RIP THOMAS 'BLOOD' MCCREARY
The long time revolutionary activist died last week after a long illness
Over the last three years I’ve been working as an producer on Allen Hughes’ upcoming documentary series, ‘Dear Mama,’ about Afeni and Tupac Shakur. In support of Allen I’ve conducted a lot of interviews for the project and met some amazing people, but none left an impression on me quite like Thomas ‘Blood’ McCreary, who died last week in Nouth Carolina. When we interviewed him in a town not far outside of Charlotte, Blood was very frail, had an operation up coming, and had a voice that sounded like sand paper.
Yet his presence was powerful and his stories so compelling. During the ‘60s and ‘70s Blood commited his life to black liberation, serving as a member of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Commitee), the Black Panthers, and the Black Liberation Army. He served time in prison, viewing himself as a political prisoner. After ending one five year bid, Blood would become an activist for the release other political prisoners.
We interviewed Blood because he’d been a close friend of Afeni Shakur, both during her years in the Panthers and then later when she’d purchased property in North Carolina after Tupac’s death. “Me and Afeni, we, we were like oil and water,” he recalled meeting her in the Panthers’ Harlem office. “You know, 'cause at first I didn't like her at ‘cause she was boisterous and she would talk shit.” But that initial conflict quickly grew into mutual respect as they survived external conflicts with NYPD and internal battles with elements of the Black Panther leadership in Oakland.
After the New York chapter of the Panthers’ slowly dissolved in the ‘70s, Blood became an active member of the radical Black Liberation Army, who’s members included Assata Shakur, who was convicted of murdering a New Jersey state trooper in 1973 and was later escaped prison in ‘79 with assistance of fellow BLA members, finding asylum in Cuba. Blood himself went underground in in the early ‘70s, moving around the country clandestinely until he was captured at gun point in St. Louis in 1972.
To get a taste of Blood’s spirit here’s his observation on the BLA vs the Panthers: “The Black Liberation Army was a underground group come out of the Black Panther Party. Like everybody used to say, everybody in the Black Panther Party wasn't involved in the shootout. There was only a few of us fools out there playing with them guns. And we took the position that once those kids started getting killed and throwing off rooftops and shit like that, we couldn't go on like that. We couldn't go on like that. And then you, psychologically people had to get up to be willing to die. You know, you have to be willing to die. I'm gonna go to jail for life or it's gonna be death.”
I can’t do justice to the scope of Blood’s dramatic life in this column. He risked his life on many occasions to protect his comrades in the movement, including standing up for Afeni at a meeting where guns were drawn. That story, and several others like it, will appear in ‘Dear Mama’ in the fall. I was very much looking forward to hearing Blood’s views on the documentary. I hope we do justice to a slight man with a huge presence.
See the links below to get a fuller sense of McCreary’s life.
https://www.fightbacknews.org/2018/11/14/interview-former-black-panther-thomas-blood-mccreary-and-frank-chapman
https://stophomegrownhate.org/untold-story-behind-new-yorks-brutal-cop-killings/
https://moguldom.com/363084/5-things-to-know-about-legendary-black-panther-thomas-blood-mccreary/