TODAY’S AWAKENING ADDS TO OUR LEGACY

They called me “brother natural” because I had a big Afro back in those days. In my teenage years I went back and forth from San Diego to Los Angeles. That had a big influence on me because some of the things I went through up there. I am a very dark-skinned Black man, and I caught a lot of flak from both ends. I was picked on and harassed. I always felt bad about my own color, but then I started studying martial arts and I was able to take care of myself.

I was about 15 when I got recruited into the Black Panther Party. A lot of the older guys had been in the service. When they got home, they were the ones who were training us how to break the guns down and stuff like that just in case we had to go to war. It was about protecting ourselves because the police would come through the community and pick us up for nothing. They would take us to these vacant lumber yards, beat us and try to get information out of us.

Despite what some people called us, the Black Panthers were not a street gang. But that

Waddell is a signature gatherer. He lives in Vista. was the perception.

I used to sell the national Black Panther Party newspaper. There was a lot of Black and Latino businesses that would buy it and support it. There was Sister Pee Wee’s, Huffman’s Barbeque, and even the taco shop on Imperial and Euclid that had been there for probably 40 years.

It was more of a community paper. People wanted to know what was going on in the movement. There was even a lot of White people who helped out as far as donations. Our sales were pretty good.

We didn’t have the fancy shoes or anything like that, but the Black Panthers wore bell bottoms, black T-shirts, black berets and black leather jackets. We dressed to let the police know

U-T FILE PHOTO In 1969, the Black Panthers fed tens of thousands of San Diego children. Here they serve breakfast at Christ the King church.