Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [111]
We talked until almost four A.M., and I learned a great deal about a variety of subjects, but especially about the day-to-day experiences of being a black man in Oakland—of being stopped and searched by policemen simply because he was black, of being degraded, belittled and called “nigger” by cops, of applying for a job and seeing in the eyes of employers that as soon as he entered their doors the job no longer existed.
About two weeks later, Bobby Hutton and Eldridge Cleaver were trapped in a house and surrounded by the Oakland police. The house caught fire, and when Bobby Hutton walked outside, the police shot him, killing a beautiful boy. Eldridge, who was still inside, took his clothes off when he saw what had happened, then came outside with his hands up and his fingers spread, totally naked. It was an intelligent move because there were too many witnesses for the police to assassinate a man who plainly had no weapons. I’m sure this act saved his life.
The killing of Bobby Hutton confirmed everything I’d heard during that long night in Oakland. The next day I flew back to Oakland. Jim Farmer, the founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, was also there that day, and it was one of the few times in my life I have felt real danger. There was so much tension in Oakland that I sensed the police would use any excuse to kill someone sympathetic to the Black Panthers. The Cleaver house still reeked of tear gas and it made my eyes water, even though the doors and windows had been thrown open. Glancing around, I saw Farmer, whom I knew only slightly, looking at me with hatred in his eyes. They told me that he despised me because I was just another knee-jerk white liberal to him.
At Bobby Hutton’s funeral, I began to sense why Jim Farmer had looked at me that way and to understand—as I have at other moments in my life in other places when I was among people I wanted to help—that I was an outsider. I sat in the second row at the church. Behind me women were sobbing, and in front of me, in the first two rows of pews, the Black Panthers sat silently and stoically. Bobby Seale spoke about Hutton and was fearless in denouncing the Oakland Police Department. The coffin lay open, and on its handle was a bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums; as Seale spoke, a few chrysanthemum petals dropped and fell on Bobby’s face and chest. Then the Panthers lined up to pass by his coffin in their black uniforms, black berets, dark glasses and leather jackets. Most simply paused, looked down at him and raised their fists in a salute. Then one came forward, took a cartridge out of a carbine and placed it in Hutton’s hands. Not one of them cried, though I couldn’t contain myself. There was a coldness in the church that was palpable and formidable, rooted in a long history of suffering; they were beyond tears.
Those Panthers made me realize how protected my life had been as a white person, and how, despite a lifetime of searching, curiosity and empathy, I would never understand what it was to be black. There were limits to empathy; it was impossible for me to walk in their shoes. I had been determined to join them in their battle, but I was an outsider and always would be. Later this was brought home to me when several blacks told me they disliked