A Life in The Party, Mumia Abu-Jamal

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A' LIFE IN THE PARTY: AN HISTORICAL
AND RETROSPECTIVE EXAMINATION OF
THE LESSONS AND LEGACIES OF
THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY
A Thesis
Presented
to the Faculty of
California State University Dominguez Hills
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
in
Humanities
by
Mumia A . Jamal
Fall 1999
UMI Number: 1397459
Copyright 1999 by
Jamal, Mumia A.
All rights reserved
UMI Microform 1397459
Copyright 2000 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company.
All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company
300 North Zeeb Road
P.O. Box 1346
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Copyright by
MUMIA A. JAMAL
1999
All Rights Reserved
THESIS:
AUTHOR:
A LIFE IN THE PARTY: AN HISTORICAL AND
RETROSPECTIVE EXAMINATION OF THE PROJECTIONS
AND LEGACIES OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY
Mumia A. Jamal
APPROVED:
Myma C. Donahoe, PhD.
Thesis Committee Chair
Joyce Johnson, Ph.D
Committee Member
Frank A. Strieker, P!
Committee Member
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Copyright Page..............................................ii
Approval........................ iii
Table of Contents...........................................iv
Abstract.................................................... vi
CHAPTER
INTRODUCTION................................................. 1
1. In the Beginning.......................................... 4
2. Black Roots of Resistance in America..................... 17
The Spanish Colonial E r a ............................. 19
The British Colonial Period.......................... 20
Bondage in the Midst of Revolutionary W a r ............30
Post-Revolutionary Resistance ................... 32
Resistance Continues ..................................34
Resistance By Other Means ............................ 37
Century of American Apartheid and Resistance........ 46
The Ethiopianist Tradition .......................... 51
Garvey and DuBois................................54
Deacons for Defense............................. 58
Robert F. Williams...............................61
Conclusion............................................ 63
3 . Theory and Practice.....................................65
Alienation............................................ 68
Ultra-legalism........................................85
Extra-legalism........................................89
Ideologies and Legalisms ............................. 92
Intercommunalism......................................93
4. Man as Movement......................................... 98
Pearson's H u e y ........................................ 99
5. Microcosm in Macrocosm.................................119
iv
PAGE
Education and the Panthers ..........................122
Women in the Party.................................. 128
6. Huey P. Newton: A Psychohistory.......................143
Formative Years ..................................... 151
Intellectual Influences ............................ 158
7. Legacies of the Black Panther Party....................164
Increased Black Pride .............................. 165
Political Education of the Masses...................169
International impact and Inspirations ...............174
National Radical and Revolutionary Formations ...... 176
Women of the Party.................................. 180
Rise in Class Antagonism............................ 183
Personal and Political Failures .................... 184
The Cult of Personality............................. 186
Post-Party Developments ............................. 188
Failed Dreams, Failed Hopes ........................ 189
End Notes............... ................................. 192
WORKS CITED................................................197
Appendix
A: BPP ARTICLES........................................... 207
B: FBI FILES.............................................. 209
v
ABSTRACT
Mumia Abu-Jamal examines the African American
revolutionary formation known as the Black Panther Party from
both an historical and critical perspective, utilizing
scholarly, popular, autobiographical, and contemporary
sources to provide a multi-faceted view of the subject
entity. He also interposes several first-person segments to
provide a perspective of a member of the formation, to
enlighten the reader and researcher by revealing the
perceptions of the member within the party milieu. This dual
perspective informs the work and provides a counterpoint to
the plethora of popular publications that have been critical
of the BPP. He also examines historical antecedents to
freedom-fighting by the BPP, as well as its political and
organizational legacies. Dr. Huey P. Newton, as a founder of
the revolutionary formation in question, is examined from a
psychohistorical perspective, with a view to sensing the
forces that were key to the development of the BPP.
INTRODUCTION
This study will examine the historical legacy of the
Black Panther Party, using central texts published by leading
party members, works written by critics of the party,
scholarly and historical writings on the subject, government
surveillance files, and first-person recollections of this
writer, from the perspective of a rank-and-file party member,
interspersed throughout the instant project.
The purpose of the project is to provide another
perspective on an historical period that remains one of
considerable contestation: the 1960s. As a leading exemplar
of the radical era, the Black Panther Party is often
criticized by contemporary writers as a way of criticizing
the era in which it was emergent. This project will meet
such criticisms, and address them through critical analysis
and deconstruction of the basis underlying said criticisms,
utilizing the resources noted above.
In essence, this project will pose a counterbalance to
the prevailing contemporary view that the Black Panther Party
was a criminal enterprise largely bereft of political
significance and ideology.
The primary format will consist of a recitation of
specific critiques, a refutation thereof, and, where
appropriate, an historical aside presented in a first-person
1
2
voice that will be illustrative of the point in contention,
and of the temporal context within which the party was an
active, radical formation. It is this latter, personal
historic element that differentiates between the scholar's
voice that is inherent to the thesis, and the creative
activist's voice that constructs a project. While these two
voices merge in this project, their scripted presentation
must differ to ensure ease and clarity for the reader, to
signal which voice claims dominance.
The candidate believes this work will augment the
historical record, enrich historical and radical discourse
and inform young radicals not only of African-American
history, but also of the various usages of history by various
social forces, for various sociopolitical reasons. He,
therefore, acts on the principle that history could be
greatly enriched by the insights provided by activists. For,
it is the candidate's contention that neither history, nor
historians, nor activists for that matter, stand outside of
the class, faction, racial or gender-based conflicts that
rage in a given social structure. As Gustavson aptly noted,
"History is the story of the successful, or better, the
successful write history" (Gustavson 127). Thus, as the
central theme of the instant project is the historical legacy
of a revolutionary formation that, in classical terms, lost"
(i.e., failed to achieve its revolutionary objectives),
3
history, therefore, is determined by who does the writing,
and what perspectives they bring to that endeavor.
To critically examine those perspectives is one of the
aims of this work; to present an additional perspective, of
one who lived, loved, and worked in the center and
geographical periphery of the revolutionary formation at
issue, is another such aim.
CHAPTER 1
IN THE BEGINNING . . .
History in the large is the conflict of
minorities; the majority applauds the victor
and supplies the human material of social
experiment.
Will & Ariel Durant
The Lessons of History (1968)
Social movements arise from the complex convergences of
social forces, historical opportunities, and unresolved
social conflicts. Social forces can be seen as the "human
material" that populates, supports, and forms the popular
armies that carry forward their ideas, or ideas which they
have made their own. This can be seen in the American
Abolitionist Movement, the U. S. Civil Rights Movement, the
Women's Liberation Movements, and the like.
Historical opportunities may be seen as systemic or
institutional openings within which social movements may
interpose positions that may have differed from those of the
ruling, albeit perhaps destabilized, elites. These openings
may, in turn, provide further openings, through which even
more radical movements and perspectives may assert
themselves. These opportunities may be occasioned by wars,
4
5
economic failures, or sociopolitical upheavals, which serve
to reveal cracks, or fissures, in the edifice of power.
This understanding allows us to locate the Black
Liberation Movement in the interstices between the political
and psychosocial dislocations created by the Civil Rights
Movement and the Viet Nam War; one an expression of the long-
oppressed black caste in the South; the other an expression
of U. S. elite antipathy to the expansion of Communist power
in Southeast Asia.
Both events posed serious threats to the continued
status quo; one from within; the other from without. Both
raised serious questions of the legitimacy of the governing
classes, one raising the racism inherent to the American
enterprise with heightened salience; the other opposing the
militarism and ugliness exposed in the Viet Nam War. Both
exposed fissures in the populace and polity of the state,
which widened into various expressions of political, class,
and racial conflict.
Within the emerging Black Liberation Movement arose
radical formations with varying ideological perspectives,
among them, the Revolutionary Action Movement, a Black Power
organization that because of its underground characteristics
failed to find broad black popular support for "revolutionary
action" against the power elite; the Republic of New Afrika,
a classical nationalist organization that called for the
ceding of five Southern states of the United States to the
6
RNA Provisional Government as a representative of black
national sovereignty; and, the Black Panther Party (BPP), a
body that incorporated some of the ideas of the foregoing,
while developing some that were all their own, influenced, by
necessity, by the various progressive, revolutionary and
Socialist expressions that were active and ascendant in the
period of its infancy and development. While the Black
Liberation Movement can be seen as a radical development that
emerged from the more sedate Civil Rights Movement, it would
be historically improper for us to push such a thesis
further. Rather, it would be more accurate to say the Black
Liberation Movement of the 1960s/70s arose through the
systemic openings occasioned by the Civil Rights Movement,
much as the falling of a great tree in the overarching canopy
of a rain forest opens space for other trees to reach for the
sunlight. The Civil Rights Movement was itself a tree in a
great canopy of the Black Liberation Movement, and the fallen
tree was the rotted husk of de facto segregation, or one, no
longer functional cover, in the rain forest of racism, in the
wilderness of white supremacy.
The Black Liberation Movement began when the first
shackled African set foot on what we now call American soil,
both figuratively and literally. As shall be made clear
later in this work, as early as 1526, when Spaniards brought
a boatload of chained captives up a river, some of the 100
7
captives broke free, slew their captors, and fled into the
virgin forests to dwell among native peoples in a kind of
freedom that their kindred would not come to know for the
next 400 years (Segal 142) . This South Carolina escape from
bondage was, in its very essence, a black liberation
movement.
Although little known now, Black Nationalism has, at
times, been the dominant mode of the expression of black
resistance, which found ways of realizing black control of
black spiritual, economic and political life. There were
also many attempts to establish a separate black polity away
from the U. S. mainland, situated in Africa, in Haiti, in
Central America, or in Canada. With the exception of the
Republic of Liberia, established on Africa's West Coast, in
1822, by U. S. black freedmen with the aid of American
colonization societies, none of the other projects bore
historical fruit.
The inborn instinct for national black independence
found various forms of expression, for example, in Bullock
County, Alabama (ca. 1807) , where blacks organized their own
"negro government" with a code of laws, sheriff and courts.
Their leader, a former slave named George Shorter, was
imprisoned by the U. S. Army (Foner 285) . As early as 1787,
a group of free Africans" (as they called themselves)
petitioned the General Court of Massachusetts for leave to
resettle in Africa, because of the "disagreeable and
8
disadvantageous circumstances" under which "free Africans"
lived in post-Revolutionary America (Moses 849) . The
petitioning delegation was led by black Masonic leader,
Prince Hall, who wrote:
This and other considerations which we need not here
particularly mention induce us to return to Africa, our
native country, which warm climate is more natural and
agreeable to us, and for which the God of Nature has
formed us, and where we shall live among our equals and
be more comfortable and happy, then we can be in our
present situation, and at the same time, may have a
prospect of usefulness to our brethren there. (Moses 9)
Indeed, it is fitting to know here that nationalism had
powerful proponents in the white community who, for their own
reasons, felt blacks should move (or be moved) to a separate
territory, away from whites. As early as 1781, Thomas
Jefferson wrote that there were political," "physical," and
"moral" objections to blacks living in political equality
with whites in the same polity:
It will probably be asked, why not retain and
incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the
expense of supplying, by importation of white settlers,
the vacancies they will leave? Deeprooted prejudices
entertained by the whites, ten thousand recollections,
by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained, new
provocations; the new distinctions which nature has
9
made, and many other circumstances, will divide us into
parties, and produce convulsions which will probably
never end but in the extermination of the one or the
other race. ^ (Moses 46)
It is perhaps lesser known that another major American
political figure, President Abraham Lincoln, expressed a
similar view over three-quarters of a century later. In an
1862 address to a "Colored Deputation" in Washington, D. C.,
the president set forth his reasons for black colonization:
Why should they leave this country? This is, perhaps,
the first question for proper consideration. You and we
are different races. We have between us a broader
difference than exists between almost any two races.
Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but
this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us
both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of
them by living among us, while ours suffer from your
presence. In a word we suffer on each side. If this is
admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be
separated. (Moses 210) [emphasis added]
It may be noted that Lincoln's political rhetoric bears
a rather striking resemblance to the separation schemes
advanced by the Nation of Islam nearly half a century later
(Lincoln 50) . Lincoln proposed resettlement of U. S. b o m
blacks to a territory in Central America (Moses 212) . Not
10
surprisingly, the "Colored Deputation" received the Lincoln
proposal coldly (Moses 209).
Reconstruction-era Republican Governor of Tennessee
William G. Brownlow urged the U. S. Congress to set aside
separate territory for black settlement. His 1865 proposal
would create a "Nation of Freedmen" (Foner 45) . As historian
Eric Foner has found, in periods of heightened black conflict
with, and political disenfranchisement by, the white majority
and its political elites, the hunger for African Nationalism
would be rekindled, and re-emerge in black popular
consciousness:
One index of the narrowed possibilities for change was
the revival of interest, all but moribund during
Reconstruction, in emigration to Africa or the West.
The spate of black public meetings and letters to the
American Colonization Society favoring emigration in the
immediate aftermath of redemption reflected less an
upsurge of nationalist consciousness than the collapse
of hopes invested in Reconstruction and the arousal of
deep fears for the future by the restoration of white
supremacy. Henry Adams, the former soldier and
Louisiana political organizer, claimed in 1877 to have
enrolled the names of over 60,000 'hard laboring people'
eager to leave the South. 'This is a horrible part of
the country, ' he wrote the Colonization Society from
Shreveport, 'And our race can not get money for our
11
labor . . . It is impossible for us to live with these
slaveholders of the South and enjoy the right as they
enjoy it. (Foner 598-9)
We have seen, then, that nationalism was a live option
that had considerable support in both the black and white
communities, that waxed and waned according to the political,
economic and psychosocial context of life for black folks in
white America. It was in just such a context that the Black
Panther Party (among other radical formations) would emerge.
According to one contemporary observer, it was the context of
black youth rebellion that called forth the BPP. Black
journalist William Gardner-Smith spent some 20 years in
Europe and Africa. His 1968 return to what was then termed
"Black America" struck him with the spirit of radicalism:
"The '67 revolts marked the entry of the tough ghetto youths
into the race battle, and the existing organizations, led by
intellectuals or the middle-class, could not cope with them
the Panthers had to be bom" (Smith 173; Singh 63) .
How was a chapter or branch of the party founded? There
are over 40 different stories, ones yet to be told. This is
one such story:
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment the BPP was
formed in Philadelphia because, in fact, there were
several such formations; one in South Philadelphia, one
in Germantown, and one in North Philadelphia. The North
and South Philadelphia formations would merge, and the
12
Germantown group, a mysterious gathering that apparently
only sold papers, would wither.
As in any such political organization, there was
intense jockeying for power, divided between young and
older, and, and north and south sections of the city.
Men met in tiny, ghetto apartments, and waged verbal
battles over who would lead and who would follow. An
aggressive, tall, lanky youth named Bill Crawford seemed
to have the edge, with his fast and fiery tongue, dark
shades covering his strange, amber-colored eyes. His
adversary, an older slow-talking, darker-hued Terry
Cooper, had appeal with his clever, patient, southern-
accented manner.
A phone call to BPP National Headquarters for the
solution brought no solution, especially when it was
related that Oakland's answer was to choose no one.
According to one source, the person answering was either
David or June Hilliard, the BPP Chief of Staff or his
assistant, and when asked about making the Philadelphia
formation an official branch, replied, "You don't hafta
be a Black Panther to make revolution."
His statement, while undoubtedly true, did not
deter those in Philadelphia who were determined to
affiliate with National. The meetings continued, as we
pondered the underlying reasons for National's attitude.
Maybe they were overwhelmed by floods of calls, from all
13
over the country! To them, we must have sounded like a
bunch of silly kids. Were they being simply cautious of
folks they did not know? Were they serious, and simply
did not want to expand? Was this a test, to see how
serious we were?
We never satisfactorily solved this conundrum. Or,
perhaps we solved it by our stubborn resolution to
simply do the work. Officers were chosen, and tasks
were assigned. When Terry was chosen as Captain, Bill
raged, and resolved to catch the first thing smoking to
Oakland.
I was chosen Lieutenant of Information, a heady
role for a man-child who had barely reached his 15th
summer, and assigned to develop propaganda for the
party. This was done with alacrity, even though no
office had yet been opened. Undeterred, leaflets were
prepared, drawing largely from the BPP newspaper for
style and tone, announcing the existence of a local
branch.
How does one provide contact information on a
leaflet in the absence of an office? Not to worry. I
simply attached the number of my home to the bottom of
the leaflet, which would not have been remarkable were
it not for the fact that home" was where I lived with
my mother. This led to some interesting, if somewhat
passionate, exchanges between us. It also led to some
14
equally remarkable telephone traffic to the city's first
listing for the emergent Black Panther Party:
Caller: Yello Is zis uh, Moo-My-uh, of the Black
Gorilla Party?
Answerer: This is Mumia of the Black Panther
Party who the hell is this?
Caller: Yeah This is Ray Frankhouser of the
United Klan of America, headquartered in Reading, Pa.
We're having a bum-a-nigger festival this weekend, and
we wanna invite cha to come. You interested?
Answerer: I doubt I'll be able to make it, but you
can bring yo ass down to Philly we got somethin' real
nice for ya.
Caller: Well, uh Can I ask ya a question there,
Moomyuah?
Answerer: What's that?
Caller: Do niggers eat shit?
Answerer: Do you?
Caller: Nah, ;uh really I I'm curious 1 Isn't
that where yer brown color comes from?
Answerer: I can't believe you that silly, man.
Ain't you got nuthin' better to do?
Caller: Well, we got tha kill-a-nigga festival I
told3 a about . . .
15
Answerer: Man, I can't believe a grown man your
age ain t got nuthin' betta to do than play ona damn
phone I Are you retarded, man?
Caller: Maw, I'm curious.
[The phone is hung up.]
The call may or may not have been reported to iry
captain; I don't remember. I remember the accent of the
caller, however. A high-in-the-throat voice that seemed
more at home in the ethnic enclaves of South or
Northeast Philadelphia (pronounced "Fluffia") than
distant Reading.
What would the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) of Reading care
about organizing in Philadelphia? Was this a local
Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) attempt to sow
enmity between the fledgling BPP and a small Klan
affiliate? If so, it was remarkable only in its
clumsiness. Was it really the Klan, and if so, were
they really so stupid, so childish that a youngster of
14 could so quickly dismiss them as juvenile?
It may have been, but to the boy on the other end
of the phone, he sounded like a typical Philadelphia
cop.
Terry, because of his low-key, laid-back approach,
was incurring more criticism than acceptance in his role
of captain. It did not help matters that he seemed more
drunk than sober these days. Inevitably, another power
16
struggle developed, and Captain Terry was retired in
favor of a younger, more aggressive North. Philadelphian-
-Reggie Schell. Captain Reg would corral the resources
necessary to open the first office in Philadelphia at
1928 West Columbia Avenue, in the very heart of riot-
torn North Philly. The office was a magnet, and the
branch drew black youth from all corners of the city.
The New York chapter, which had regional
jurisdiction over the East coast, sent its deputy field
marshal, Henry, Mitchell, to check out the branch. With
ascerbic, earthy language, and arrogant, proud
authority, New York gave Philadelphia its intense
scrutiny. Barking like a drill instructor, Mitchell
issued orders to the novice troops and the newly-minted
captain, his face a dark, furrowed mask of disapproval.
But by day's end, the city was given a passing mark,
told to strengthen and fortify office and housing,
ordered to report regularly, and abruptly left alone.
After months of organizing, personnel changes, paper
sales and a grim inspection, we had succeeded.
Philadelphia had its first official branch of the
Black Panther Party, the first in the state.2
We now examine some historical antecedents to the BPP to
show some instances of armed resistance to the oppressive
slave system.
CHAPTER 2
BLACK ROOTS OF RESISTANCE
IN AMERICA
Contrary to popular white opinion,
most Blacks shared Malcolm's view regarding
self-defense and not Martin's view on non
violence. Black history is replete with black
Christians who rebelled in self-defense
against white brutality . . . There were also
many ordinary black Christians, past and
present, who quietly but firmly let whites
know that they would not remain passive in a
situation of violent attack against their
personhood.
James H. Cone (268-9).
Before one can meaningfully examine the historical
legacy of a radical formation such as the Black Panther
Party, it is only logical that one examines its historical
precedents.
While it may be virtually impossible for one to find an
identical radical precurser which presented a challenge of
similar salience, it is safe to say that the incidence of
armed collective resistance by Africans in America was
neither unprecedented nor rare.
To the extent that the scope of this resistance is
little or not known, it is a reflection of how American
culture is deeply ahistorical, and especially as regards the
resistant strains of African experience in America.
17
18
In this connection, it is important to recognize that
what we usually denote as history" is in fact the history of
the rulers, not the ruled; it is the history of the
Europeanization of America, not of resistance to the
devastating impact of white supremacy by non-European
peoples. As such, the history of resistance is one that is
still being uncovered; written by the grandsons and
granddaughters of those who resisted, or by those who found
themselves, by political persuasion, allied to the
descendants of communities of resistance.
Herbert Aptheker*s American Negro Slave Revolts, for the
purposes of scholarly standards of explicit clarity and to
forestall what he anticipated as a rightist critique from
segments of the academy, as well as to emphasize the depth
and persistance of black resistance, offers both an expansion
and a limitation of their occurrences. By defining slave
revolts as actions which involved at least ten enslaved
persons who had as their objective the attainment of freedom
and which were cited in contemporary accounts and records as
plots, uprisings, or insurrections, he, of course,
intentionally expands the long, regnant white cultural
projection of black docility; i.e., "the happy darkie".
Aptheker's work, written in response to a challenge posed by
black scholars who saw the need for a comprehensive study of
slave revolts, was also itself a stark challenge to
19
mainstream" American historiography which projected
"meekness or docility" as characteristic of the slaves"
(Aptheker 16) .3 The definition is limited because it does
address acts of revolt by persons. It must be said, here,
however, that Aptheker devotes an entire chapter to
"Individual Acts of Resistance", such as sabotage, slow
downs, suicide, and the like, and, as such, devotes much
attention to what were usually more covert forms of
resistance.
We will now attempt to chronologically track and note
some of the more salient and remarkable instances of African
resistance to New World bondage.
The Spanish Colonial Era
Aptheker uncovers approximately 250 such revolts on the
land mass that would become the United States beginning as
early as 1526 (Aptheker 162-3) . It is apt to note that the
first European settlement on what is seen as the continental
United States, which featured African captivity, also marked
the site of the first revolt against such captivity. This
settlement, founded by a Spanish coionizer in Summer 1526,
was thought to be situated near the Pedee River in the region
now known as South Carolina. Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon led
nearly 500 Spaniards, who held some 100 Africans in bondage,
to the site.
20
Those Africans eventually rebelled and fled into the
"Indian" forests, and before the year was out, the colony
dissolved, decimated as it was by disease, dissension and
instability, and survivors returned to Hispaniola. The rebel
Africans left behind found the Indians to be friends, and
became, therefore, the first (non-Indian) permanent
inhabitants of what would later become the United States
(Aptheker 163) .
From such auspicious beginnings, the maroonage movements
that so marked free black life both in North and South
America, would be born, with forests, mountains, or
everglades beckoning as beacons of freedom for generations of
African captives to come (Aptheker 179, 409) .
Acts of collective resistance would continue in the
Western Hemisphere for the next three centuries where people
held in bondage utilized whatever tools they could find
poison, fire, machetes and guns to kill their captors,
destroy the property and machinery of slavery, and escape to
freedom.
The British Colonial Period
In colonial Virginia began the peculiar American
differentiation that branded blacks as "slaves" for
perpetuity, and white unpaid workers as mere "indentured
servants" who served for an express number and term of years
with an actionable expectation of freedom thereafter. Three
21
years after this legal designation, was made into Virginia
law, African captives and, remarkably, white indentured
servants, were charged with conspiracy against the English
colonial settlement of 1663. Several people were executed and
their heads were set atop chimneys to discourage further
resistance. (Segal 142) Less than a decade later, in 1672, a
number of armed groups of fugitive slaves were said to be
troubling Virginia's peace, and the use of force was
authorized to meet this threat.
In less than half a decade, the conflicting interests of
the classes developing in colonial Virginia would almost
split the settlement asunder. Here, one sees the germ of
class conflict, which existed amidst a cauldron of racial
conflict, and also between Europeans and native aboriginal
peoples.
It was a conflict between the whites of property and
those who were the aspiring tenant farmers, black and white,
who, having served their terms of indentureship, hungered for
the Indian lands they saw all around them, and chafed at
restrictions put in place by the colonial government, which
they interpreted as obstructions to their right and will to
own farmland. This conflict would come to be called Bacon's
Rebellion.
The poorer tenant farmers murdered some 30 Indians and
killed four chiefs of the Susquehanna, precipitating a
vicious Anglo-Indian conflict that the governor and House of
22
Burgesses tried to smother. Those in the frontier chose
wealthy outsider English planter Nathaniel Bacon to lead what
was essentially a class war that rocked the very foundations
of the colony. Bacon's 300-man army would take him to the
generalship of the colony, from which he launched a class-
based, anti-wealthy civil war. His army growing, Bacon
captured Jamestown from the governor and burned it to the
ground, utilizing a force remarkable for its composition of
English and African tenant farmers and servants. Had Bacon
not died shortly thereafter from dysentery, the political
character and class structure of America might have
been radically different.
Bacon's death led to his arity's dispersal, and to the
governor's revenge. Rebels of means were disinherited, and
23 men were hanged. Moreover, the serious class threat posed
by Bacon necessitated a political response that consolidated
oligarchic power and gained the support of poor whites and
servants. The colonial "aristocrats" supported an
expansionist military policy that ravaged Indian lands and
lives.
More importantly, for our purposes, the statute of 1660,
which specifically declared the hundreds of black servants in
the colony were slaves, meant the increased importage of
Africans and less reliance upon the unruly European
indentured servants. The fear of the demonstrated and deadly
potential of biracial, black-white, lower-class rebellion
23
against an increasingly nervous plantocracy thus shaped
social, ideological, economic and political development in
ways that would, for over the next three centures, define
blackness as a devalued characteristic, one virtually
synonymous with otherness, alienage, slavery and
subordination (Aptheker 164) .
It would be misleading to suggest that either slavery or
resistance was merely a Southern phenomenon. As early as
1702 the ruling establishment in New York felt the need to
enact an "Act for Regulating of Slaves" in an attempt to
prevent "running away, or other ill practice" (Segal 142). A.
slave rebellion struck Newton, Long Island in 1708. The
rebel group killed seven whites, and upon recapture, four
captives were executed.
Early in 1712, New York faced a far more serious
challenge in a city numbering some 1,000 slaves when an
uprising occurred, which left nine white men dead and others
injured before military intervention quelled the fray.
Twenty-one slaves were subsequently executed, in a manner
that the governor described as:
. . . burnt, others hanged, one broke on the wheele,
and one hung a live in chains in the town, so that there
has been the most exemplary punishment inflicted that
could be possibly thought of. . . . (Aptheker 173; Segal
142)
24
The British Lords of Trade, to whom the governor had made
this report, were doubtless pleased at this restoration of
the status cruo.
In the Southern British colonies, resistance raged on,
with the Southeastern! Spanish colony of Florida acting as a
magnet that both white slavers and black enslaved feared and
longed for, respectively, for, by Spanish imperial decree,
any fugitive reaching their territory, if they agreed to take
up arms against the Anglos, would be granted freedom. It is
in this context that the following events transpired.
The Stono Rebellion
In late 1739, a score of captives revolted at Stono,
South Carolina, and killed five guards of a warehouse. They
then expropriated:
. . . a pretty many small Arms and Powder, and left, due
south, enroute to St. Augustine. The rebels, led by a
man named Jemmy, moved at a slow but deadly pace. Like a
raging human blaze, they killed all in their path,
except an innkeeper whom they considered 'a good Man and
kind to his slaves', and burned some seven buildings, so
much so that 'the Country there about was full of
flames.' (Aptheker 187-8)
From some 20 rebels, the Stono Rebellion steadily grew,
as other Africans joyned them", bringing the number to
nearly 80 enslaved persons. The rebels did not run like
25
fugitives afraid of being detected, but proudly and defiantly
" . . . called out Liberty, inarched on with Colours
displayed, and to Drums beating" (Aptheker 188) . One Colonel
William Bull, Lieutenant-Governor of the Province, happened
to be riding by when he spied the rebel march, and raised the
alarm.
