You know I've written a bit about Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter, a complicated young man who was assassinated in 1969 at UCLA. I stopped writing because I ran out of further information about him.
In the meantime, NBC began a TV series, "Aquarius," about a white detective in Los Angeles that stumbles into Mr. Carter and the Black Panthers in Los Angeles. I have not yet seen the series, so I don't know how Mr. Carter is handled, and I have heard that his family is not happy with his treatment. I'll have to take a look.
I'm more interested in Mr. Carter as a person, and I learned something new about him today: he was a poet and a singer. Elaine Brown wrote that the Panthers sometimes sang together. "John (Huggins) sang bass to my contralto and Bunchy's falsetto, and that he was a great dancer. This makes sense in some ways--like Doris Day, he suffered childhood polio and his mother enrolled in "therapeutic" dance classes to try to strengthen his limbs.
Bunchy worked at a department store on Wilshire and had a job working at the Teen Post in Los Angeles, for a woman named Caffee Greene. Her son, Raymond Nat Turner (Black Agenda Report's poet-in-residence), says, "Yeah, I heard Bunchy sing Stevie" "I'm Wondering," and "I Was Made To Love Her," and I used to hear Tommy (Lewis) play piano at the Teen Post my mom directed. It was also fun to watch Bunchy dance--Philly Dog, Jerk & Twine . . . a lil' 'Bitter Dog' with the Philly Dog ever once in a while. . . "Bepop Santa From the Cool North Pole. "Black Mother" were also great to hear."
Bunchy Carter, singer, poet, dancer, child actor in the Little Rascals, felon, scholar, intellectual and revolutionary. Like I said, a complicated young man. Too bad he didn't
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