The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones (67 page)

We struggled about what would go down and in the end I put her on a plane, weeping under my chauvinism. When I got back to Newark a few weeks later, my first son, Obalaji Malik Ali, was a week old. He had been born while I was in San Francisco. I had let Sylvia have the baby alone.

The same motion that had been rising when we left Newark was at a higher point when I got back. The hot bubbling surface speaking of depths of frustration and unrest. The medical school issue had gotten even sharper. There were several different groups contending with the powers about this obvious ripoff, and a main coalition pulling people together to fight was agitating throughout the city. I got active in this and drew the forces around the Spirit House very active in this as well. Groups of us would go to the meetings and attack the various administration spokesmen, city or state. I also began to identify various groups and trends in the city and enter into general discussions about Newark politics. It had become obvious to me that, since Newark was at least 60 percent black, Black Power here meant that we had to control the politics of the city. I printed leaflets and stated this thesis in the issues of the
Stirling St. Newspaper
. When I made public appearances I would dwell on this issue, intent on raising the national consciousness of the black masses in Newark.

Another equally incendiary issue was the question of the appointment of a secretary to the Board of Education. Wilbur Parker, a black CPA, had gotten to be the favorite of the black community for the job. He had a master's degree and was certainly academically and technically qualified.
But Addonizio resisted. He wanted to appoint one of his cronies, as usual. In this instance there was a catch. Addonizio's man, Callahan, was only a high school graduate. His major qualification was that he was white. Like the medical school conflict, this issue was one that could tighten the jaws of all classes of blacks, whether black workers or black professionals. Both issues were attacks on the whole of the black community.

Another factor in the general increase of tension was the constant incidents of police brutality. The Newark police whipped heads with impunity under the neo-fascist police director Dominick Spina, a “kindly” gray-haired administrator who reminded me of one of Mussolini's murderers. I had had already, since returning home, several direct conflicts with Spina, and not just the general ones. In any public gathering where he was, I never resisted the opportunity to talk bad to and about him. I was told later, by one of Spina's paid informers, that Spina was a member of the Klan. It seemed that the Klan in New Jersey had become progressive enough to recruit Catholics.

We were still putting on plays and using the Spirit House for community meetings, broadening the block association and focusing much heat up at the Robert Treat school. Newark was a city of widespread and clearly understood corruption. Everybody in public office was known to be on the take, and not just from hearsay — most people had had some direct experience of it. Calvin West was one of Addonizio's “classiest” niggers and Cal had the kind of personality that might make one spray a room with Lysol after he'd passed through it with one of his outsized cigars.

All these things were in the bubbling. Black Power pressed these issues at a higher level. It pointed out the straight-out apartheid in the South and the neo-apartheid in the North. It raised the issue of black political self-determination and the need for self-sufficiency. The Nation of Islam preached about “doing for self” and how black people were indeed oppressed by the filthy white devil. Black nationalists talked about “the beast” getting big on black people's flesh, and Addonizio and company were living proof of all these nationalist examples. And I'm sure the “left,” wherever it was, was also pushing in whatever ways it could. Tom Hayden and his classmates were around being “troublemakers,” which could only add yeast to the whole mixture.

Adam Powell had gotten removed from Congress over some obvious bullshit, though white liberals would've told you, “We've formed the Urban Coalition and just appointed Thurgood Marshall as the first Negro on the Supreme Court.” But as it got warmer that summer, all talk of white
liberals just added some numbers to the thermometer. All over the country black people were marching or rising up. You heard often not only of Dr. King and the Nation of Islam but of Stokely and Rap and Huey Newton and the Panthers, of CORE and SNCC and Black Power. The newspapers and television, the radio and people's mouths, carried the word. Even the
New York Times
that year reported that the civil rights movement was over. I don't remember if they remarked on the rising motion of the Black Liberation movement. There was an antiwar movement against the U.S. involvement in Vietnam that was also in motion. Even Dr. King had announced his intention to come out against the war. A current of dissent was everywhere, open rebellion was not only justified and justifiable, but examples of it were growing ubiquitous: demonstrations, marches, sit-ins, arrests, civil disobedience, clashes with the police, cities going up in smoke. There was, in Newark, an atmosphere of oppressive tension. As spring moved into summer, each day and evening held a quiet, heavy aura. It was clear the medical school was going ahead, the largest on the planet. It was clear that Callahan would get the job and not Parker. Spina's blueshirts had run into a Muslim home near East Orange because it was reported that there were men in the building “armed.” No arms were ever produced, though the place did serve as a kind of “dojo” for martial arts training, which apparently pissed Spina off. His boys shot the place up and brutalized some people. That word was passed around swiftly and bitterly.

