Straight Life - Art Pepper [172]
You had to hand it to the blacks and the Indians. The Indians stuck together completely. All they did was play basketball. Every minute. They wouldn't hold any jobs. They wouldn't go along with any program. No matter what kind of weather it was, if they weren't playing basketball they were huddled together in some corner of the basketball court.
The blacks had total solidarity. That's where they get their power. It's the same way they get their power on the streets now and the reason they're so strong. They talk about "my people" and all this nonsense, which to me is utter nonsense because they don't feel it; they don't believe it, most of them, but at least they do it; and it makes a weak position a strong position and a smallness in numbers turns to their advantage. In the daytime they go down into the yard and gather and do calisthenics, training for the war to overthrow the white race. They line up and do these outrageous things, chant and make strange African noises: "Kill them all! Kill the whites! Cut them to ribbons! Destroy their women!" And everybody stands around and hates them, wants to kill them. They're generating fear. They're going through these strenuous wartime calisthenics openly in the yard. They do it in the morning and in the afternoon. For a while they'd gather by the laundry. There was a big laundry with corrugated tin walls. They'd stand against this and face the rising sun and the preacher would run them through these little routines; to me, and I was watching, I felt that it was all geared to make the rest of us fear them. And it worked. The guards would be on their walkways and they'd get orders from the captain to shake the Muslims up a little, so they'd shoot over their heads with their rifles and hit the laundry walls. Now and then they'd hit one of them in the shoulder or the leg, and that would break them up for a while. They'd have to change their position.
Most people had to go through a shakedown. But if the blacks were shook down they'd holler, "Prejudice!" And they wouldn't have to submit. They didn't have to scrub floors or do anything they didn't feel was dignified, and there's hardly anything that's dignified if you're a prisoner. Anything that had to do with cleaning, anything that had to do with laundry, anything that had to do with sweeping, mopping. So the whites and the Mexicans did all the cleaning and scrubbing.
The younger blacks coming up have a lot of nerve. They're getting to the point where they're so intent upon being strong that, just like they do in sports and like they do in music, they spend every second trying to be strong and fearless. It has become an obsession now with them. They will give their lives to show that they're not cowards as they were always thought to be in the past.
There's lots of black people in prison that don't want any violence. They don't want to have anything to do with all these hate groups. They don't want it but they have to be a part of it at least outwardly; they have to make those noises because if they don't they'll be set upon by their group. The musicians would have to act the part even though they didn't feel it. I'm talking about some of the black musicians. And because they were a little smarter than the run of the mill black in the joint, they in some cases developed into leaders.
There was this one guy I'd know in Detroit; he was a drummer. I'd been to his house, we'd copped together, we'd been friends. After about a year in San Quentin I ran into him. He was a warm guy, but he'd had occasion to have a couple of fights and he had a scar on his face that made him look mean. And he was smart. He'd studied the Muslim religion and learned all the little sayings, and he became a preacher. I asked him, "Where have you been?" While we talked he kept looking around because he didn't want the blacks to see him talking to me. They're not supposed to have any communication with whites unless they have