Growing up Black Panthers: Richmonder’s one-woman show reflects on ‘Cub’ childhood

These recollections are all part of Gabriel’s one-woman show on growing up as the daughter of parents who belonged to the Black Panther Party.

Her show “I Was There, Too!” debuts at 8 p.m. tonight at Airship Laboratories in Richmond with a second performance at 2 p.m. on Sunday.

The 75-minute performance features the Richmond resident speaking and singing about her childhood experiences. She is backed by a three-person musical group, Sam Reid on piano,

Sam Gonzalez on drums and led by Yafeu Tyhimba on bass, as well as a slideshow that shines on the wall behind her.

Gabriel says the purpose of her multimedia performance is to show how the community the Black Panthers built also affected the “Cubs,” as their children were known.

She says while most may remember the Panthers for confronting police and challenging authority they also were building a supportive community that included preschools, day care centers and cultural arts activities.

However, Gabriel notes that the disruption of everyday life as well as the level of commitment demanded by Panther leadership took a toll on the children.

“People who took up the movement committed their mind, body and soul to it,” she told Richmondside. “We had day care, but that didn’t take care of it. Children need their parents.”

Gabriel says her show is a way for people who grew up under the Black Panther umbrella to process their past. However, she said the performance might appeal to anybody who felt unseen or abandoned in their childhood.

“There is a message of self-care,” she said.

Ajuana Black, director of “I Was There, Too!,” agreed.

“It gives voice to the child and the adult who didn’t have a voice back then,” she told Richmondside. “Through her words, there is healing for that child.”

Gabriel was born in 1974 and grew up in east Oakland. Her father, Emery Douglas, was the minister of culture for the Black Panthers. Her mother, Gayle Dickson, was the primary women’s artist.

Her parents weren’t married, and Gabriel lived with her mother and two half-brothers in a single-parent household. She said they moved at least 12 times during her childhood.

Much of that time was spent in poverty, but the family always had a place to stay and food to eat due to the Panthers’ support network. However, Gabriel recalls living in “pretty raggedy” circumstances with unclean surroundings and violent neighbors.

She also recalls the secrecy that enveloped their household. She and her siblings were told they couldn’t tell anybody about their parents’ participation in the Panthers, a confusing message for a young person, she said.

Gabriel attended a Panthers preschool but mostly went to public schools from kindergarten through high school. She graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C., and then continued her education in Paris in the 1990s.

She has taught French, language arts, writing and literature at various institutions. She also established Life-Changing Writing, a program that helps writers discover their literary voice.

She even contributed to the forward of a book her father wrote about his art while in the Black Panthers and toured with him when he exhibited.

However, her childhood still simmered underneath.

She said those feelings rose to the surface when she attended the memorial service for Black Panther leader Geronimo Pratt in 2011.

Gabriel heard stories about what people who were adult Panthers members remembered from their revolutionary days. The children, she realized, had not been heard from.

“I had never felt like it was my story. It was my parents’ story,” Gabriel said. “I started to wonder if there was something to it.”

She wrote some poetry about her experiences,  participated in some panels, and the idea of a one-woman show began to germinate.

That’s when she met Black, an actress, vocalist and songwriter, who had put together her own one-woman show on motherhood.

Black thought a personal reconstruction from Gabriel was a great idea.

“I had a real vision about the power of such a performance,” Black said.

Gabriel will bring that vision to life when she unveils her one-woman performance this weekend.

She isn’t sure what her parents will think. Her father plans to attend, although she’s not sure if her mother will be there.

From there, Gabriel plans to take the show on the road. Grants from the California Arts Council,

Center for Cultural Power and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts are helping to fund the journey.

“I’m super excited,” Gabriel said. “I’m doing everything in this show that I wanted to do.”