Paul Coates & Eddie Conway Talk
History, the author keep quiet for two former Black Panthers
BY SUSIE DAY
Awhile back, a friend and
I were talking about History
and rebellions, and
I lamented how the 1871
Paris Commune had failed. My
friend, a self-avowed psychic, said,
“Yes, history records very few total
victories over oppression. That’s
because, on this worldly plane,
most things are not supposed to
work out. It’s all about the trying.”
So this will be a short essay on
trying. On how, in the late 1960s,
two Africa-American men met at
the Baltimore chapter of the Black
Panther Party for Self-Defense and
tried to build “The Revolution.”
And how, for the past six years, I’ve
tried to write a book about them.
The book is “The Brother You
Choose.” I’m happy it’s being published.
Ultimately, though, the book
fails. It has to, because the lives of
the two brothers in question are
too stunning to fi t into an artful
stack of perfect-bound pages.
Why a white lesbian spent six
years chatting with two former
Black Panthers
The book covers the lifelong
friendship of Eddie Conway and
Paul Coates who, in their early
20s, had, like thousands of young
Black people, come to the Panthers
demanding, not just racial equality
and an end to police violence, but a
chance for Black people to reshape
the world.
History tells us that the Panthers
didn’t work out. You can
blame hubris or planetary karma
for this — but you absolutely must
look also to the US government.
Similar to government efforts today,
infi ltration campaigns like the
FBI’s Counterintelligence Program
COINTELPRO worked with local
police to “neutralize” and destroy
antiwar and liberation groups. No
group was more targeted than the
Black Panther Party.
When they met, Paul didn’t much
like Eddie: “He had an attitude, you
know. Eddie would just pop up and
he was: ‘I’m a PANTHER. You just
came on the scene? Get out of my
Eddie Conway and Paul Coates on February 20 of this year.
way, squirt.”
Nobody could have known back
then that COINTELPRO existed,
but even amid community projects
like the Free Breakfast for Children
Program, both Eddie and Paul began
to suspect that something
wasn’t right. Eddie remembers how
the cops set up a confrontation by
getting an informer to start a fi ght
on the street, then run through
the Panther offi ce:
The police pull up—screeeeee—
all around our offi ce.
“GIVE US THAT MAN!”
“We ain’t got that man.”
“COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS
UP!”
“Hell, no.”
Of course, we get locked up.
We go to court. Guess who’s on
the stand? Yep. The guy that ran
down the street, in our door, and out
the back. They had to let everybody
go because the Baltimore Sun found
out this guy was working for the police.
How could the Panthers be harboring
a fugitive when the fugitive
was a police employee?
When Eddie was arrested for
the shooting death of a Baltimore
policeman, Paul knew the charges
had to be bogus. He vowed to never
to leave the guy with the “attitude,”
even after Eddie went to prison
carrying a sentence of life-plus-30-
SUSIE DAY
HAYMARKET BOOKS
This is a book where author Susie Day spent a
good deal of time listening — and making what
she heard the centerpiece of the narrative.
years.
For over four decades, while Eddie
was locked up, Paul stuck by
him. He worked on legal campaigns
and organized rallies, trying to get
Eddie out. He started Black Classic
Press to get books into the prison.
Paul visited Eddie regularly, often
bringing with him his seven kids.
One of them, Ta-Nehisi, was to become
a writer.
In 2014, when Eddie was fi nally
released, Paul was there on the
streets of Baltimore to welcome
him. Today the two men, in their
70s, each married with families,
jobs, and full, separate lives, are
BOOKS
rock-solid. Each, the other’s chosen
brother.
That’s a rough synopsis. But
why did I, a queer white woman —
whose life has been enhanced by
centuries of systemic racial perks
— want to put together a book on
two radical Black dudes with whom
I have so little in common? I mean,
weren’t the Panthers macho? Isn’t
today’s Black Lives Matter movement
less hierarchical? Why get
into anyof this?
Because History, as we’ve known
it, needs to shut up. History needs
to listen to the elegance and bravery
and intelligence of those who’ve
tried to make The Revolution and
“failed.” Listen especially to the generations
of Black people like Paul
and Eddie who have faced, since
they were children, the ordinary,
everyday poverty and brokenness
and abuse and discrimination and
soul-canceling of living in white
America. Then listen harder to
how these very people tried, with
groups like the Panthers, to create
something better. As a white person,
now and forever, I need to listen
to these stories. And there are
many.
That’s why this book, except
for my background narration of
settings, history, and legalities of
Eddie’s case, is 95 percent Paul’s
and Eddie’s own words. I got these
words from interviewing them for
more than six years, beginning
soon after Eddie’s release.
I’d take the train from New York
to Baltimore every few months,
and we’d hang out. I’d ask them
questions and they’d talk about
their growing up, their time in the
army, politics, stuff that happened
in and after prison. Among other
things, Paul talked a
bout the brilliant and abusive
father he’s never stopped loving.
About how discovering Black literature
changed his life. About
“getting my children through,”
by which he means, teaching his
kids to be strong, ethical people,
respectful of their elders, but most
importantly, people who stand up
➤ THE BROTHER YOU CHOOSE, continued on p.34
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