The New Yorker Radio Hour - American Exiles in East Africa

Episode Date: March 8, 2019

Pete O’Neal was a street hustler and small-time pimp who gave up crime to struggle against oppression, founding the Kansas City chapter of the Black Panther Party. Charlotte Hill was a high-school student who gave up a college scholarship to join the Panthers and do community service. Their love affair seemed like a charmed one. But the Black Panthers became targets of intimidation and disruption by the F.B.I. and other law enforcement, and a climate of paranoia set in. After Pete was convicted on a firearms charge that he considered trumped up, he jumped bail, and he and Charlotte fled the United State with false passports. Since 1970, Pete has never been able to return. Living in Africa, they began to think about how to resume the work they had commenced as Black Panthers. As well documented as the nineteen-sixties were, the staff writer Jelani Cobb notes, the story of radicals forced into exile is hardly known. The producer KalaLea reported from Tanzania, with additional reporting by Andrea Tudhope in Kansas City. (Part 1 of a two-part story.) Tshidi Matale, Kiva, and L. D. Brown of Grey Reverend contributed music for this story. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Gianlani Cobb, a staff writer with The New Yorker. Today we're going to tell the story of two remarkable people, Pete O'Neill and Charlotte Hill O'Neill, who have been living in exile for nearly 50 years. I met Charlotte when I was a student at Howard University. She gave a talk to me and a group of other student activists about the development. development work she and Pete had been doing for many years in East Africa. In a time of American history that's been covered a lot and mythologized, maybe even romanticized, the story of 1960s radicals who went into exile is still barely known. So Charlotte and Pete O'Neill's story really intersects with a big movement in American history.

And the struggle that drove them out of the United States as political activists against oppression has never really ended. For several years, Charlotte has been urging her elderly father to come live with her and Pete in Tanzania. At the age of 91, he finally accepted their invitation. Charlotte returned to the United States to throw her father a farewell party. It's food outside, it's food in the kitchen. It's placing bowls and spools and furs and farts. How's you doing?

I've been hanging in there. How are you doing? By doing it better, it'll scare me. You're looking well. You're looking well. Our producer, Kalalia, has been reporting the story of Charlotte and Petal Neal for much of the last year. So the Fair World Party was on Saturday, the 16th of June. Not officially summer, but it was already 94 degrees in Kansas City that day.

And despite the heat, people keep coming in. No one wanted to miss the opportunity to say goodbye to Charlotte's father, Mr. Hill. Well, just about everybody in here is Blood Family. And that's Charlotte Hill O'Neill. I don't know how many people have been here today, but they're going to keep on coming until tonight. Thank you, Jaden. Thank you so much.

Everybody says that Kansas City will not be the same without my dad being here. Because, you know, he grew up here. He knows everybody and everybody knows him. My name is M.A. Sterling Hill. I'm a very emotional person. I'm about ready to start shedding tears now because it's hard for me to leave my loved ones here and go there with loved ones.

My wife and I, we were together for over 50 years. she was a real mother and wife and church member. I didn't want to go because this was our home. Can you imagine packing up everything and your wife's not with you and moving to another continent? Charlotte's come alone to assist with the packing and selling of her father's home. Her husband Pete hasn't been able to travel to the U.S. since they left the country nearly 50 years ago. So many memories, you know, just in every corner,

in every inch of this house. And the fact that this is the last time that we'll be in this house, you know. I mean, that is a trip for me. Me and Dad always had a very special relationship. He always called me pumpkin. The reason I call a pumpkin. when she was first born, she had a pumpkin head.

And that name, that's name's stuffed with her. Mr. Hill is in his early 90s, and he spent much of his life in uniform. After serving in World War II, he was a Navy officer. And then for 25 years, he worked as a fireman, where he retired as chief. Charlotte remembers when he used to visit her grade school for Parents' Day. When he was a fireman, and he'd have on his blue dress outfit and this blue hat with a visor, and he'd have a stockwash. Because what they would do is time us, you know,

and see how long it would take us to leave the school after they ring that bell. And I used to be so proud. Everybody knew my dad. You know, everywhere we went, they knew my dad. Now Charlotte's parents were the kind of people. we would call pillars of the community. But in some ways, they were also way ahead of their time. They made sure that we recognized that we were African people.