The provincial militia was gathered, and sent to
intercept the rebels, who, in addition to their somewhat
strenuous activities, had been marching and fighting for some
10 or 12 hours, and were moving southwards from Stono at the
rate of about one mile per hour. The militiamen, although
probably similar in number, were fresh troops, and probably
better equipped. When they met, " . . . an engagement
[ensued] wherein one fought for Liberty & Life the other for
their Country &. every thing that was Dear to them" (Aptheker
188) . The black rebels "behaved boldly" but could not
prevail. An account of the opening trade of fire tells the
tale:
In the opening exchange of gunfire the militiamen 'bro't
down 14 on the Spot, and pursuing after them, within ten
Days killed twenty odd more, some hangd, and some
Gibbeted alive. A number came in and were seized and
discharged; and some are not yet, but we hope will soon
be taken.' (Aptheker, 188)
26
At uprising's end, some 75 persons, 50 Africans and 25
English were counted as casualties of the uprising and its
suppression (Aptheker 189).
Thomas' somewhat apologist work on the Atlantic Slave
Trade devotes less than a paragraph to this significant slave
rebellion and does so, in decidedly negative terms. Indeed,
given its brevity and tone, it bears repetition here: . .
. in 1739, a group of slaves in South Carolina seized arms
and began to march south to Florida to, that is, as they
ignorantly supposed, freedom" (Thomas 462) . That is the
almost parenthetical reference to the Stono Rebellion, and it
is the sole, unnamed reference in a work of 908 pages, which
closes with the snide suggestion that to rebel against
slavery generally, and this flight to Florida in particular,
was an "ignorant" thing to do. Less elitist historians, such
as Aptheker, give us insights into the period that raises new
questions about whether the African captives or the learned
historians were ignorant" or not. Let us therefore examine
the Stono period:
The presence of Spaniards in Florida who were hostile to
the English and befriended their fugitive slaves was
important in leading Negroes to gamble their lives in
uprisings and attempts to reach that haven. This
condition is well indicated in an unsigned letter dated
'Carolina June 24, 1720' describing a recent 'very
wicked and barbarous plott of the designe of the negroes
27
rising with a designe to destroy all the white people. '
Most of the rebels were captured, 'and some burnt and
hang'd and some banish'd, ' but fourteen at first eluded
arrest. These 'thought to gett to [St.] Augustine,' and
hoped the Creek Indians would aid, but the latter 'would
not joine them or be their pylots. . . . For many
years after this Florida remained a magnet for
America's slaves. . . .(Aptheker 85-6; fn. 20)
It is further important to note that by 1739, Spain was
at war with England, a conflict that found military
expression in battles between New Spain and the pre
revolutionary Anglo-America. Florida, hotly contested
between Britain and Spain, enraged the slaveholding class in
Georgia and South Carolina because of the Spanish penchant
for aiding fugitive slaves and often enlisting them as
soldiers. As a matter of fact, even after the Revolutionary
War, as slavery continued, so did the black flight to
Florida. The United States fought several pitched battles
with Spain to set up a rump state of East Florida, but lost
each one. In their conflicts, the Spaniards utilized black
soldiers, " . . . and this caused alarm among neighboring
slaveholders" (Aptheker 24, 30) .
Within this context, the Stono Rebels could hardly have
been seen as "ignorant", for St. Augustine offered more hope
of freedom than contemporary Boston, which, in any case, was
a great deal more distant than was St. Augustine from
28
Savannah, or Charleston. It might be said that if there was
any ignorance" in their rebellion, it was in their failure
to move South more hastily, for had they arrived at their
objective, the mouth of the Edisto River, directly north of
St. Augustine, their status would have been radically
different (Aptheker 86) . Even after the Revolutionary War,
as late as 1789, the Spanish Crown issued a decree regarding
its colony in Florida and granted land and freedom to
fugitive slaves there (Aptheker 90 fn.).
Stono illustrates how land areas we now take for granted
were, in their age of rebellion, contested claims for
dominance of space. To the Anglo-American elites, Spanish
territories were sites of the most extreme danger and threat;
to African and native slaves, the foreign space beyond the
border truly held the promise of being a "land of
opportunity" .
Maroonaae
As discussed above, contested spaces of European
colonial conflict and of aboriginal lands yet seized provided
enormously attractive opportunities for African captives to
find some kind of freedom in a nation where slavery was truly
the norm. To a lesser degree in the American context, as in
the Central and Latin American context, resistance and
rebellion led to maroonage, or the establishment of new
African, and Afro-Indian, communities in the hinterlands, or
29
on the periphery of the colonial world. These were cimarron
communities of resistance. The word was derived from
American Spanish for "wild". As many as hundreds of people
lived, and led lives of freedom, only so long as they could
defend their free territory from colonial military
encroachment (Segal 71) .
Maroon lands, especially in the U. S., became islands of
black and red freedom in turbulent seas of white oppression.
As such, they became bases from which Maroons mounted
offensives, and raided white settlements to gain supplies,
destroy property, kill whites, or . . . stir insurgency
among the remaining slaves" (Segal 91, 144).
Throughout the maroonage era, native tribes and clans
played mixed roles, sometimes as allies of the fugitives, at
other times as agents of colonial provinces, who raided,
fought or even "terrorized" black runaways (Aptheker 194) .
In this notable instance, different tribal groups functioned
on both sides. Aptheker explains:
A fort erected by the British Colonel Nicholls at
Appalachacola Bay, Florida, was occupied, after the
English abandoned it, by the Seminoles. The latter were
driven out by a band of about three hundred American
fugitive slaves, men, women, and children, together with
some thirty Indian allies. They took over the well-
supplied fort and used it as a haven for other runaways.
30
and as a base for marauding expeditions against slave
holders . The condition was very disturbing, and . . .
was loudly condemned by the Southern press which
clamored for the obliteration of the danger. (Aptheker
259)
A ten-day seige, and cannon fire that hit the forts
magazine and exploded, spelled death for about 270 of the
fugitives, leaving 40 survivors. The fort was assaulted by
U. S. troops, assisted by some "friendly Indians" (Aptheker,
259) .
Many Maroons found free, new identities in the swamps of
Florida, not as functionaries of the Spanish, but as members
of an increasingly Afrindian tribe, the Seminoles. These
people fought pitched battles with colonial, and later
American forces, to maintain their freedom, independence and
autonomy (Moses 6-8) . Maroon battles and skirmishes with
white settlers in the region continued well into the 1790s
(Segal 144).
Bondage in the Midst of
Revolutionary War
There can be no meaningful discussion of Americas
Revolutionary War, at least with regard to the status of
Africans in America, without some acknowledgement of the
glaring contradiction that arose when one considered the
irony of a people clamoring for liberty, freedom and national
31
independence, while holding millions of others in a state of
perpetual bondage.
As American sentiment gathered for resistance against
the British crown, colonial voices were heard that likened
American dependence on the rulings of the British Parliament
to slavery". In a letter published in the December 1771
edition of the Boston Gazette, one writer claimed:
To say the contrary is to say that we are slaves, for
the essence of liberty is to be subject only to laws
made by ourselves, and, being subject to laws made by
other people is the essence of slavery." (Thomas 479)
The letter, signed "from an American", sounds totally
reasonable, until one considers it was written by a member of
a polity where some 4 million people were held in thralldom,
" . . . subject to laws made by other people . . . " (Thomas
479) .
Perhaps it was just such galling hypocrisy that moved
one British subject to quip: How is it that we hear the
loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"
(Thomas 467) .
Fortunately, tens of thousands of African captives did
not rely upon these persons for their liberty, but sought
their own measures to free themselves from American slavery.
Thousands linked up with the whispered Underground Railroad,
and hundreds of thousands fled, some to the lands held by
32
colonial competitors and enemies, knowing that the armies of
France and Britain offered liberty as a payment for military
service. Thousands bought their freedom, and although there
can be no certainty as to the specific number, . . . it is
probable that thousands actually ransomed themselves or those
they loved" (Aptheker 140, fn. 1) . It is also probable that
thousands of blacks served in the American Army and Navy
during the American Revolutionary War, not so much for
American liberty, as for their own (Aptheker 140-41) . For
most blacks, liberty lay almost a century away, and even
then, not real liberty.
Post-Revolutionary Resistance
A post-Revolutionary communication from Newbern, N. C.
on July 26, 1792 published in a September 1792 edition of the
Boston Gazette, showed, quite eloquently, that American
liberty hardly meant any kind of " liberty" for black folks:
The negroes in this town and neighborhood have stirred a
rumour of their having in contemplation to rise against
their masters, and to procure themselves their liberty;
the inhabitants have been alarmed and keep a strict
watch to prevent their procuring arms; should it become
serious, which I don't think, the worst that could befal
[sic] us would be their setting the town on fire. It is
very absurd of the blacks, to suppose they could
accomplish their views, and from the precautions that
33
are taken, to guard against a surprise, little danger is
to be apprehended. (Aptheker 213)
Perhaps one such precaution can be seen in the Southern
criminalization of insolence", which might be activated by
so little as a look; or as one North Carolina judge put it:
" . . the pointing of a finger, a refusal or neglect to step
out of the way when a white person is seen to approach"
(Segal 62).
Gabriel's Rebellion
A mass rebellion struck Virginia in 1800 when a captive
named Gabriel Prosser organized a force that grew to 1,000
rebels who planned to strike Richmond. Prosser, an inspired
leader, was later described as " . . . a fellow of courage
and intellect above his rank in life" (Segal 144) .4 Joined
by his wife, Nanny, his brothers, Solomon and Martin who
served as his lieutenants, Gabriel conducted reconnaissance
in Richmond, focusing on armament stores, and the lay of the
land. Weapons and bullets were made by the rebels, and a
night to strike chosen. But on the afternoon before the
rising, two slaves, Tom and Pharoah, broke the secret to
their master who immediately informed Virginia's Governor,
James Monroe. Monroe rapidly mobilized 650 men and placed
every state militia commander on alert (Segal 144) .
Nature did not assist the rebels, as an early evening
rain muddied the roads to Richmond so badly that they were
34
impassable. Travel got so obstructed that they decided to
disperse, not knowing that the rebellion had alreatfy been
betrayed hours before. An arny of 1,000 slaves, wielding
farm implements and a few guns, dissolved into the August
night, after coming within six miles of the city. Over the
next few days, a number of rebels were hunted down, as was
Gabriel.
With not one confession nor divulgence of information,
at least 35 rebels were hanged, including Gabriel Prosser, of
whom Governor Monroe noted: "From what he said to me, he
seemed to have made up his mind to die, and to have resolved
to say but little on the subject of the conspiracy" (Aptheker
222; Segal 144).
Resistance Continues
The largest slave conspiracy since Gabriel Prosser's was
led by a remarkable African-born man named Denmark Vesey who
managed to buy his own freedom in 1800, and was among a
number of free black artisans in Charleston, South Carolina.
It was among this class, those of artisans, that he found his
principal lieutenants and rebel confederates, among them
Peter Poyas and Mingo Harth, skilled slave workers. A
literate man who spoke other languages fluently, Vesey
utilized the Bible. U. S. Congressional debates on slavery,
and the still-fresh example of a victorious revolution in
Saint Domingue to make his case among enslaved Africans to
35
rebel against white American tyranny. Vesey and his
associates carefully widened the conspiracy, avoiding
domestic servants as they were considered inherently
tint rustworthy. It was precisely such a one, however, who
informed his master, the direct result of which was the
arrest of Poyas and Harth on May 30, 1822, who passed
scrutiny because of their "cool [ . . . 1 composure", and
were released just one day later (Aptheker 271) . Apparently
unnerved by the betrayal of his two close associates, Vesey
advanced the uprising date, originally set for the second
Sunday in July, to a month earlier, despite extensive
preparation for the first deadline. Over 500 weapons were
specially forged, and an estimated 9,000 conspirators were
recruited, as well as disguises prepared for some of them.
But, once again, an informer foiled the plot, and 131
conspirators would be taken, and almost all of them would do
as Peter Poyas directed, to " . . . die silent, as you shall
see me do." Thirty-seven of them, among them Vesey, were
hanged, with 12 others spared the noose only to be
transported elsewhere (Aptheker 272) .
Of the hundreds of slave rebellions that rocked the
South, none were as upsetting to the white land-owning class
as the one led by the biblically-inspired Nat Turner who used
heavenly omens and portents to determine the day and season
of his August 21, 1831 rebellion. B o m in the year of the
Gabriel Prosser conspiracy, held in bondage in Virginia' s
36
Southampton County where he learned how to read, he immersed
himself in the Bible. It would later be written in his
confession that a vision came to him as he worked in the
fields in the spring of 1829 with a:
. . . loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit
instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was
loosened and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne
for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and
fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast
approaching when the first should be last and the last
should be first." (Segal 147)
Although originally set for the Fourth of July, he fell
ill, so a sign was awaited. On the 13th of August, the sun
seemed to possess a strange radiance that signaled the day to
come. Turner began his rebellion at home, the site where his
erstwhile master and all the members of his family were
slain. Joined by five other rebels, they seized weapons and
horses, killing whites and attracting other rebels while
riding for an arsenal in the county seat of Jerusalem. Three
miles from their destination and having 70 rebels alongside,
they passed a plantation, which a group raided, over Turner's
opposition, to find rebel recruits for the march on
Jerusalem. What they found instead was a large wine cellar,
which proved quite a diversion for the rebels who were caught
37
unawares when the militia arrived.. A battle ensued and the
rebels fled.
White armed forces, quite predictably, reacted with what
one contemporary observer called great barbarity", launching
massacres against the blacks. Turner, who evaded capture
until October 30, 16 other rebel captives and three "free"
blacks were hanged.
What made Turner's rebellion earthshattering to white
Southerners was the fact that at least 57 whites were slain,
leading to an eruption of white hysteria across the region
and the enactment of a new wave of repressive statutes (Segal
147-8) . This repression notwithstanding, the wave of African
resistance continued unabated.
We have seen, quite abundantly, indisputable examples of
organized African resistance to majority oppressions,
utilizing whatever arms and means could be procured, over the
span of centuries. Intertwined with the occurrences of overt
and frontal revolts were more covert actions which served to
undermine the system of legal bondage, without risking
detection, and thereby protecting the actor(s).
Resistance by Other Means
Acts of collective resistance would continue in the
Western Hemisphere for over three centuries, where people
held in bondage utilized whatever tools they could find
poison, fire, machetes and guns to kill their captors,
38
destroy the property and machinery of slavery, or to escape
to freedom.
We have recounted and examined instances of dramatic and
overt armed resistance, from the Spanish colonial period,
through to the fights for black freedom in the post
revolutionary period, but it is important to note the covert
expressions of resistance that happened each and every day,
quietly, with a smile sometimes, as the enslaved responded to
their oppression with acts of individual counter-violence
that reflected consciousness of resistance. Sometimes this
counter-violence took the form of self-mutilation, an
extraordinary case where the enslaved deprived their captors
of the value of their human property, by inflicting intense
physical suffering on the self. Aptheker cites the Richmond
(Va.) Daily Dispatch (2 July 1856) for an instance where
three men cut off three fingers of each hand, to prevent
their being sold (142) . Covert resistance also took the form
of "shamming" (feigning illness), sabotage, suicide, and
flight. Broken tools, poorly treated animals, openings in
fences and the like, point to the carelessness and deliberate
destructiveness of the captives, who slowed work down, by
obstruction. Resistance, whether overt or covert, did not
occur merely for its own sake. It had obvious and clear
objectives: freedom, or more pragmatically, acts designed to
slow down the back-breaking machinery of bondage.
39
As noted above, poisoning played such a significant role
in resistance that several slave states enacted laws against
the practice. The 1770 Act of the Georgia legislature was
followed, by nearly two decades, a similar passage enacted by
South Carolina. Under Georgia law, a slave informer to a
poisoning would receive a stipend of 20 shillings per annum
until death, and from the day his reward was paid, he would
be excused from labor" (Aptheker 143) .
But, as history has taught us, laws do not stop a
problem, so much as it defines one. Ten years after the
South Carolina enaction, a Charleston newspaper would bemoan:
"The negroes have again begun the hellish practice of
poisoning" (Aptheker, 143).
Interestingly, few Southern journals referred to the
"peculiar institution" of slavery as "hellish", but there was
an even more hellish" form of covert resistance that slaves
used to devastating effect: fires. Arson was a frequent
occurrence in the ante-bellum South, and, given the inherent
difficulty of obtaining guns, knives, or even poison, the
equipment and opportunity for creating or spreading fire was
fairly ubiquitous. The incidence of what Southerners called
"incendiarism", frequently blamed on the enslaved, was so
prevalent that insurance policies were affected, as evinced
by this excerpt from a letter to a gentleman in Savannah,
Georgia, from an official of the American Fire Insurance
Companies (dated 17 February 1820) :
40
I have received your letter of the 7th instant
respecting the insurance of your house and furniture, in
Savannah. In answer thereto, I am to inform you, that
this company, for the present, decline making insurances
in any of the slave states. (Aptheker 144)
Another form of covert resistance that frequently turns
up in contemporary reports is the incidence of "stealing",
although the enslaved regarded this as merely taking" (or
liberating1):
While white preachers repeatedly urged 'Don't steal',
slaves just as persistently denied that this commandment
applied to them, since they themselves were stolen
property. Josephine Howard demonstrated how the
structure of white morality could collapse when examined
from the slaves' point of view: 'Dey alius done tell us
it am wrong to lie and steal, but why did de white folks
steal my mammy and her mammy? dey lives dost to some
water, somewheres over in Africy, and de man come in a
little boat to de sho' and tells dem he got presents on
de big boat . . . and my mammy and her mammy gits took
out to dat big boat and de locks dem in a black hole
what mammy say so black you can't see notin' . Dat de
sinfulles' stealin' day is.' Charles Brown, a fugitive
slave from Virginia, claimed that he had expressed the
same argument to his master's face: 'I told my master
and day said I, 'You white folks set the bad example of
41
stealing you stole us from Africa, and not content with
that, if any got free here, you stole them afterward,
and so we are made slaves.' (Raboteau 295-6)
Can there be any question but that these people were
resisting even by stealing? Is there any question that
these men and women were striking back by depriving the
slaveholder of his precious property, and by justifying it
based upon their unjust bondage, were asserting their
inherent right to personhood?
What can never be ignored is the context in which all
forms of resistance, covert and overt, occurred. Blacks, who
were less than 33 percent of the population, were held under
a repressive regime that mobilized white resources into a
system in which " . . . the white population constituted one
great militia fully and even extravagently armed, tough and
resourceful, and capable of all the savagery that racism can
instill" (Genovese 17; Segal 140) .
The Christiana Resistance
Fully a decade before the U. S. Civil War, a collective
act of black resistance to the lengthening arm of the
American slave power struck the peaceful farmlands near
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Quietly, man by man, woman
by woman and family by family, a relatively small black
farming community began to assemble, safe in the knowledge
that they lived north of the Mason-Dixon line, if only by a
42
few dozen miles, and as such, were free. The 1850 signing by
President Millard Fillmore of more harsh amendments to the
Fugitive Slave Act dashed those notions of freedom from
millions of black minds. A prominent Black Nationalist and
emigrationist of the period, Martin R. Delany, argued
passionately against the law, and implicitly in favor of a
new black homeland, in Haiti, or in Africa:
By the provisions of this bill, the colored people of
the United States are positively degraded beneath the
level of the whites are made liable at any time, in any
place, and under all circumstances, to be arrested and
upon the claim of any white person, without the
privilege, even of making a defense, sent into endless
bondage. Let no visionary nonsense about habeas corpus,
or a fair trial, deceive us; there are no such rights
granted in this bill, and except where the commissioner
is too ignorant to understand when reading it, or too
stupid to enforce it when he does understand, there is
no earthly chance no hope under heaven for the colored
person who is brought before one of these officers of
the law . . . We are slaves in the midst of freedom,
waiting patiently, and unconcernedlyindifferently and
stupidly, for masters to come and lay claim to us,
trusting to their generosity, whether or not they will
own us and carry us into endless bondage. (Moses 108-9)
43
As Delany suggests, the Fugitive Slave Act made the
Mason-Dixon Line superfluous, for it made all U. S. territory
unsafe for blacks, whether one was a runaway or not, for upon
a white slaver's claim, there was virtually no defense
available. Suddenly, the North" meant Canada, where
thousands made their way to escape the reach of a new, and
deadly threat. It is in this context that a Christiana became
virtually inevitable in America, for it was bred in the
searing conflict between the divergent interests of the
capital-intensive manufacturing north and the labor-intensive
plantocracy in the South.
The South exercised its political influence over
Congress to achieve passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, making
the North and the machinery of the federal government an
appendage of its slave-catching enterprise. That regional
political hegemony deeply stained the notion of American
justice as demonstrated in the pivotal case of Dred Scott v.
Sanford.5 where Southern aristocrat and slaveowner, Chief
Justice Roger Brooke Taney, writing for a majority of the
Supreme Court, declared that all blacks, whether free or
enslaved, were not and would never become citizens of the
Republic because negroes" were a subordinate and inferior
class of beings.
On September 11, 1851, a white Maryland slaveholder,
Edward Gorsuch, approached the Christiana home of William
44
Parker, in the early morning hours, hoping to find the
occupants of the Parker home unawares. Gorsuch was seeking
four Africans who had escaped his bondage: George Hammond,
Joshua Hammond, Noah Buley and Nelson Ford. Armed with
warrants issued by a Fugitive Slave Commissioner in
Philadelphia, Edward Ingraham, Gorsuch and his party had no
way of knowing that their activities were observed by members
of a local abolitionist organization who would dispatch an
emissary to Christiana to warn the area self-defense group of
Gorsuch1 s coining.
Black historian, Ella Forbes' But We have No Country:
The 1851 Christiana Pennsylvania Resistance, recounts this
thrilling conflict:
The slave catching posse arrived at William Parker's
just before dawn on September 11, 1851. Edward Gorsuch
and Marshal Kline entered the house but were forced to
retreat when the occupants aimed their firearms at them.
Eliza, William Parker's wife, blew a horn, in pre
arranged signal, to summon members of the self-defense
organization. The posse shot at her but she continued
blowing. About twenty-five black neighbors were alerted
by the horn and arrived with whatever weapons they could
Find. (Forbes 9)
45
When neither side would yield, a fight erupted, gunfire
flared, and the Gorsuch party fled, leaving Edward Gorsuch
lying in the dirt, and dying.
Frederick Douglass would later write, of Christiana,
that it . . . inflicted [a] fatal wound[] on the Fugitive
Slave Bill" (Forbes 114? Douglass 289) . Scholars James
McPherson and Philip Foner saw Christianas armed and bloody
resistance as a natural reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act
and a "harbinger" of the Civil War that was brewing in the
land (Forbes 265). Forbes considered it "the first blow of
the Civil War (265).
Organized, armed, resolute and determined, the
Christiana Resistance fighters are largely forgotten by
history. Indeed, throughout Forbes' account, one is struck
by how lineal descendants of the resistance fighters, whether
in the Southeastern Pennsylvania environs or in Canada, often
knew quite little about their ancestors. There was a marked
difference between how African-American descendants and white
descendants of the Christiana event took historical note of
what happened. Gorsuchs descendants told of him being a
good slavemaster who "cared" about "his people (i.e.,
slaves) . It is telling that more do not know of this era of
resistance against unjust laws.
46
Century of American Apart
heid and Resistance
The Civil War revealed a deep and bitter breach in the
American psyche that had ripened since the iniquitous so-
called Great Compromise of 1787. At that time,
constitutional convention delegates haggled over the messy
issue of slavery until Connecticut's Roger Sherman opined
that it was " . . . better to let the southern states import
slaves than to part with those states, . - - as both South
Carolina and Georgia threatened to do (Thomas 500) . For over
four years, the war raged, and for 13 years thereafter, the
Reconstruction Era waxed and waned, until the rights, hopes
and dreams of the freedmen were ground into the dust.
Despite the monstrous betrayal of black rights by their
erstwhile allies in the Republican Party and the union that
they protected and defended, black resistance continued. One
wonders at the use of the term, resistance". Were not
blacks free at the close of the Civil War? Did not the Civil
Rights Act of 1866 make all black folks free? Did not the
Civil Rights Act of 1875 make all black folks equal?
A majority opinion of the Supreme Court of 1888 written
by Justice Joseph F. Bradley declared the latter act
unconstitutional, adding that blacks should cease 11 . . . to
be the special favorite of the law" (Foner 587) . The former
act was virtually ignored, especially in the South, where a
47
Democratic Party-sponsored reign of terror made a hard life
for blacks more hellish.
Even before the war was over, a black lecturer for the
American Anti-Slavery Society observed that:
. . . unfriendly expressions against the colored people
were never more common in my hearing. Many Republicans
united with Democrats in cursing the 'niggers', and in
declaring that the slaves, if possibly emancipated by
the war, must be removed from the country. (McPherson
91)
Facing this kind of bipartisan hatred, black freedmen
continued a long and varied tradition of resistance, relying
on their own efforts and the support of a waning faction of
radical Republicans. Faced with such solid antipathy, blacks
organized in every sphere of life that they could, from
church to political group (Foner 91, 45) . One senses an
incipient nationalism among freedmen, a deep feeling that
black folks could, and indeed should, live free and
sovereign, apart from whites. As early as January, 1865,
General William T. Sherman, Freedmen's Bureau Commissioner,
met with some 20 black ministers in Savannah to get a
personal sense of how the freedmen felt about a number of
things including freedom. Garrison Frazier, 60 years in
bondage and a Baptist minister, defined it as . . . placing
us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor." As for
slavery, Reverend Frazier, who bought his own freedom in
48
1857, knew it only too well, for it was when one man was .
. . receiving . . . the work of another man, and not by his
consent." When asked whether blacks wanted to live
separately, or among whites, the minister answered: "I would
prefer to live by ourselves, for there is a prejudice against
us in the South that will take years to get over" (Foner
70) .6
The South launched into a crusade to make these newly
"free" people as unfree as possible. South Carolina, for
example, required all blacks working in agriculture to have
written authorization from their "masters" before selling
farm produce. North Carolina made "the intent to steal" a
crime, and even unsuccessful attempted theft, a crime to be
prosecuted as larceny (Foner 202) . For blacks, even " . . .
hunting, fishing, and the free grazing of livestock . . . "
became crimes (Foner 203) . Emerging was the underlying
matrix of a legal system that would crystallize as the Black
Codes, a series of state laws that criminalized black
behavior, and restrained black labor to the plantations.
This form of early American apartheid damned the very notion
of black freedom, while empowering whites who did harm to
blacks:
Sheriffs, justices of the peace, and other local
officials proved extremely reluctant to prosecute whites
accused of crimes against blacks. To do so, said a
Georgia sheriff, would be 'unpopular' and dangerous,
while an Arkansas counterpart told a bureau agent that
to take action against a planter who had defrauded
freedmen 'would defeat him in the coming fall election
. . . Texas courts indicted some 500 white men for the
murder of blacks in 1865 and 1866, but not one was
convicted. 'No white man in that state has been
punished for murder since it revolted from Mexico, '
commented a Northern visitor. 'Murder is considered oi
of their inalienable state rights.' (Foner 204-5)
In 1870, blacks in Bennettsville, South Carolina
organized to prevent Ku Klux Klan attacks by arming
themselves and patrolling the streets. Groups of freedmen
occasionally threatened to visit retribution against known
criminals if violence persisted (Foner 435).
But black self-defense in the Reconstruction South
elicited a monstrous price, as Foner explains:
The bloodiest single instance of racial carnage in the
Reconstruction era, the Colfax massacre taught many
lessons, including the lengths to which some opponents
of Reconstruction would go to regain their accustomed
authority. Among blacks, the incident was long
remembered as proof that in any large confrontation,
they stood at a fatal disadvantage (437) .
The site was Grant Parish, Louisiana, where freedmen,
fearing Democratic seizure of the government cordoned off
50
Colfax, the county seat, digging, drilling, and organizing
under the command of black Civil War veterans and militiamen.
