Masaryk University Faculty of Education Department of English Language and Literature

The armed struggle from Oakland Diploma thesis

Brno 2018

Supervisor: Author: Michael George, M. A. Bc. Jan Hudeček

Prohlášení: Slavnostně prohlašuji, že jsem tuto diplomovou práci vypracoval samostatně, pracující pouze se zdroji, které jsou uvedeny. Souhlasím s tím, že tato práce bude uložena v knihovně Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy university a bude přístupná pro studijní účely všech studentů Pedagogické fakulty.

V Brně 21. února 2018 …………………… Bc. Jan Hudeček

Declaration: I solemnly declare that I had carried out this diploma thesis independently, only working with the listed sources. I agree with this work being stored in the library of the Faculty of Education at Masaryk University and being accessible for study purposes to the students of the Faculty of Education.

In Brno, 21st February 2018 …………………… Bc. Jan Hudeček

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Michael George, M.A., for his notes, helpful advices and guidance through the process of writing my diploma thesis and to my family, who never stopped supporting me.

Abstract

The armed struggle from Oakland outlines the Black Panthers Party movement in USA from 1966 to 1972. Chapters of this thesis are chronologically describing the movement and the development of the Party in the USA, what were the most important events the party participated in and who were the most important members of the party.

Anotace

Diplomová práce 'The armed struggle from Oakland' ukazuje vývoj Black Panthers Party (Strany černých panterů) v USA mezi lety 1966 a 1972. Cílem této práce je uceleně popsat jak se strana během své existence vyvíjela, jaké byly její nejznámější akce a kdo byli nejznámější členové strany.

Key words

The Black Panthers, The Black Panther Party, TBPP, USA, Black nationalism, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, late 1960s, African Americans, Oakland, California, Black movement organization, African-American Civil Rights Movement

Klíčová slova

Černí panteři, Strana černých panterů, ČP, USA, Černý nacionalismus, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, druhá polovina šedesátých let, Afroameričané, Oakland, Kalifornie, Afroamerické hnutí za občanská práva

Table of contents

Introduction ...... 7

1 From the first meeting to the founding of the Black Panther Party ...... 8

2 The style that stood out ...... 11

3 The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense Ten-Point Platform and Program ...... 12

4 The first recruit and patrolling the patrols ...... 20

5 Getting more guns ...... 22

6 Leroy Eldridge Cleaver ...... 23

7 Escorting of Betty Shabazz and the Paper Panthers ...... 24

8 The murder of Denzil Dowell ...... 26

9 Sacramento ...... 28

10 Vanguard ...... 30

11 The death of Police Officer John F. Frey ...... 31

12 Kathleen Cleaver (née Neal) ...... 34

13 “Free Huey!” campaign and the new allies ...... 35

14 Huey Newton as a symbol ...... 38

15 The aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’ assassination ...... 39

16 The funeral of Lil’ Bobby Hutton ...... 41

17 COINTELPRO ...... 42

18 Ericka Huggins (née Jenkins) ...... 45

19 Founding of new chapters ...... 46

19.1 Los Angeles Black Panther Party and the clash with US ...... 46

19.2 Seattle Black Panther Party ...... 49

19.3 New York City Black Panther Party ...... 50

20 Survival programs ...... 53

21 Fred Hampton ...... 56

22 The murder of Alex Rackley and the New Haven Black Panther trials ...... 58

23 The demise of the Black Panther Party ...... 60

Conclusion ...... 64

List of references ...... 65

List of appendices ...... 72

Introduction

When talking about the United States of America in 1960s people usually connect these years with the Cold War, the Vietnam War or the social and political movements. Concerning the African Americans the names of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are then widely known all around the world and it comes to nobody’s surprise that they were not fighting alone. Strong leaders always inspired people to rally behind them and Bobby Seale and Huey Newton are no exception from this rule. One of the movements that emerged in the second half of 1960 was the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The Black Panthers may not be as widely known in Europe as the other civil rights movements are, but they have created an important chapter in the American history and their beginning shares a lot with the Black Lives Matter.

