IF YOU NEED US THERE, WE’LL STILL SHOW UP

We ended up in San Diego because my biological father, Henry Lee Wallace IV, was a staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force. He moved around the country, but eventually we ended up here in San Diego.

My father carried himself as a proud Black man. Back in those days, you rarely saw a Black man who was in the military have rank. He made me feel like I was somebody. Even though I was poor and broke, I still had that pride.

He was not the best father. My mother eventually divorced him. She remarried Frankie Germany. My stepdad took care of her and us until the day he died.

In 1967, my sister Shirley George-meadors enrolled at San Diego State College (now San Diego State University). She met a young man named Kenneth Denmon, and they were active within the Black student union. They were approached by members of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, who asked them to start up a chapter in San Diego. He became our first deputy minister of defense when the Black Panther Party opened its first headquarters in San Diego on Imperial at 29th Street. Some of the first recruits were guys who hung out at Mountain View Park. Their names were Jeffrey Jennings, Walter Wallace, Zeke Tate and David Combs, also known as “Little Mole.”

My sister and her boyfriend wanted to do something for the community and so that’s when my mother, Evelyn Taylor-germany, and my stepfather, Frankie James Germany, my brothers Vincent Wallace and Patrick, and myself all got involved.

U-T FILE PHOTO San Diego police respond on July 13, 1969, to unrest at 43rd Street and National Avenue. Police raided Black Panther headquarters that week.