their second in command, and that was Angela Davis. She was an outstanding speaker, very militant, very scary person, but a wonderful speaker. She presented the program that night. But meanwhile, outside, armed guards were waiting if something should happen inside. “
At this point, her eyes are staring at me like I suddenly became some pop star or something; she is so interested in what I’m saying.
“Anyway, since so many people in the white community who wanted to hear their story that they, well, we couldn’t get one more person inside. Fred had put on the show, my husband, and had organized it and he couldn’t even get in. I was in the room and I heard.”
“Really? Wow, you were, like, in the middle of everything!” Her eyes sparkle at the thought that I was someone on some day in the past. “Could you…..could you tell me more about the Davis lady and the Black Panthers and stuff? If you don’t want to, that’s okay, I’m sorry for bothering you!” This teenager who thinks she knows everything is unsure of herself when asking an elder for a story of the past. I see the nervous wishing in her eyes as she hopes I will say yes. Of course, I do.
“She went on to get her PhD and was eventually a full professor at the university of California after the movement was dead. They were in their prime when they came out to visit. I was probably about 40, 45 when this happened.”
“Cool.” Her grin seems to falter for a second as she decides on her next question. “Did you, or I guess, was that the first time you met a black person? Like, did you know African people growing up?”
“Growing up in Los Angeles, there were not many black people in my community. This was before the war. The Black Panthers did not just happen; they were the result of many, many hundreds of thousands of people who came to California, Oakland in particular in the 1940’s. They came because there were jobs. We were at war at that time and we needed ships to carry troops, to carry food, to carry cargo, to carry artillery. Anyway, there were jobs and many of the people who came were brought by the government to the Oakland area to build ships. And so the government built a lot of apartments and barrack type things. The people who came from the south had a background of slavery and when they arrived-these are people who had never had jobs before in their lives- they had to be taught.” Her nod and grunt prompted me onward.
“They didn’t know how to take care of property if they were fortunate enough to earn enough money to buy a house. Because they did not have enough money to live where the white people lived, they bought the old, old houses and did not take care of them-they didn’t know how! So terrible neighborhoods had grown up near the shipyard. That was where they worked. They couldn’t afford cars, and many of them had never had jobs before. Okay, so here come thousands of people, and when the war is over, there are no jobs. They’re not going to go back, not now that they’ve had a good taste of living independent lives and earning a good salary and putting away money.”
“So what happened to them?
“So, Oakland became a land of poverty stricken people. The education was bad, and the schools were antiquated. There weren’t any taxes coming in from their salaries anymore, so they were in awful shape.
“Did you ever see the schools or anything?”
“When I graduated in 1950, and got my first job, they asked us to visit a dozen or so schools before we applied to certain places. The schools in Oakland were in terrible, terrible shape. Anyway, we have issues of poverty and drugs and terrible rancor-bad feeling- between the black neighborhoods and the police and terrible incidents going on daily, practically. So, they felt very, very persecuted.”
“What happened after that?”
“Now, they lived like that for approximately 20 years before any social programs were invented to help them out of the pit they were in. The Black Panthers were organized, eventually, to feed the kids breakfast, to see that they had shoes on their feet and so forth. They served a real purpose, but they were also a socialist, Marxist based group, so you can imagine how the white people in Oakland felt terrorized. Yet, the black people who lived just down the road felt terrorized so the tension there was great. The white people could afford to move up the hill to property they could build on. They could leave the black people down by the water where they were brought in to work, or they moved over the hill. That’s where we lived- Over The Hill. Fred would go to work in Oakland.”
“So, was he ever around black people?
“Actually, his office, the engineering firm he worked for, was backed up to the Black Panther office building. It was in, you know, terrible, terrible shape, just an old house that they had moved into. That was where all the action was going on and their second leader, Bobby Seale, was actually killed in that building, right behind where Fred’s office was.”
Her look of disbelief is delicious.
“I mean, they just got rid of Bobby Seale, I don’t know to this day if he was assassinated or if the police killed him or rival groups in the neighborhood may have gotten to him. So, that just left three or four people, Angela Davis, for instance, who was a very strong person. Also, Huey Newton, who actually started the Black Panthers. Even though Fred was so close to the Black Panther’s office, he never really had any encounters with them. They parked their cars in the parking lot behind the building and there was the Black Panthers in the house behind them. I doubt if they ever even saw each other. The white community was definitely frightened of them, though. They were militant, they were aggressive, they thought they were protecting the black community when the police would come through their neighborhood.”
“Wow, Grandma, you’re cooler than I thought.”
“I like to think so too.”
“But….what did that song have to do with this?”
I laugh, the notes fluttering in my ears long after the radio has stopped playing.
“Because that song has spoken the truth since it was written- For the times they are a-changin'.” Even if she rolls her eyes as I sing the anthem of revolution, I know in her smile that she knows more than her years how much time can change.