This work takes a look at how Bobby Seale and Huey Newton created a political party that was widely known all around the United States, starting with their first meeting in 1962 and ending with the events that lead to Bobby Seale’s decision to leave the Party for good. Because the Black Panther Party had, at its peak, chapters in more than sixty cities around the United States it is impossible to look at some all of the events chronologically while still creating a comprehensive picture of the development of the Party for the reader. That is why some of the personalities appear more than once, sometimes out of chronological order. The aim of this thesis is to create a work that shows how a small group of people created a Party that was targeted by the FBI, and whose leaders were assassinated and how a change of its focus and ideology lead its demise.

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1 From the first meeting to the founding of the Black Panther Party

After the assassination of Malcolm X on the twenty-first of February, 1965, a lot of young Afro-Americans demanded a change. Martin Luther King’s politics of nonviolence stopped being an option for them, the progress achieved by Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party had no real impact on the west coast of the USA and the changes were happening too slowly in their opinion. It was common that Afro- American families lived on the verge of poverty and had the first hand experience with harassment from police officers and jail time. Amongst those people were Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, the two founders of one of the most famous Afro-American revolutionary parties America ever knew – the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The unusual friendship between Robert George “Bobby” Seale (*1936) and Huey Percy Newton (1942-1989), who was shortening his name to Huey P. Newton, started in 1962, when they met at a rally at Merritt College in Oakland, California. Bobby Seale was studying Engineering and Politics, after he had been dishonourably discharged from the United States Air Force due to his brutal attack on one of the commanding officers that owed him money. Bobby Seale had nearly killed him with a pipe. Huey Newton was studying law while also studying for his Associate of Arts degree. Law started to interest him after he was released from prison, where he had been incarcerated several times since he was 14 years old, for crimes ranging from thievery to street fights. Amongst other spokespersons at the rally, which was focusing on the recently announced U.S. blockade of Cuba, featured Donald Warden, the leader of the Afro- American Association (AAA). Bobby Seale and Huey Newton soon started talking and Huey, who believed that U.S. was unjust towards Cuba and that something has to be done, convinced Bobby Seale to come and join him in Warden’s group. (Bloom, p. 21) The AAA believed that the capitalist form of Black Nationalism was the solution Afro-Americans should aim towards but Donald Warden was convinced Afro-American people had no will to improve their own situation and doubted their determination to take the matter into their own hands. Huey Newton grew more and more dissatisfied with these ideas and the theoretical approach the group was displaying and started to loudly criticize Warden. Because of that their association with AAA did not last and within the next year both Bobby Seale and Huey Newton separated from the group to search for another group that would be more of their liking. Huey Newton in 1973

8 wrote in his autobiography that ‘He (Warden) offered the community solutions that solved nothing. I could have accepted this if he had been ignorant, but I believe he knew what he was doing.’ (Newton and Blake, p. 65) In 1964, after they left the Afro-American Association, Huey Newton was jailed once again, this time for six months. The all-white jury convicted him for repeatedly stabbing another man with a steak knife at a party. Huey Newton insisted on his innocence and claimed that everything was done in a necessary self-defense. During his time in prison a new group arose at Merrit College – Soul Students Advisory Council (SSAC), a front group of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM). (Bloom, p. 31) RAM, originating in Philadelphia, was anti-imperialist and a Marxist Black Nationalist organization that believed in Afro-Americans being able to win their freedom by participating in what they called a global revolution against imperialistic regimes. It did not take long for Huey Newton to reconnect with Bobby Seale and both of them soon joined SSAC. At the beginning the group aimed to create courses in Afro- American studies at the college by organising protests, students’ meetings and proposed a black studies curriculum (Newton and Blake, p. 108). The association with RAM also exposed Bobby Seale and Huey Newton to new, mainly leftist, writings and ideas that came from all around the world. Their approach started to be more and more organised and both Bobby and Huey started to look upon revolutionaries such as Mao Zedong and Ernesto 'Che’ Guevara or anti-imperialistic events like the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya. RAM’s idea that Blacks America was essentially just an another colony, no different than other colonies that had been all around the world for centuries, became one of the central ideas in the Black Panther’s philosophy in the following years, together with the idea that justice and liberty between races cannot exist within the same regime that had justified slavery and racial oppression for centuries (Bloom, p. 32). RAM was also addressing The Vietnam War and deeply sympathized with Vietnamese struggle against America. Their stance about the draft was identical to the sixth point of the Ten-Point Program. (which will be talked about in the fourth chapter) Although RAM and SSAC members were quite vocal about their ideas, the practical application was limited mainly to students’ rallies and peaceful protests. Both Bobby Seale and Huey Newton wanted to challenge the system and the police brutality in it directly by actions rather than words. (Bloom, p. 34) At the same time as the anti-draft actions were taking place Huey Newton acquired a copy of a memoir of Robert F. Williams ‘Negros with Guns’ which became the most