Colfax was under their command for three weeks; Easter
greeted the tiny town with a force of whites armed with
rifles and cannon, which overwhelmed the black defenders,
leading to widespread slaughter. When some 50 blacks raised
the white flag and laid down their arms, they were massacred.
A Louisiana teacher and black legislator, John G. Lewis,
would later note:
The organization against them is too strong . . . They
attempted [armed self-defense] in Colfax. The result
was an Easter Sunday of 1873, when the sun went down
that night, it went down on the corpses of two hundred
and eighty negroes. (Foner 437)
As repression continued, so did resistance, as in
several cases when day laborers actually called strikes, or
walkouts, mindful of the power of their labor. In May, 1876,
workers at the Combahee River plantation in South Carolina
struck for higher wages and for payment in cash rather than
chits redeemable only in plantation stores. Hundreds of
strikers moved through fields, calling on laborers to join
the action, and beating all who refused to join (Foner 573) .
As Reconstruction was betrayed and died, so too did
hope. Radical reconstructionist and abolitionist, Wendell
Phillips, predicted, rightly, that: "There isn't a party in
the South that is friendly to the negro or disposed to do him
51
justice (Foner 221). Deprived of the ballot, Phillips
warned, Blacks would be doomed to "a century of serfdom"
( i d . )
The Democratic South, determined to disenfranchise the
freedmen, utilized brutal terror to achieve their objective.
When blacks tried to vote in 1874 Alabama, the Democrats used
bullets to reduce the black belt turnout. In Barbour and
Sumpter Counties, Republicans were shot, had their homes
burned down, and when blacks gathered in the hundreds to cast
their vote in Eufaula, seven were shot dead: 70 were wounded
(Foner 552-3) . Within such a milieu of "narrowed
possibilities", black political activity ebbed, as the landed
class used its economic power to influence, and where that
failed, it relied on terror.
Predictably, some turned to the hope of nationalism, or
the establishment of a sovereign black state in Africa, the
West Indies, or Central America.
The Ethiopianist Tradition
As difficult as this may seem to contemporary political
observers, Black Nationalism, as in the founding of a black
republic, was a live option in the 19th Century, and
thousands of black folks in America responded to this option
with alacrity. The undeniable spur to such movements as
these was the relentless nature of American racism that
soured black hopes of any meaningful achievements or change
52
in a nation that was (to use a word coined by scholar Cornel
West) more pigmentocracy than democracy.
The Republic of Liberia, founded circa 1847 with an
administrative and economic elite composed of black freedmen
from the United States, was a reality that exists on the
north west coast of Africa to this day.
Suffice it to say, this was hardly a majority opinion,
and at the time of its colonization, some American blacks,
like emigrationist and later, Democratic functionary Martin
Delany, attacked the Liberian colonization scheme as bogus:
Liberia is not an Independent Republic: in fact, it is
not an independent notion at all; but a poor miserable
mockery a burlesque of a governmenta pitiable
dependency on the American Colonizationists, the
Colonization Board at Washington City, in the District
of Columbia, being the Executive and Government, and the
principal man, called President, in Liberia, being the
echo a mere parrot of Rev. Robert R. Gurley, Elliot
Cresson, Esq., Governor Pinney, and other leaders of the
Colonization scheme to do as they bid, and say what
they tell him. This we see in all things. (Moses, ed.
114)
Delany was not so much opposed to black colonization as he
was to the American scheme to remove blacks from the U . S .,
far away, on Africa's coast, Delany and some of his
53
colleagues, all prominent black emigrationists, supported
resettlement in the Caribbean, and even in some portions of
the Southern United States (Moses, ed. 26) . They formed the
African Civilization Society, and sought to become a
competitor to the better-financed white-led American
Colonization Society.
Much of this impetus for Black Nationalism came, not
only because of the resilient toxin of white supremacy, but
from a long-standing cultural and religious theme that
pervaded black American consciousness, especially among those
of the first "free", or non-slave, generation living in the
bitter aftermath of the Civil War. As tens of thousands of
them, or relatives, resisted the slaver's grip by escape from
bondage, so too, emigation to a new" land, a form of escape
from the narrow, venal spirit of white supremacy, became a
form of black assertiveness and resistance, albeit an unarmed
expression.
This form of expression found validation in the deep and
powerful "Ethiopianist" teachings drawn from Psalms 68:31 of
the Bible: "Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall
soon stretch out her hands to God." This somewhat cryptic
verse, said by Raboteau to have been "probably the most
widely quoted verse in Afro-American religious history",
while a vital ingredient in black literary and religious
constructions, possessed a powerful pull in an existential
54
context, and fueld emigrationist impulses for an untold
number of black Americans, many of whom already viewed the
war as a divinely inspired instrument of justice and long-
prayed-for deliverance of the "children of God" from the
cruel bondage of "Egypt (America) (Moses, 16-7; Smith 58-9).
For such a people, Psalms 68:31 seemed only a continuation of
God's promise, as God's children" left "Egypt land and
began their Exodus to "the promised land" (Smith 92) .
Some, perhaps thousands or tens of thousands, followed
their hearts and left the land of their birth, to give birth
to a new nationality in Liberia, Haiti, or other parts of the
Caribbean, and Central American region.
Theologian James Cone explains there is an oscillation
in Afro-America between the poles of integration and
nationalism, which reflects black self-assessment of their
life in a white, supremacist milieu. In times of hope,
integration gains adherants, in times of hopelesness,
nationalism gains. This is determined by one's perspective
on white America (Cone 4).
Garvey and DuBois
In the years following the Reconstruction Era's fall,
two men marked the 20th Century with their passion and their
brilliance: Marcus Moziah Garvey and William Edward
Burghardt DuBois. There could be no greater contrast than
between these two men: class, ethnicity, educational
55
achievement and physiognomy; not to mention, politics.
Garvey worked as a printer's assistant and journalist
DuBois as a university professor; Garvey traced his lineage
proudly to his Maroon ancestors, and DuBois traced his
background to black, Huguenot and other European strains;
Garvey, although a voracious reader, supplemented his self-
education with more informal studies at London's Birkbeck
College, while DuBois excelled in his educational endeavors,
winning his Ph.D., after studies in several prestigious
universities in the United States and Europe; Garvey,
relatively short and powerfully built, with a dark brown
complexion, well-reflected his Maroon and African roots,
while DuBois' sallow complexion reflected the many and
diverse rivers that merged in his person.
Their political differences were even more pronounced
and reflective of the differing modes of black political and
organizational resistance in the post-Reconstruction era.
DuBois, as a founder of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was an integrationist,
who was, at best, ambivalent on the issue of nationalism.
Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA) , was antagonistic to integration,
intensely nationalistic, and Afrocentric in orientation.
They were thus political and indeed personal enemies who
derided each other in caustic and scathing terms, reflecting
56
what might be seen as the irreconciliable nature of these two
perspectives.
A similar dialectic may be seen in the varying views
expressed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. King
was perhaps the premier integrationist of his generation;
Malcolm was perhaps the premier nationalist, and like their
predecessors, DuBois and Garvey, they came from, and were
thus influenced by diverse class perspectives.7 With the
exception of strong personal antipathy, these two men
typified an ideological conflict that they not only inherited
from DuBois and Garvey, but that survived them as well.
At its root was the biculturalty that Dr. DuBois so
brilliantly described as " . . . double-consciousness, this
sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of
others. . . . " (DuBois 2): "One ever feels his two-ness, an
American, a Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled
strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged
strength alone keeps it from being t o m asunder" (DuBois 2) .
For Garvey, the question was seen in more practical than
existential terms:
Where is the black man's government? Where is his King
and his kingdom? Where is his President, his country
and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big
affairs? I could not find them, and then I declared, I
will help to make them. (Moses, ed. 32)
57
The "African or American?" question posed by Garvey and
DuBois, and echoed in some ways by Malcolm and Martin,
reflected an ambiguity of black life in white America that
spanned generations, and remained unresolved precisely
because life in the U. S. meant living in the midst of the
glaring, irresolvable contradiction between Americas promise
and her performance, a contradiction that spawned those mired
modes of black resistance.
Doctors DuBois and King chose to accent their American
selves, while Garvey and Shabazz (Malcolm X) opted for living
in furtherance of their African selves. It is ironic that of
the four, only DuBois, ever ambiguous, lived and died in
Africa.
Another facet of the differences between Malcolm and
Martin related to their beliefs in divergent strategies that
would best promote Black liberation. Martin L. King promoted
a Gandhian philosophy of nonviolence, while Malcolm X was a
staunch advocate of self-defense. But as scholar and
theologican Cone informs us, the line between the two
sometimes blurred:
Contrary to popular white opinion, most blacks shared
Malcolm's view regarding self-defense and not Martin's
view on non-violence. Black history is replete with
black Christians who rebelled in self-defense against
white brutality. Nat Turner, a Baptist preacher who led
a slave revolt that killed sixty whites, was perhaps the
most famous in this regard. David Walker's && Appeal to
the Colored Citizens of the World and Henry Highland
Garnet' s Ariri-r<=>ss to the Slaves were also well known.
There were also many ordinary black Christians, post and
present, who quietly but firmly let whites know that
they would not remain passive in a situation of violent
attack against their personhood. The 'Deacons for
Defense' served a similar purpose, protecting many civil
rights workers, including Martin King, during the 1960s.
(Cone 268-9)
Deacons for Defense
Though little known now, the Louisiana-based Deacons for
Defense and Justice was an important influence on the man who
would found the Black Panther Party, Huey P. Newton (HPN) .
Huey came across a leaflet inviting people to hear a
representative of the Deacons speak:
One of their leaders had come through the Bay Area on a
speaking and fundraising tour, and we liked what he
said. The Deacons had done a good job of defending
civil rights marchers in their area, but they also had a
habit of calling upon the federal government to carry
out this defense or at least to assist them in defending
the people who were upholding the law. The Deacons even
went so far as to enlist local sheriffs and police to
defend the marchers, with the threat that if law
59
enforcement agencies would not defend them, the Deacons
Would. (HPN/RS 112-13)
While admiring their basic positions, HPN drew the line at
working with state forces that "opposed the will of the
people" (i., 113).
B o m in the same southern state as was Newton, the
Deacons, organized just over two years before the BPP was
founded, were miles ahead of their contemporaries, not merely
on the stance on armed self-defense, but also regarding the
inclusion of women in their group.
A number of Southern African-American women joined the
Deacons, among them Unita Blackwell,^ Laura McGhee, Ora
Bryant, Annie Reeves and Louise Meriwether, who either joined
the Deacons or participated in the early days of armed
patrols (LeBlanc-Emest/Jones 3 06-7) .
First formed in Jonesboro, Louisiana in July 1964, the
Deacons for Self-Defense and Justice influenced black
militants in both the North and the South, among them the
late Kwame Ture (ne Stokely Carmichael) , who, in his classic,
Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (Vintage:
1967) wrote:
The country's reaction to the Deacons for Defense and
Justice, which originated in Louisiana, is instructive.
Here is a group which realized that the 'law' and law
enforcement agencies would not protect people, so they
60
had to do it themselves. If a nation fails to protect
its citizens, then that nation cannot condemn those who
take up the task themselves. The Deacons and all other
blacks who resort to self-defense represent a simple
answer to a simple question: what man would not defend
his family and home from attack? (Carmichael &
Hamilton, 52-3)
One might also ask, given the Deacon's advanced membership,
"What woman would not?"
Ture, who served briefly as BPP Prime Minister (ca.
1968) saw the Deacons as "instructive". The FBI saw them as
a "gun-carrying black vigilante group" (O'Reilly 394, n. 24) .
Although their records date and place their forma.tion as
February 1965 in Bogalusa, Louisiana, they felt secure enough
about their surveillance data to send reports on the group to
"appropriate . . . authorities in the state of Louisiana."
(id.) It is a measure of their disingenuousness that the FBI
would label the Deacons as "vigilantes" when in fact their
very raison d'etre sprang from the FBI's unwillingness or
inability to protect the health, welfare, lives and property
of blacks who were civil rights advocates.
One cannot even imagine the damage and destruction to
civil liberties that resulted from their reports to
"appropriate . . . authorities" in Louisiana. Perhaps lost
jobs; perhaps terrorism; perhaps imprisonment; and perhaps
61
death. In this sense, the Deacons were indeed forerunners to
the BPP in both a positive and a negative sense.
Robert F. Williams
As the Deacons for Defense influenced HPN, so too did
Robert F. Williams, the militant Monroe, North Carolina-based
NAACP leader, who demonstrated under arms after violent
attacks by racists. Indeed, Newton named Williams as a
source of "great influence" (HPN/RS 112) . Williams, an ex-
Mar ine, joined the NAACP upon returning to his hometown in
Monroe, but found the community virtually defenseless against
KKK and cop terror. He found the "tum-the-other-cheek"
directions from the NAACP National Headquarters to be
untenable, declaring,
The stranglehold of oppression cannot be loosened by a
plea to the oppressor's conscience. Social change in
something as fundamental as racist oppression involves
violence. You cannot have progress here without
violence and upheaval. . . . (Williams 110)
When Monroe NAACP folks demonstrated, they did so under their
own arms; when the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) people tried to do so, unarmed, they were beaten
senseless. Williams, implicated in a bogus kidnaping, would
flee the U. S. for an exile that HPN would himself echo years
later. Newton would criticize him for calling on the
government "for assistance", suggesting Williams was somehow
62
unclear on the real nature of the state (HPN/RS 112) . Yet
Williams would liken government officials to agents and aides
to the KKK (Williams 93) .
What is clear is that the revolutionary movement that
emerged in the late 1960s era, had deep and long-living
roots, informed, influenced and fed by a wealth of historical
antecedents. The sheer power and scope of historical
revelation can perhaps best be seen in its absence, as when
an uninformed youth comes in contact with its elevating and
enlightening essence, as exampled by this young girl' s
exposure to a Black History class:
The subject of one of the many lectures scheduled by the
[Golden] Drums was about a slave who had plotted and
planned and fought for his freedom. Right here in
amerika. Until then my only knowledge of the history of
Africans in amerika was about George Washington Carver
making experiments with peanuts and about the
Underground Railroad. Harriet Tubman had always been rry
heroine, and she had symbolized everything that was
Black Resistance for me. But it had never occurred to
me that hundreds of Black people had got together to
fight for their freedom. The day i found out about Nat
Turner i was affected so strongly it was physical. I
was so souped up on adrenalin i could barely contain
63
myself. X tore through every book my mother had.
Nowhere could i find the name Nat Turner.
I had grown up believing the slaves hadn't fought
back. I remember feeling ashamed when they talked about
slavery in school. The teachers made it seem that black
people had nothing to do with the official 'emancipation'
from slavery. White people had freed us. (Shakur 175)
That young girl became a BPP member and later a Black
Liberation Army soldier, now known by the name, Assata
Shakur.
Conclusion
The young Assata was hardly an anomaly. She represented
millions of black youth who were given a cursory and negative
portrayal of African-American history. In the truncated,
servile portrayal of the black experience that passed for
history as taught in public schools of the middle 20th
Century, blacks were slaves, and good ole' Abe Lincoln freed
them, and perhaps, Sojourner Truth did something on the
Underground Railroad.
For these millions, and for millions of such children
similarly situated in crumbling public schools today, there
were no Nat Turners, no Denmark Veseys, no Madison
Washingtons, and most definitely, no slave rebellions that
lit the sky with ferocious tongues of flame.
Absent such a context, the emergence of the Black
Panther Party in October 1966 seemed somewhat odd and out of
64
place. In fact, the BPP was the lineal descendant of the
Deacons for Defense; they were the grandsons of Garvey, the
great-grandsons of Gabriel Prosser, and considered itself
"the heirs of Malcolm", the generation's pre-eminent Black
Nationalist (HPN/RS 90) . The study of the long record of
African resistance places them in their proper historical
context
CHAPTER 3
THEORY AND PRACTICE
It is virtually impossible for us to meaningfully
discuss the theoretically driven ideology of the Black
Panther Party without first noting that the party was a
dynamic entity, one which had an ideology that grew and
developed over time, expanding the consciousness of its
leading members.
Organizations are brought into being as a direct result
of the temporal context, or Zeitgeist, which moves upon,
informs and transforms human consciousness.
Finally, it must be noted that human factors such as the
power of persuasion, influence, determination and vision,
interact with larger social factors such as national economic
trends and social stability to create psychological space for
certain, especially radical, movements that seem to be wholly
logical developments, as in movements that seem historically
compelled.
In the case of the Black Panther Party, which seized
headlines nationwide, its origins were surprisingly mundane.
Two relatively poor anti-poverty workers joined a college-
65
66
based black students 1 group, one of perhaps many of the
period.
In this chapter, the writer will utilize three
perspectives to examine the various ideological developments
of the BPP. These perspectives are themselves developmental,
moving from one axis to another, illustrating the movement
from a nexus where Anglo-American law is situated, from its
farthest periphery, to its center, and outwards to its polar
periphery, opposed to its earliest position..
We will denote those perspectives as the following:
(a) alienation: this position is where one is at
variance from supposed legal norms. This distance may be
seen as antagonism manifested individually as reflected in
the classic lumpenproletariat strata, as petty crimes,
prostitution, and the like. It is seen as a position that
perceives the legal system as one that is fundamentally alien
to their class and cultural perspectives;
(b) ultra-leaalism: this position reflects the
literalist, almost strained reliance upon basic, and
fundamental laws. One so situated perceives the U. S.
Constitution as the supreme "law of the land", and subsidiary
laws as somehow illegitimate in nature. This position
reflects a perception of the legal system that is one of
opposition to how laws are, in fact, applied, as opposed to
how they are written; and.
67
(c) extra-leaalism: this position, the polar opposite
of a) supra. is one in which the law, and the legal process
based upon said law is seen as wholly illegitimate. The
"law" is here seen as a bourgeois tool, and an instrument of
class domination. Opposition is thus of a collective, or
class character, that situates the law" as a power relation
that lacks any discemable moral force. It is an imposition
that is therefore repudiated by revolutionary forces who, by
virtue of their work, sacrifice and ardor, represent the
people's will to separate themselves from the illegitimate
state, and acquire a new identity, which therefore generates
its own morality.
In the context of the development of the Black Panther
Party, it is therefore helpful for us to utilize these
perspectives to view how the BPP, as it grew, came to
perceive the world around it, and perhaps more importantly,
acted in the world based upon that perception. It is in this
temporal context that we begin this discussion, one suffused
with the spirit of alienation, from the central state
structure, from the nation's then ascendant civil rights
hierarchy, and from American society in general.
In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis gave birth to the
extremely controversial American blockade at the time, an
issue that stirred U. S. college campuses, including Merritt
Junior College, in West Oakland, California. The Civil
68
Rights Movement was in full swing at this time also, and it
was not unusual to find hundreds of students standing around
campus, debating some international or national issue of the
day.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, although perhaps little known,
and lesser examined, today, pitted the armed nuclear forces
of the then-Soviet Union against the United States, in a war
of nerves between the world's two superpowers, that, quite
literally threatened much of the United States and the Union
of Societ Socialist Republics (USSR) and the world with
mutual destruction. The Civil Rights Movement was in full
swing at this time also, and it was not unusual to find
hundreds of students standing around campus debating some
international or national issue of the day.
The national mood that prevailed was one of intense
questioning and challenging the status quo in a period that
seemed feverish for change. And, it was just such a context
that students expressed their alienation from their
government with demonstrations and protests rocking the
nation.
Alienation
One of those students named Bobby Seale stood transfixed
as a young student named Huey Newton regaled the crowd with
his militant speech:
69
I guess I had the idea that I was supposed to ask
questions in college, so I walked over to Huey and asked
the brother, weren't all these civil rights laws the
NAACP was trying to get for us doing us some good? And
he shot me down too, just like he shot a whole lot of
other people down. He said, it's all a waste of money,
black people don't have anything in this country that is
for them. He went on to say that the laws already on
the books weren't even serving them in the first place,
and what1 s the use of making more laws when what was
needed was to enforce the present laws? (Seale 13-4)
The milieu that Seale describes is one of ferment, of
questioning, and fundamentally, of challenge:
That's the kind of atmosphere I met Huey in. And all
the conflicts of this meeting, all the blowing that was
going on in the streets that day during the Cuban
crisis, all of that was involved with his association
with the Afro-American Association. A lot of arguments
came down. A lot of people were discussing with three
or four cats in the Afro-American Association, which was
developing the first black nationalist philosophy on the
West Coast.
They got me caught up. They made me feel that I
had to help out, be a part and do something, to help out
some way. One or two days later I went around looking
for Huey at this school, and I went to the library. X
70
found Huey in the library, and I asked him where the
meetings were. He gave me an address and told me that
there were book discussions. (Seale 14)
How does a benign meeting such as this presage the
development of the BPP or its ideological stance? The last
two passages reveal young men who have begun to question the
existing status q u o , both nationally and thus, as to the
then-prevailing Civil Rights Movement, this was both an
ideological and generational conflict.
Further, we see in this interaction the beginning of a
power relation that situates HPN as a teacher of sorts, to
whom Seale turns when he seeks the answers to sociopolitical
conundrums.
Why discuss this period, before the BPP was even formed?
Because here we find the genesis of the ideas that would
later find expression in organization. Notions of
internationalism, allegiance with the so-called Third World,
alienation from American laws, and a nascent Black
nationalism are expressed by these young men who were
essentially trying to make sense of the world, and trying to
find their places in it. They joined and quit a number of
nationalist and black student groups, from the Afro-American
Association (which HPN initially quit because he saw that its
leader wouldn't defend his group from a "white gang"), the
Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) , to the Soul Students
71
Advisory Council, until accusations arose over using SSAC
funds for bailing out one man, and paying a lawyer for the
representation of Huey and. Bobby for the arrests stemming
from a fight on Telegraph Avenue shortly before.
What seems to have been emerging in the SSAC conflict
was the beginnings of a class conflict between the students
who came from more solidly working class or middle class
backgrounds and those who saw themselves as more
lumoenproletariat in character. Huey P. Newton was, more by
his own choice than his inherited class, a man who survived
by his wits, as in petty thefts, burglaries, and check-
kiting, and as such, assumed a lumpen lifestyle. Seale, as a
welder, carpenter and the like, was essentially working
class, if somewhat inconsistently employed.
Yet, both men felt the SSAC was somewhat elitist and
dismissive of folks deemed "from the street" :
So Huey and I jumped up, and we said, Well, fuck it.
We resign. We're going to the black community and we
intend to organize in the black community and organize
an organization to lead the black liberation struggle. 1
Huey ran all that down to them. 'We don't have time for
you,' he said. 'You're living in these colleges. You're
hiding behind the ivory-walled towers in the college,
72
and you're shucking and you're jiving.' This was the
real break with the SSAC that Huey established. (Seale
33)
The psychological and sense of class distance seen in
this passage, circa 1966, would have long-term and serious
impact on the organization Newton and Seale would
subsequently form. That action may have been seriously
influenced by what Seale did several weeks before when he
visited HPN's home and introduced the intense young man to an
extaordinary book that he had read some "six times (Seale
25) .
The book was The Wretched of the Earth, by Martinique-
born Algerian revolutionary, psychiatrist Dr. Frantz Fanon, a
text described as a "handbook of black revolutionaries", by
some. For HPN, the Fanon text forced him to, in Seale's
words, do some " . . . thinking. Hard" (Seale 26) . And how
could it be otherwise, when a young, questioning African-
American reads the somewhat stilted translation of Fanon's
genius, as he skillfully dissects the contradictions of
colonial society?
The mass of the people struggle against the same
poverty, flounder about making the same gestures and
with their shrunken bellies outline what has been called
the geography of hunger. It is an under-developed
world, a world inhuman in its poverty; but also it is a
73
world without doctors, without engineers and without
administrators. Confronting this world, the European
nations sprawl, ostentatiously opulent. This European
opulence is literally scandalous, for it has been
founded on slavery, it has been nourished with the blood
of slaves and it comes directly from the soil and the
subsoil of that under-developed world. The well-being
and the progress of Europe have been built up with the
sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians and
the yellow races. (Fanon 76)
For one seeking to make sense of the vast, bleak
panorama of poverty of the ghetto, as contrasted with the
stately order and opulence of white wealth, Fanon's brave and
brilliant prose held powerful illumination. People of
African descent saw themselves in the villages of rebellion,
and saw their ghettoes as little more than internal
"colonies", illumined by Fanon's analysis.
While this African vis-a-vis European dialectic
undoubtedly had intellectual appeal to young Africans b o m in
America situated in opposition to the status quo, his text
made pointed references to the growing sense of resistance
among "American Negroes" (Fanon 174) . In his chapter, "On
National Culture", Fanon wrote of the powerful linkages
between blacks in the Diaspora, and continental Africans, and
also of their limits:
74
The Negroes who live in the United States and in Central
or Latin America in fact experience the need to attach
themselves to a cultural matrix. Their problem is not
fundamentally different from that of the Africans. We
have seen that the whites were used to putting all
Negroes in the same bag. During the first congress of
the African Cultural Society which was held in Paris in
1956, the American Negroes of their own accord
considered their problems from the same standpoint as
those of their African brothers. (Fanon 174)
While Fanon goes on to note that " . . . every culture
is first and foremost national, . . . " and that black
American culture is therefore fundamentally different from
continental African nationalist culture, it cannot be
gainsayed that his initial remarks served as a powerful,
ringing affirmation of the seeds of a common black culture,
and given his perspective, an implicit affirmation to the
further development of a black American revolutionary culture
(Fanon 174).
The BPP Communications Secretary, Kathleen Neal Cleaver,
Esq., the daughter of an African-American diplomat and ex-
wife of the late BPP Minister of Information, Eldridge
Cleaver, was an able, articulate and attractive spokesperson
for the party, both nationally and internationally who has
written of Fanon*s profound" influence on BPP thinking.
75
She explains the power of Fanon's analysis on Black
Nationalist and revolutionary thinking:
The condition of Blacks in the United States, in the
perspective of the Black Panther Party, was analogous to
that of a colonized people a captive nation dispersed
throughout the White population. We were subjected to
what [Eldridge] Cleaver called 'community imperialism' .
Cleaver redefined what was usually called the White
community as the 'mother country', and constantly
referred to the Black community as 'the colony' .
Adopting Fanon's analysis helped to clarify the
historical relationship between subjugated Blacks and
dominant Whites that conventional terms obscured.
Viewing Blacks as colonized subjects, instead of so-
called second-class citizens, defined the political
course the Black Panther Party proposed as a legitimate
alternative to the assimilationist thrust of the Civil
Rights movement, and justified organizational strategies
designed to liberate, instead of integrate, Blacks. ([K]
Cleaver/Jones 215)
Fanon's revolutionary, anti-colonial writings also
heavily influenced how the lumpen segments of the colony were
to be perceived and utilized. This sector, likened to "a
horde of rats" who were as " . . . gangrene . . . at the
heart of colonial domination . . .", Fanon saw them as people
who, if given the proper backing, would " . . . throw
IS
themselves into the struggle for liberation like stout
working men" (Fanon 104) . From Fanon, HPN learned the worth
of a class that classical Marxist theory saw as worthless,
and heeded the fateful Fanonian warning that if the lumpen
were not utilized by the liberation movement, they would be
put to the use of the oppressor, " . . . who never loses a
chance of setting the niggers against each other" (Fanon
109) .
This fit in perfectly with Newton's intuition that those
who were bourgeois-aspirants like many of his fellow students
at Merritt, would not " . . . throw themselves into the
liberation struggle" with everything they possessed, but
would theorize, extemporize, or, as he learned during his
street experience with Donald Warden and the AAA's conflict
with the "white gang" on Fillmore Street, would not fight
(Seale 21) . Huey therefore reasoned that those who would
fight, and fight the hardest, were those who had nothing to
lose, and a world to gain; those who fought each and every
day, even, in blind hatred and ignorance, among each other;
those he had run from as a boy, and those whom he had learned
to fight back and beat with his fists; those, who, like
Fanon' s "horde of rats", would chew at the very vitals of the
empire's body politic: were lumpenproletariat in
orientation. He therefore cast the net towards this class,
the very ones that most civil rights and student-centered
77
militant groups scorned; he instinctively knew (and Fanon had
affirmed) that this class would provide the energy to push
the movement forward:
One must relate to the history of one' s community and
its future. Everything we had seen [Watts riots,
vicious cop brutality, state terror, etc.] convinced us
that our time had come.