We had been building a following at the Spirit House. We were rehearsing plays. Giving poetry readings. We even made a record, “Black and Beautiful,” with rhythm and blues and chants and poetry of black struggle and nationalism.

Sylvia and I had also been struggling, in a different way. The child had come, Obalaji, and I viewed this with the mystical focus I had then. It was very significant to me that the white woman, Nellie, had not produced a boy child, only girls. It was clear I had gone in the right direction (more chauvinism). The boy was named after a young boy I'd known in Harlem with Oserjeman's temple, a little fresh dude full of life. Obalaji (God or the King's Warrior), Malik for Malcolm, and Ali after Muhammad Ali. But for all that, I was not ready to get married. I had not thought of it. It seemed unnecessary. Yet my son was on the scene. Sylvia and I had traveled around together, I had taken her with me on many of the poetry readings and speaking trips I went on. I had been drawn to her deep, lovely sensuality. The San Francisco business had created a tension between us I would forget more quickly than she. How selfish and subjective men can
be when it comes to women. I knew I wanted Sylvia. I knew I wanted us to live together. I was full of joy that we had had a son. Yet I did not think we had to get married. It was half bohemianism, some plain-out insensitivity, but may it not have been also a kind of unconscious disregard for black women? I had offered to marry Nellie in a similar situation. Yet, with Sylvia, there I was haggling and contentious about the same kind of act. The irony is that I felt closer to Sylvia, we were more “together,” there was much more heat to our relationship, much more passion. I had even been moved to the point of telling her how much I loved her, which I could not do before with women I'd been with, even Vashti, even though I'd taken the sparkling relationship we'd had as a love relationship.

Our explosions inside the Spirit House were in tune with the whole siege of tension that stalked the day-to-day streets of the slowly simmering town. There might have been rumors about us up and down those streets just as there were broader rumors twisting through the streets of the whole city as it heated up and hidden tension became open tension, and open tension became confrontation.

One afternoon I heard something about a demonstration over at the precinct across from the Hayes Homes. It was about a cabdriver who'd gotten beaten by the police the night before. When we got there, there were maybe fifty to one hundred people. It was still afternoon and most people were still working, so this was a good crowd on the line. It was thick over there. There were younger people standing across the street, watching, occasionally calling out or laughing. The picket line was being led, ostensibly, by CORE and its chairman in Newark, Bob Curvin. We talked briefly, and the couple of us who'd come over from the Spirit House got in the line. There were young people and middle-aged on the line. They chanted and walked and as we joined them it was obvious to me that it was not like a picket line at a strike or the lighter kinds of demonstrations. People talked, but there was a presence on the line and in the scattered crowd that gathered on the other side of the narrow street. It was the same precinct where we had demonstrated for a black police captain to replace one of Spina's cronies. It was like the air itself was a container for something that was pushing against it trying to break out. People turned and looked at each other, sensing this presence. They grinned nervously or squinted up at the precinct at the mostly white police who stood outside frozen or the ones who would occasionally scowl through the windows of the precinct or move quickly by, snarling, as they got out of their police cars and went into the building.