9 important influence on his ideas about how the revolution should be done. The first thing he wanted to do was to mobilize and gather all people of colour from ghettos, without regard to their education, job occupation or experience with resistance against the system and arm all of them, so they would be able to defend themselves. The first rally of “brothers on the block” was proposed by him to SSAC and RAM to take place on the anniversary of Malcolm X forty first birthdays (on the twenty-first of February, 1966) but was rejected by all leaders of the organisation. Being dissatisfied with the lack of real action and not seeing it changing in the future both Bobby Seale and Huey Newton soon left the organisation. Not finding a group that would suit their ideas for revolution Bobby Seale and Huey Newton decided to create their own revolutionary organisation. Because of that on the fifteenth of October 1966 the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was born by adopting the ideas they liked from the previous organisations and formulating a new politics for the party. On the same day they had also created the first draft for their popular Ten-Point Program and Huey Newton established himself the Minister of Defense and Bobby Seale the Chairman of the party.

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2 The style that stood out

One of the challenges for the newly born party was to come out with a style that would stand out and help people to identify them on a first glance. When it came to the clothing The Black Panther Party was using the same urban militant style as was used by activists Mark Comfort and Curtis Lee Baker in early 1966. The members’ uniform consisted of compulsory black beret and a black leather jacket over a white, powder blue or black shirt. Many of other members also started to wear black pants, sunglasses and afros with additional personal pieces, often connected to the African culture. The usage of a black panther as a symbol was also nothing new or unusual. The same symbol had already been adopted by several black organizations in last two years. The first who adapted the panther as their logo was Lowndes County Freedom Organization, an independent political organization created by activist Stokely Carmichael in 1965, followed by the Harlem Black Panther Party in August 1966, the Black Panther Party of Northern California and sub-factions of RAM. John Hulett, the creator of the logo, stated in one of his interviews that “The black panther is an animal that when it is pressured it moves back until it is cornered, then it comes out fighting for life or death. We felt we had been pushed back long enough and that it was time for Negroes to come out and take over” (Carson, p. 166) quote that Huey Newton would often paraphrase in his interview.

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3 The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense Ten-Point Platform and Program