Out of this need sprang the Black Panther Party.
Bobby and I finally had no choice but to form an
organization that would involve the lower-class
brothers. (HPN/RS 48)
This conscious design by BPP founders to target lumpen
strata brothers and sisters lent the organization an edge and
character that proved both helpful and dangerous. For such
elements, while courageous and aggressive, could also be
notoriously undisciplined and short-sighted. For a group
that saw itself as revolutionary, however, it was critical to
mobilize fighters, and fighters don't come from the
intelligentsia (as a rule) , but from the lumpen.
The example of the martyred nationalist leader,
liberation fighter Malcolm X, also had an "intangible" and
profoundly "spiritual" influence on the BPP. Newton said, "
. . . as far as I am concerned, the party is a living
testament to his life work" (HPN/BS. 113) :
78
From all of these things the books, Malcolm's writings
and spirit, our analysis of the local situationthe idea
of an organization was forming. One day, quite
suddenly, almost by chance, we found a name. I had read
a pamphlet about voter registration in Mississippi, how
the people in Lowndes County had armed themselves
against Establishment violence. Their political
group, called the Lowndes County Freedom Organization,
had a black panther for its symbol. A few days later,
while Bobby and I were rapping, I suggested that we use
the panther as our symbol and call our political vehicle
the Black Panther Party . . . The image seemed
appropriate, and Bobby agreed without discussion. At
this point, we knew it was time to stop talking and
begin organizing. CHPM/ES. 113)
Here, one sees the convergence and crystalization of
inchoate and disparate forces moving through black and
radical consciousness: the noble example of Malcolm, who,
although of lumpen origins, would grow to inspire and
motivate millions; Fanon's colonial analysis and
accreditation of lumpenized resistance; Robert William's
armed battles in the South against racist violence and
bourgeois betrayal; the Lowndes County Freedom Organization's
political resistance movement to Alabaman apartheid and white
supremacist status Q U O : with a distinct anti-colonialist,
79
anti-imperialist, and, indeed, an anti-government flavor.
Drawn largely from black Southern resistance movements and
experience, it is perhaps fitting the leading BPP personnel
were themselves largely of Southern origins: HPN, Eldridge
Cleaver (Minister of Information) , and Geronimo ji-Jaga, ne
Pratt Deputy Defense Minister, Los Angeles Chapter, were all
Louisianans; Seale was born in Dallas, Texas; David Hilliard,
Chief of Staff, and brother, June, were born in Rockville,
Alabama (Seale 4; Marine 12; Hilliard 26) . In David
Hilliard's recollections, the South meant something that
California, where he spent the bulk of his life, did not:
Yet Rockville remains a profound influence on my life .
. . 'We're going back to the old country, ny cousin
Bo jack used to say when we were growing up and preparing
for a trip south. Rockville remains the closest I can
get to rry origins, to being African. (Hilliard 26)
Although largely disowned by the more bourgeois Civil
Rights Movement, the BPP's patrimony was more than
legitimate. It drew, not upon some Gandhian notion of non
violence, but upon the African and African-American
traditions of resistance and nationalism. It was in this
context that the BPP saw itself as the lineal descendant of
Malcolm X, the premier nationalist of his era. In an early
essay, Newton drew on imagery that situated the BPP on a
"triangle of death" opposite the oppressor and the black
80
bourgeoisie. The essay, "In. Defense of Self-Defense," states
in part:
The heirs of Malcolm now stand millions strong on their
corner of the triangle, facing the racist dog oppressor
and the soulless endorsed spokesmen. The heirs of
Malcolm have picked up the gun and taking first things
first are moving to expose the endorsed spokesmen so the
Black masses can see them for what they are and have
always been. The choice offered by the heirs of Malcolm
to the endorsed spokesmen is to repudiate the oppressor
and to crawl back to their own people and earn a speedy
reprieve or face a merciless, speedy and most timely
execution for treason and being ' too wrong for too
Long.'(HPN/TDFTP 90-1)
This essay reflects the emergence of the BPP as a
classconscious, radical formation that posited itself as
overtly antagonistic to the interests of the black
bourgeoisie who usually constituted the spokesmen class. The
antipathy and sense of alienation expressed here is palpable
in its lumpen militance.
To be sure, some scholars have found this
"lumpenization" to be one of the party's most grievous
errors. Sociologist Chris Booker in his critical essay in
The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered) noted:
81
. . . [S]cholars and activists alike have been
pessimistic about the revolutionary potential of the
lumpen class. Specifically, they argue that individuals
of the lumpen class are unsuitable for the rigors of
revolutionary action because this sector not only tends
to lack loyalty and discipline, but is also prone to the
use of intimidation and violence when resolving
disputes.9 (Booker/Jones 346)
Booker is quite critical of the party's reliance on, and
recruitment of " . . . a social element that existed on the
fringes of legality for its daily existence" (Booker/Jones
357) . He cites a number of instances of lumpen-like actions
to support his thesis, among them an act of spontaneous
violence involving the party chief-of-staff, David Hillard:
Once Hilliard himself recalls an incident on New Year's
Eve when, after guzzling a large amount of alcohol at
his sister B. B. 's house, Hilliard decided to 'carry out
a guerrilla action' by firing on a police car with his
pistol. The incident startled Bobby Seale, who stood
next to Hilliard. Since it occurred so quickly, Seale
did not have a chance to discourage Hilliard from
committing the act. While Hilliard's shot missed,
incidents such as this presented the government ample
opportunities to exploit the Panthers in the effort to
dismantle their Panther organization. (Booker/Jones 355)
82
Booker's example of an expression of lumpenism may more
aptly be an example of drunkenness, of behavior wrought by
stress, ala Post -Trauma tic Stress Syndrome, or of simple,
human stupidity. Hilliard's autobiographical account is rife
with his serious struggle against alcohol and other substance
abuse. In his telling of the event which Booker discussed,
one reads of an event that seems far more complex than Booker
suggests:
One night I join the madness. I decide I've got to do
more than just talk about fighting the pigs. It's New
Year's Eve, late, and I've been drinking with June and
Bobby. We're standing on the porch of my sister B. B's
house. I've been spending a lot of time with Eldridge,
and now I'm saying we need to show some success in the
struggle, that we've got to deliver a material blow
against the pigs, not just give the brothers and sisters
theoretical justifications for some future revolution
that might never come. The talk and drink get heavier as
the New Year approaches. As always during these
discussions I feel an irresistible pull toward the
violence, even though I don't yearn to shoot a gun or
kill anyone.
Out of the blue a cop car rolls by the house.
Well, I have a .380 Beretta in my possession. Why not
now? 'This is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate how
to carry out a guerrilla action, ' I tell Bobby. Before
83
he knows what I'm doing, I unleash the .380 and start
firing at the cop car from the steps.
Bam I
Bam I
Bam I
Luckily I miss the car totally and the cops don't
decide to fight . . . They zoom off, tires screaching.
'David, you really shot at those guys,' Bobby says.
' You' re goddamn right, ' I say. But I don' t feel proud.
I have wanted to set an example, but I am humiliated by
my action.
'We gotta talk about this,1 Bobby says. 'That
ain't right. That's jackanape stuff. We believe in
discipline. You gotta read and talk about Fanon, man,
on spontaneity and its strengths and weaknesses. That' s
not what Huey would want at all. '
'Well, explain it to me, ' I demand, his rebuke
confirming ny faith in the Party.
We drive to his house; until the dawn we drink and
talk about violence, reading and discussing Fanon.
'This is what the man's saying, ' Bobby explains.
I listen, tracking the subtleties of Fanon's
thoughts, not incomprehending now. It's complicated,
this stuff, I think not simply what Fanon is saying,
but being a revolutionary. Revolution is a science, not
simply a matter of risking a lot or acting like a rebel.
84
You've got to analyze and sort through things. This
stuff is hard, I think; this revolution I've entered
into takes time. (Hilliard 151-2)
Given this expanded perspective, can one honestly
attribute Hilliard's actions to his lumpen origins, or to his
drinking? Isn't he quite correctly, albeit informally,
reprimanded by his superior officer? If undisciplined use of
weapons is a reflection of one's lumpen status, to what class
are the cops assigned who shot up the BPP Grove Street office
after HPN's trial? (Hilliard 208).
That said, it would be disingenuous of this writer to
suggest Booker is in error in all of his observations. For
future activists, he warns the lumpen could create a crisis,
one that would " . . . contribute to the demise of the
organization" (Booker/Jones 356-7). He is quite correct that
. . . organizations . . . seek[ing] to focus their
recruitment on the lumpen should have effective mechanisms to
reform new members" (id.) . He is also correct in his
assessment that the BPP erred by " . . . promoting the
personalities and lifestyles of the lumpen," as if this was
in and of itself, a positive attribute. To promote the
values of, say, pimps in a radical formation that claims to
adhere to women's equality is, to say the least,
schizophrenic, and inconsistent. The truth of the matter is
that the party went through several incarnations, according
to the understandings and ideological development of the
85
leadership, and how well these concepts were disseminated
among rank and file membership.
It is somewhat intriguing that Booker opts to ignore the
respected and influential source of the lumpenproletariat
organizational theory; i.e.. Dr. Frantz Fanon. The BPP read
Fanon religiously, and followed his analyses as closely as
comprehension allowed. Prior to his escapade on a porch in
West Oakland, Hilliard admits a losing struggle against the
turgid prose of Fanon's translator, written, as it was, for
scholars, for psychologists, and intellectuals, and not
necessarily for marginally educated youth who were one
generation removed from Southern peonage, peasantry and
poverty, and saw themselves, from a lumpen perspective, as
brothers off the block".
Ultra-legalism
While some may find it somewhat questionable to see any
BPP ideology as ultra-legalistic, in fact this literalist
quality was inspired by the party founder's fascination,
learning, and knowledge of the law. Huey P. Newton devoted
four of the 10 BPP Program statements to what could be called
legalistic issues, with three of them citing the U. S.
Constitution or Declaration of Independence as authority for
several of them, and a basis for resolution. Those that are
overtly legalistic are:
86
7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY
and MURDER of black people.
We believe we can end police brutality in our black
community by organizing black self-defense groups that
are dedicated to defending our black community from
racist police oppression and brutality. The Second
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives
a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all
black people should arm themselves for self-defense.
8. We want freedom for all black men held in
federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.
We believe that all black people should be released
from the many jails and prisons because they have not
received a fair and impartial trial. [Even though this
program doesn't expressly state its Constitutional
foundation, it clearly utilizes fair and impartial'
language that suggests its 6th Amendment origins. ]
9. We want all black people when brought to trial
to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or
people from their black communities, as defined by the
Constitution of the United States.
We believe that the courts should follow the United
States Constitution so that black people will receive
fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U. S.
Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer
group. A peer is a person from a similar economic.
87
social, religious, geographical, environmental,
historical, and racial background. To do this the court
will be forced to select a jury from the black community
from which the black defendant came. We have been, and
are being tried by all-white juries that have no
understanding of the 'average reasoning man' of the
black community. (Jones 474)
As to Point 10, the "What We Want" section is a kind of
catch-all point, which states quite clearly that African-
Americans want a number of things that are intrinsically not
satisfactorily provided to such persons, among them, "We want
land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace"
(Jones 474) . The "What We Believe" provisions of this point
are a verbatim recitation of the opening excerpts from the
Declaration of Independence, a pertinent part of which
states:
. . . when a long train of abuses and usurpations,
pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to
reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right,
it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to
provide new guards for their future security. (Jones
475)
For a group of black revolutionary nationalists to
recite America' s founding documents to such an extent as
shown here betrays the fundamentally ultra-legalist character
of founding members of the BPP. Further, this invocation of
88
Americas founders attributes to the revolutionary enterprise
a kind of ancient license, an aura of that which is old,
hallowed, and unquestioned lending an air of authenticity to
the new, the untried, the revolutionary.
One legal scholar, upon examining the legal experiences
and interactions of HPN, came to the conclusion that he was,
in his heart-of-hearts, quite lawyer-like in his way of
thinking, despite his lumpen class origins and activities:
. . . Newton reveled in defending himself in the
Courtroom after he had been charged with a crime. He
saw these efforts as a way to show his contempt for the
system, but his eager commentaries on legal definitions
and issues also betray an actual engagement with legal
discourse. 'Each law has a body of elements, and each
element has to be violated in order for a crime to have
been committed, he announced in Revolutionary Suicide.
'That's what they call the 'corpus delicti'.
People think that means the physical body, but it really
means the body of elements. ' Here and elsewhere, the
legally trained hears echoes of his or her own first-
year law school notes. Strange as it might seem, Newton
had the categorizing and differentiating aptitude of a
fine lawyer. (Papke 119-20)
Papke, who sees the American constitutional legal system
as a kind of "legal faith", saw the BPP as a body which
89
projected a critique of the system that may have been "too
effective." (Papke 3, 107) They were state targets in large
part because they challenged that commonly held "faith"
(Papke 107).
That distinctly American trust in legalism, shared by
lumpens, youth, college and high school students and drop
outs who joined the BPP, may have proved damaging to the
party in its latter years, especially as the state utilized
tactics that were illegal, unconstitutional and deadly to
"neutralize", disrupt, and destroy Black Nationalist groups,
under the rubric of the infamous FBI COINTELPRO and BLACKPRO
programs (Jones 366-8; O'Reilly 282) .
As New York Panther, and former political prisoner,
Dhoruba Bin Wahad has accurately noted, the state functioned
as political police, who ran a counterintelligence program
that was, in essence " . . . a domestic war program, a
program aimed at countering the rise of black militancy,
black independent political thought" (Grady-Willis 366;
Fletcher, etal. 18) . In such a context, ultra-legalism could
not long survive.
Extra-legalism
Scholars, even from the "mother country", now lend some
credence to the idea that state forces ran riot over the
constitutional and civil rights of BPP members in an effort
to disrupt and dismantle a legal political entity. Papke
90
found BPP critiques to be heretical" in their attack against
American civil, legal "religion" (Papke 107). He surmises
that such a pointed critique stimulated the state' s
repressive response:
The best evidence, perhaps, of the coherence and
potential of the Panther critique of law enforcement was
the police response to it. Both in the Panther' s
Oakland home and at a national level, the police
suppressed the Panthers and muffled their heresy. (Papke
107)
Illegal wiretaps, the use of informants and mail covers,
faked letters, unlawful arrests, beatings and killings of BPP
members taught the unmistakable message that the law is but
an illusion.
In such a context, where the state utilized extra-legal
methods to "neutralize" dissent, the forces of dissension
would adopt extra-legal methods to survive, and later, to
exist. Indeed, anyone with even a fleeting relationship to
African-American history cannot help but come away with the
unsettling notion that there is, and has ever been, at the
very least, two systems of law: one for the subordination of
Africans; another for the liberty of the white majority
(Fredrickson 167) . This deep, experiential, and culturally-
informed inner knowledge was certainly perceived by many of
the founding BPP members, especially those of Southern
91
origins, as the essential extra-legalism that lies in the
American heart:
Before segregation laws and suffrage restrictions had
apparently put southern blacks in their place',
anxieties about how to maintain total dominance over a
group that persisted in asserting its claim to civil and
political equality helped provoke an epidemic of
lynchings and pogrom-type race riots* in the South.
Even after the full array of discriminatory legislation
was on the books, extra-legal violence, or the threat of
it, continued to play an important role as a device for
intimidating blacks and shoring up the color line.
Besides being symptomatic of pathological Negrophobia,
these brutal vigilante tactics also reflected a
persistent insecurity about the effectiveness of white
dominance and a lack of faith in the full adequacy of
legal or institutional controls over blacks.
(Fredrickson 251)
That "pathological Negrophobia" did not die in the
demise of American slavery, but finds expression in the
present, especially in the interaction between assertive
Blacks and white state power. Extra-legalist attitudes among
BPP members and ranking leaders may be seen in Hilliard's
behavior noted above. Huey P. Newton would criticize this
perspective as "revolutionary cultis [m] " which ultimately
92
isolates one from the community (HPN/TDFTP 102) . It is also
safe to say that although HPN criticized this feature
relatively early in party life, it, fueled by lumpenism, the
very real incidences of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by
overworked and tired troops, and in some cases, human
stupidity, continued to find some level of expression
throughout party life.
Ideologies and. Legalisms
At first blush, one might wonder, how does a discussion
of alienation and one's legalistic position address concerns
of ideology? It is a well-known maxim that ideological
theory, standing alone, is of little value to an activist or
revolutionary. One learns, one grows, one perceives, through
acts that occur in the real world. Such revolutionary acts
exist in counter-position to the state, especially its legal
apparatus. How one is situated then, in relation to that
apparatus, defines one's field of action, and, in large part,
one's interaction with others with which one works. Dry,
semantic discussions on theoretical niceties do not define
these relationships, and may serve to obscure the deeper
levels of such relationships behind labels that have very
little real meaning in the daily life, struggles and work of
the activist or revolutionary.
The question then becomes: what is one' s actual
relationship with state power?
93
We have utilized this interpretive tool to try to
address this central question.
Xntercommunalism
Huey P. Newton, ever the Nietzschean, challenged all
forms of orthodoxy, even Socialist orthodoxy. It is in this
sense that he jettisoned several key ideas central to
Socialist theory, as in the inevitability of the erection of
a Communist state after Socialism further developed.
Newton's insight, which was either hotly disparaged or
ignored at the time of its pronouncement, was termed
intercommunalism, or the recognition that in the context of
imperialism's global reach and power, there really are no
nations, for they are held in thrall by imperial masters.
For some mature BPP ex-members, HPN's insights have only
ripened in time. Former Central Committee Member and BPP
Campaigner, Joan Kelly represents that sector of membership
that developed and expanded ideologically:
One of the things that we did continuously is grow
philosophically and politically. We were not just
mouthing platitudes that we picked out of Chairman Mao' s
Red Book. We were and are very intelligent and
politically aware and conscious people. And when you
see, if you go back and look historically at the Party,
if you are that kind of academician or you like to do
that, if you go through our literature, if you go
94
through our history, you will see evolutions. You will
see us go from the Black Panther Party Newspaper to the
Intercommunal News Service, back to the Black Panther
Party Newspaper. Which showed some realizations that we
had about how you organized people, how you get to
people. Sometimes you lead by following. And one of
the things that is important about Intercommunalism, a
lot of radicals used to call it Imperialism, but at some
point, early 70s, the Party recognized that what is
happening today is going to happen. There were going to
be no boundaries. That if you' re in Los Angeles, if
you're in Tiajuana, if you're in Argentina, if you're in
Bonn, Germany, its' all IBM.1
The internationalist, anti-imperialist nature of the BPP
forced members of the organization to constantly study, and
constantly reassess their positions. We were told to study
other groups in society, the better to critique them when
involved in conversations or arguments. This instruction
came in handy for one young Panther assigned to paper-selling
duty:
The 3rd Avenue El in the Bronx was a major thoroughfare
of the borough, and as such a prime site for one seeking
to sell The Black Panther. In an attempt to sell rry
fifty copies, I chose a stop on the line where the foot
traffic would be quite heavy, as people descended from
95
the elevated train ride. At roughly the same time,
another young black man elected to stop at the busy
corner, from which he intended to sell his wares.
His wares were essentially the same as mine
newspapers. There, however, the similarity ended, for
it was clear from his product that competition was
inevitable.
The young man wore a dark-green iridescent suit,
and a brightly-colored bowtie. His hair was cut close
to his scalp in the 'hustler' style, with a thin part
shaved in, and his face was shaved hairless. He carried
with him a multi-colored plastic shopping bag which
appeared to be filled with copies of Muhammed Speaks .
We looked up at each other, and understood that
neither would relinquish the comer to the other. And
so, we began selling at earnest. Shouts of 'Help us
free Huey! ' mingled with 'Salaam Aliekum, brother! ' , as
the two struggled to sell their product.
'Yo, brother! Find out whats happenin' that the
white power structure ain't gonna tell ya! Check out
the Black Panther only a quarter! ' 'Salaam Aliekum,
Sister! Come on back to your own! Read Muhammed
Speaks! Twenty-five cents.'
For nearly an hour the sales continued, fed and famished
by the flow of passersby debarking from the trains hissing to
96
a stop overhead. After some time, the two got into a
conversation:
'Brother, you got to get with the Honorable Elijah
Muhammed, and stop following those devils like Marx and
Lenin and 'em.'
Well, bro' you should get with the Minister of
Defense, Huey P. Newton, and the Black Panther Party.
You should follow a Black man, brother, not some
Jews like Marx and Lenin I
We revolutionaries, brother, and we study about
revolutionaries from around the world. We don't care
what race they is.
I can see that, brother,' glancing at a copy of the
Black Panther, pointing to a picture of a Asian,
full-haired man, 'Who is that, brother?
That's Kim Il-Sung, the leader of North Korea, and
a revolutionary.
You see what I'm saying, brother. Here you go
talking 'bout another guy. He ain't got 'nothin' to say
to Black people, brother!
Well, if that's so, brother, why he in yo paper
Muhammed Speaks'
What you talkin' 'bout, brother?, he asked,
seemingly stunned by the question. I read and studied
the paper regularly, for its layout, news, and
97
commentary. This seemed only logical for one assigned
to the Party's East Coast Ministry of Information in the
Bronx, and I remembered reading this week's issue.
Check it out, brother, in yo international news
section.
In disbelief, the young man turned the pages until,
sure enough, an article appeared bearing a photo of Kim
II-Sung. He looked at it, and then turned to me,
smiling.
Yes, sir, brother. Yes, sir.
And what we learned from him was the idea of
1 Juche' . a Korean word that means self-reliance.
The ideology of the BPP was crafted in the furnace of
the fires of global rebellion. It sought to give life and
expression to the storms raging around the orbit of black
consciousness; the dreams of Malcolm; the Viet Nam War; the
bourgeois orientation of the Civil Rights Movement; the
festering sores of ghetto life; the fears born of police
terrorism; and the raging riots of mid-century America.
Ideology serves to make sense of the swirling, roiling storm
of sensory input, and finding a way forward, out of the
storm. It is a lens, and a road map.
The BPP sought to bring its vision into reality and, for
a time, succeeded brilliantly.
We have attempted to give some glimpse of that vision.
CHAPTER 4
MAN AS MOVEMENT
. . . je suis moi-meme la matiere de mon livre
(X am myself the matter of ny book) .
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
(French Essayist; 1533-1592)
There are many ways to write of the history of men, of
women, and of social movements, each of them informed by the
political perspectives of the writer, the milieu in which the
work is written, the perceived audience to which the work
will be directed, and the sociopolitical usages to which the
work will be put.
These choices are ones chosen by the writer, and as
such, usually intrinsically understood by the consumer (s) of
the work, especially when the writer is known by reputation.
When The Shadow of the Panther was published in 1994,
the writer, Hugh Pearson, a relatively young African-
American, had no appreciable history of activism; thus, his
work reflected a perspective uninformed by lived experience,
as well as betraying an historical and historiographical
ignorance.
98
99
It is impossible for one to read. Pearson's work without
coming to the conclusion that Huey P. Newton was, at least in
his latter years, a thug. Further, that thuggishness is
presented as a negative transference of sorts against the
entire BPP. One scholar found the work largely objectionable
on this score, noting: "He concludes that the party was
essentially an organization of street thugs" (Jones 4).
What makes such a position untenable (in addition to its
logical incoherence) is its ahistoric broadness and its
demonstrable inconsistency. One wonders, how can such a
broad principle be so narrowly applied? Let us critically
examine Pearson1s thesis.
Pearson's Huey
While Pearson, as he must, crafts a figure that is
undeniably complex, he portrays his subject in unremittingly
negative terms. No man is wholly negative, and it is
simplistic for us to suppose otherwise.
The Huey P. Newton of fresh-faced youth, the searching,
idealistic boy-man is largely ignored in his treatment, for
the grizzled, conniving drug addict of latter days: the
movement1 s recruit has all but disappeared, while the war-
weary, post-traumatically wounded veteran becomes central,
and pivotal to the portrayal.
An old adage teaches us that "the boy is father to the
man", yet barely four pages out of 422 are devoted to HPN's
100
early life (Pearson 17; 45-7) . We therefore fail to see the
formative forces of a man who the writer himself deems
emblematic of Black Power in America" (Pearson, tit.) .12 we
therefore do not know that HPN was driven by an intense and
palpable sense of fear, a fear that may have been manifested
throughout his life (Brown 252-3).
Fear, being a common feature of human personality, is
not seen in Pearson's portrayal of HPN, and such a rendition
serves to distance and dehumanize his subject from the
reader.
In his view, the Black Panther Party, from the very
inception was little more than a criminal enterprise, a kind
of Black Mafia, so to speak" (Pearson 250).
As shall be made clearer later, the writer is ill-
equipped to come to such a conclusion. Suffice it to say his
reliance on three BPP insiders, coupled with the attributions
of non-blacks who knew HPN or were "affiliated" with the
party, as these were the "easiest" sources from which to gain
"cooperation", denotes a demonstrable research bias that
skews the work (Pearson 344). It is also notable that the
writer chose to utilize the failures and foibles of HPN as
the basis from which to project a negative portrayal of the
entire BPP.
If one man may serve such a representative function (a
dubious notion at best), why not the martyred Illinois Deputy
101
Chairman of the BPP, Fred Hampton? By opting for HPN, the
conclusion was foregone. Further, Pearson did not provide a
developmental perspective of HPN, nor did he give us a sense
of the social, political, or ideological development of the
BPP, a far more complex endeavor, to be sure, but one surely
compelled by a work that purports to be an examination of
"The Price of Black Power in America", as the title suggests,
we are expected to arrive at the equation that if HPN was
"bad", then the BPP was "bad", too. [HPN = BPP = -0] This
kind of simplistic logic leads to equally simplistic
conclusions, such as his almost laughable avowal that the BPP
was little more than "a temporary media phenomenon" (Pearson
347) .
At the very beginning, Hugh Pearson juxtaposes the fate
of one man who followed HPN (Landon Williams) with that of
Newton himself, with the latter measuring unfavorably from
the comparison (2) . Pearson, writing of the tumultuous
1960s, commends "men like Williams" for their work to
transform the dispossessed in the ghettoes of West Oakland,
while implicitly denigrating the very man who attracted,
organized, and motivated "men like Williams" to do that very
work (2) . He commends the work done by "men like Williams"
in the 1960 s, while damning the HPN of the early and late
1980s. This kind of temporal incoherence suggests a bias
that colors the work.
102
Pearson's work also exhibits a strong strain of
decontextualization in the usages of HPN's written words to
impart to them a meaning that does not exist in the original.
This is demonstrated in an account which purports to
illustrate HPN's thinking in the early efforts to recruit BPP
members:
But there was a flip side to this budding deal that the
Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was making with the
local black community: black criminality, for the most
part, was to continue. From the beginning of the party,
Newton was working out a deal with the black criminal
elements of Oakland, covering the deal in revolutionary
rhetoric quid pro quo, the Panthers were saying. We'll
undermine the police, making it easier for you to engage
in your criminal activities, in exchange for a fee.
Newton admitted as much, although you had to read
between the lines. ' Black consciousness had generally
reached the point where a man felt guilty about
exploiting the black community, he wrote of the party's
beginnings. However, if his daily activities for
survival could be integrated with actions that
undermined the established order, he felt good about it.
In order to survive, they still had to sell their hot
goods. But at the same time they would pass some of the
cash on to us [emphasis added] . That way, ripping off
103
became more than just an individual thing. ' (Pearson
118)
The writings of HPN provide us with a missing context
that allows us to dispense with reading "between the lines".
In describing the hard work of recruitment, he notes:
This recruiting had an interesting ramification in that
I tried to transform many of the so-called criminal
activities going on in the street into something
political [emphasis added], although this had to be done
gradually.
Instead of trying to eliminate these activities
numbers, hot goods, drugs I attempted to channel them
into significant community actions. Black consciousness
had generally reached a point where a man felt guilty
about exploiting the Black community. However, if his
daily activities for survival could be integrated with
actions that undermined the established order, he felt
good about it. It gave him a feeling of justification
and strengthened his own sense of personal worth. Many
of the brothers who were burglarizing and participating
in similar pursuits began to contribute weapons and
material to community defense. In order to survive they
still had to sell their hot goods, but at the same time
they would pass some of the cash on to us. Ihat way.
