Photo by Kate Stanworth

This December it will be 40 years since Fred Hampton, leader of the Chicago chapter and later chairman of the Illinois State Black Panther Party, was poisoned and then shot by the FBI. His young face looks out from the T-shirt of storyteller Michael D. McCarty as he walks on stage to give a talk to the assembled seniors of Jean Mermoz Secondary School in ritzy Belgrano, Buenos Aires. The first words he says as he settles into centre stage are: “I run my mouth for a living.”

He does. On stage, he is literally a torrent of words, jokes and characters. During his set he will become, at turns: his wife, his baby daughter, an old Indian woman, a gang of racist parents at a baseball game, a typewriter and even his own heart trying to beat its way out of his chest after he took his last hit of crack-cocaine in 1979 just as the drug was poised to begin its incendiary rush through the ghettos of the US. His stage water will go untouched but for once, when he’ll use it as a prop and hold an undulating tribal yell for the whole time it takes to slowly, slowly pour a glass.

He is one of eight story tellers that Dream on Productions will bring to South America this year. The Buenos Aires based company organises live English language storytelling tours throughout schools in Latin America. “Every [storyteller] who comes is like an ambassador,” says co-founder and current director Alberto Alexander. “They provide a glimpse into another culture.”

Photo by Kate Stanworth

With dreadlocks all the way down his back, Michael’s culture is certainly foreign to these Argentine students. He grew up in ‘60s Chicago, a time when black leaders like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael were transforming the national dialogue from one of civil disobedience to one of black power. Politicised by his own run-ins with racial violence and police indifference, Michael joined the Black Panthers and became a full time activist. When not attending rallies and political events, he devoted his time to teaching political education classes, selling the party newspaper and helping with the breakfasts for children programme.

The students are rapt. “The thing about storytelling,” Michael says, “is that however many people there are in an audience, that’s how many video screens are going. Each person, as they hear the story, sees their own stories in their minds.”

And even though they’ve been studying Michael and the Black Panthers for a month, listening to him they have that glazed quiet look of people watching a fire burn. They know that the FBI would kill Hampton soon after Michael joined the Panthers, and the Chicago chapter would go into decline. They know that he would go on to join the army, ship to Korea, come back and try to be an acupuncturist before finally discovering story telling. They know about his crack habit, and about his wife and daughter, about his 300 bumper stickers, his 400 t-shirts and the time he was pistol whipped. And though they know all this, they want to know more. “How did you meet your wife?” one asks. “What was the best moment in your life?”

Photo by Kate Stanworth

His stories add something intangible to the facts. Later, he relates a vignette. He’d been commissioned to build a story based on an exhibition at the Getty Museum. It wasn’t at all funny, “a very intense story,” about the ghosts of drowned slaves. A boy came up to him afterwards and said that though he’d studied slavery in school, “he never understood the horror of [it] until he’d heard me tell that story.”

As he wraps up the session, the kids slowly lose their calm and start to shuffle, joke and check their phones. As they begin to pour out, they ask for pictures, pose and laugh. They seem genuinely enamoured. “I’m very flattered to have the chance to meet this great man,” said Rodrick Depaz. Four giggling girls even propose marriage. To all four of them. Together. “Me too,” a fifth chimes in. Another runs up to blurt out, “I just want to say: dude, you rock.”

They troupe past, giving him sweet American high-fives in place of the ubiquitous Argentine peck on the cheek. The face of Fred Hampton stares out from between the bright orange lapels of a vest printed with the African cowry shells which for hundreds of years served as money on much of the Ivory Coast. Hampton’s famous line, “You can kill the revolutionary, but you can never kill the revolution,” falls in and out of site behind the lapels of the vest.

To learn more about Michael D. McCarty, go to www.havemouthwillrunit.com, Dream On Productions: www.dreamontheatre.com.ar. And if you’re interested in checking out live storytelling in Buenos Aires, try www.cuentosaldia.com (Spanish content).