Similar to the symbol and the uniform of the party even their famous Ten-Point Program was heavily inspired by external sources. The majority of Black Panther ideas were almost identical to the platform Malcolm X created in 1963 for Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. Similar to the original, Huey Newton, with suggestions from Bobby Seale, divided their program into two sections – “What We Want” with 10 points and “What We Believe” with another 10 instead of Malcom X’s 12 (Seale, Seize the Time, p. 37). The party emulated the nationalism of the original document but left out parts that were connected to Islam. As the party developed so did the program. The first version was distributed as a manifesto two weeks after the party was founded. This version of the Platform and Program existed as only as a pamphlet and was also later printed in ‘On the ideology of the Black Panther Party’ from 1969 and ‘Revolutionary Suicide’ in 1973. On fifteenth of May, 1967, the program was mass printed for the first time in the second issue of the Black Panther Black Community News Service newspapers (Bloom, pp. 70-73). The latest version was then printed on the twenty-ninth of March, 1972. (The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation and Hilliard, pp. 74-76) Above the second and the third version of the program was also included a stylized photography of Huey Newton. The photo pictured Huey Newton in the Black Panther Party uniform, without any additional personal insignia, seated in a wicker throne and facing the camera with a riffle in his right hand and a spear in his left one. The spear, zebra-skin rug and two shields behind him are clearly referring to the heritage of African Americans while the gun is announcing him, and the Black Panther Party through him, as the vanguard of the revolution. The title TBPP started to use after Mulford Act has passed earlier that month. This iconic image from 1967, Huey Newton seated in a wicker chair (Fig. 2), became one of the most famous posters in 1960s in the United States. (Bloom, p. 73) In the following part of the thesis are the both sections from October 1966 together, in a corresponding style which was using bold letters together with standard letters in the printed version, with changes that appeared in it in the following versions and explanations what makes these changes significant. (Fig. 1)

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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.

The 1972 version changed the first point significantly. Instead of focusing only on African American population Huey Newton added “…and oppressed communities” at the end of what The Party wants and changed the second part to “We believe that Black and oppressed people will not be free until we are able to determine our destinies in our own communities ourselves, by fully controlling all the institutions which exist in our communities.”. This change is significant for the development of TBPP because it demonstrates how the Black Panther Party switched its political view from Black Nationalism to Huey Newton’s intercommunalism. This term originates from a speech Huey Newton gave at Boston College on the eighteenth of November, 1970. In his speech Huey Newton stated that it is no longer possible for the party to be nationalistic, because the United States is an empire and nations have been transformed into communities of the world. (Newton, The Revolutionary Communalism of the Black Panther Party, pp. 1-7)

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.

The second point remained almost identical through the whole existence of The Black Panther Party but the 1972 version omitted the racial specification from American businessmen. The expression ‘white’ was used as a summarizing term for all people of the Caucasian ancestry who were not related to any African Americans. By omitting the term white The Black Panther Party distanced itself from anti-white racism

13 that was often connected to them due to their actions that will be talked about later in the thesis.

3. We want an 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 were 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 German are now aiding Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six millions 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.

There were two changes done within this point of the program. In 1967 the word capitalist was changed to white man. This change was however reverted in 1972 and similarly to the point one Huey Newton switched the focus from African Americans to African Americans and other oppressed communities. This change is the second example of how the party switched from nationalism to intercommunalism. “What We Believe” part was made shorter by omitting both sentences about Jewish people and their relationship with Germany. The demand for ‘Forty acres and two mules’ remained in the program, even though it was a promise that had been made to formerly enslaved black farmers in 1865 and had not been connected to other races or oppressed communities. (McCurdy)

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human being. We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the landlord should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

The fourth point remained almost the same and was changed only in the spirit of intercommunalism. The only differences are the additions of oppressed communities and omission of the racial specification of landlords.

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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.

The content of the fifth point remained the same but The Black Panther Party switched the addressee of the message from ‘a man’ to ‘you’. This change was done in the spirit of TBPP community educational programs and the Oakland Community School, which was running under TBPP from 1970 to 1982. (Huggins, Biography)

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service. We believe that 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 kill 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. (1966 and 1967)

To reflect the new policy of the Black Panther Party the sixth point of the program was changed completely in 1972. The new version removed the demand for exemption of African Americans from the military service and replaced it by the demand for free healthcare:

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6. We want completely free health care for all black and oppressed people. We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people health facilities that will not only treat our illnesses – most of which have come about as a result of our oppression – but that will also develop preventative medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide ourselves with proper medical attention and care. (1972)

This change can be seen as the prime example of how the focus of the party changed since the launch of the Black Panther Party community programs in 1968. To help the struggling people of African American communities Panthers launched their own ambulance service and opened clinics in twelve cities in ten years. (Note to self – add page number/chapter number for more information about programs)

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.

