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were trailing behind, scooped up the woman and hustled her across the street into a waiting car.

The newscaster's blow was slight but it was plain to see that the blatant audacity of it outraged Huey P. and he dropped the magazine and belted-the newscaster square in his mealy face, knocking him flat up against the wall which rebounded him into his cameraman. All the cops tensed up and their hands began fidgeting around the butts of their holstered pistols, and Bobby Seale motioned to his brothers that the time seemed appropriate to split. But Huey P. didn't think so and he stood out in front of the others, pointing at the dazed newscaster and shouting for the cops to "Arrest that man! He assaulted me 'n I want you to arrest him! Go on, arrest him GODDAMMIT!" The cops all began flipping the straps off the hammers of their .38's, and Huey P. jacked a shell into the chamber of his shotgun and ordered his brothers to "Spread out!" behind him, and they did, facing the cops with their M-l's gripped tight in both hands and angled toward the sky.

It looked like it was all going to blow any second, and Emmett moved off the sidewalk into the street, positioning himself for cover out of the line of fire a hundred feet away on the other side of the row of parked cars. Just then, a fat, chunky cop started coming forward yelling, "Don't point that shotgun at me! Stop pointing it at me, I tell ya!" The traffic coming from and going to the Bay bridge was bottled up at the freeway ramp behind Emmett, and the copper's screaming had all the people in the cars staring with their mouths open wide in utter disbelief at the showdown occurring only a short distance away from them.

There were about thirty cops all crowded together on the sidewalk now, and the chunky one kept hollering and making threatening motions towards his pistol, and Huey P. held his ground in front of him with his shotgun tilted, ready for action. He wasn't going to let that fat cop bully his way any closer and he started challenging him to remove his gun from his holster. "Go on, you big fat racist pig, draw your gun! You goddamn coward! Go on, I'm waitin'!" The fat cop froze, startled at being called. The other cops began moving away from him out of the line of fire, and when he saw that, he sort of sighed, hung his head low and gave up. Huey P. Newton laughed in his face.

All of a sudden, one of the black guys who walked over to the car with the woman and the other two, came running across the street [end page 307]

 

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