In 1966 my father’s life changed profoundly. It was in his words a “primal moment.” He had quit working for the California Department of Vehicles a year earlier and took the family to Europe where we lived in a tent for a year and, as my father said, “Got to experience real freedom.” When he returned his vocation as writer and his calling as community activist both came to fruition.
So when I got back, again I’m talking October 1966. When I got back that’s when the first rumblings came about putting this book (A Panther is a Black Cat) together. At the very same time they had this thing on EOP. (Educational Opportunity Program- This is a direct quote from the tape. My father did not get hired until 1968.) They were looking for somebody with community work and so forth and so on. And so I became a candidate for that. I was a very good candidate because I had the backup of Nat’s little political connections and the local activists who kind of knew me.
So I made up my proposal for the Panther book (A Panther is a Black Cat) and then I went to interview for this job. I came back and I said this is wonderful, my hands are definitely into this. Whichever job comes first, that’s my career. I’ll do it that way. So the EOP (Educational Opportunity Program) job came through. I went in, signed all the papers, said tee-he and what not. I use to say it was the same day, but it wasn’t the same day, but it was just in the very close time frame, up pops a thing from my publisher telling me that I had a book.
It was a good year.
Definitely. I couldn’t do better. Now at that point I knew all the Panther leadership, because I met them through Eldridge (Cleaver), and I’d gone backwards and forwards. So they knew me and everything was cool and I had already begun interviewing them and followed them throughout.
It was a really interesting trip because part of the Panthers support system was a group out at State. (San Francisco State College, now University.) The people out at State (Brothers who were part of the BSU and Strike movement) didn’t know that I knew the big boys on top. They used to come up with all sort of nonsense. And the thing about it, you know I never had to do it, but I had a really bad understanding at that stage of the game and I was willing to fight at the drop of a hat. I didn’t really care. And so every time they’d sweat me I’d say, “Come on.” I couldn’t do anything as EOP director but I was hoping one of them would come across the desk. I really prayed for it because as far as they were concerned I was just another bougie dude. It never occurred to them that I had learned to fight on the street.
That gave me a really unique view of the Panthers. Because even when they’d see me out there I’d say hello to, you know, Stokely, who I had met at that point. I was at the level where I could meet all these national leaders and we’d talk and so forth. But these guys were not observant enough to see that I was tight with them. They just saw somebody hanging around. I wasn’t hanging around, I was moving around.
So how long were you EOP director?
Let’s see now. I think three. I think it was 68-71.
Didn’t you come right after the strike?
The strike and I were at the same time. I started actually working in May. I worked all during the summer and I didn’t know those guys were doing that. As soon as the troops were on campus they went on strike. It was alright with me because then I was putting together stuff for the book.
So I was putting stuff together but I couldn’t write a note, I couldn’t do a thing because of putting the EOP thing together. That’s when we had that big blowup and the Black administrators all flipped out and quit and I quit among them. I was the worst one to quit because I had four or five hundred organized kids on campus and the notion of having these unsupervised black folks on campus…
Sointula, British Columbia
That’s why you got pressured to find my address when we were up in Canada. I sat down up there and basically the first few chapters of the book were written like that. (Zipping sound.)
And that was the beginning of writing A Panther is a Black Cat after admitting over 900 hundred students of color to SFSC through the EOP and creating a program that had a lower attrition rate and higher graduate student rate than the general college. But more on that later, when I get to that tape.