The version of the seventh point remained exactly the same from 1967. However the rising tension between the Panthers and the police made this point much more aggressive in 1972. ‘We believe that the racist and fascist government of the United States uses its domestic enforcement agencies to carry out its program of oppression against Black people, other people of color and poor people inside the United States. We believe it is our right, therefore, to defend ourselves against such armed forces and that all Black and oppressed people should be armed for self-defense of our homes and communities against these fascist police forces.’ The encounters between the Black Panther Party members and the police were happening on many occasions and sometimes even ended in shootouts with dead on both sides. The change in this point is

16 also referring to Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), a project conducted by FBI, which was targeting the Black Panthers and was exposed in 1971. (More about COINTELPRO can be found in the chapter seventeen)

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. (1966 and 1967)

The original eighth point of the program was thematically merged with the point nine in 1972. The new point was demanding ‘an immediate end to all wars of aggression’ that were caused by ‘aggressive desires of the U.S. government.’ and was very likely inspired by the participation in the Vietnam War. (Bloom, pp. 32-33)

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, 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.

After the points eight and nine merged in 1972 only two section were added demanding ‘the ultimate elimination of all wretched, inhuman penal institutions’ and ‘freedom from imprisonment while awaiting trials.’.

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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 subject 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 bands 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 they are endowed by their by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and 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 to 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 [sic] their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the form to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations purposing invariably the same object, evinces and 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.

Majority of the last point is a direct quote from the United States Declaration of Independence. The demand for United Nations-supervised plebiscite exists only in the 1966 version and there has never been a vote to determine the will of the whole race as to their national destiny. (Russonello)

The changes in the program between years 1966 and 1972 show better than anything else the development the Black Panther Party went through. The focus of the party switched from African Americans to all minorities in the USA and countries that 18 were affected by U.S. policy, the style became more aggressive towards the government and towards the police, and the demands were stricter. Even though the demands were never met the program is still considered an important historical document that later inspired several other movements, such as New Black Panther Party, and was used as an inspiration by Tupac Shakur, son of New York Black Panther Party member Afeni Shakur, to write the Code of Thug Life. (The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution)

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4 The first recruit and patrolling the patrols

Shortly after Bobby Seale and Huey Newton wrote and finalized the first version of the Ten Point Program the Party got the first recruit. Robert James Hutton, better known as Lil’ Bobby Hutton, was recruited to the party when he was 16 years old by Bobby Seale, who he worked for as an assistant in the North Oakland Neighborhood Service Center. (Seale, Bobby. About Lil’ Bobby Hutton) Being equipped with Bobby Seale’s shotgun and rifle, and a newly bought handgun started their first public action riding in Bobby Seale’s 1954 Chevy. (Bloom, p. 46) The three Panthers, Huey Newton equipped with a shotgun, Bobby Seale with .45 calibre handgun and Lil’ Bobby Hutton with M-1 rifle, patrolled the streets of Richmond, Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco until they spotted a patrolling police car (Newton and Blake, p. 115). After finding a suitable car the plan was to follow the car around whenever it goes and stop when the driver stops as well without getting out of the car while having weapons unloaded and visibly displayed. This action was only possible because California was one of the states that legalized to openly carry legally owned firearms in public under several conditions. The fist condition was that the gun has to be visible at all times, with the barrel pointing either downwards to the ground or upwards to the sky, and the second one was that it was still illegal to have a loaded gun in a moving vehicle, because it would violate the Fish and Game Code. The idea behind these patrols was to monitor the behaviour of the police and to make sure they will not harass any African Americans or threaten them. (The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution) Besides the weapon party was also equipped with a law book and whenever a police officer confronted them Huey Newton started to recite the second Amendment of the United States Constitution together with and Californian laws about gun control, penal code and a right to observe the police from the distance that would not interfere with the performed police action. During these patrols Bobby Seale, Huey Newton and Lil’ Hutton had several confrontations with the Oakland’s police that was trying to confiscate their guns, stop them from following their cars or arrest them. At this time Bobby Seale also started to refer to any policeman, who was in his opinion working against African-American communities, as to pig or less often as to dog, despite their race (Seale, Seize the Time, p. 72). The pig became a term that caught on and was used