104
ripping off became more than -fust an individual thing.
(HPN/RS 127) [emphasis added]
While a writer can perhaps be forgiven for reading "between
the lines", to quote directly from a passage in order to
support one's position without utilizing an ellipsis to
reveal matter excised from the cited passage is, to say the
least, disingenuous, and at the most, patently misleading to
readers.
A fair reading of the entire passage shows, not a
criminal consciousness, but rather a communal one.
Unfortunately, it shows us more about the writer than the
subject, who utilizes a technique of improperly quoting from
sources, and, in effect, changing the evidence to fit his
thesis. Such an historical method is simply untenable.
Further, the underlying premise of The Shadow of the
Panther is the conflation of the leader and the organization,
as in the event the leader acts out in a criminally improper
fashion, then the organization is, ipso facto, a criminal
organization, and always was so.
One scholar found Pearsons perspective to be woefully
reductionist on this score:
Although Pearson (pp. 30-2) seems to appreciate the
dialectic between activism and criminality in an unjust
society (i.e., many in the civil rights movement were,
in light of racist laws, technically criminals), he does
105
not seem to fully appreciate the fusion and
transformation of the two (activism and criminality)
brought about by Malcolm and the impact of this image on
the Black activists of the 1960s. This process was even
more challenging for the Black lumpenproletariat
elements that the BPP was attempting to organize and,
following Fanon, promote as a vanguard. For Pearson,
Newton's most telling failure was his inability to
transform himself along the lines of Malcolm X, and this
failure, for Pearson, is not only a personal one, but
represents the collective failure of the Black Power
movement itself. However, only if we reduce the BPP to
Newton and then reduce Newton to his criminal behavior
while ignoring all else can this claim be substantiated.
Such conclusions are ahistorical and inaccurate, but,
unfortunately, this appears to be Pearson's assessment.
(Henderson 175-6) [notes omitted]
Parenthetically, it must be noted that, for some,
principally the black bourgeoisie, Malcolm, in life, wasn't
the Malcolm he would become in death. At the time of his
death he was vilified in terms that colored him as a
criminal, especially by leading black public figures.
Carl Rowan, former director of the United States
Information Agency, described Malcolm as " . . . an ex
convict, ex-dope peddler who became a racial fanatic" (Cone
40) . For the life of him, he could not understand all the
106
"fuss" made over the death of such a m a n . 13 Rowan was
"deeply disturbed" by the flood of praise for the slain Black
Nationalist pouring in from the Afro-Asian world in the days
following his death (Cone 40) . Other exemplars of ruling
class opinion displayed even more caustic responses to the
assassination of a man who was a perennial thorn in the side
of white supremacy. Malcolm X, Time wrote, was an unashamed
demagogue" who preached a gospel of hatred". The magazine
described him as a man who " . . . in life and in death, was a
disaster to the civil rights movement" (Cone 39) .1^
The respected "gray old lady" would outdo the
newsmagazine in its denunciation of Malcolm X, who it noted
was an "irresponsible demagogue" . The pre-eminent Black
Nationalist of his generation was described by the New York
Times as an "extraordinary and twisted man" who turned his
"fine gifts to evil purpose" (Cone 39).15
Indeed, the Malcolm that we know and revere today is
largely the result of Black Nationalist, and, to a lesser
extent, white Socialist, retention and remembrance of the
life and vision of Malcolm.
Malcolm, himself, citing his pre-Nation of Islam (NOI)
conversion, "Became one of the most depraved parasitical
hustlers among New York's eight million people four million
of whom work, and the other four million of whom live off
them" (Malcolm X 75) . For some among the black bourgeoisie,
107
Malcolm's prison life before his Nation of Islam ministry
became an excuse for tainting both his radical,
dechristianized message, and his person.
It was to this audience, known as the responsible Negro
elements", that the FBI, through its "responsible Negro media
contacts", tried to disseminate negative, salacious, and
critical information, and, one might add, disinformation, ala
gossip and rumor which was designed to . . . expose,
disrupt, discredit, or otherwise neutralize such groups and
their leadership, spokesmen, members and supporters"
(O'Reilly 282-85; Monges 136).
In an attempt that was as macabre as it was malicious,
one example of the FBI' s role in black movements was the
sending of a note and audiotape to Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr., which counseled suicide, written by FBI Assistant
Director, William Sullivan:
King, like all frauds, your end is approaching. You
could have been our greatest leader . . . But you are
done . . . The American public, the church
organizations that have been helping Protestant,
Catholic and Jews will know you for what you are . . .
there is only one thing left for you to do. You know
what this is . . . there is but one WAY out for you.
You better take it before this filthy, abnormal,
fraudulent self is bared to the Nation. (O'Reilly 144)
108
That the FBI conceived, initiated, and executed such
tactics against a confirmed, Gandhian, pacifist as King,
speaks volumes about its role in the destruction of the black
freedom, and nationalist movements, to which Pearson seems
particularly myopic (Pearson 180) .
The dialectic between activism and criminality is more
than "not appreciated" by Pearson, as Henderson argues (175-
6) . Xt is all but dismissed by him (Pearson 180) .
Many of the acts of the FBI and local police against the
BPP constituted crimes, crimes of acute violence (such as
premeditated murder) , for which they have never been
criminally sanctioned. Their sordid history on that score
sets forth a dialectic between power and powerlessness;
between the forces of a state, and that of an organization
fighting for social change. This is never clearer than in
Pearson's desultory treatment of the FBI/IBI/Chicago cop
murders of Illinoisan BPP officers Fred Hampton and Mark
Clark on December 4, 1969 (180, 208-9) . The FBI paid a
relatively meagre sum to settle the civil suit brought by
Hampton's relatives, of $1.85 million dollars (O'Reilly 310-
15) .
Thus, to discuss "law" in the abstract, as if it were
not the instrument of class rule, racial and hierarchical
domination, or white supremacy and African subordination, is
to speak of an illusion that does not accord to American
109
reality, for it was in this temporal context that the BPP,
and HPN struggled and resisted.
At the inception of the BPP, and throughout its most
militant stages of development, the impact of Malcolm X could
only be called iconic. His early life, his prison years, his
resurrection as an NOI minister, and his post-NOI
nationalism, especially its most secular elements, were
powerful examples that stirred black youth consciousness in
the 1960s, in a way and to a degree that Martin Luther King,
Jr., could not match.
Malcolm's example was so stirring that Newton seriously
considered joining the NOI, but this atheistic "PK"
(preacher's kid) could not abide the sect's eschatological
and theological views. He regularly visited Muslim mosques
in San Francisco and Oakland, and discussed the problems
facing black folks with temple members. Huey P. Newton heard
Malcolm X (accompanied by a young convert then named Cassius
Clay) give a powerful address at Oakland's McClymonds High
School sponsored by his former study group, the Afro-American
Association. He found the dedicated'' young minister
impressive with his logic" and his "disciplined" mind
(HPN/fiS.71), but:
. . . I could not deal with their religion. By this
time, I had had enough of religion and could not bring
myself to adopt another one. I needed a more concrete
110
under standing of social conditions. References to God
or Allah, did not satisfy ny stubborn questioning.
(HPN/RS 71)
Malcolm X, seen as "one of the great prophets of black
liberation" at the time of his 1965 assassination, so deeply
inspired HPN that he would refer to the BPP as the heirs of
Malcolm" (Gilmore 216; HPN/TDFTP 90-1) . In such a context,
then, imprisonment, rather than a social stigma, became a
mark of honor. With Malcolm gone, HPN, one of Malcolm's
"heirs", was seen by many party faithful as the man most able
to realize his radical Black Nationalist vision.
How was HPN perceived by those inside of the BPP?:
Summer 1969 was a hot time in Philadelphia, and a time
the local branch spent spreading the party message of
rebellion and resistance. One internal highlight of the
season was a visit to Philadelphia by the respected BPP
Field Marshal, D. C., a member of the Party's leading
Central Committee. His visit to the city served to
provide an invaluable opportunity for an authentic party
elder to teach and guide younger Panthers.
This, D. C. did with sensitivity and alacrity.
Wednesday evenings at 7:30, the party held P. E.
(political education) classes for party members,
community workers, and supporters. Usually, more
advanced members would read passages from Marxist or
Ill
radical texts, and then 'break them down' or analyze and
explain them.
D. C., with his calm reassuring manner, didn't read
from the stodgy, hoary texts, but talked informally
about his history in the party, and of conflicts with
the state.
'Huey is the baddest muthafuka in Black America.
His love for Black folks is so strong, you can walk on
it; you can feel it, man! '
'And Huey built the Black Panther Party to be the
vanguard party, the revolutionary party, the mule for
our people to ride to get to revolution. ' 'Now, what is
the objective of the Black Panther Party? Can anybody
answer that?'
A smattering of hands go up.
'You, sister, ' D. C. points to Candy, a beautiful,
dimpled 17-year old Panther.
'Um to defend black folks from the racist-dog-pig
cops I', she announced, proud of herself.
Nervous laughter raced around the room, a linoleum-
tiled, wood-paneled meeting area that, less than ten
hours later would serve as the place where over 60
neighborhood kids would gather to eat their breakfasts.
112
D. C. smiled gently, and joked, 'Damn sister! Did
you call ' em enough names ? ' The nervous laughter became
genuine, and exploded from thirty young mouths.
'That's a good answer, Candy, but X want all of
y ' all to understand this: The Black Panther Party' s
objective is to establish revolutionary black political
power for black people in America; and also, to achieve
self-determination for our people through a UN-
supervised plebiscite where our people can freely
determine our destiny. '
Brother D. C.?'
'Yeah, brother?'
'Uh. . .umm What's a pleeb. .. -uh- pleeb-o-site? '
More nervous titters are heard, by many who, no
doubt, hadn't the faintest idea of what the term meant.
'Well, Brother Jeff, that word only means vote.
You see, Black folks never chose American citizenship;
it was imposed onto us. And over 100 years after
slavery ' sposed to end, Blacks is still treated like
aliens in this country. That's why we need the
plebiscite (laughter) uh, vote, (more laughter) to have
our people determine, once and for all, whether we want
to be American citizens, or if we want our own separate,
socialist nation; that's for the people to decide.'
'Well, D. C. uh, can I ask you something,
Brother?'
113
'Sure, Brother who is that, Brother Tick?'
Right on O. K. Now if pleebo ?, uh, 'pleba'
uh '
Plebescite'
Yeah however you say it (laughter) . If that
word mean vote, why not just say, 'vote'?' (laughter
again)
Well, Brotha Tick, lemme put it to ya this way:
When our brother, Huey P. Newton, founded the Black
Panther Party, with Brother Bobby Seale, the Minister of
Defense wrote our Ten Point Program and Platform. Point
10 of that program talks about a 'plebiscite', a 'U. N.
supervised plesibscite' to determine the destiny of our
people in the Black Colony; You dig me, Tick? '
'Right on '
'Well, is vou gonna tell Huey P. Newton, the
Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party, our
leader, one of the baddest niggas ever to walk the
earth, how and what to write?'
Tick, nervous now, begins to stutter, 'Uh, uh No,
sir! Field Marshall D. Ci Uh '
'Well, I ain't either!'
The room erupts in gales of laughter, as the
tension is released by D. C.'s humorous manner. When it
subsides, he continues in a serious tone:
114
'Brothers and Sisters: When y'all joined the Black
Panther Party, y'all joined the revolution to free our
people from this racist, capitalist power structure.
Now, being a revolutionary in an oppressive system is
hard work, ain't it?'
'Yup!'
'Un-huh! '
'Right on, Brother!'
'Well, then we can't let a little word, like
'plebiscite' get in our way. As revolutionaries, we
gotta study the revolutions in other countries, like
Cuba or Mozambique, or China if we ain't scared of this
racist, fascist white power structure of the most
powerful empire on earth, how we gonna be scared of
words ?'
'In our party, Huey P. Newton says, 'Each one,
teach one. ' That means when a Panther learns something,
he teaches it to his fellow Panther. That way, we all
learn, right?
'Right on!'
'Huey P. Newton is the greatest, boldest, most
righteous Black man to lead Black people this nation has
ever seen!'
'Right on!'
'Huey P. Newton faced down this fascist pig and
said, 'If you shoot me, pig, I'ma shoot ya back! ' and
115
when he did this, he stood up for Black folks all over
this country! Am X right, ya'all?'
Right on, Brother D. C.! 'Right on, Field
MarshalI' 1 That's right I'
Huey P. Newton is the only Black leader, who could
walk across this country, and millions of our people
would follow him!
Right on!*
'So that mean' s we gotta free Huey!'
Free Huey!1 'Right on!'
'Now, study the 10 Point Program '
Right on!
'Memorize it '
Right on!'
'And also memorize the Party's 3 Main Rules of
Discipline
1) Obey orders in all your actions.
2) Don't take a single needle or piece of thread
from the poor and oppressed masses; and,
3) Turn in everything captured from the attacking
enemy. '
Winding up now, D. C. launches into the Party
motto, memorized by most with ease, and therefore joined
by all who composed this secular chorus:
All power to the people!
116
Black power to Black people I
Brown power to Brown peopleI
White power to White people!
Panther power to the Black Panther Party! *
'Right on!' D. C. chanted, his voice echoed in the
dozen youthful throats, and the group had a palpable
sense of release, an open, psychic suffusion of
commonality that gave the P. E. class the special
elatedness that one feels after church.
For D. C., with his warm, open manner, and as one
who walked with the beloved Minister of Defense, seemed
more like a priest than a Field Marshal, and his patient
presence was a blessing to the assembled young, who
would go out on Columbia Ave., and work harder than
ever, to bring Huey home, to build the party, and to
make revolution.16
For most Panthers who sat through the summer night's
heat for D. C.'s Political Education class, if he was a
priest, then HPN was like a god; or perhaps more aptly, a
man-god akin to Prometheus, who, instead of stealing fire,
unleashed the raging fire of black millions at a system that
spat on them, and their ancestors, for centuries. Huey P.
Newton, although a young man of barely 25, unlike Martin
Luther King, Jr., called himself and his party,
revolutionary.
117
For most Panthers, "making the revolution" meant selling
newspapers, managing the various party programs, feeding
children in the breakfast program, passing out leaflets,
giving speeches, arranging meetings with area community
groups, and the like.
This kind of hard, consistent, and unpaid labor bespeaks
a deeply felt idealism that is the very antithesis of the
cynical criminality projected by Pearson (118, Jones 4) . It
also reflects a highly ideologically-driven motivation that
is either absent from Pearson's account, or seriously
misrepresented by his textual manipulation of the documentary
and evidentiary data in order to fit his preexisting bias.
While it is undeniable that Newton played a seminal role
in Black Panther Party history, one cannot discount nor
diminish the powerful forces of radical change and
revolutionary transformation that permeated this period; the
forces, in fact, that motivated a HPN to seize the moment, to
coalesce, to build, and to dare.
Huey P. Newton was part of an historical continuum, of
which Malcolm's militant martyrdom, Robert William's armed
defiance, and Frantz Fanon's cutting anti-colonial analysis
and critique were constituent parts and accessible historical
referents. That said, it is simply ahistoric to
decontextualize the life experience of Newton, as if he were
the very movement itself.
118
No man is a movement.
To suggest otherwise is to adhere to the Great Man
Theory" of historical interpretation that has been largely
supplanted and discredited by more comprehensive ways of
examination (Gustavson 122-4) . Seen in this light, Pearson's
work, albeit ambitious, seems deeply flawed.
CHAPTER 5
MICROCOSM IN MACROCOSM
When the untrained mind must grapple with
the broader historical problems, it finds its
explanations in certain rudimentary concepts
and gross oversimplifications based upon
inadequate observation and strong subjective
preferences.
C. G. Gustavson, A Preface to History (1955)
Microcosmic analysis may prove useful in the physical
sciences, as in chemistry, molecular biology, and the like.
It does now follow, however, that such an approach is
warranted in the social sciences.
The study of human groups, of the growth, cohesion and
dissolution of social formations requires a broader plane of
perspective, with an appreciation of the human factors of
motivation, objectives, and the role of ideology. Thus, a
study of one man in a social formation, no matter how
influential the man, cannot capture the inner life of the
thousands of components of the social formation, and any such
presentation that, even implicitly, rests upon such a premise
must be seen as inherently flawed, if not misleading.
Gustavson terms such ideas "rudimentary", adding:
119
120
Among these are the Great Man. theory (or at least the
visualization of politics almost exclusively in terms of
personalities) , the single-cause explanation for a
complex event, the naive good-evil or black-wilite
judgment of people and issues . . . , and the like.
(Gustavson, v. vi)
As noted, Pearson's condemnation of Newton takes place
largely within the context of the growth,
institutionalization and decline of the Oakland Center of the
BPP. His references to the life and death struggles of the
BPP in other times and places, far from the Oakland or
California center, can only be termed tangential (Pearson
206-9) . Although the "New York 21 is referenced, its
treatment is virtually parenthetical, and no attempt is made
to explicate this extraordinary moment in BPP history, a
startling, principled victory against the state's attempt to
neutralize, destroy and disrupt one of the most active and
productive chapters in the entire organization (Balagoon, et
al., 347-60) . Moreover, one may read Pearson and have no
significant insight into the over 44 chapters and branches
scattered across the nation's vast expanse, and beyond.
If, as any earlier chapter suggests, the man does not
make the movement, how much moreso is it valid that one
branch does not denote an entire, national organization?
121
By telescoping an entire movement, the Black Power
Movement, into the failing years of one man, Huey P. Newton,
Pearson is able to malign the movement by implication.
Similarly, by his perverse attention to rumor, scandal, and
unsubstantiated attacks on the Oakland BPP office, he is able
to tar and feather the entire BPP, without any appreciable
examination of the bulk of the party organization.
One political scientist found Pearson's approach
insupportable:
But Pearson is in no position to substantiate these
claims absent a more thorough analysis of Newton and
members of the BPP from across the country. His review
of the Oakland Panthers (the national headquarters) does
not allow him to draw such inferences and proffer such
an overarching condemnation. Further, even in regards
to Huey, . . . Pearson's assessment is inadequate.
(Henderson 176)
At the risk of sounding simply conclusory, let us
examine in greater detail the question of how a limited,
regional analysis undermined a fair appraisal of what was,
undoubtedly, a national phenomenon. We will examine two
features that Pearson found important education and the role
of women.
122
Education and the Panthers
Pearson, early in his work, uses the development of a
disaffected former member, Landon Williams, to chart the
supposed devolution of BPP founder Newton. An important
marker for Pearson is educational attainment and placement in
mainstream, bourgeois institutions.
Williams, he writes, is an effective operator" as he
works "within the system", having obtained a Master's Degree
from an American university and a post at Stanford University
(Pearson 2, 295). While acknowledging, as he must, HPN's
later acquisition of his Ph.D. (even as he diminishes the
worth of this accomplishment) , Pearson laments the fact that
HPN would "never" make the transition that Williams did, and
therefore, as a mere "political activist", would never be
"effective" (Pearson 234-35, 2). Implicit within this
critique lies the premise that working within the system is a
valid measure of one's effectiveness. Also within the
premise is a bias against the external, revolutionary
challenge that must, by necessity, situate itself outside of
the system; lost by such a critique is the insight that it is
precisely these external challenges from the revolutionaries
that create pressure for systemic openings.
Further, the notion of "working within the system" rests
upon the unfounded assumption that such a thing is either
desirable or effective. Such a position, given the inherent
123
factor of the institutional constraints on an insider * s field
of action, is, at best, a contested one.
That said, what might we have learned had Pearson
examined other party chapters?
Let us, for the purpose of this study, examine a slice
of personnel from the party's most populous, diverse, and
productive chapter: New York City. Moreover, let us examine
a group that had the somewhat dubious distinction of having
been selected by the state through the infamous "New York 21"
bombing and conspiracy trials, and therefore, those Panthers
deemed by the state to be influential, those possessing
leadership qualities, leadership potential, or impressive
organizational skills. This cross-section of the New York
BPP explodes the model used by Pearson that posits bourgeois
education as a post-party accomplishment. To be sure, in
such a state-selected cross-section as here obtains, one
finds a wide range of educational attainments, some formal,
and some quite informal. For some Panthers, colleges and
universities were sites of learning; for others, prisons and
ghettoes were graduate schools.
Formally, Panthers Joan Bird and Kwando M. Kinshasa,
while in secondary schools, performed at Carnegie Hall, in
dance and piano, respectively, in New York City (Balagoon, et
al. 94-6). Sundiata Acoli graduated from high school early,
at 15 years of age (Balagoon, et al. 112). Ms. Bird would
later be accepted at Bronx Community College where she
124
pursued nursing studies (Balagoon 131). Acoli would graduate
from college with, a degree in Mathematics, and after an
extended search for a job, he would finally land one at the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
(Balagoon 161-4) . Several, like Dhoruba bin Wahad, Ali Bey
Hassan, and Robert Collier, would drop out of school, join
the service, and undertake various studies while in the
military (Balagoon 133-4, 154). Collier would study
electronics at Northeastern University until his funds ran
out (Balagoon 134) . Panther Curtis Powell would earn a Ph.D.
in the biochemistry field (Balagoon 166).
It is fitting to note that these educational
accomplishments and experiences occurred previously to any of
these people joining the BPP, perhaps best expressed by
Powell:
In August, 1968, I arrived in Babylon with my Ph.D.
ready and eager to get into the struggle. The time was
right, I felt, and our people were ready. I stayed with
my mother in New Jersey until October, when I got a pad
on the Lower East Side again. I got a gig at Columbia
College of Physicians and Surgeons, Institute of Cancer
Research, Francis Delafield Hospital. With a Ph.D., I
had a wide latitude. I could work my own hours.
I started checking out the organizations. Around
October I started working with SNCC, but they weren't
going far: there was something missing.
125
At about this time, the pigs attacked the Panthers
in a Brooklyn courthouse. I started checking the
Panthers out, and they looked pretty cool. But I
checked carefully; I did not join until January, 1969.
I joined the Party because I am a revolutionist an
active revolutionist. I am oriented toward that. My
people call, the revolution calls and its pulsebeat is
my own. (Balagoon 282)
Further, when one considers the alienation inherent to a
society formed and functioning on the underlying basis of
white supremacy, the educational enterprise itself becomes
alienating for black folk who, by necessity, come into
conflict with this process. A young Sundiata Acoli,
reflecting on this inherently conflictive class divide, would
write:
The schoolteachers in iry hometown belonged to that
respected class of blacks which also included the
undertakers and the preachers. The undertaker was
respected simply because he made a decent living, which
wasn't hard, considering how often blacks killed each
other. The preachers were respected for peddling Jesus
and salvation. The teachers had college degrees and
were respected for their education, but even then it
seemed the most ridiculous thing in the world, to hear
black teachers educating black children to the beauty of
American democracy 'justice is blind', proportional
126
representation, constitutional guarantees, universal
suffrage, due process of law, every boy can grow up to
be President', free enterprise! 1 highest standard of
living in the world, land of the free', all men are
born equal', savage Indians', 'happy slaves', etc., ad
nauseum. All of this in the face of poverty, disease,
fighting, killing, and exploitation running amok in the
black community. We never heard one word from
'respected' blacks about those evil conditions either
their cause or their cure.
Nobody could have expected direct action by them;
teachers were under the complete domination of the Board
of Education. But to continue like a robot to teach the
'American dream' in the very teeth of the hellish
Nightmare was more than ludicrous; it was downright
suicidal.
So I never cultivated much respect for the black
bourgeoisie, teachers, preachers, intelligentsia, and
so-called leaders. I had a lot more respect for the
bloods of the block because they were much less
hypocritical, less brainwashed, more outrageous, more
volatile, had more fun, and were more willing to fight.
(Balagoon, et al. Ill)
It was precisely this class divide that Acoli describes that
was reflected in the recruitment of the BPP that
127
distinguished it from the more mainstream groups of the
period, for the more bourgeois elments were, as a rule, too
reticent to fight, as they were, for the most part, "trained"
into an individualistic I'll get mine" mode of thinking.
And while this characteristic permeates consciousness in a
capitalist society, and as such is present in lumpen
elements, their willingness to fight made them invaluable to
a militant formation heavily influenced by Fanons theory
that they would throw themselves into the struggle for
liberation" (Fanon 104).
Finally, what kind of education would prove fruitful for
one who thought a revolutionary, direct-action movement was
necessary to achieve black revolutionary political power?
Such an education would hardly be found in the bourgeois
institutions that were functioning in the 1940s, 1950s, and
1960s that the young New York Panthers would attend. But it
is undeniable that much, perhaps most, of learning occurs
outside of formal institutions. For a young U. S. Marine
from Harlem, Guatemala of the volatile 1960s was school:
A few days later I arrived in Guatemala City, and the
Guatemalans were in the middle of a revolutionary war, a
war that is still going on. Right on to the Guatemalan
revolutionaries. My political education progressed so
far while I was in Guatemala that by the time I left
two-and-one-half years later I was on the verge of being
128
kicked out by the reactionary government in power, not
to mention the Americans there who didn11 like my
friendships with known revolutionaries. I entered a
country a very apolitical Negro marine, and came out a
dedicated black revolutionary. 1 made it a point to
learn all I could about our Latin American and black
brothers in Central America; and these brothers whose
friendship I gained made it a point to educate this
black marine from America. At the time, there were only
ten blacks from the U. S. in Guatemala, but the
population itself is about 80 percent Mayan, 10 percent
black, and 10 percent a mixture of European and Mayan
and black. (Balagoon et al. 219)
That black marine would become a Black Panther named
Kwando Kinshasa who would later be named as one of the New
York Panther 21.
What is perhaps most remarkable about this state-
selected, cross-section of the New York BPP chapter is their
common sense of commitment, to a group, a revolutionary set
of principles, and to militant self-defense of black people
which superseded the barriers of class, educational
attainment and regional origin.
Women in the Party
One cannot read Pearson's portrayal of the role of women
in the BPP without coming to the conclusion that male abuse
129
of women was "flagrant", wide-ranging, and routine" (Pearson
179). While Pearson seeks to present several cases as
reflective of national practice, his conclusions are again
found wanting because of the narrowness and paucity of his
evidence.
Just as his fundamental analysis suffers from a
parsimoniousness of perspective, his presentation of the life
and experience of female Panthers is severely flawed.
While it is undeniable that the BPP was primarily a male
organization, it was forced, by necessity, to promote bright,
capable women to positions of power, like section leader
Afeni Shakur, who, although claiming she was neither
"brilliant" nor had any "leadership ability", simply had to
do the job (Balagoon, et al. 293).
When two leading Panthers were busted on old bench
warrants from old pre-BPP membership offenses, they appointed
her to this key party organizing post, despite her
obj ections : " . . . and everytime I ' d tell them that I
shouldn't be in any position like that, they would just look
at me and tell me there' s nobody else to do it. That' s how
they justified it" (Balagoon 293).
As an angry, alienated desperately poor girl from North
Carolina, living in the cold, hellish city, how did she
interact with the BPP? After hearing a "cute little nigger",
co-founder Bobby Seale, making a street comer soapbox speech
on 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, she learned of the BPP
130
(Balagoon et al. 287). Shortly after hearing Bobby speak,
she made her way to the BPP Harlem office, attended a
Political Education (P. E.) meeting, and joined. How was
this young female treated?:
When I met Sekou [Odinga] and Lumumba [Shakur] it was
the first time in my life that I ever met men who didn't
abuse women. As simple as that. It had nothing to do
with anything about political movements. It was just
that never in iry life had I met men who didn't abuse
women, and who loved women because they were women and
because they were people. (Balagoon et al. 292)
Afeni hailed from the Harlem office. From the Brooklyn
office, former Panther Frankye Malika Adams challenged the
very notion of the BPP as a male's party":
[W] omen ran the BPP pretty much. I don't know how it
got to be a male' s party or thought of as a being a
male's party. Because these things, when you really
look at it in terms of society, these things are looked
on as being women things, you know, feeding children,
taking care of the sick and uh, so. Yeah, we did that.
We actually ran the BPP's programs. (Matthews 291)
Indeed, if a more balanced account of the Oakland office
was written, it would have significantly undermined Pearson's
central thesis; i.e., that the sexual abuse of party women
was "flagrant", wide-ranging and "routine" (Pearson 179).