Now, that was back in the day, that was something that was unusual. It really, really was. But they always taught to be proud, you know, and to be creative. In many black families, in the 60s and even today, acknowledging their African history was frowned upon. I remember my own grandmother saying to me when I was a little girl, I'm not African, I'm colored. She was brought up to believe that being African was primitive and shameful. We didn't see much of ourselves in the books in those days. Every little bit, every little glimpse of Africa, it might have been National Geographic, it might have been the encyclopedias that we were so proud to have.

I was drawn to that. When Charlotte was a teenager, it was the mid-1960s, and the black power movement was taking shape. Black people in America and throughout the diaspora were turning to Africa for cultural and spiritual guidance. They were changing their names, their style of dress, and their hairdos. The Afro or natural was being embraced,

but not by every black person. In a mostly black high school, Charlotte stood out. I was the only female who was wearing my hair natural. The vice principal, Rohn, he actually suspended me from school. I had a little short, real short natural with a little, like I wear now with a part cut in it, and I would wear my African clothes, and he said that it was drawing too much attention. So he actually suspended me, and my parents had come up there and get me back in school, and I did not stop wearing my African clothes.

That interest in African heritage has stayed with Charlotte her whole life. Recently, she became an Eresha priestess. It's a little hard to describe in Western terms, but let's just say she's a spiritual practitioner in African ancestor religion. At her father's going away party, Charlotte wanted to perform an ancestor ritual to honor him. She asked everyone at the party to make a circle around him. And on the grass at their feet are family heirlooms, tools, and glassware.

Many items are more than a hundred years old. Just a little bit as we speak their name. And I'd like to start with my mom, Teresa Calzeller, Garrett Hill. Charlotte uses a lighter to burn incense, and then she encourages the family to call out the names of their loved ones. Mr. Hill closes his eyes. Call him out. Robin Hill. Call him out.

Constance Hill. Call him out. He'll. Call him out. Michael Hill. Call him up. Ruben Sipkin. Calvin Hill.

Call him out. While preparing for her father's move, Charlotte came across the letter. she had written to her family just one month after she left the country, following her husband into exile. It's a long one, about four or five pages. That was a pretty good writer even then. Yeah, your handwriting is remarkable. People don't write cursive anymore. No. That blows my mind. Yeah, I know.

Oh, that's too bad. So this letter begins. We have started this letter several times. I guess it's difficult to be separated and say goodbye to those you have loved for so long. But we have come to the realization that this separation, no matter how long, is not goodbye, but it is only an interruption. I no longer feel the need to console you all whom we love so dearly. I believe love will be the supreme consoler. Don't worry, please don't, for that would be an extra burden that we all would have to bear. We can make it.

We have always before, and we will continue to do so. Remember that we are alive, we're safe, and we're very much in love. We get our strength from this love, as you must do also. Should I keep on? At the bottom of the last page, there's an additional note, a P.S. You know, back in the day, we referred to police as pigs, as many of y'all know. And this says, P.S. The pigs are going to approach you and family members that I didn't know we had.

Tell them nothing. The best way to answer them is, quote, I have nothing to discuss with you. Be strong and don't let us down. You're listening to American Egg. in East Africa. Our producer, Kalalia, reported this story for much of last year. I'm Jelani Cobb. We'll find out why Charlotte left the country abruptly when she was 19 years old when our story continues. You're listening to The New Yorker Radio Hour. You're listening to

the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Jolani Cobb, a staff writer with the New Yorker. We're listening to American Exiles in East Africa, the story of Pete O'Neill and Charlotte Hill O'Neill, and their 50 year exile from the United States. My name is Felix Lindsay O'Neill Jr. My nickname is Pete O'Neill. Who are you? I'm Pete O'Neill. I'm a 78-year-old elder black man.

Who else could I possibly be? Our story picks up in 1969 when Pete O'Neill was the chairman of the Kansas City, Missouri chapter of the Black Panther Party. And in that year, the Black Panthers were at the height of their influence. with chapters all across the United States, and they loomed very, very large in the American imagination for people in the counterculture who revered them and for their opponents who demonized them.

FBI director Jay Edgar Hoover declared the Panthers were the greatest internal threat to U.S. national security. As far as the government was concerned, people like Pete O'Neill were enemies of the state. Our producer, Kalalia, interviewed O'Neill in Tanzania, where he's been living for nearly 50 years. Pete was a prominent member of the Black Panther Party, but he wasn't always a radical person bent on ending oppression.