20 during the rest of the Black Panther party existence as a way to refer to the oppressing police forces. (Blacks Against Empire, p. 46) To distinguish between ‘the good’ and ‘the bad’ police forces the party also used the term ‘cats’ which was reserved for police forces that were concerned with the African American community and were not harassing people for no reason. (Seale, Seize the Time, p. 197) The police patrols were active over the course of several months (until July, 1967) and although the Black Panther Party never officially fired a bullet up to the sixth of April 1968 (which will be talked about in the chapter fifteen) these patrols were the first implementation of armed self-defense by African Americans and important step to gather the first few followers. (Seale, Seize the Time, p. 47)

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5 Getting more guns

Because the party was getting more popular one of the top priorities was to get more guns to arm its new members. As a mean of getting more money the Party decided to start selling Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung at Cal campus. The books, often referred to simply as The Little Red Book or The Red Book of China, were bought at the China Book Store in San Francisco for thirty cents apiece and sold at campus for a dollar. This way the party earned over 170 dollars and was able to afford two new shotguns. According to Bobby Seale party had to get more guns, because it would be something meaningful and valuable that would draw new people into the organization. The last major sale of the book concluded on the fifteenth of April 1967 when The Little Red Book was sold to people marching to Kezar Stadium in San Francisco against the Vietnamese War. That day the party earned around 850 dollars and used them to buy more guns. (Seale, Seize the Time, p. 51)

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6 Leroy Eldridge Cleaver

Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998) is probably the one of the best known early leaders of the Black Panther Party right after Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. Eldridge Cleaver, born in Arkansas, moved to Los Angeles together with his family shortly after the Second World War. Even as a child he was involved in petty crimes and at the age of nineteen he was sent to Soledad State Prison for two and a half year for possession of marijuana, which was a felony by Californian law without the possibility for a parole (California Drug and Marijuana Arrests, 1960-67). While in the prison Eldridge Cleaver earned his high school diploma. The second arrest of Eldridge Cleaver occurred just a year after he was released for the first time and the crime had been much more serious – rape and assault with intent to kill – with eight years sentence. While in the prison for the second time Cleaver joined the Nation of Islam and later the Organization for African-American Unity which was founded by Malcolm X in 1964. He had also begun to correspond with a white civil rights lawyer Beverly Axelrod. While Eldridge Cleaver was still in the prison Beverly Axelrod was smuggling his essays to the publisher of Ramparts, a prominent left-wing magazine. After Eldridge Cleaver was released on parole, in December 1966, the publisher employed him as one of Rampart’s writers. The collection of Eldridge Cleaver’s essays was released in a book Soul on Ice in 1968 and immediately catapulted Eldridge Cleaver into the consciousness of the American public. Eldridge Cleaver joined the Black Panther Party at the end of February 1967 and soon became one of Party’s most prominent figures. While in the Party Eldridge Cleaver had a titles of Minister of Information, Head of the international section of the Panthers and served as the main editor of the Black Panther Party’s newspapers. (Bloom, pp. 48-49; 74-82)

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7 Escorting of Betty Shabazz and the Paper Panthers

