Boing Boing: Black Panthers hot sauce
the hot sauce is dubbed “Burn Baby Burn.”

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I almost didn’t click on this link. But a hot sauce put out by the Black Panthers named “Burn Baby Burn.” was just too much to pass up. So here it is. For whatever reason.

Though now that I think about it I do have a slight memory connection.

What follows needs to be taken with a large dose of salts. The mind that is doing this remembering isn’t real sharp any more about things yesterday much less this far back. I could be misremembering all the way across the board. You have been warned.

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There used to be a log cabin across the street from where I now live. It was owned by an old black man (? I think). Don’t know what happened to him. I think he was already long dead by the time the place was torched. The old cement steps are still in the bank by the ditch.

The house was burned, I heard, by the local KKK who were trying to capture two Black Panther outside agitators that were supposedly in the area (Anniston, AL) inciting the black community to violence and arson.

There had been some rioting and several buildings burned in Anniston one Sunday evening. We saw the glow in the sky over Anniston when we came out of church that night. I remember wanting to go down there but my father intervened (wisely looking back on it now) so I didn’t get to see any of the rioting. A friend did go and said it was all crazy but I don’t know that he really went or got close to anything if he did.

It was later that night or Monday when the rumor went around that this guy (don’t think I ever knew a name) was hiding out in this old cabin across from our farm. I doubt that he was but there was no evidence in the ashes that anyone died there when the fire marshal checked it out a day or so later.

Anyway I heard and then saw the fire trucks head this way. We lived about 2 miles away then, actually where my folks still live, but to get here you had to turn right in front of our house (then). So I saw the trucks head this way and wanted to follow but I suspect my dad knew more about what was going on than I did and wouldn’t let me go. Came this way the next day I think and the place was just smoking ruins.

The next report was that the Black Panthers had left the state and things started to settle back down.

I guess this would have been 67 or 68 but I can’t be sure. We were always about 2 to 3 years behind the west coast on everything else.