My tenants, the Black Panthers

FIRST PERSON | Bud Johns

Consider me a sucker for commemorative plaques. One reason London is among my favorite cities is its many buildings with blue ceramic plaques noting the famous people who lived there. I find it impossible not to pause and read them.

So it was inevitable I would stop my car when I realized a bronze plaque had been installed on an Italianate Victorian I once owned at 2777 Pine Street. It didn’t mention that I had lived on the ground floor. Instead, it associated the building with a tenant who had rented the two floors upstairs.

c. 1878
Former home of
Eldridge Cleaver
Black Panther
and
Republican leader