My People Are Rising. Aaron Dixon

fifties opened the door, wearing a leopard-skin fez and an African cloth tied around his waist, over his pants.

      He said, “You brothers come on in.”

      We walked in, following him, ducking under the beads hanging in the passageway, into the living room, where three brothers a few years older than me were sitting.

      “You brothers have a seat,” he said. “We were just discussing what to do about Whitey.”

      We introduced ourselves to the older brothers there. I recognized them from BSU and SNCC meetings. We sat down, glancing around at the candles and beads and African art scattered about the room.

      “See, Whitey understands only one thing. You start spilling his blood and you get his attention. . . . We gonna have to call out the haints, call out the warriors. You understand me?”

      We all nodded and sat and continued to listen to this older cat. He gestured with his long fingers as he continued to talk for hours about his ideas of rebellion. At one point he walked into the back room and came out with a .30-caliber US carbine, the kind I had seen in countless war movies, the same kind my father had carried into battle in the Philippines.

      “Brothers, this is what y’all need, some guns.”

      We were surprised when a brunette white woman appeared from the kitchen and asked us if we wanted something to drink. After several hours of listening and talking, we left.

      We didn’t know who this cat was, nor did we care. We just wanted someone to point us in the right direction. We visited Voodoo Man often, and each time we saw more and more brothers and sisters over there from the SNCC and BSU circles we associated with. I think everyone was intrigued by his guns, and his talk was different from what we had been hearing at BSU and SNCC meetings. We didn’t even care that he and his whole scene seemed a little weird. We just wanted to move, to act, to make some noise, to startle the white establishment, to let them know we were watching their every move.

      One Friday night, Anthony and I accompanied Elmer and the Regents to the YMCA up on 23rd for a “Battle of the Bands” dance and contest. Elmer’s band was doing battle with a band from the South End called the Noblemen. They were a group of brothers who were not terribly good musicians, but they were funky and their lead singer, George, knew how to work the audience. During the dance there was some gesturing back and forth between members of the two bands. Because they were from the South End, we did not really know these brothers, nor did they know us. While we were putting our equipment back in the van, Elmer and one of the Noblemen got into an argument, and soon we all squared off with each other and started fighting.

      Within minutes the cops showed up and started pushing, shoving, beating us with their batons, and attempting to arrest us in their usual manner, and in a flash we united, turned on the cops, and attacked them. The crowd soon joined in. We chased the cops away and started throwing rocks and bottles at the white passersby, yelling obscenities. It was like an explosion of capped anger, like someone took a bottle of Coca-Cola, shook it up, and let off the cap. We erupted that night with Seattle’s first little riot. Soon more cops came. We stood our ground, throwing whatever we could grab, but were slowly overtaken. I was on the corner cussing, throwing rocks, when I was grabbed by four cops and practically heaved onto the hood of a squad car. One cop grabbed my long Afro and pulled my head back by the hair, and out of nowhere came a white guy with a camera, wearing a trench coat. He snapped my picture and disappeared. I knew he was a cop. Elmer, Anthony, I, and the Noblemen brothers were arrested and taken downtown. We were released a couple hours later without being charged.

      The following evening, Reverend Lloyd, the most outspoken religious leader in the Central District, called a community meeting about the incident. His little church on Cherry Street was packed with older people from the community. Many of them were upset about the treatment of us young rebels. We were praised as innocent, brave warriors brutalized by the police. The meeting went on for hours and finally ended without resolution. That little riot at the Y was the first time most of us had an actual physical conflict with the cops. They did not have to come down on us the way they did. But through their actions, they brought us together, uniting us and politicizing us, all in one night. I remember the cop taking my picture, which could have meant only one thing: just as we were preparing ourselves for the inevitable, the authorities were doing the same thing—preparing, by identifying future enemies of the state.