After an hour or so, the couple of us from the Spirit House got off the line, which was still moving, more people having come, others splitting. We had to go home to get ready for rehearsal and another community meeting. So we started to go home, rolling slowly across Belmont Avenue, past the abandoned Krueger brewery and over to Springfield Avenue. It seemed there were knots of people, ever moving, people in small groups, looking, peering, as if they too sensed what was ready to loose itself.

It was later in the afternoon when we got to the Spirit House. I had to eat. Sylvia and the boy were there, also Barney's girlfriend, Beverly, and Shorty's friend, Helen, who was an old friend of Sylvia's. We ate and talked and began to get ready for the evening when some of the young boys who came in and out of the Spirit House rushed in. “They're breaking windows on Springfield Avenue” was the word. Moving outside, it looked, for some reason, like the sky had a long, wide reddish streak to it. It was low and wanted to burn. It sizzled and carried images and words, buzz turning to roar. Its smell got in your nose and made you blink. You could see people in motion, like a slow-motion flick speeded up. Moving in all directions.

We stood for a second, all of us from in the house. Then Shorty, Barney, and I jumped in the bus; it was a new Volkswagen I'd bought recently, but I still didn't know how to drive. “Where're you going?” Sylvia called, and I said something, but we were around the corner and onto Springfield Avenue. When we got there the shit was already on! Farther up the street we could see figures moving fast. The sun was falling to hide them quick. Suddenly, sirens. We could see some smoke, hey, then glass started to break close to where we were.

The spirit and feeling of the moment a rebellion breaks out is almost indescribable. Everything seems to be in zoooom motion, crashing toward some explosive manifestation. As Lenin said, time is speeded up, what takes years is done in days, in real revolution. In rebellions life goes to 156 rpm and the song is a police siren accompanying people's breathless shouts and laughter. (See “Newark: Before Black Men Conquered.”)

All that was pent up and tied is wild and loose, seen in sudden flames and red smoke, and always people running, running, away and toward. We wheeled the wagon around and began to head up toward what looked like the eye of what was growing mad and gigantic and hot. We went straight up Springfield, not fast, not slow, but at a pace that would allow a serious observer to dig what was happening. It had got dark fast, like the dashing bloods had reached up and pulled night down by its silver string and slam! it was down and they got on with they shit.

Boxes of stuff were speeding by, cases of stuff, liquor, wine, beer, the best brands. Shoes, appliances, clothes, jewelry, food. Foodtown had turned into Open City, some dudes jumped the half story out the window to the ground. There were shifts of folks at work. The window breakers would come first. Whash! Glass all over everywhere. Then the getters would get through and get to gettin'. Some serious people would park near the corner and load up their trunks, make as many trips as the traffic would bear. Some people would run through the streets with shit, what they could carry or roll or drag or pull. Families worked together, carrying sofas and TVs collectively down the street. All the shit they saw on television that they had been hypnotized into wanting they finally had a chance to cop. The word was Cop & Blow! And don't be slow.

Then the fire setters, Vulcan's peepas, would get on it. Crazy sheets of flame would rise behind they thing. Burn it up! Burn it up! Like Marvin had said: Burn, baby, burn! They were the most rhythmic, the fire people, they dug the fire cause it danced so tough, and these priests wished they could get as high and hot as their master the Flame.

Now we circled and dashed, zigzagged, tried to follow the hot music's beat. We were digging, checking, observing, participating, it was a canvas, a palette no painter could imagine. A scale no musician could plumb. (Why do you think Trane and Albert sounded like that? They wanted the essence of what flailed alive on all sides of us now.)

The police were simply Devils to us, Beasts. We did not understand then the scientific exegesis on the state — though we needed to. Devils! Beasts! Crisscrossing in their deadly stupor of evil. The people were like dancers whirling around and through the flames. A motorcycle leaped through Sears's window! with a blood, head down, stuck to it, booting and smoking up Elizabeth Avenue. Rifles strapped to his back. The last firearms sold legally in Newark disappeared in all directions out of Gene's and the same Sears. Devil-cars spinning meanwhile as they shot at everything that moved, everything with any grace.