Spitfire! The Makings of a Revolutionary-True Life Story of Ashanti Ali
Post date: Apr 23, 2015 9:20:58 PM
The Revolutionaries of the 1960s and 1970s did not operate in a vacuum. While we have seen and read the headlines surrounding these warriors, what we haven't seen enough of are the accounts of those who studied and worked with them on a daily basis.
Spitfire is the narrative of one of those brothers who learned directly from such greats as Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Mark Comfort and many others as a youth in Oakland, California at the height of the Black Power movement of the 60s and 70s. The Elder Ali recounts in vivid detail numerous tragic events that led to his self-conscription into the movement to liberate his people from the abuses lingering after the Civil Rights Movement. A must-read for those seeking the story of black liberation directly from the source.
Excerpt from Ch.1 of Spitfire
The Nazis, in posthaste, mistook my celly, Charles Captain, for me. A true case of mistaken identity for real and for sure. The price tag was enormous. San Quentin would be locked down for more than a year. A war was brewing. I was young, fresh to the line, and inexperienced in how they get down in prison minus the hearsay bequeathed unto me in the county jail. But, the one thing I wasn’t was a coward.
I was fortunate enough to have been in the company of true to form revolutionaries prior to my capture. I was well drilled in numerous forms of combat, notwithstanding I am an Army veteran. I had escaped being so-called executed on death row only to descend into an environment of puritanical racism. I entertained “fish lines” galore each day, every day, all day from the radical “BDF” there in East Block with me, telling me I “had to take a military course of action” for what the “White boys” did to my celly. Bottom line. I let it be known in no uncertain terms, oh, it’s going down on sight. I actually would stab an individual, Peacock—he had a giant peacock tatted on his back and that’s exactly where I left my knife. I left it stuck in a protruding from his back. It should be known that it was much more to all this targeting that met the eye. And, perhaps it would be a wise man’s move to freeze, back up, and highlight just what ushered all this madness in.