He has a fairly checker past, and he's tired of talking about it, but of course I pressed him. I came up on 12th Street where all the great jazz giants were and everything, all the hustlers and the pimps and the prostitutes, and these people from the age of nine, were my professors. They inculcated in me a way of thinking.

I don't even know if I'd really need to be talking about this, but nonetheless, they inculcated into my psyche, a manner of thinking that is very street-oriented. It's square people just don't think that way. They really don't. From a fairly young age, Pete was primarily a street hustler and small-time pimp. He had just two concerns in life, making money fast and staying far away from the police. But he had an argument with the wife of a police officer, and the law caught up to him.

Pete needed help. And he thought maybe the Black Panthers could help him, so he went to the headquarters in Oakland. They had no interest in his personal affairs. But they encouraged him to stay and participate in political education classes. They started to talk to me about great revolutionaries, people who had struggled and sacrificed and lost their lives. For what? For the benefit of the people. For the benefit of the people.

And I just said, my God, my God, I've been looking at this thing wrong. To me, was like what I imagined a born-again Christian experiences when he's seen the light. I went back to Kansas City, pumped up, filled with revolutionary fever. In 1966, Bobby Seale and Humey Newton created a 10-point program for the newly established Black Panther Party. When we first organized the Black Panther Party of a self-defense, he would say, Bobby, he says, we're going to draw up a basic platform. While news coverage has tended to focus on the armed self-defense aspect, of the organization. Most of it was about community-based social programs. The point was not to attack the government per se, but rather to empower marginalized people to organize themselves and pursue

their own interests. You say we want freedom, we want power to determine the destiny of our black community, full employment for our people. Number three, we want housing fit, decent housing fits for shelter of human beings. Number four, we want all black men to be. be exempt for military service. Number five, we want decent education for our black people in our community that teaches us the true nature of this decadent racist society and to teach black people and our young black brothers and sisters they're placing in society because if they don't know they're placed in society and in the world they can't relate to anything else. Number six. Pete stayed in Oakland at the Panthers headquarters for three weeks.

He returned home and decided he was finished with petty crime and pimping young women. There was this one girl who worked for him, and they were living together too. And I told that little girl, I said, child, go home. I said, go home, now you're going to make my crap. I said, you go home, girl, and I said, you try to get your life together. You know, I said, just go on it. In 1969, Pete got permission to start a Panther chapter in his hometown. I met some really good brothers of Bill Whitfield, Keith Hinch, and myself.

The three of us decided to form the Kansas City chapter of the Black Panther Party. In June, Pete was returning from a speaking tour throughout the Midwest. He had left the Kansas City Panthers chapters in the hands of his younger brother, Brian. A friend dropped off Pete at the corner, not too far from the Panther pad. As I approached, I could hear this loud music boom-ty-boom-boom-boom-boom-pum-pum. Music is rocking, and they're just dancing and javving and going around, and you could almost see smoke emanating from that porch. I said, what the hell is wrong with you?

You come, what are you doing? Everyone was speechless. They couldn't deny that they were violating the one important rule. It will not be allowed to use marijuana during office hours. Anyway. Which were it was? Whatever it was, you couldn't smoke during those hours. Now, after you finish your office work, okay.

Now remember, we're talking about teenagers. And to them, 30-year-old Pete was no one to mess with. Then Pete spotted Charlotte. I'd never seen her before. Pretty young, skinny woman. I said, and who in the hell are you? My name is Charlotte Hill. I said, well, why are you here?

And she said, I joined the Black Panther Party. I want to struggle for the people. I said, I don't know who the hell you are. I said, but shut up and don't say another damn word. and I turned my head to start fussing at the other kids and she said, you can't tell me not to talk and all of the other panthers gasped. They said, and I said, what did you say to me?

You can't tell me not to talk. My father told me never to allow anyone to stop me from expressing my feelings and my views and you can't tell me. I said, you dare not. I'd say another word. I'm going to talk. I have a right to talk.

And I thought to myself, oh God. I said, this woman is going to be trouble. I said, I don't like her. I don't know why she's here, but I'm going to get rid of it. It's the last thing I do. I was thoroughly hooked on being a Panther, and I remember cutting out articles and pasting it on my wall. One of those was Brother Peter O'Neill,

and I never thought I would meet him, actually. Charlotte Hill, a high school student in Kansas, had cut out a photo from the Kansas City Star. It showed Pete protesting at the mayor's office. Do you remember what you were reading about, Pete? Mm-hmm. At the time before you had met him, like... Yes, yes.