Further, a systematic review of the treatment of women in
131
Oakland would have, at bare minimum, examined the fate of the
first woman to join the party, Oakland native, Tarika Lewis,
as she lived, struggled and worked as the only female in an
all-male milieu.
As a female, Lewis received no special treatment and was
subject to the same organizational regulations as her male
counterparts. In addition to regular attendance in Political
Education classes, she trained in the usage, cleaning,
disassembly and reassembly of small arms.
In her first year of service, she made rapid
advancements in rank, was appointed a section leader, ran
drills, and taught Political Education. That said, she was
still challenged: "When the guys came up to me and said 'I
ain't gonna do what you tell me to do 'cause you a sister', I
invited 'em to come on out to the weapons range and I could
outshoot 'em (LeBlanc-Emest 307-8)." Such a Panther, woman
or no, would earn the respect of her comrades because of her
undeniable abilities and demonstrated performance (LeBlanc-
Emest 308). Because the latter example is of an Oakland
native, and indeed, the first female Panther, her omission
from Pearson's narrative is troubling.
Other examples, gleaned from the public record, were
equally accessible to the principled researcher, and their
glaring lack of reference in Pearson's work either denotes a
demonstrable denial of the positive role women played in the
party, or a willing ignorance.
132
While these examples do not, and could not, discount the
specific examples of the sexual abuse of women cited by
Pearson, they call into question his premise that such
treatment was "flagrant", wide-ranging, or routine" (Pearson
179). Moreover, by balancing the picture, the foregoing
examples surely mitigate Pearson's portrayal of "the better
half" of the BPP.
This is not to suggest, however, that sexism was not a
serious problem in the party, that it hampered party growth,
development and maturation cannot be gainsaid. What is
clear, however, is that sexism did not, and could not, exist
in a vacuum. As a prominent feature of the dominant social
order, how could it not exist in a social formation which was
drawn from that order, albeit from that order's subaltemate
regions?
And, for men who, often for the first time in their
lives, exercised enormous power, sexism became a tool for the
exercise of sexual dominance over a subordinate, as noted by
a young Panther, and now scholar, Regina Jennings:
All I wanted was to be a soldier. X did not want to be
romantically linked with any of my comrades, and even
though I gave my entire life to the Party my time, rny
energy, ny will, rry clothes, and my skills, yet my
captain wanted more. My captain wanted me, . . . I
lacked maturity and the skill necessary to challenge
authoritarian men, so I searched for ways to circumvent
the sexism of my captain. I was determined not to leave
the arty because X felt there was no other place in
America where I could fully be my Black revolutionary
self, . . . After a year of transforming nyself into a
young woman who cared deeply for my people and becoming
a fixture within Oakland and enjoying all of its rights
and privileges, I found that my captain searched for
greater ways to push me out of the Party, . - . There
were women who came through the Party and would
immediately leave because of the vulgar male behavior.
There were women in the Party like me who tried to hold
on because we understood the power, the significance,
and the need for our organization. Black men, who had
been too long without some form of power, lacked the
background to understand and rework their double
standard toward the female cadre. Perhaps, if the Party
had external observers community elders who respected
our platform such unfair practices against women may
not have occurred. (Jennings 262-3)
As a precocious 16 year-old, Jennings, a Philadelphia
native, took a plane to Oakland, with the express intention
of joining the BPP, and, when asked why she wanted to join,
would answer with youthful brio: "I wanna kill all the White
people; that's why" (Jennings 259) .
The Officer of Defense, a mature Panther who had heard
it all, calmly took down her information, and after a
134
suitable investigation, accepted her for membership, even
though she was a drug addict who had a somewhat simplistic
view of the party's role. They cured her of her addiction
and filled the drugless void, " . . . with a pure and noble
love for my people" (Jennings 260) . Why such bright,
energetic and idealistic women such as she were subjected to
the debilitating effects of sexism was a tragedy, but
Jennings reminds us that this was not an all-encompassing
feature of BPP life: " All men in the Party were not sexist.
In fact, many fought with me against the foolishness of our
captain. These men were also ostracized by the leadership"
(Jennings 263). Jennings' experience teaches us that while
sexism certainly existed in the party, and poisoned some
interactions between male and female comrades, it was most
often a feature of imbalanced power relations between the
higher and lower ranks. A feature that is reflected in
contemporary bourgeois life, in the Army, Air Force, and
other male-dominated institutions of society. Indeed, former
party chief Elaine Brown's account of her life on the
"throne" is a riveting tale of gender politics, power
relations, and sexual dominance exibited by her when she was
appointed to the top post by Huey P. Newton as he left for
exile (Brown 368-70) . For example, she heard reports that
she was a man-hating lesbian" (Brown 367) . She resolved to
reject the stigma any such label entailed, not by mere
dismissal, but by openly embracing a feminism that privileged
135
females in her personnel decisions. For those who questioned
her, she would be "very hard". Just how hard could be seen
in her decision to discipline a member of the underground
stationed in Los Angeles. This soldier, not coincidentally,
was the very man who beat her several years before.
Brown set up a meeting with him, disarmed him, and
proceeded to teach him who was boss by ignoring his pleas to
contact the exiled Huey P. Newton:
'We're not calling anybody right now,' I responded
coldly. 'Right now, I'm going to give you an
opportunity to apologize, and to acknowledge the
leadership of this party .'
'You mean, to say I'm sorry I kicked your ass, ' he
interrupted.
'I'm through, Larry, ' I said, getting up from my
chair, scraping it along the floor with ny foot as I
rose.
Big Bob reached over, lifted Steve from the couch,
and slammed his solid body to the floor . . . Four men
were upon him now . . . Steve struggled for survival
under the many feet stomping him . . .
Their punishment became unmerciful . . . Blood was
everywhere. Steve's face disappeared. (Brown 371)
Angela D. LeBlanc-Emest, Director of the Black Panther
Party Research Project at Stanford University, writes of a
period in the party marked by intense state repression, a
136
time when the organization, by necessity, turned inward, and
relied on its women to literally save the group:
During this state of organizational flux, women in the
Party emerged as national and local Party leaders. Some
assumed the rank and duties left unoccupied by the
departure of their male comrades, while other women
filled prominent local positions from the onset. Under
both patterns, leadership successes, the individual s
talents, skills, and performance formed the selection
criteria for advancement in the BPP. Both Kathleen
Cleaver and Patricia Hillard held influential positions
at the national level, Communications Secretary and
Finance secretary respectively. In Panther affiliates
throughout the nation, Elaine Brown, Ericka Huggins,
Barbara Sankey, Ann Campbell, Afeni Shakur, Yvonne King,
and Audrea Jones were among many women who became
influential leaders in their respective chapters during
the revolutionary phase of the BPP. (LeBlanc-Emest 310)
Pearson's broad-brush attack on the party quite obviously
misses these salient features of the role of women in party
life. It does not serve the thesis he advances, so it is
apparently ignored.
Similarly, one would never guess nor learn that the late
Eldridge Cleaver, BPP Minister of Information, gave the most
unambiguous and principled directive in party history on the
necessity for gender equality in BPP ranks, in a letter from
137
exile published in The Black Panther, July 5, 1969) . In what
Cleaver termed a "stinging rebuke to all manifestations of
male chauvinism within our ranks," the information chief
praised the commitment and tenacity of imprisoned Panther,
Ericka Huggins, and all Panther women:
Let it be a lesson and an example to all of the sisters,
particularly to all the brothers, that we must
understand that our women are suffering strongly and
enthusiastically as we are participating in the
struggle. (Foner, 98-9; LeBlanc 314)
The BPP, like other groups of the period, had sexism
within its ranks, and this tendency caused serious damage to
group cohesion and morale. It is also fair to say that the
BPP openly acknowledged its deficits on this score, and
fought against it, with varying degrees of success.
Yet, as we have seen, a man does not a movement make.
Nor can the events of one chapter be transposed to the events
of over 40 separate chapters and branches situated across
America.
As different cities have different tempos, rhythms, and
feels, so too did different branches of the BPP; Northern
party branches were far more assertive than their Southern
compatriots; Southern chapters moved at a more restrained
pace.
138
Former BPP Chief of Staff, David Hilliard, who ran. the
party for several years during the incarcerations of the co
founders HPN and Bobby Seale, and the exile of Minister of
Information, Eldridge Cleaver, has been criticized by some
for his "harshly authoritarian" stewardship of the
Organization (ca. 1969-1970) (Cleaver 236) . As a Southern-
born, California-reared, boyhood friend of HPN, Hilliard
found several of the Eastern chapters quite disconcerting.
Indeed, years later, he would condemn the New York chapter by
using one of the most damning epithets imaginable "cultural
nationalists" (Hilliard 168).
While such a charge is absurd on its face (it might be
accurate to call them culturally informed, however) , it
reflects Hilliard's honest perception of Panthers who had
names like Dhoruba, Afeni, Oba, and the like. This was
exacerbated by the high percentage of New York Panthers who
were Muslims because of the powerful influence of Hajj Malik
Shabazz (Malcolm X) .
Of the New York 21, at least two of them, Dr. Curtis
Powell and Richard Harris, either talked to Minister Malcolm
X, or heard and saw him preach in the mosque (Balagoon et al.
226-38) . Malcolm X spent some of his most productive years
as head of Temple #7 in Harlem. It is ony fitting,
therefore, that many New York Panthers would be deeply
influenced by him, politically as well as religiously.
139
Although HPN heard Malcolm X speak in person and was
deeply impressed" by his ministry, he rejected religion, as
did most West Coast Panthers (HPN/RS 71) . In a party as
ideologically hostile as the BPP was to any smattering of
cultural nationalism, the New York chapter, with its Muslims,
Yorubas and Puerto-Ricans (and probably a few Santerios) ,
while thoroughly New Yorkers, were seen as somehow suspect
(Hayes 169) .
Yet, it reveals the very real visceral and felt
differences between members of the same radical formation who
happened to grow to adulthood in a differing sector of the
same black colony. As the writer has noted elsewhere, there
was no single BPP; there were many, unified in one
organization, to be sure, but separated by the various
regional and cultural influences that forms and informs
consciousness (Abu-Jamal 1992). That said, it is important
to state here that statements of negation provide some
insight into what the party was not, while this writer has
not overtly stated what the party stood for.
There were discrete ideas and tenets that united all
Panthers into a disciplined, coherent whole: the Ten Point
Program as written by HPN (Seale 66-9) . In developing that
program, he sought to address the deep-seated yearnings of a
long oppressed people:
140
We need a program. We have to have a program for the
people. A program that relates to the people. A
program that the people can understand- A program that
the people can read and see, and which expresses their
desires and needs at the same time. Its got to relate
to the philosophical meaning of where in the world we
are going, but the philosophical meaning will also have
to relate to something specific. (Seale 59)
We will here denote the relevant sections of the Ten
Point Platform and Program that formed the core, unifying
objectives of the party.I7
OCTOBER 1966
BLACK PANTHER PARTY
PLATFORM AND PROGRAM
WHAT WE WANT . . . 18
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the
destiny of our Black Community . . .
2. We want full employment for our people . . .
3 . We want an end to the robbery by the capitalist
of our Black Community . . .
4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human
beings . . .
5. We want education, for our people that exposes
the true nature of this decadent American society. We
141
want education that teaches us our true history and our
role in the present-day society . . .
6. We want all black men to be exempt from military
service . . .
7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and
MURDER of black people . . .
8. We want freedom for all black men held in
federal, state, county and city prisons and jails . . .
9. We want all black people when brought to trial to
be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or
people from their black communities, as defined by the
Constitution of the United States . . .
10. We want land, bread, housing, education,
clothing, justice, and peace. And as our major
political objective, a United-Nations-supervised
plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in
which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to
participate, for the purpose of determining the will of
black people as to their national destiny. . . . (Seale
66-9)
Former BPP Chairman, Bobby Seale, introduced HPN to the
potent political analyses of the brilliant Martinique-born
psychiatrist and Algerian revolutionary, Frantz Fanon, from
from which arose the position that African-Americans, like
most of the 1960s-era Third World, were "colonial subjects".
142
Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, was an important learning
tool for all Panthers, and was assigned as a required study
(Seale 54-6).
Works such as this, the speeches of Malcolm X, the
little red book of Mao Tse-Tung (Quotations from Chairman Mao
Tse-Tuna) , and the like, once intertwined with the BPP Ten
Point Program and Platform, served to develop a united and
revolutionary nationalist consciousness, and joined BPP
people from coast-to-coast, or from Winston-Salem, North
Carolina to Boston, Massachusetts.
In this sense, clearly, The Black Panther Party was one
party; yet, it was several parties as we have noted above,
divided by region and culture. A broader perspective would
have taught Pearson this valuable lesson: the macrocosm
cannot truly be found in the microcosm.
CHAPTER 6
HUEY PERCY NEWTON: A
PSYCHOHISTORY
I'm not a man. I'm not a woman, I'm just
a plain-born child.
Huey P. Newton (Brown 243)
There is perhaps nothing so daunting as to attempt to
write a man's psychohistory without the advantage of a
clinical psychological assessment or psychoanalysis of the
subject. This is especially so when the writer is of the
opinion that bourgeois psychology is itself a somewhat
tainted enterprise, one that serves the interests of the
established by seeking to mold the individual to the
collective without regard to the wisdom or sanity of
collective, social actions or efforts. Bourgeois psychology
assumes a universality that has drawn challenges from
opposing theorists who posit their attacks from a number of
perspectives, among them, from Black or Critical Psychology
(Jones, Passim. Tolman & Maiers 19) .
In any event, every comprehensive written work on a
given subject is, by necessity, an attempt to plumb the
143
144
depths of such subject' s psyche, while not always formally,
by utilizing psychoanalytic terms or techniques.
Psychological ideas have so permeated popular culture that
most writings must give us some inkling of a subject's inner
life if they are to be seen as comprehensive.
For example, Pearson's portrayal of Huey P. Newton is a
primarily negative one, concluding the BPP chief was a
'paranoia"-driven, tempermental figure, moved by both
murderous madness and a shimmering brilliance. In his
account, however, the genius" of his subject is far
outweighed by his almost mythic maliciousness (Pearson 219,
84, 89) . The attainment of his Ph.D. is virtually dismissed
as a "cynical joke" (Pearson 286) .
Pearson's account suffers from some critical
deficiencies. Among them, he neither interviewed the central
subject of his work, nor did he make much use of works that
were openly available at the time of his writing. Here, one
may example Elaine Brown's A Taste of Power (1992), which
offers a finely written, deeply personal view of HPN from the
intimate perspective of a lover.
Indeed, Newton's own writings offer valuable insights
into his psyche, and reflect how he perceived the world. As
we have seen, however, Pearson does not treat such writings
with much fidelity, nor does he apparently regard such
sources as a u t h o r i t a t i v e . 19 This disquieting feature, plus
145
the writer's reliance upon committed enemies of HPN, betrays
a marked imbalance and bias in the work.
In his most substantive autobiographical work, HPN
relates his unsatisfactory secondary school experience, which
was marked by what can only be called a profound sense of
alienation. In Revolutionary Suicide, he recounts the shame
of a youth who reaches the last year of high school while
being functionally illiterate (HPN/RS 54) . In emulation of
an older brother who was attending college, HPN talked to a
school counselor who assured the younger Newton that he
wasn't college material. Thus challenged, the headstrong
teen came to an important decision:
First, I had to learn to read. The school
authorities told me not only that I was not college
material because of my performance in school, but also
that I was not intelligent enough to do college work.
According to the Stanford-Binet test, I had an I . Q. of
74. They felt justified in discouraging me. I knew I
could do anything I wanted to do; that was how I
maintained my self-respect. I wanted to go to college,
so my defiance of their opinion, as well as rry
admiration for Melvin, were incentives for me to learn
to read. (HPN/RS. 53)
While Pearson predictably parenthetically suggests HPN " . .
. managed to graduate from Berkeley High, later claiming that
146
he did so without knowing how to read . . . , " Newton' s own
account tells us that his stubborn defiance spurred him on to
actually teach himself what he didn11 know in his llch grade
year: how to read. In his own words, he describes a sense
of shame, at his functional illiteracy that is palpable:
I knew I would have to read well in order to make it in
college. I also knew that it would be difficult to find
someone to teach me because I was embarrassed. I
decided to teach myself. My key was the poetry I had
learned to recite. I knew plenty of words but could not
yet recognize them in print. Using Melvin's poetry
books, I began to study the poems I knew, associating
the sounds in my head with the words on the page. Then
I picked up Melvin's copy of Plato's Republic:, bought a
dictionary, and started learning to read things I didn't
already know. The Republic seemed a logical choice; I
wanted to join Melvin and his friends in their
intellectual conversations . . . I spent long hours
every day at home going through the Rennbl i n and
pronouncing the words I knew. If I did not know a word,
I would look it up in the dictionary, learn to sound it
out if I could, and then learn the meaning. Proper
names and Greek words were difficult, and I soon began
to ignore them. Day after day, for eight or nine hours
at a time, I worked on that book, going over it page by
147
page, word by word- I had no help from anyone because I
did not want it. Embarrassment overwhelmed me. My
mother loved reading and devoured books. Here I was, an
adult who could not read, as my father, ny mother, and
Melvin could. I felt so low I stayed in my room where
nobody could see what I was doing. . . . (HPN/ES. 53-4)
It is virtually impossible for one to read this account
of one man's battle to attain literacy without being
profoundly moved by the flood of shameful inadequacy such a
struggle would unleash.
Pearson virtually dismisses this pivotal event in the
life of HPN by, initially, underplaying its developmental and
psychological importance; and subsequently, by (once again)
factually misrepresenting the record. Contrary to his
assertion that HPN "claim[ed] to have graduated without
knowing how to read, Revolutionary Suicide clearly states he
was "functionally illiterate" by his last year, prior to
graduation (Pearson 46; HPN/RS 53) . Because of his intense
self-study, which he did "all through [the] senior year in
high school and the summer following, " he could read with
comprehension, and thus graduate (HPN/RS 55) . Thus, the best
that could be said for Pearson's portrayal is that it is
disingenuous.
Former Ramparts Senior Editor, Gene Marine, wrote, as
long ago as 1969:
148
At Berkeley High, Huey had been classified as a
'functional* student an educator's term meaning that he
could do well enough at his level. He was * functional *
at [Oakland] Tech, too (the term has a lower-standard
meaning in Oakland), but 'functional' did not mean much:
both Huey and Melvin testified at Huey's murder trial in
early 1968 that Huey could 'barely read or write' when
he graduated. Later, Melvin said that ' . . . it wasn't
literally true that he could not read or write, but he
certainly could not read at the level of a high-school
graduate.' (Marine 14-5)
But, even that does not tell the whole story, for while
a brother may lovingly want to believe his baby brother is
more able than he actually is, sometimes a lover is more
privy to a man's intimate secrets. Elaine Brown, Newton's
successor during his Cuban exile, traveled with him to China
during the Mao years, and expressed "shock" at Huey's level
of literacy:
Huey' s had always been an untutored intellect. I had
been shocked to learn how difficult cursive writing was
for him. When he decided to present copies of his book
to the Chinese, he had wanted to inscribe them first.
In the privacy of our hotel room in Ottawa, I had helped
him painstakingly write his dedications. His genius was
so great, it had completely masked his lack of formal
education. He had used tape recorders and transcribers
149
to write his books. He had taught himself to read, and
read only slowly, he confessed, always with the help of
a dictionary. It was another of our secrets. (Brown
326)
Brown was not describing a sullen teenager rounding the
rude cusp of puberty, but a man full grown, past his third
decade of life. Clearly, she was describing a man burdened
by a deep and potent shame, one nurtured in his youth. This
is but to be expected in a culture where literacy is expected
to be a universal accomplishment. Newton wrote:
Once or twice I asked Melvin to pronounce a word for me
or explain it. He was shocked that I could not
recognize some of them and at first, I think, disgusted.
That hurt. His disgust could not compare with my own.
He said that not knowing how to read was a very bad
thing, but I knew that by then, and his disapproval made
it even more difficult to learn. My sense of shame had
kept me from seeking help earlier, now it became
impossible for me to ask. (HPN/RS 54)
One need not be a behaviorist or an expert in
psychodynamics to perceive the depth of shame in HPN, nor the
compulsions such shame would unleash to ease psychical
anxiety. While it is clear that " . . . behaviour is [the]
perpetual interplay between the person and the environment .
. .", various schools of bourgeois psychology find critical
L50
importance in the early life of a person, as an important
determinant of how a person psychologically and perceptually
develops (Vinacke 146) .
In the case of HPN, as a black man coming of age in the
1960s, any felt sense of inferiority was not merely
individual, but collective as well, as the esteemed black
Sociologist, E. Franklin Frazier, noted in Black Bourgeoisie:
The entire history of the Negro in the United States
has been of a nature to create in the Negro a feeling of
racial inferiority. During the more than two centuries
of enslavement by the white man, every means was
employed to stamp a feeling of natural inferiority in
the Negro's soul. Christianity and the Bible were
utilized both to prove and to give divine sanction to
his alleged racial inferiority or, as some contended,
his exclusion from the races of mankind. (Frazier 112)
Frazier argues that this collective sense of inferiority
is responsible for a number of compensating responses, among
them, status-seeking (especially among the bourgeoisie).
Faced with the fear that he was illiterate, "not college
material", and with an I. Q. of 74, stupid, Newton
overcompensated by unleashing an innate, driven brilliance,
his own peculiar genius that would efface the shame of his
youth.
151
Formative Years
A central feature of the psychoanalytic schools of
psychology, is the examination of one's self-apprehension, as
revealed by frank and open-ended discussion with a subject
who is compelled to look into his inner life. To our
knowledge, HPN did not avail himself of that practice, so we
must look elsewhere for those insights. One obvious
advantage, however, is offered by a lover's account that is
remarkable for its frank flavor of revelation. It reveals
the man behind the myth, the person hidden within the
persona, and displays a remarkable measure of one's self
apprehension. For Newton was driven, not by an over-arching
bravado, but by fear:
'A lot of what I am has to do with fear, ' he said to me
out of nowhere one of those first nights I came to see
him in Oakland. And, what I understand about fear. I
wasn't afraid only in the Soul B r e a k e r . 20 Like you,
I've been afraid much of my life.' (Brown 251-2)
The you" was Elaine Brown, who, like Huey, was
relatively lightskinned, and grew up in atmospheres of
profound resentment, hatred and self-hatred, projected onto
them by their blacker age-mates and peers, reflecting some of
the perverse psychopathologies that course through black
consciousness in a nation rooted, defined and committed to
white supremacy. Both grew up in black ghettoes, in poor or
152
working families, amongst people scuffling for physiological
and psychological survival; and both had to develop coping
strategies:
'You know, niggers on the street don't like 'pretty
niggers', he continued, making me wonder whether he was
speaking about him or me. 'They called me 'pretty' and
'high yellow nigger' and other motherfuckers. The
problem with niggers on the street, of course, is that
they don't know what to hate for their oppression.'
'Or, as Frantz Fanon wrote, they're afraid to
confront the real issue: draw the oppressor's blood,'
as he said. MY problem in North Philly was 'good'
hair.' 'Naturally . . . Anyway, it didn't take long to
figure out that I was in trouble on the street. I
reached the point where I was scared to go out of my
house. Then Walter, my brother, tutored me on the game.
Walter schooled me on how to confront my fear, how to
see a motherfucker for what he was in most cases,
another scared individual. He taught me how to walk on
the street, how to talk, how to carry myself, and how to
use my hands . . . But I was still scared every day. '
(Brown 252)
Huey P. Newton's later life, as an activist, campus
militant, community organizer, revolutionary party builder,
and post-revolutionary period, can be seen as distillations
of Walter Newton' s lessons to his younger brother in
153
confrontations with. fear. He can be seen as a man who felt
fear quite acutely, yet who did not yield to it ever. From
Soul Breaker, the vile sensory-deprivation unit in Alameda
Couny, to the racist cops who tried to make Seventh Street in
West Oakland his grave, from the dizzying heights of power
while in command of the BPP, to his days of drugged
debilitation, again in the streets of West Oakland, he
confronted his fears, with a spirit that was as remarkable as
it was irresistable.
The misdirected violence noted by Brown was a central
concept of radical Ethnopsychiatrist Frantz Fanon, and it
would become a problem that the Black Panther Party would
address openly, but could not surmount:
While the settler or the policeman has the right the
live-long day to strike the native, to insult him and to
make him crawl to them, you will see the native reaching
for his knife at the slightest hostile or aggressive
glance cast on him by another native, for the last
resort of the native is to defend his personality vis-a-
vis his brother. (Fanon 43)
Although Dr. Fanon was writing in the Algerian
Revolutionary context, it had significant resonance in the
African-American liberation context, and thereby provided a
correlative framework with which to analyze the psychosocial
problem of black intracommunal violence.
154
It was the violence of the Oakland Police Department,
long regarded as "notorious for racism and brutality" , that
proved to be the societal stimulus for the leadership of a
resistant response that crystallized into the nucleus of the
BPP (Marine 100) . But this is not to suggest that the BPP
was a mere creation of a social stimulus-response experiment.
It is. to say, however, that the party developed, principally
in the consciousness of HPN, out of a world view informed by
the lived experiences of a youth who saw the world through
eyes sharp with fear, and, after Walter's tutelage, bent on
confrontation. For HPN, once paralyzed by fear and liberated
by confronting that fear, the troubles of one slight,
"pretty" boy were solved by the same principles that could
salvage the traumatized and oppressed Black Nation; for, like
the skinny little boy, Black America was gripped by an
awesome and historic fear; and, like the terrorized boy who
learned to use his fists first, and an ice-pick later
(earning the sobriquet crazy") , the black nation, to break
the terrible stranglehold on it, might utilize whatever tools
it could grasp, for freedom:
He went on to say that black people would never rise out
of life at the bottom of the quagmire of America unless
they took the same approach.
The first question for black people is to get past
fear, to see past the monolith to the man. That's why
155
we started using the word 'pig', a detestable image that
takes away the image of omnipotence. A pig, whether
running loose in the ghetto with a gun or sitting on
Wall Street or in the White House, is a man who can
bleed like a man and fall like a man.
So, in many ways, the party represents a response
to our collective fear of the Man getting past the
first barrier to walking free on the streets of life . .
Revolution will be our ultimate response. . . .
(Brown 253)
The late black Psychologist, Amos N. Wilson, wrote, on
the intracommunal violence visited upon blacks:
The violently oppressed react violently to their
oppression. When their reactionary violence, their
retaliatory or defensive violence, cannot be effectively
directed at their oppressors or effectively applied to
their self-liberation, it then will be directed at or
applied destructively to themselves. (Wilson xiii)
For a time, during the developmental and revolutionary
phases of the life of the BPP, that great and terrible
violence found its mythic energies unleashed in some
alarmingly constructive and life-affirming ways, such as the
Free Breakfast for Children Programs, Free Clothing Programs,
S. A. F. E. (Seniors Against a Fearful Environment) program,
and the like (Abron/Jones 180; Jennings/Jones 240;
Matthews/Jones 291).
156
When these retaliatory violent energies could be focused
through the collective psyches of the BPP, it could free up
positive communal feelings of solidarity, much as Fanon found
in Algeria's national liberation struggle, the "blood and
tears" of sustained revolt unleashed activism on the part of
the people who were infused with the spirit of national
unity making " . . . each man' s consciousness the ideas of a
common cause . . and finding such practical, radical
expression as "feeding the moudiahidines" . aiding the poor,
coining to the aid of rebel widows, and the like (Fanon 45,
73) . For, at the deepest, unexpressed hearts of the
oppressed, beats a drum of resistance, held constrained by
the impunitious violence of the oppressor.
That said, it would be an error to see resistance as an
autonomic response to repression. Resistance is a learned
thing, and most effectively, a collective effort at
resistance. Throughout human history, acting in resistance
movements transforms consciousness, and channels violence
along productive, revolutionary lines. For Newton, Fanon and
other revolutionaries of the age, like China's late party
chairman, Mao Tse-Tung, and Cuba's Ernesto Che" Guevara,
posed a powerful framework upon which to sculpt a
revolutionary theoretical structure (HPN/ES. 111-12) .
