Tureeda Mikell
Life Light Remembered
“We are soldiers on the battlefield
With life light in our eyes,” said Sis Sonja
1994, 23 years after volunteering
at the Black Panther Party free health clinic,
the Tribune calls,
Asking,
“How many guns did you have at the
Black Panther Clinic?”
How many guns?
Not - how many services were provided?
Not - how many programs were implemented?
Not - how many doctors or healthcare workers volunteered?
Not even why we’d care to put into practice such a program
with so many hospitals in our community.
No, didn’t ask any of that!
Wanted to know how many guns we had.
Not what illnesses or diseases most
affected our communities or
how often we provided diabetes or sickle cell tests
or checked for high blood pressure, if at all.
Or… What may have been my specialty at that time,
I would have told her of certain grains to regain genetic memory.
But she was more interested in
How many guns we had
Not who ran the clinic
or what hours or days
of the week we were open
Or… Who was our hero or she-ro
to set about such a task that sustains
our health needs today.
No, the reporter didn’t ask any of that.
She wanted to know,
How many guns we had?
Black men and women
Late teens, 20-somethings
Volunteered to become doctors, nurses, pharmacist, and therapist,
completed homework between
seeing patients.
Black volunteer staff physicians
Tolbert Smalls and Eddy Newsome
tried to reverse curse of opioid addictions
purposefully placed in our neighborhoods
to weaken Black power base,
developed methadone program
to destroy heroin dependence.
We took vital signs,
Did sickle cell and diabetic tests
Provided prenatal care
Kept patient records
Organized charts, med rooms, pharmacy
Gave better care than Kaiser dared
Held life light in our eyes,
Books our bullets,
Educationally armed
Right to fight through walls that
Imprisoned us as violent, drug infested
Gun carrying, sex crazed jigga boos.
Kwame Ture warned…
“We must be politically prepared for what is coming. We have no choice.
The revolution is coming whether we want it or not! It is coming whether we
want it or not!!!”
How many guns did we have?
“We were soldiers on the battlefield
With life light in our eyes.”
We are soldiers on the battlefield with life light in our eyes!!
Previously printed in Civil Liberties United: Diverse Voices from the San Francisco Bay Area, Pease Press, 2019.
Reflection Questions:
The author was a volunteer at the Black Panther Free Health Clinic. What point does the poem make about how facts are sought, reported, remembered, and perpetuated?
What battles were fought at the health clinic? Against what diseases, with what tools?
What was the life light, and what are the long battles we continue to fight?
Tureeda Ture Ade Mikell, Story medicine woman, holistic activist, Black Panther Alum named ‘word magician’ by acclaimed Tanzanian poet, author, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, insures voices of youth be heard by publishing 73 youth poetry anthologies, elementary to high-school. Author of the full-length poetry collection, Synchronicity: The Oracle of Sun Medicine (Nomadic Press, 2020), which was nominated for the California Book Award; The Patrice Lumumba Anthology in collaboration with EastSide Arts Alliance (Nomadic Press, 2021) and a second full-length poetry collection, The Body: Oracle of Memory (Black Lawrence Press, 2024). Mikell received Berkeley Poetry Festival's Life Time Achievement Award in 2024. @storymedicinewoman and tureedamikell.com