Well, of course, most of the stories were negative on the news, you know, and that's when we were still being called Negroes, you know. And this Negroes is patrolling... Police and the police, which was one of the policies of the Black Panther Party. One of the pictures that was very prominent was when they were holding their shotguns and rifles and announcing the formation of the Black Panther Party, I would never forget that. You know, in spite of all this negative stuff that I was reading, you know, Panthers are racist, Panthers of wild people, Panthers of mad men and women,

I also was hearing about the Breakfast for School Children program. And when I was actually able to participate in that and other community service projects, I knew I was on the right track. Like I said, I always did very good in school, and I had had aspirations of being a gynecologist, a pediatrician, and I had gotten a scholarship to go to the school in Austin, Texas. and then when I didn't take that opportunity to actually use that scholarship, my parents were very upset about that. I said, no, this is what I, this community service is what I want to do.

Now, it could have been a way of community service being an obstetrician or a pediatrician, but I just wanted to be a panther. The day Charlotte had met Pete, he swore he was going to get rid of her. But while working together on the Breakfast for School Children program, they grew to appreciate one another. And it was so ironic in my sincere dislike of this woman. Two months later, we were living together. Weeks after they met,

they rode the Panthers bus from Kansas City, Missouri to Kansas City, Kansas, to get the last of Charlotte's things. By the end of 1969, Charlotte and Pete were. We're listening to American exiles in East Africa. By the time Pete O'Neill and Charlotte Hill met, tensions were already high between law enforcement agencies and many of the Panther chapters. There was a climate of paranoia developing within the Black Panther Party. Under the banner of Cointel Pro, a counterintelligence program designed to dismantle the

Panthers and other radical political organizations. The FBI engaged in surveillance, political dirty tricks, and extra-legal. tactics to sole dissension among the radicals. At the end of 1969, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, two Chicago Panthers had been killed at home during a police raid. Police reports claimed that Hampton and Clark had fired at officers, which was later contradicted by forensic evidence. Their deaths created a wave of fear within the party, and that affected the Kansas City chapter as well. In late October of 1969, Pete was visited by the FBI, the FBI, the ATF and the Kansas City SWAT team, who took them to the state of Kansas to charge him.

They arrested me, and the charge was, listen carefully, that one year before, I had bought in a pawn shop, a $19, single-shot shotgun, and transported it across state lines. Now, they couldn't prove that. because they didn't get the gun from me. They got it from another panther in Missouri. I bought it in Kansas, I did. The panther got it, took it over into Missouri. They got it from him and arrested him.

Pete used to take fellow panthers between states to do survival training, which meant he had brought guns across state lines in the past. This would have been fairly common, especially during hunting season. And Pete says he didn't know it was illegal. So to Pete and Charlotte, the charge seemed like a completely trumped-up one. So they changed the charge. They said he either transported or caused it to be transported. And from that, they concocted three charges from that one act that would have led to 15 years in prison.

Pete was sentenced to four years in prison on October 26, 1970. And then he said, oddly, but I'll allow you to stay out on bill. That was the funniest thing. I could not understand why he did that. Now, you know, you've seen enough crime movies. When they sentence you, they put the handcuffs on you, and they take you away. Pete was worried that this was some kind of setup. He says that a black police officer warned him.

His life was in danger. You remember Kenny Rogers? I know you do. The gambler, you remember that? and he said it and he said, you got to know when to hold them, no when to fold them, no when to walk away and know when to run.

Well, it was common sense. It told me it's time to leave now. Pete Jump Bell. And despite being watched by just about everyone with a badge, he felt his only choice was to leave the United States as soon as possible. American Exiles in East Africa was produced by Kalalia

for the New Yorker Radio Hour. That was part one. We'll continue next week when Pete and Charlotte O'Neill escaped the country in disguise. Midnight came, no phone call. One o'clock came,

two o'clock came. And we was like, this ain't going to happen. So I'd taken off my itchy wig, and he had taken off his clothes, and we were like, I don't know. what's going to happen after that, but it doesn't look like we're going to escape.

That's next time on the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and that's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for listening. Our story, American Exiles in East Africa, was produced with assistance from Meja Mbuyah in Tanzania, and additional reporting by Andrea Tudhope in Kansas City. Additional music was contributed by C.D. Matale, Kiva, and L.D. Brown. The story draws on Seth Markle's book called A Motorcycle Arborchell. on Hell Run, Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism, 1964 through 1974.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Turina Endowment Fund.