Reflected here is life as I lived it, my thoughts and feelings as I remember them. Here, too, are my personal… — Elaine Brown

To say that I loved Huey, however, even at that moment would be to say too little I loved being loved by him. I loved the protection he offered with his powerful arms and fearless dreams. I loved how beautiful he was, sinewy, and sultry at once. I loved his genius and his bold uses of it. I loved that he was the vicarious dream of a man that white men hid from themselves, except when he confronted them, their rules, their world. I loved his narrow buttocks and his broad shoulders and his clean skin. I loved being the queen of his world, for he had fashioned a new world for those who dared. Yet I had come to hate life with him. His madness had become as full-blown as his genius. The numerous swaggering "dicks" who had challenged the hero to prove his manhood had finally taken their toll. Now had had outdone them all, including himself.

A women in the Black Power movement was considered, at best, irrelevant. A woman asserting herself was a pariah. A woman attempting the role of leadership was, to my proud black Brothers, making an alliance with the "counter-revolutionary, man-hating, lesbian, feminist white bitches." It was a violation of some Black Power principle that was left undefined. If a black woman assumed a role of leadership, she was said to be eroding black manhood, to e hindering the progress of the black race. She was an enemy of black people.

"Oakland is the birthplace of this party. Oakland will be the birthplace of revolution in the United States. And that will be so despite the pigs. It will be so despite any petty despots who claim to be our comrades. It will be so despite the criticism of the infantile leftists, who have accomplished nothing. It will be done despite the voodoo drums of the so-called Black Nationalists."