About two years before I completed high school, my inner life was plunged into a sea of confusion and turmoil that lasted until Bobby Seale and I organized the Black Panther Party. For four years I went through the kind of pain that comes when you are letting go of old beliefs and certainties and have nothing to take their place. This distress had begun earlier and was a result of contrasting and varying elements in my life. As I matured physically, the problems seemed more insoluble, the strain became greater; I felt adrift. I began to question everything about my life. There seemed no haven of security in anything I was doing or hoping to do.

I questioned my religious activities and my search for God. I questioned whether school was worth the effort. Most of all, I questioned what was happening in my own family and in the community around me. My father’s struggle with bills was common in many of the families of my comrades. He had worked hard all his life only to sink more deeply in debt. It seemed that no matter how hard he worked and sacrificed for his family, it led to more work. Things never became easier. I began to ask why this had happened to us and to everybody around us. Why could my father never get out of debt? If hard work brought success, why did we not see more success in the community? The people were certainly working hard. It seemed we were predestined to endless toil. We poor people never reached the point of having time to pursue the things we wanted. We had neither leisure time nor material goods. Not only did I want to know why this was so; I wanted to avoid a similar fate.

The struggle with religious faith is a difficult experience to describe because it involves many things that are either repressed earlier in life or not understood. In the process, the fears that are not related to religious beliefs are released. By then you no longer have any protection from your religion, and you have to start dealing with your dread. The real world closes in on you, cutting off traditional comforts like a simple prayer. Eventually, you, and you alone, have to deal with troubling questions. This always leads to anxiety. There is nothing, so you are free—and terrified.