and reach for dignity at the same time; you can fucking feed
children on top o f that and you got my respect. I stayed aloof,
also because I wasn’t some liberal white girl, middle-class by
skin, I had to take his measure and I couldn’t do it through
public perceptions or media or propaganda or the persona that
floated through the air waves. I saw him do fucking brilliant
things; I mean, you got to know how hard it is to do fucking
anything; and I saw him survive shootings, the police were
trying to assassinate him, no doubt; and I saw him transcend it;
and I saw him build, not just carry a fucking gun. Then there’s
this picture. H e’s been shot by the police and he’s cuffed to a
gum ey in an emergency room at Kaiser Hospital, October
1967. His chest is bare and raised; it’s raised because his arms
are cuffed to the legs o f the gurney, pulled back towards his
head; he’s wounded but they pulled his arms back so his chest
couldn’t rest on the gurney, so he’s stretched by the manacles,
his chest is sticking up because o f the strain caused by how his
arms are pulled back and restrained, it would hurt anyone, I
have been tied that way, it hurts, you don’t need a bullet in you
for it to give you pain, there’s a white cop in front o f him, fully
dressed, fully armed, looking with surprise at the camera, and
there’s this look on H uey’s face, half smile, half pain, defiant,
his eyes are open, he ain’t going to close them and he ain’t
going to die and he ain’t going to beg and he ain’t going to give
in and he ain’t thinking o f cutting his losses and he ain’t no
slobbering, frightened fool, and behind him there’s a white
nurse doing something and a sign that says “ D irty Needles
And Syringes O n ly, ” and she ain’t looking at him at all, even
though he’s right next to her, right against her side almost. I
have been cuffed that way, physically restrained. I have been
lying there. I have memories when I see this picture, I see m y
life in some o f its aspects, I see a hundred thousand porn
magazines too in which the woman, some woman, is cuffed
the same way, and the cop is or isn’t in the photograph, and the
cuffed woman is white or black, and I see on H uey’s face a
defiance I have never seen on her face or on m y own, not that I
have seen mine but I know what the photo would show, a
vapid pain, a blank, hooded stare, eyes that been dead a long,
long time, eyes that never stared back let alone said fuck you. I
see that he is defiant and that the cop is scared and that the cop
has not won. I see that even though H uey’s chest is raised
because his arms are stretched back and he is cuffed there is
pride in that raised chest. I see that his eyes are open and I see
that there is a clearness in his eyes, a willfulness, they are not
fogged or doped or droopy. I see that he is looking directly at
the camera, he’s saying I am here, this is me, I am, and the
camera can’t take his picture without making his statement. I
see that there is no look o f shame or coyness on his face, he
