helped other prisoners understand they had value as human beings, that they
were worth something. I could still remember the way it felt to be accepted
by the Panthers in the Tombs, to see in their eyes that they valued me, that I
was somebody to them, even though I was a prisoner with a 50-year sentence
and I didn’t value myself. As a member of the Black Panther Party, I gave my
word I would make it my duty to protect other prisoners, to teach them how
to stay focused on life outside prison, to show them that they belonged in this
world. I kept my word.
In my forties, I chose to take my pain and turn it into compassion, and not
hate. Whenever I experienced pain of any origin I always made a promise to
myself never to do anything that would cause someone else to suffer the pain
I was feeling in that moment. I still had moments of bitterness and anger. But
by then I had the wisdom to know that bitterness and anger are destructive. I
was dedicated to building things, not tearing them down.
In my forties, I fully understood all that my mom had sacrificed to take
care of her children. I felt all the love she had for us, and the love I had for
her. Everything my mother ever said to me came back to me over the years.
Lessons she taught me that I had lost in the arrogance of childhood became
the foundation of my own wisdom. “Life’s got to be like throwing water on a
duck,” she used to say. “It don’t stick.” I hadn’t known what it meant when I
was a child but looking back I saw that she was telling me not to let the
poverty and difficulties of my childhood define me. She was telling me to let
the pain and circumstances of my life roll off my back.
Her words came to
me when I needed them, pushing me to understand their deeper meaning and
find a way to keep going. “I used to complain about having no shoes,” she
would say, “until I saw a man with no feet.” Her words encouraged me to
focus on my strength instead of the agony of being separated from the world
and feeling the heaviness of that. “When someone gives you lemons,” she
always said, “make lemonade.”
In the novel
Native Son
, Richard Wright wrote, “Men can starve from a
lack
of self-realization, as much as they can from a lack of bread!” I never
forgot those words. By the time I was 40 I’d read and educated myself
enough to develop my own values and code of conduct. It started with the 10-
Point Program of the Black Panther Party. In the years after the party broke
up I expanded upon those values, I broadened my views on the struggle, and I
found solace in the words of other great men and women who seemed to
understand me and validate my life.
“If there is no struggle there is no progress,” Frederick Douglass wrote.
“Those who profess to favor freedom
and yet depreciate agitation, are men
who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without
thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its
many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one,
and it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power cedes
nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Malcolm X wrote, “Every defeat, every heartbreak,
every loss, contains
its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next
time.” Malcolm gave me direction. He gave me vision. The civil rights leader
Whitney Young said of being black:
“Look at me, I’m here. I have dignity. I
have pride. I have roots. I insist, I demand that I participate in those decisions
that affect my life and the lives of my children. It means that I am
somebody.”
There wasn’t one saying that carried
me for all my years in
solitary confinement, there were one thousand, ten thousand. I pored over the
books that spoke to me. They comforted me.
In my forties, I was able to show my mom the man I’d become. I was
able to thank her for her wisdom and the lessons of life she taught me and let
her know she was my role model and my hero. I thanked her for the sacrifices
she made for me and my sister and brothers. I apologized for putting her
through so much pain in my youth and told her I appreciated everything she
did for me. I always wanted to be a man my mother could be proud of. I was
in prison, but I was able to show her that I had become that man.
By age 40 I had learned that to be human is to grow, to create, to
contribute, and that fear stops growth. Fear retards the process of growing.
Fear causes confusion and uncertainty. Fear kills one’s sense of self-worth.
By
eradicating fear on the tier, I learned that men can deal with each other
better. They can get along. I wondered if in society, we could build a world in
which we do not fear one another.
