FADE TO BLACK

"At this point, we're nonviolent," explains Kahlil. "When you have violence, a lot of times you don't have a focus except for violence. That was a weakness with the Black Panthers.

"Also," he continues, "their focus was freedom for all black men and women. But that failed because people didn't see it as an obtainable goal. What we are saying is, the first thing you have to free is yourself. Revolution isn't just one thing. It isn't only about fighting The Man. It's about everything: what you eat, what you see, what you think, what your sexual preference is, what you wear in your hair."

"The Panthers," Hasira adds, "were missing the spiritual foundation, which is giving people something to believe in besides a person--in their case, Huey Newton."

Lauren Watson doesn't necessarily agree with his sons' thinking, but he offers advice when he can. "He tries to help us with what we're doing," Hasira says, "in terms of organizing on campus, what people you should avoid, what people just want to hook on to the group for the name."

"We'll get in the student newspaper, and he'll be proud and say things like, `It's good you're waking people up' and `I remember having to slap people, too,'" Kahlil adds.

Even though they both looked forward to leaving Denver--and even needed to in order to gain some perspective on how the rest of the world works--both of Watson's sons say that when they graduate from Howard they'd like to return to Colorado. "I want to be the great awakener," says Kahlil, "get people to open their eyes."

"My father's got us out there," says Hasira. "So there really hasn't been any steps lost."

"Lauren Watson's legacy is his children," says Kahlil. "Because we're making the waves now."

end of part 2