Former BPP Central Committee member, now lawyer and
scholar, Kathleen Neal Cleaver, writes that Fanon' s work,
157
especially The Wretched of the Earth, "profoundly influenced"
Black revolutionaries in America who were organizing the
Black Liberation Movement:
Fanon's analysis seemed to explain and to justify the
spontaneous violence ravaging Black ghettoes across the
country, and linked the incipient insurrections to the
rise of a revolutionary movement. The opening sentence
of The Wretched of the Earth said, National liberation,
national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to a
people . . . Whatever may be the headings used or the
new formulas introduced, is always a violent
phenomenon.' Fanon's penetrating dissection of the
intertwining of racism and violence in the colonial
scheme of domination was compelling to Blacks fighting
in America; it provided a clearly reasoned antidote to
the constant admonition to seek changes peacfully.
Fanon explained how violence was intrinsic to the
imposition of White colonial domination, and portayed
the oppressed who violently retaliate as engaged in
restoring the human dignity they were stripped of by the
process of colonization. His analysis of the tortured
mentality of the colonized person and the therapeutic
nature of fighting to destroy colonial domination
provided radical Blacks in America with deep insights
into both their own relationship to a world-wide
158
revolution underway and to the profound kinship between
their status in America and that of colonized peoples
outside America. (Cleaver/Jones 214)
Based upon Fanons timely insights, HPN (and other
Panthers) found militant, revolutionary resistance to be
deadly to the paralysis of fear. Unfortunately, it seems,
the decimation and dissipation of the resistance movement,
withering under state attacks, returned Newton to his pre
movement mindset, one which allowed reactionary violence to
be utilized not against the oppressor, but against the
oppressed. As we shall see, other features contributed to
this remarkable instance of ideological backsliding.
Intellectual Influences
We have learned of HPN's "untutored intellect" as well
as his "genius" (Brown 326; Pearson 284) . While literacy
should not be confused with intellect, it is important for us
to examine which written sources fed his budding literacy,
and which thereby informed his world view. In Revolutionary
Suicide, he mentions over 30 books, many by African-American
authors like W. E. B. DuBois, James Baldwin, and some by
thinkers like Dostoyevski, Camus, and Kafka. His first book
read was Plato' s Republic. which was a remarkable text to
initiate a literacy program. Fanon's The Wretched of the
Earth, as noted above, had "profound influence" upon BPP
159
members. For HPN personally, however, Nietzsche' s The Will
to Power heavily influenced his thinking (HPN/ES. 163) .
It is important to note here that although Marxist-
Leninist revolutionaries like Mao Tse-Tung, Che Guevara and
Mikhail Bakunin were influential on party leaders, HPN didn't
claim to be Marxist. Indeed, in his famous Yale University
lectures, he defined a Marxist as someone who worships Marx
and the thought of Marx" (HPN/CG 26) . His primary
theoretical contribution was to go beyond communism to
intercommunalism, or the notion that as the United States was
no longer a nation but an empire which dominated, exploited
and super-interpenetrated the rest of the earth, other
nations were nations only in name, as they could not resist
imperial domination they were, in fact, only oppressed
communities (HPN/CG 29-30). The point is, Newton was hardly
a Marxist. If anything, he was more interested in Maoist
thought, the writings of which were infinitely more
accessible to a deep thinker who had difficulty reading.
Ironically, a writer known more for his philosophical than
political contributions, Nietzsche would provide the
intensely rationalistic writings that would mark his thinking
and add an element that would be crucial to HPNs
organizational, intellectual and personal development:
power. The unprepossessing Nietzsche reminds us of the
slight, pale, fearful Newton who feared leaving his home. In
160
Nietzsche, we find the naked expression of life itself is
will to power", and the attainment of said power is man's
duty (10) . And man?:
He shall be the greatest who can be the most solitary,
the most concealed, the most divergent, the man beyond
good and evil, the Master of his virtues, and of super
abundance of will; precisely this shall be called
greatness . . . the 'wild beast' has not been slain at
all, it lives, it flourishes, it has only been
transfigured. (Nietzsche 84, 97)
In reading Nietzsche, one perceives the core ideas that
steeled the youth that affirmed the revolutionary, and
justified the post-revolutionary Huey P. Newton.
In Nietzsche is found the philosophy of power, by any
means, and the clear condemnation of morality as a weak
reflection of a "slave" consciousness. What was "good" was
what served the "ruling caste"; what was evil'' was what the
ruled feared, and therefore, of no moment to the rulers.
They merely reflected what Nietzsche termed "mas ter-morality"
vs. "slave-morality", or, perhaps more aptly, what
perspective one occupies (Nietzsche 126-7).
Huey P. Newton understood these concepts clearly:
Man attempts to define phenomena in such a way that they
reflect the interests of his own class or group. He
gives titles or values to phenomena according to what he
161
sees as beneficial if it is to his advanage, something
is called good, and if it is not beneficial, then it is
defined as evil. Nietzsche shows how this reasoning was
used by the German ruling circle, which always defined
phenomena in terms complimentary to the noble class.
(HPN/RS 164)
There is a tendency in psychological theory to exercise
one' s intuition when analyzing or interpreting psychological
phenomena, especially in psychoanalytic analysis, as in
Freud's writings, for example. The writer has chosen not to
write such a theoretical analysis in this instance, for it is
the better practice to use the acts or writings of Newton to
illustrate one's position or to buttress one's argument. How
central was the concept of power to HPN's psyche?
In his most significant and historic life act, the
founding of the Black Panther Party, Newton set forth the Ten
Point Program and Platform which guided the party through its
remarkable life and development. The central organizing
ideas embodied in those 10 points, the ideas which attracted
people to the party, were his own (Seale 59) . It is of
interest for us to examine what idea he found important
enough to list as the first program:
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the
destiny of our Black Community. (Seale 66)
There it is: We want power . . .
162
That central idea fired his consciousness, and fueled
his radical determination. For a people who had historically
been powerless; for a young man who once feared the mean
streets of Oakland, who feared the forces of an alien
authority, which determined his human worth with a wave of
dismissal, power was the only, the primary, and central goal.
Huey P. Newton, a youth once paralyzed by fear, who
learned to quell his fear by confrontation, who faced death
daily as a revolutionary, and who would outlive his political
organization only to die in utter ignominy in the ghetto
streets, was a psychological Nietzschean. As in any life,
there is development of one's political ideas, and HPN's
political analyses developed perhaps more than most. In
early youth, he was apparently as apolitical as are most
youth. His yearning to confront the very real terrors of
inner-city street life, and his intersections with white
state power as a direct consequence of both police
concentration in ghetto streets and his lumpenized behavior,
spurred his attempts at comprehension, resolution and
transformation of that condition. This is, in itself, a
political perspective.
Newton's student-years observation of Malcolm X almost
brought him into fellowship with the politically conservative
Nation of Islam. The NOI, but for its religiousness, would
have attracted him. Indeed, how could he not be inpressed or
influenced when reading of Malcolm's disparagement at the
163
hands of a white school counselor who, almost echoing his own
experience, assures the black youth he isn't being
''realistic", as he isn't "college material" (HPN/ES. 53)?
This young man sought secular sources of power:
When I read Nietzsche' s The Will to Power. I learned
much from a number of his philosophical insights. This
is not to say that I endorse all of Nietzsche, only that
many of his ideas have influenced my thinking , t_
particularly about the meaning of power. (HPN/RS. 163)
[emphasis added]
Nietzsche, key to the warped objectives of the German
ruling class, was a tool of white supremacy and genocide. It
is a testament to Newton's brilliance that he utilized
Nietzsche on the side of the oppressed, for it is the
powerless who are most in need of power. For Huey P. Newton,
that search for liberating power for the grandsons and
granddaughters of slaves merged with his inner, personal
power objectives.
He began seeking the power to leave his home; then the
power to quell his enemies; then the power to forge a
militant, revolutionary party; then the power to amass black
political power for black folks, and finally, alone,
isolated, we come full circle, to a man seeking the power,
through drugs, to quell the fear of the anonymity of death.
CHAPTER 7
LEGACIES OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY
He who fights with monsters should be
careful lest he thereby become a monster. And
if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss
will also gaze into thee.
Nietzsche
In the decades since the demise of the BPP, there have
been numerous opportunities to question the legacies of this
organization. As in any analysis, any examination of these
legacies would have both a positive and negative character.
It is consistent with the dialectical method" that a
phenomenon possesses both negative and positive features,
depending upon its stage of development (HPN/TDFTP 27) .
One attempts to examine these features, from both a
positive and a negative perspective, and thereby to learn
some of the lessons of history.
When one considers some of the positive features of the
BPP, some of them take on an ephemeral, inchoate quality.
They are features of consciousness of political perspective,
and of world-view that have no direct material expression,
yet are positive attributes nonetheless.
164
165
Increased Black Pride
The psychological import of an armed, resistant,
community-oriented nationalist organization coming into
existence, as it did, during the political ascendancy of the
Southern, non-violent Civil Rights Movement, cannot be
underestimated. As Cone has explained, and contrary to the
projections of the white media, most blacks rejected the
Gandhian notion of non-violence, opting instead for the
inherent right of self-defense (Cone 268).
The Martin Luther King, Jr.-led Civil Rights Movement,
which predicated political advancement at the cost of black
suffering, based this movement on the evocation of white
shame raised by the spectacle of black people being
brutalized. For many, especially those living in the North,
the very notion of not responding to racial violence, or
turning the other cheek was anathema.
Malcolm X, wildly popular in Northern black communities
for his strong stand on self-defense, advocated the formation
of black rifle clubs to defend black life:
In areas where our people are the constant victims of
brutality, and the government seems unwilling or unable
to protect them, we should form rifle clubs that can be
used to defend our lives and our property in times of an
emergency. (Cone 195)
While the BPP was not a "rifle club", it did take Malcolm's
injunction about communal self-defense seriously.
166
Echoes of that injunction may be seen in the edicts
issued by the BPP's Minister of Defense, especially in
excerpts from Executive Mandate No. 1, where HPN wrote:
As the aggression of the racist American Government escalates
in Vietnam, the police agencies of America escalate the
repression of Black people throughout the ghettoes of
America. Vicious police dogs, cattle prods, and increased
patrols have become familiar sights in Black communities.
City Hall turns a deaf ear to the pleas of Black people for
relief from this increasing terror.
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense believes that
the time has come for Black people to arm themselves
against this terror before it is too late . . . A
people who have suffered so much for so long at the
hands of a racist society must draw the line somewhere.
We believe that the Black communities of America must
rise up as one man to halt the progression of a trend
that leads inevitably to their total destruction.
(Newton/TDFTP 8) [emphasis added]
That the BPP took the words of the martyred Malcolm X
seriously, and integrated them into an integral part of party
theory and practice, became an immense source of pride for
black youth. Many young people, seeing reports of the armed
BPP "invasion" of the California General Assembly on May 2,
1967, decided then and there to join or support the
167
organization. One of them. New York Panther 21 co-defendent,
Shaba Om, recalled reading Ramparts magazine, and by an
article therein, moved to search out members of the BPP.
When he met one, he bought a BPP newspaper, and obtained from
him the address of the Harlem office. The party's powerful
radical example impressed him so deeply that he began to
renounce his criminal past:
I began to go to political education classes but I was
still hung up in the bag of pimping. What really got me
out of that madness was political education, me digging
on my true self as a black man, and the Honorable John
Coltrane's music. I dug what I was doing to my people
and myself. In 1968, I had got myself together and
stopped jiving. Began to go to political education
classes every night after slave. After political
education classes I would go to iry pad and try to hide
from the jive niggers I knew. It was past time for me
to come forward and correct the wrong I'd done. I knew
all the madness I was doing in the streets was wrong as
two right shoes, dig . . . the only thing left was to
become a true helper and servant of ny beautiful people.
. . . This is when I really became a Black Panther,
warrior of my people. (Balagoon, et al., 285-6)
What Om is describing is a conversion experience as sure
and as certain as the process of a religious conversion,
168
although this conversion is a political, existential one. It
is similar to the process of nigrescence described by black
psychologists, or the rising of black consciousness in an
otherwise deracinated personality (Cross, Jr., et al., 324-
5) . It is a psychological metamorphosis, which results in
the death of the old psychological structure, and the birth
of the new.
This process is activated or energized by a shattering
event" which forces one to confront his racial identity, and
by extension, his collective condition (Cross, Jr., et al.,
324) . For Om, a former pimp and drug user and pusher, the
"shattering experience", was death:
And then this sister I was relating to as ny main love
died from skag. Man like this blew my mind, because she
had quit skag once, and come to me for help because she
dug me and ny way of thinking and I turned ny back on
her; this really blew my mind when she died. I was
going to political education classes then, too, when she
died. The first thing that came into ny mind was, I
helped the pigs kill one of my sisters. (Balagoon, et_
al., 286)
What Om seems to describe is the shame that resulted
from his betrayal of a "sister", and his conversion into a
new being, for whom such an act of betrayal would become
inpossible. It is here, exactly after he describes the loss
169
of the sister, that he affirms, "This is when I really became
a Black Panther" (Balagoon, et al., 286).
To " . . . be [come] a Black Panther", for many men and
women like Om, meant becoming better people, new" people,
defined by pride rather than shame, and becoming servants of
the community, rather than predators of the people.
Political Education of the Masses
The Black Panther Party took its responsibilities to
educate the black and working class masses quite seriously,
and expressed this commitment through several of its
programs, among them the establishment of liberation schools,
the publication of a regular, radical and independent
newspaper, and the erection of its Intercommunal Youth
Institute, later renamed the Oakland Community School. The
BPP-operated school was so remarkable that it garnered a
special award from the California Legislature in September
1977 for " . . . having set the standard for the highest
level of elementary education in the state" (Abron/Jones
186) . The school operated for over a decade.
As we have noted above, the Political Education program
was an important party vehicle for the dissemination of the
BPP message, ideology and outlook. The P. E. classes, as
they were called, were the adult equivalents to liberation
schools, and although their quality, regularity, and program
content might have differed from city to city, in most
170
instances they featured, a reading from a central text from a
leading member, and an explanation asked for from, or by, a
community person.
From such readings would arise discussions about
contemporary life as it related to the cited passage.
Political Education classes also served as important
recruitment devices, as the example with Om demonstrated.
In a broader sense, these classes also gave the BPP an
opportunity to interact with the community, and to develop
channels of communication separate and apart from those
mediated through and via the establishment press.
In furtherance of this latter goal, the BPP established
The Black Panther: Intercommunal News Service, a weekly
newspaper that was a regional, national and international
journal of radical and black revolutionary news, analysis,
and opinion. Although the BPP was under relentless
government repression for years, the party organ met its
deadline every week for over a decade and, incidentally,
produced a product that, in the words of arch-conservative
critic E. D. Hirsch, Jr., was clearly first-rate:
The writers for The Black Panther had clearly received a
rigorous traditional education in American history, in
the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of
Allegiance to the flag, the Gettysburg Address, and the
Bible, to mention only some of the direct quotations and
171
allusions in these passages. [And] they also received
rigorous traditional instruction in reading, writing and
spelling. X have not found a single misspelled word in
many pages of radical sentiment I have examined in that
newspaper. (Jones & Jeffries 29)21
The paper sold well over 100,000 copies per week, more than
many ,,mainstream, papers. To the extent Hirsch1 s critique
was correct, it was due to the editorships of Raymond Lewis,
Frank Jones, Elbert "Big Man" Howard, Bobby Heron, Judy
Douglass, David DuBois, JoNina Abron, and Elaine Brown et al.
This writer, who functioned as writer, graphic artist,
typist, proofreader and assistant to editor Judy Douglass
during her period of production of The Black Panther, was
also a high school dropout who, given his ghetto upbringing,
hardly received "a rigorous traditional education"
(Jones/Jeffries 29).
That said, the newspaper, which was spectacularly
successful, was produced by a highly motivated, and non-
professionally trained cadre of young people who were taught
to perform the skills needed to produce the paper.
The paper was a major target of the state, and a number
of FBI reports made this clear:
The Black Panther Party newspaper is one of the most
effective propaganda operations of the BPP.
Distribution of this newspaper is increasing at a
172
regular rate thereby influencing a greater number of
individuals in the United States along the black
extremist lines. Each recipient is requested to submit
by 6/5/70 proposed counterintelligence measures that
will hinder the vicious propaganda being spread by the
BPP. The BPP newspaper has a circulation in excess of
139,000. It is the voice of the BPP and if it could be
effectively hindered it would result in helping cripple
the B P P . 22 (Jones & Jeffries 29) [emphasis added]
The response from the field was not long in coming.
Former editor JoNina Abron noted that less than a week after
the above memo was issued, "The San Diego FBI office proposed
to spray a foul-smelling chemical on copies of The Black
Panther11 (Abron/Jones 182) . In fact, such actions did happen
in several cities across the country, from "foul-smelling
chemicals" to urine, all designed to make the product
unsellable.23 Indeed, there was a rather painstaking
investigation of the paper by members of the U. S. Congress,
a source, no doubt, of much unfriendly attention from U. S.
intelligence agencies.
Much is written by scholars and ex-Panthers alike about
the infamous FBI COINTELPRO operation. Even the doctoral
thesis of HPN concentrated on this facet of government
surveillance, to the exclusion of much else (HPN/WATP 16,
55) .
173
From the very earliest days of party organizing efforts,
the FBI surveilled BPP activists, and sent copies of their
reports to other agencies of government, including Military
Intelligence (MI) , Naval Intelligence (NISO) , and the Secret
Service, among others, under the rubric, "RM" "Racial
Matters".24
Because the BPP and its voice, The Black Panther,
addressed itself to the needs, concerns and rebellious
spirits of the repressed lumpenproletariat and working class
sectors of the black colony, it attracted the class antipathy
of bourgeois and petit bourgeois elements who traditionally
constituted black leadership. Implicit in such a stance is
the rejection of the previously projected notions of the
black bourgeoisie. It was the institutionalization of the
broad and deep wave of discontent that swelled through black
America, and remained unmet by the passivity of King's
movement. This voice did not call for integration, but for
liberation through revolution, and the establishment of black
revolutionary political power.
A feature, therefore, of BPP existence can be seen in
the authentication of an anti-establishment point of view
that contrasted sharply with the state's view. This
dissenting position interjected a new language and a new
174
consciousness that devalued bourgie" behavior, and valued
political activism against the U. S. Empire.
International Impact and Inspirations
When the BPP emerged in the working class and ghetto
neighborhoods of Oakland, California, and particularly after
its emergence nationally after the May 1967 invasion" of the
California General Assembly, it burst through into the
world's press with remarkable and unexpected results. Their
protracted, unabashedly militant and audacious political
stance attracted and inspired young militants of other
oppressed national minorities, who, as political scientists
Charles E. Jones and Judson L. Jeffries note formed similar
radical configurations there:
The impact of the BPP transcended the borders of the
United States. Panther activism served as a
revolutionary exemplar for various oppressed indigenous
groups in several foreign countries. Left-wing
political formations in England (Black Panther
Movement), Israel (Black Panther Party of Israel),
Bermuda (Black Beret Cadre), Australia (Black Panther
Party) , and India (Dalit Panthers) drew from the
organization founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale
in the United States. Members of the Black Beret Cadre
formed in Bermuda in 1969 adopted the Panthers
signature black beret and sponsored liberation schools
175
and political education classes. Similarly, the Black
Panther Party of Israel created by Jews of Moroccan
descent in 1971 implemented community services for the
children in the slums of West Jerusalem. (Jones &
Jeffries 37)
That so many radical and revolutionary groups could
borrow the imagery, name, and format of the BPP bespeaks the
power and potency of the original organization ' s performance
in the realm of politics and radical resistance. While few
of the overseas groups had any organizational link to the BPP
headquarters in Oakland, California, by their very existence
they helped project the party's image and message of militant
self-defense and community service to the poor and oppressed
deep into an international popular consciousness.
They also served to validate, if only implicitly,
Newton's Fanonist insight that, in an imperial and anti
colonial context, nations were essentially illusions:
We found that because everything is in a constant state
of transformation, because of the development of the
mass media, because of the fire power of the
imperialist, and because of the fact that the United
States is no longer a nation but an empire, nations
could not exist, for they did not have the criteria for
nationhood. (HPN/TDFTP 31 [emphasis added]
176
Huey P. Newton's intercommunalism" theory (discussed
elsewhere at length) is based upon the notion that
imperialist and capitalist penetration of so-called
"undeveloped" countries is so great, that nations, acting on
imperialist interests, as opposed to national interests,
cease to be, in fact, nations. They remain nations in name,
but as international capital directs its internal, external
and military policies, they are functionally colonies, at
best, and geographically-spaced communities, at worst (Newton
& Erikson 29-30) . Hence the term, intercommunalism".
The revolutionary formations in Bermuda, in England, and
other places, were expressions of a degree of "revolutionary
intercommunalism", as they saw the importance of a struggle
that, like empire, permeated national boundaries (Hilliard
11; HPN/TDFTP 31).
The BPP, therefore, had global impact that moved
radicals and revolutionaries worldwide to emulate some of its
more positive attributes, perhaps proving the old adage,
"imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."
National Radical and Rev
olutionary Formations
As the emergence of the Black Panther Party stimulated
the emergence of similar groups in the international sphere,
so too did the decline and fall of the BPP give rise to
177
several local and regional radical and revolutionary
formations that borrowed much from the BPP.
Especially following the rancourous East-West split of
the BPP, ex-Panthers organized coastal, regional or local
groups that served to continue radical and grassroots work
without reliance on the Oakland center.
In Philadelphia, an ex-BPP cadre formed the Black United
Liberation Front (BULF) , which, through declining membership
and resources, was largely defunct after six years of
o p e r a t i o n . 25 i n Kansas City, Missouri, a militant and
aggressive cadre of ex-BPP personnel transformed their
chapter into a group named the Sons of Malcolm. They, too,
ceased to exist.
While the African People's Socialist Party (APSP) was
more a contemporary competitor than a successor formation,
the St. Petersburg, Florida based nationalist organization
utilized ex-BPP talent like Akua Njeri (nee Deborah Johnson)
to preside over the APSP-led National People's Democratic
Uhuru Movement. Njeri was the fiancee of the martyred Fred
Hampton, the popular and extremely able chairman of the
Illinois chapter of the BPP, and was herself seriously
wounded in the deadly state fusillade that ended the life of
Hampton and Peoria, Illinois BPP branch captain Mark Clark on
December 4, 1969. In addition to using key ex-Panthers in
the APSP apparatus, organizational propaganda depicted the
178
close relationship between APSP and BPP theory and ideology.
Njeri, of her current work, calls it a continuation of the
Panther legacy" (LeBlane-Ernest/Jones 326).26
In 1991, a talk show assistant, Aaron Michaels, formed a
group calling itself the New Black Panther Party,
headquartered in Dallas, Texas. In clear imitation of its
namesake, the New BPP sponsored breakfast programs, made food
donations, and attracted a cadre of some 150 persons (Jones
6) .
Most recently, the New BPP, led by the former Nation of
Islam official. Dr. Khalid Abdul Muhammad, led an armed
grouping to the Jasper, Texas courthouse where avowed white
supremacist John King was being charged in the torture-
dragging death of James Byrd, Jr.27 Although there were no
incidents, their appearance caused considerable controversy.
This was the second major armed demonstration by the New BPP,
the former being an attendance by armed members at a Dallas
school board meeting in the summer of 1996, where Michaels
and two others were arrested (Jones 6) .
In 1994, the New African American Vanguard Movement
(NAAVM) emerged in Los Angeles, California. The organization
was led by, and its collective leadership partly composed of,
former members of the original BPP formation. The group has
formulated an eight point platform and program, updated and
179
developed from the original Ten Point Program set forth by
HPN (Jones 6).
The L. A. formation shows continuous development and
maturation, reflected by its subsequent name change, and
reformulation of its program and platform to ten points. It
is now known as the New Panther Vanguard Movement (NPVM) ; its
newspaper bears a similar masthead and typeface of the
original party organ. Its title is virtually identical: The
Black Panther International News Service. According to the
Fall 1998 edition of the quarterly, NPVM collectives are
established in Indianapolis, Indiana and Decatur, Georgia.
Interestingly, the L. A.-based NPVM was co-founded by
a former Panther who is now an attorney, B. Kwaku Duren,
which puts one in mind of the ultra-legalist tendencies of
the original BPP founder, Huey P. Newton, who dared to cite
to armed cops California statutory law, chapter and verse,
while himself legally armed. Here we see, in the original
formulations, as in the successor groupings, a strong
orientation towards legal forms, if not ends (recognizing, as
we must, that all revolutionary movements are inherently
antagonistic to the established legal norms, seek their
dissolution, and are seen, therefore, as criminal in nature,
even as they claimed a higher moral basis) .
In New York City, a group partly composed of former BPP
members organized the Black Panther Collective (BPC) in 1994.
180
They describe their objectives as follows:
(1) to continue the revolutionary legacy of the Black
Panther Party;
(2) to put forth a vision of a new and just society;
(3) to build a revolutionary infrastructure; and,
(4) to engage in protracted revolutionary s t r u g g l e . 28
As we have seen, the BPP stimulated, sparked and
inspired a number of successive, imitative, and strikingly
similar radical formations, some of which continue their
work, drawing on models over three decades old.
That, in itself, is a remarkable legacy.
women of the Party
Given the prominent play accorded Elaine Brown' s
extremely well written, yet extraordinarily subjective &
Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Storv (1992), the role of
women in the party has yet to be given a balanced treatment.
The BPP, as did all natonalist, revolutionary and social
change groups of the period, most certainly suffered from
serious sexism, but the party, propelled by the dual forces
of consistency with one's ideology, and of the debilitating
effects of state repression, went much farther than their
competitors and contemporaries in the movement. The BPP's
call, in 1970, for gay liberation and women's liberation,
once seen in tandem with their practice of naming women to
181
high ranking and influential party posts, denoted their
"astonishing leap, given the period" (Singh/Jones 87) .
As has been noted elsewhere, Afeni Shakur was appointed
a section leader of the New York chapter, even though she
felt incapable of the role. Shakur was thrust into the role,
because " . . . there's nobody else to do it" (Balagoon, et
al., 293) . Similarly, Joan Kelly (now Joan Kelly Williams)
of the Los Angeles chapter was thrust into the role of head
of the Free Breakfast Program:
It's hard to describe what I did. I think all of us did
so many different things. When I was in Los Angeles, rny
focus initially, and your focus could change daily. 'So
and so is in jail, you've got to run the Breakfast
Program. ' Because men did do program work, I think
that' s the other illusion that people have is that we
had a paramilitary underground and went off and offed
pigs at night. And the women got up and served
'breakfast and helped care for people. It was a little
more comp rehens ive than that (audience and panelists
laugh) .So, I remember somebody went to jail and I got
responsibility in LA for the Breakfast Program . . . The
clearest thing we could do was our programs. And if we
could keep enough people who serve breakfast in jail in
the morning, and the kids got there and there was nobody
serving breakfast, then the media could go on the 7
o 1 clock news and say, 'That Panther Breakfast Program
182
doesn't work, it's all a fluke.' Or whatever, or a
hoax. So we became very sophisticated. We could come
back at you really quick in terms of strategies and ways
to meet the challenges that we faced . . . The
condition thrust women into roles of leadership e a r l y . 29
That very "condition", of unrelenting repression, forced
leading Panthers in chapters nationwide to turn to their
brightest and most motivated members to save the party,
and the ones to whom they turned were often women.
Women functioned as captains, field secretaries, section
leaders, lieutenants, communications officers, and with
Brown's ascension after the self-imposed exile of Newton, as
head of the entire party. No other radical or revolutionary
formation of the period could boast of such a pronounced
range of female officials.
This depth of revolutionary activist experience and
leadership equipped a generation of women with a kind of
palpable knowledge that informed a cadre of women and
prepared them for lives of community service. For example,
the revered Erika Huggins, who supervised the Intercommunal
Youth Institute for nearly a decade, continues to work in
the educational fields, as an adjunct professor at San
Francisco State University, and at other such institutions.
She also helps HIV-positive exposed persons. Kathleen
Cleaver is an attorney who has worked in the liberation of
183
Geronimo ji-Jaga (nee Pratt) from his unjust imprisonment.
JoNina Abron was a managing editor of Black Scholar and is a
tenured English professor at Western Michigan University.
Regina B. Jennings (Oakland/ Philadelphia branches) earned a
Ph.D. in African-American Studies and now teaches at Franklin
and Marshall College (LeBlanc-Emest 325-6) .
These women, and many unknown soldiers, went back to
their communities, the party either in shambles or defunct,
and continued to serve the needs of the people, in a variety
of roles. They remain remarkable legacies of the BPP.
We have mentioned, if only in passing, the inevitability
of negative features of the BPP. Those negative
characteristics, seen through the lens of dialectical
materialism also possess, by necessity, positive elements
through which one learns from the errata of the past
(HPM/TDFTP). Some of these features, being legacies, are the
direct result of the BPP's passing from the sociopolitical
and revolutionary scene, and are therefore, not acts of the
party, but omissions made by their absence.
Rise in Class Antagonism
While the Black Panther Party was not the first
radical formation to provide a clear class analysis of
contemporary African-American life (the Communist Party U.
S., and related groups may have that distinction), it was the
first such formation to focus on the role of the
184
lumpenproletariat. and the first to seek to enlist lumpen
folks and energy into the revolutionary enterprise in the U.
S., consonant with Fanonian analysis (Fanon 109; HPN/TDFTP
27) . In order to draw attention to the politics of the BPP
by the alienated masses of the African-American lumpen, the
party attracted the vehement attention of the state, and
after its passing, the black poor, defenseless and voiceless,
became the target of a bipartisan brand of white supremacy
that can be seen in black incarceration rates which far
outstrip comparable white incarceration rates, attacks on
welfare recipients, and the projection of black poor males as
les betes noires (lit-, black beasts) of the culture. In
sum, the BPP's passage ceded the field to a combined attack
on those of a racial and class character who were least able
to respond to such an attack.
Personal and Political Failures
While it is undeniable that the state, through its
COINTELPRO and related programs, exacerbated party unity and
played off of personality conflicts, in many such instances,
it did not create these conflicts. Those conflicts arose
because of the poison elements of ego and power. This may be
seen in the Newton-Cleaver fissure, which split the BPP in
twain, and essentially ended its existence as a truly, and
viable national formation. While it is true that the FBI
utilized brownmail"30 to create, and deepen conflict, that
185
conflict wasn't inevitable, as the late, revered Deputy
Chairman of the Illinois BPP, Fred Hampton, Sr., demonstrated
by his own experience. Scholar Gracfy-Willis recounts the
efforts of the state to stop the proposed merger of the
Illinois BPP with the as-yet-unpoliticized Blackstone
Rangers, a powerful street gang in Chicago, that would have
doubled the size of the chapter ovemite:
When Chicago [FBI] Bureau agents got wind that Jeff Fort
had misgivings about a possible alliance with the Party,
they quickly suggested COINTELPRO action. On January
30, 1969, J. Edgar Hoover authorized an anonymous letter
to be sent to Brother Jeff* of the Rangers:
'I'm not a Panther, or a Ranger, just black. From
what I see these Panthers are out for themselves, not
black people. I think you ought to know what they're up
to, I know what I'd do if I was you. You mite here
[sic] from me again.'
As Fort pondered what he had just received in the
mail, the FBI's Chicago office sent a number of false
letters to various Panthers implying that Jeff Fort
wanted to 'off' Fred Hampton. (Grady-Willis 372)
It is a testament to Hampton's remarkable courage that
he, and BPP Deputy Defense Minister Bobby Rush, met with Fort
at his headquarters with over 100 armed Rangers present.
That meeting convinced them that the letters were forged,
although no merger occurred. If Hampton could meet with an
186
unpoliticized gang leader like Fort, could not Newton have
met with Cleaver in Algiers?^ 1 Perhaps such a meeting might
have mended the rent in the party, and resulted in a
stronger, more cohesive formation.
The Cult of Personality
The powerful persona and shimmering brilliance of
Huey P. Newton lent itself to an undeniable veneration of the
man who, virtually single-handedly, formed the Black Panther
Party. The various and sundry national groupings that made
up the mid-20th Century Socialist camp only served to
reinforce this characteristic, as observed in the wealth of
honorifics granted to leaders or founders of Communist states
or parties of the era. Mao Tse-Tung was often termed "The
Great Helmsman" . Kim Il-Sung of North Korea sported a
similar honorific. In similar fashion, Newton assumed the
title, "Supreme Commander" and later modified it to "Supreme
Servant of the People" (Cleaver [K. ] 236) . As might be
expected, such terms of adoration only served to distance HPN
from party rank and file, and implicitly endorsed an
increasingly unhealthy tendency towards sycophancy among
leading BPP personnel. Fortunately, we now have some reason
to believe that Huey himself may have opposed this trend.
Erika Huggins, former director of the Intercommunal Youth
Institute, quotes a Huey P. Newton who seems strangely
troubled by the crippling burdens of his public role:
187
He was sometimes like this and sometimes like that. And
a part of it had a lot to do with the dream that he
created. One day he walked up to me and he said,
'Erika, X didn't think we'd all be living this long.
What do I do now? All these people depend on me. They
think I'm something. I'm just rry daddy's 7th son. What
am I supposed to do?' And he didn't say it from
ignorance. He said it with full knowledge of what there
was out there that wanted him to be something that no
one human being could be.32
The Black Panther Party was larger than Huey P. Newton,
and it suffered from this lack of learning. Scholar Johnson
has theorized that the problem lay, not so much in HPN
personally, as in elite theory, which posits a dangerous
paradox at the core of radical formatons that he describes as
the "iron law of oligarchy", or the psychological compulsion
of a "numerical minority" in groups to gain, control, and
misuse power in an organization (Johnson/Jones 391-92).
Simply put, groups promote their more competent members,
who, in seeking to address the complex issues before them
efficiently, in turn rely on a small group to decide
important organizational questions. This exercise of power
invites a kind of deference that in turn reinforces elite
188
dominance. The interests of the elite then serve to motivate
leadership behavior.
Post-Party Developments
While the Black Panther Party undoubtedly instilled
pride in black youth, in many cases this awakened political
consciousness found expression in traditional, as opposed to
revolutionary, politics. The election of black mayors in
Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Oakland owed much to
energies unleashed by the BPP. Those roles served to
legitimate a system that it called illegitimate, and led to
the class stratification which promoted the interests of the
black bourgeoisie while demonizing the lumpen poor. To
attract non-black political support, many such mayors have
had to voice conservative-sounding political concerns, as in
welfare reform, increased reliance on the punitive sanctions
of the criminal justice system, and a marked antipathy for
civil service unions (not to be confused with police
"unions", which are courted). Thus, politics, while
undoubtedly energized by the BPP grassroots, has assumed an
increasingly conservative character. In the absence of a
worker's party or a black political party, that energy was
siphoned off by the Democratic Party.
And, even attainment of once-untouchable political plums
leaves many black political figures with what scholar Lusane
likens to a rude awakening:
189
Neither the Black Panthers nor others who advocated a
strategy of moving from what Bayard Rustin called
protest to politics' could have predicted the nearly
magical co-opting effect of political office that
transformed erstwhile radicals and rebels into
functionaries or apologists. Many Black elected
officials find themselves merely treading water
struggling to keep their head above the policy waters,
but unable to move forward. The rude discovery that
being in office is not the same as being in power
shocked many newly elected Black officials and the Black
community. (Lusane 453)
Power then, continues to elude African-Americans.
Failed Dreams, Failed Hopes
For all of its wonder, its splendor, its radical
accomplishments, and its heady potentialities, the Black
Panther Party failed to do that which even amoeba and single
celled organisms do fairly easily it failed to reproduce
itself.
While some successor formations may exist, no central
entity, grown from the organic seed of its mothersource,
remains. That is, quite simply, a failure of insight,
planning, and of love. It did not have to be that way.
The BPP, throughout its active life, was a remarkably
resilient and surprisingly flexible group. That it did not
190
learn to consciously and willfully train, prepare and raise a
youth, cadre to take over the party when they matured was
perhaps its most fatal flaw.
While the party did found and run an admirable school,
it was a community, as opposed to a Panther school, and this,
largely centered in Northern California.
It is a measure of party myopia that good sisters who
got pregnant were perceived more as problems than as comrades
who brought new life to the party, and an opportunity to
serve through their natural function. Akua Njeri, faced with
the challenge of raising her son while performing the duties
of a full-time Panther, chose the former over the latter and
left the very body that her husband gave his very life to
protect (LeBlanc-Ernest/Jones 319) .33 It is for the reader,
in the final analysis, to judge whether the negative
outweighs the positive, or, perhaps, this judgment will be
left to the vagaries of history. In any event, the legacies
of the Black Panther Party are manifold. A lineal descendant
of the long-shrouded history of African resistance, it sought
to take the struggle forward, and, for a time, it succeeded
brilliantly.
Against the most daunting odds, the BPP fought its way
into existence, and gave voice to a people whose lips were
long sealed. To quote historian Philip S. Foner: " [N]ever
before in the history of Black Americans has an admittedly
191
revolutionary party won such support in the leading black
communities of this country."34
Being human, it made errors. Being youthful, it was
fueled by boundless idealism. Being African, it attracted
the antipathy of the white supremacist state. Being complex,
it left behind itself a mixed legacy, both positive and
negative, of having lived, fought, and engaged in the battles
of the day.
It failed in some important respects, but by even
existing, it gave brilliant notice, of what might have been.
ENDNOTES
Notes
1 Jefferson, Thomas. Notes on the State of Virginia.
(1781-1782). n.p.
2 This passage was written by Jamal for this study from
memory.
3 Aptheker, at 17 cites call of scholar L. D. Reddick
for a thorough" . . . study of the attempts to break the
system by the slaves through suicide, flight, individual
resistance and group insurrection, . . . " ca. 1937.
4 fr. letter of J. T. Callender to Thomas Jefferson, 13
Sept. 1800, the Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress
5 60 U. S. (19 How.) 393 (1857). This opinion was
invalidated by the Civil Rights Act of 1866, at least in
theory.
6 Just four days later, Sherman issued Field Order No.
15, assigning the Sea Islands, and South Carolina coastal
areas for 30 miles inland (with 40 acres per family) to
exclusive Black settlement. General Commissioner O. O.
Howard returned in Fall 1865 to evict freedmen, who refused.
Troops removed the majority in Spring 1867 (Foner 162).
7 This writer will address these theoretical differences
elsewhere in this work at greater length.
193
194
8 Blackwell was later elected mayor of a town in
Mississippi.
9 Given this assertion one wonders, into which class
does one assign cops?
10 Joan Kelly Williams, et al., The Black Panthers of
Oakland: The Dilemmas of Radicalism." Video conference, SCU
94-Califomia Studies Conference VT. Oakland, CA 10-12
February 1994.
11 This passage was written by Jamal for this study from
memory.
12 in a later chapter, I have written on some of those
"formative forces"; e.g., "Huey P. Newton: A Psychohistory."
13 New York Times. 26 Feb. 1965, p. 15.
14 "Death and Transfiguration," Time. 5 March 1965, p.
23 .
15 New York Times. 22 Feb. 1965, p. 20; 14 March 1964,
p. 22. The latter-cited article followed Malcolm's split
with the Nation of Islam (NOI).
1^ Recollections of the writer of a P. E. class, ca.
Summer 1969, 1900 block of Columbia Avenue [now Cecil B.
Moore Avenue] in North Philadelphia; across the street from
BPP offices and state headquarters. This passage was written
by Jamal for this study from memory.
195
I7 A photocopy of the entire 10 point program is
appendixed.
The What We Believe" section is not here repeated.
19 In an earlier chapter, "Man as Movement", we have
demonstrated Pearson's penchant for misquoting,
misrepresenting, and decontextualizing cited passages from
source material (see, e.g., Pearson 118; HPN/RS 127) .
20 An isolation, or strip cell (4 1/2" x 6" x 10 feet)
to which HPN was confined for refusing orders, at Alameda
County Jail (HPN/RS 99-100)
21 fr. E. D. Hirsch, Jr. Cultural Literacy (New York:
Vintage Books, 1988), p. 23.
22 Memo from San Francisco field office to FBI
Headquarters; dated 3/15/70.
23 The writer cites to his personal knowledge in
Philadelphia.
24 see appendices; Philadelphia FBI File 157-2004,
(5/23/69), 3 pp.
25 The writer participated in this collective.
25 Njeri's son, Fred Hampton, Jr., is considered an APSP
political prisoner who is doing a term of 14 years in
Statesville Prison, Joliet, Illinois.
196
27 Tupahache Asiba, "Keeping an Eye on the Murder of
James Byrd," 23 November 1998. Online posting,
nattyreb@ix.netcom.com. America Online, 24 November 1998.
28 The Black Panther International News Service. 1:5
(Fall 1998), p. 12. The Black Panther Collective.
29 Joan Kelly Williams, et al., "The Black Panthers of
Oakland: The Dilemmas of Radicalism. Video conference, CSU
'94--Califomia Studies Conference VX, Oakland, California,
10-12 February 1994.
20 The government's practice of sending fake letters to
one, in another's name, to spark conflict between leaders
(HPN/WATP 58, 68-9) .
21 Cleaver invited Newton to Algeria, but he claimed he
was unable to acquire a passport (Cleaver [K.] 236) .
22 Erika Huggins, et al., "The Black Panthers of
Oakland: The Dilemmas of Radicalism." Video Conference, CSU
94-Califomia Studies Conference, V. I., Oakland, CA, 10-12
Feb. 1994.
22 Her husband was BPP martyr, Fred Hampton.
24 Philip S. Foner, Introduction to The Black Panthers
Sneak: The Manifesto of the Party . . . , ed. P. S. Foner
(New York: Lippincott, 1970), p. xxiv.
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_______. Black Reconstruction in America. New York:
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Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance
Farrington. New York: Grove, 1966. Trans, of
Lesdamn'es de la terre. Paris. Francois Maspero,
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Farhi, Farideh. States and Urban-Based Revolutions: Iranand
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Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: Americas Unfinished
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Frazier, E. Franklin. Black Bourgeoisie. New York:
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Fredrickson, George M. White Supremacy: A Comparative Study
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Genovese, Eugene D. From Rebellion to Revolution. New York:
Vintage, 1981.
Grady-Willis, Winston A. "The Black Panther Party: State
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Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998, pp. 363-89.
Gustavson, Carl G. A Preface to History. New York: McGraw
Hill, 1955.
Henderson, Errol A. "The Lumpenproletariat as Vanguard? The
Black Panther Party, Social Transformation, and
Pearson's Analysis of Huey Newton." Journal of Black
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Hilliard, David and Lewis Cole. This Side of Glory:
TheAutobiocrraphv of David Hilliard and the Storv of the
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1993 .
Jennings, Regina. Why I Joined the Party: An Africana
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rReconsidered!. Charles E. Jones, ed. Black Classic
Press, 1998, pp. 258-65.
202
Jones, Charles and Judson L. Jeffries. "'Don't Believe the
Hype' : Debunking the Panther Mythology. In The Black
Panther Party TReconsideredl . Charles E. Jones, ed.
LeBlanc-Ernest, Angela D. "'The Most Qualified Person to
Handle the Job'": Black Panther Party Women, 1966-
1982." In The Black Panther Party fReconsidered!.
Charles E. Jones, ed. Baltimore: Black Classic
Press,1998, pp. 305-35.
Lincoln, Abraham. "Address to Colored Deputation." In
classical Black Nationalism:__From the American
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Look for Me in the Whirlwind: The Collective Autobioqraphvof
the New York 21. Kuwasi, Balagoon, et al., eds. New
York: Vintage, 1971.
Marine, Gene. The Black Panthers. New York: Signet, 1969.
Matthews, Tracye. "' No One Ever Asks, What a Man' s Place in
the Revolution Is' : Gender and the Politics of the
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McPherson, James M. The Negro's Civil War. New York:
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Monges, Miriam Ma'-Ka-Re. "'I've Got a Right to the Tree of
Life' : Afrocentric Reflections of a Former Community
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Newton. New York: Norton, 1973.
_______ . Revolutionary Suicide. 1973. New York: Writers
and Readers, 1995.
_______ . To Die for the People: The Writings of Huev
P.Newton. 1973. New York: Writers and Readers, 1995.
_______ War Against the Panthers:__A Study of Repression in
America. Diss., U. Of Cal., Santa Cruz, June 1980. New
York: Harlem River Press, 1996. New York Times. 26 Feb.
1965, p. 15.
_______ . 22 Feb. 1965, p. 20.
_______ . 14 Mar. 1964, p. 22.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Bevond Good and Evil. trans. Helen
Zimmern. Mineola, N. Y.: Dover, 1997. Trans, of
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O'Reilly, Kenneth. "Racial Matters": The FBI's Secret File
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204
Papke, David Ray. Heretics. in. the Temple; Americans Who
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Pearson, Hugh. The Shadow of the Panther: Huev Newton and
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Addison-Wesley, 1994.
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Seale, Bobby. Seize the Time:__The Storv of the Black
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Vintage,1970.
Segal, Ronald. The Black Diaspora. London: Faber & Faber,
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Shakur, Assata. Assata: An Autobiography. London: Zed
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Singh, Nikhil Pal. The Black Panthers and the
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Smith, Theophus H. Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations
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Abu-Jamal. Assata Shakur. Jim Fletcher, Tanaquil Jones,
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1993 .
The Black Panther International News Service. 1:5 (Fall
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Vinacke, W. Edgar. Foundations of Psychology. New York:
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206
Williams, Robert F. Negroes with Guns. New York: Marzani
SMunsell, 1962.
APPENDIX A
BLACK PANTHER PARTY PLATFORM AND PROGRAM
WHAT WE WANT, WHAT WE BELIEVE
(October 1966)
1. We want freedom. We want power to
determine the destiny of our Black
Community.
We believe that black people will not be free until
we are able to determine our destiny.
2. We want full employment for our
people.
We believe that the federal government is
responsible and obligated to give every man
employment or a guaranteed income. We believe
that if the white American businessmen will not
give full employment, then the means of
production should be taken from the businessmen
and placed in the community so that the people of
the community can organize and employ all of its
people and give a high standard of living.
3. We want end to the robbery by the
CAPITALIST of our Black Community.
We believe that this racist government has
robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue
debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres
and two mules was promised 100 years ago as
restitution for slave labor and mass murder of
Black people. We will accept the payment in
currency which will be distributed to our many
communities. The Germans are now aiding the
Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish
people. The Germans murdered six million Jews.
The American racist has taken part in the
slaughter of over fifty million Black people;
therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand
that we make.
4. We want decent housing, fit for
shelter of human beings.
We believe that if the white landlords will not
give decent housing to our Black community, then
the housing and the land should be made into
cooperatives so that our community, with
government aid, can build and make decent
housing for its people.
5. WE want education for our people that
exposes the true nature of this decadent
American society. We want education
that teaches us our true history and our
role in the present-day society.
We believe in an educational system that will give
to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does
not have knowledge of himself and his position in
society and the world, then he has little chance to
relate to anything else.
6. We want all black men to be exempt
from military service. We believe the Black
people should not be forced to fight in the
military service to defend a racist government
that does not protect us. We will not fight and
Ml other people of color in the world who, like
black people, are being victimized by the white
racist government of America. We will protect
ourselves from the force and violence, of the
racist police and the racist military , by
whatever means necessary.
7. We want an immediate end to POLICE
BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.
We believe we can end police brutality in our
black community by organizing black self-defense
groups that are dedicated to defending our black
community from racist police oppression and
brutality. The Second Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States gives a right to
bear arms. We therefore believe that all black
people should arm themselves for defense.
8. We want freedom for all black men
held in federal, state, county and city
prisons and jails. We believe that all black
people should be released from the many jails and
prisons because they have not received a fair and
impartial trial.
9. We want ail black people when
brought to trial to be tried in a court by
a jury of their peer group or people
from their black communities, as
defined by the Constitution of the United
States. We believe that the courts should
follow the United States Constitution so that
blade people will receive fair trials. The T4th
Amendment of the United States Constitution
gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group.
A peer is a person from a similar economic,
social, religious, geographical, environmental,
historical and racial background. To do this the
court will be forced to select a jury from the
black community from which the black defendant
came. We have been, and are being tried by ail*
white juries that have no understanding of the
"average reasoning man of the black community.
10. We want land, bread,
housing,education, clothing, justice and
peace. And as our major political
objective a United Nations-supervised
plebiscite to be held throughout the
black colony in which only black colonial
subjects will be allowed to participate,
for the purpose of determining the will
of black people as to their national
destiny.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes
necessary for one people to dissolve the political
bonds which have connected them with another,
and to assume, among the powers of the earth,
the separate and equal station to which the laws
of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that
they should declare the causes which impel them
to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal; that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to
secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed; that, whenever any
form of government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or
to abolish it, and to institute a new government,
laying its foundation on such principles, and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their safety and
happiness. Prudence, indeed,, will dictate that
governments long established should not be
changed for light and transient causes; and,
accordingly, ail experience has shown, that
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils
are sufferable, that to right themselves by
abolishing the forms to which they are
accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object,
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
despotism, it is their duty, to throw off such
government, and to provide new guards for their
future security.
AH Power to the People!
The Black Panther collective
PO Box 20735
Park West Scaoon
NY, NY 10025-1516
718.390.3555 (Voicemail)
APPENDIX B
.1%'
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION -j
REPORTINGoffice OFFICE OF ORIGIN DATE
INV&T>fCATtVE PCR10O
- t
PHILADELPHIA
SAIEIFRAKCI-SSO 5/23/69
2/25 - 5/13/69 *
R E P O R T M A D E r
0 BLACK PANTHER PARTY -
-PHIIADELFHIA DIVISION
T Y P t B B Y
mmm
CHARACTER OF CASE
REFERENCE
Bureau letter to Albany, 4/4/69, captioned
"BLACK PANTHER PARTY; RM; REPORTS."
-P-
LEADS
PHILADELPHIA;
At Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pa.
s Will continue to follow and report any activitie
of the Black Panther Party in the Philadelphia Division.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS CLAIMED N UN S
ACQUIT
CONVI C- AUTO. FUG. fin es SAVINGS RECOVERIES TALS
r r /
OENDINGOVER ONE YEAR ^3 VES 1___1*0
PENDINGPROSECUTION
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S P E C I A L A G E N T
I K C H A R G E
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USA, ED Pa. (RM)
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Secret Service, Philadelphia
San Francisco. (157-2255n(RM
.57-^004) (15
DO NOT WRITE IN SPACES BELOW
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5 f * I n'diy iauais cio* this city claiming association with^the'
Slack Panther Party, **S.nd reports will be submitted ^hn-these:i%^;.:i;r^
ndividuals :as they are identified and lnvestigatlQh^?oT/;t;H&'^'-.^^^
ompleted. * '
-From the inception-ofyalleged Black Panther' Party'
' ctivit ies-rin the Philadelphia^Division, no evidentiary'î-v-'-iv-^ "i:?
material has been received. In the event that such-,ma1
comes' to- the- attention of the Philadelphia DivisionV*!^__
be reported as directed by the Bureau in referenced letter
As reflected in the details of this report*.Cthe
Philadelphia Division does not, at this time, havV'a'n^ctual'^^
Black Panther Party chapter affiliated with the National Party- ' -
nor has there been substantial activity by those individuals . ^
in the Philadelphia Division claiming affiliation with .'the _ . -;<?
Black Panther Party. For this reason Phi lade lphia;.jthus far,--' v- ^
has not submitted counterintelligence recommendations' "
This report has been classif
because the information received from unrougn
if disclosed, could reasonably result ^^tne identificarlorr
of confidential sources of continuing value and compromise
their future effectiveness.
Informant
INFORMANTS
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FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
REPORTINGOFFICE
PHXLftDELEHIA
OFFICE OF ORIGIN
SAN FRANC
TITLE OF CASE
/T-
"b la c k panther party ( b p p )
DECLA&SI
OIL.
INVESTIGATIVE PERlOO
7/10/69.- 9/9/69
TTPE5 BY
clp
1940;
character of case
RACIAL MATTERS
SMITH ACT OF 1940;
SEDITIOUS CONSPIRACY; 7* '>>
REBELLION AND INSURRECTION ^
---
^--:3
S -
-Bfh
REFERENCES
Bureau Airtel to Albany and other offices dated 6/II/69 and
captioned as above.
(P)
LEADS
PHILADELPHIA . .
_________ At Philadelphia, pa.
1. Maintain liaison with the Philadelphia Police _
Department Civil Disobedience Unit and Intelligence Squad and \~ y
follow up on any information developed .by ttitem concerning. ilr \ iu-
legal activities by the BPP. /wr ^ _____
CLASS, t 3^_
ESASO-J-^CIl^*
7 ^ ~
sga COPIES MADE;
BATS- .0
ACCOMPLISHMENTS CLAIMED
ACQUIT
TALS SAVINGS
PENOINGOVER ONE YEAR ^3 YCS ^XO
PENDINGPROSECUTION
OVER SIXMONTHS QvCS ( .HO
DO NOT WRITE IN SPACES BELOW
^Bureau (105-165706-37)
-4104
l-(157-2004) (BPP)
V t
copies continued Cover Page B
H A Z S - A Mjf: ./
_ , A\f . nHt I ** I
Dissemination Recorder Attached Report ions
: S E H V . .
IGESCZ
How Fwd.
r - ^ ^ t Agency
-I-.-a/! Request Reed.
705'-. Date Fwd.
: 1 e;4 0 C T l n 1 9 6 -
213-
PH 157-^104
-irr-Vj
-:;V^
copies continued from Cover Page
1-USA, EDPA (RM)
1-NISO, Philadelphia (RM)
1-OSI, Philadelphia (RM)
1-MI, Philadelphia (RM)
1-Secret Service, Philadelphia (RM)
1-New York (100-161993) (RM)
4-San Francisoo (157-1204)
2-(157-2255)
1-WFO (100-45995) (RM)
C O N C H A !
2. Continue to direct sources to develop information
concerning illegal activities of the BPP.
3. Determine whether the Philadelphia Chapter is in
telephonic contact with other chapters of the BPP through
subpoena of toll call records.
4. Conduct appropriate interviews in an effort to
develop individuals able to testify to Illegal activities of
the BPP.
5. Submit monthly reports in. this case.
ADMINISTRATIVE DATA
This report is being classified sj
sources whose identities, if disclosed, coul<f reasonably
impair their future effectiveness and thereby adversely af
fect the security of the nation.
s{ret to protect
uld
It is noted that the investigative period covers
sixty days. This is due to the fact that this is the first
such report. Future reports will be' prepared at thirty day
Intervals to be submitted on the sixteenth day of each month.
Information copies are designated for WFO and New
York due to the interaction of 'aetiaritiesrG in Philadelphia,
New York, and Washington, D.C. Copies are being disseminated
locally to NISO, OSI, MI, Secret Service, and USA, EDPA.
B
COVER PAGE
CON0 BENm
214
m
PH 157-4104
,d
si
CONgH^TlAL
The following sources were contacted In regard
to information furnished by them pertaining to the Bpp and
advised they are not willing to testify as it could Jeopardiz
their personal safety and/or the safety of their ^families:
;ern Union
(by request)
157-2004
157-2004, 360
157-2004,
The above two sourcesiare technical installation!
authorize<T"toy the U.S. Ddptrlo^Jus't^feceaidany material obtained
from that source will have to be Introduced'by the Special
Agent having made the pertinent transcription.
On 8/28/69J
that he hadrecorded t!
M M ^ / ^ I ^ H v >urnlshed the tape to Agen ___
H | P b f ffl^FnxTroelphia Office. This 'tape was transcribed
anc accordingly, the ytapaî^being handled as evidence by the
Philadelphia Office.
b i c
advised bl 0
ate.
b l -
COVER PAGE
2 1 5
- --
-./r
--T4-V.
PH 157-4104
i
/
On 9/4/69
press conference he
the tape toS
as above
advised he had recorded the BPP
ate.j{ On 9/5/69 j^H^B^furnlshed )pT\C^
nd this tape has been handled
Portions of the statements "made at the two press
conferences are Included In the details fif this report and
the entire transcriptions are exhibits to this report.

A Life in The Party, Mumia Abu-Jamal

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