In January 1967 the memorial for Malcolm X was organized on second anniversary of his assassination. The main organizers were American writer and political activist Eldridge Cleaver and Roy Ballard, one of the founders of the Black Panther Party of Northern California. One of the Eldridge Cleaver’s ideas was to include Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, as one of the hosts at the event but there was a need of someone who would escort her safely from the airport to the offices of Ramparts magazine. (Bloom, p.48) There were two Panthers groups tasked with this – Bobby Seale and Huey Newton’s the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and Ballard’s Black Panther Party of Northern California, both providing eight armed members as Shabazz’s guards. David Hilliard, Chief of Staff in Oakland Black Panther Party, labelled the second group “Paper Panthers” because their activity was confined to printing different materials without working in streets. (Newton and Blake, p. 130) In the afternoon of the twenty-first of February 1967 both groups of Black Panthers were ready to escort Betty Shabazz out of the airport. Because she did not want any pictures taken by reporters the Panthers were holding copies of Rampart around her. (Newton and Blake, p. 131) This action lead to a confrontation with one of the reporter that was trying to push the magazines away from Betty’s face and as a response was hit by Huey’s left hook. The fight caused a reaction from the thirty policemen that were present at the scene and both groups started to draw their guns. While Huey Newton remained calm and told the policeman that was near him that there will be a bloodbath if he draws his revolver Ballard started panicking and fled back inside the building. With no response from the policeman the standoff ended as quickly as it started and Betty Shabazz was escorted safely to the office of Ramparts magazine. (Bloom, p. 49) At the Ramparts Huey Newton found out that although the second group was visibly armed with guns they had no bullets. Huey Newton was furious that he had no backup and that the Paper Panthers were protecting Shabazz without loaded guns. A few weeks later Huey Newton went to San Francisco with several members of the Black Panther Party and issued Ballard an ultimatum – they could merge with his group, change their name or be annihilated. Ballard originally refused all three options but after a short fist fight and a shot fired in the air the group changed its name. (Newton and Blake, p. 132)

24

The execution of the escort mission and handling the confrontation with the police impressed Eldridge Cleaver who, right after his interview with Betty Shabazz had been concluded, asked Huey Newton to join the Black Panther Party.

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8 The murder of Denzil Dowell

The addition of Eldridge Cleaver gave the party an opportunity to get the attention and media coverage they needed. It is not clear how many members the party had at the end of the April 1967 but Bobby Seale estimated the number to be somewhere between forty and fifty-three. (Seale, Seize the Time, pp. 48; 57) By the end of April the number was seven times higher and at the start of May the whole America knew who the Black Panthers were. In the early hours of the first of April, 1967, a young African American named Denzil Dowel was shot dead by the policemen of Richmond, California. The official sources stated that Denzil was trying to escape from the police following an attempted burglary. Dowell’s mother, unsatisfied with the official explanation, started to believe that her son was murdered by the police and contacted Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. (Bloom, pp. 50-52) There were three important actions that happened in Richmond in the following weeks. The first was the investigation of the murder. In the investigation Panthers were talking to the community, asked questions and unsuccessfully tried to persuade the county sheriff to reopen the case, demanding a further investigation of the case and reclassification of it as a murder instead of justifiable homicide. Although this campaign was unsuccessful and the case remained closed Huey Newton and Bobby Seale got a respect of the community by genuinely carrying about them. (Bloom, p. 54) The second important action was taking place concurrently with the investigation. Some of the parents asked for help with school teachers who were beating up and slapping their children. To solve the problem fifteen Panthers took their guns and started to patrol on the sidewalk in front of the school while the mothers of children were patrolling in the hallways at the same time. The school principal, not knowing how to handle the situation, called the police. The police, not wanting to escalate the situation, had to leave the Panthers in front of the school. (Seale, Seize the Time, p. 84) The third, and by far the most important action, happened several weeks later on the twenty-second of April, 1967. Fifteen Black Panthers in uniforms showed up in front of liquor store in North Richmond and started a rally where they were explaining Party’s political program and answered any question they were asked. Bobby Seale and Huey Newton maintained that ‘only through armed self-defense could the black community

26 find security’ which lead to people going back to their houses just to come back with their own guns and rifles. (Bloom, p. 52) At the end of the rally The Black Panther Party got over 300 applications from people who wanted to join them in their fight against the system. (Seale, Seize the Time, p. 84) Three days after the rally, on twenty-fifth of April, 1967, The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense released the first issue of their community newspapers titled ‘The Black Panther - Black Community News Service’ with the headline ‘Why was Denzil Dowell Killed?’. This issue, which was actually only a four-page newsletter, featured several articles: questionable facts about the case from the point of the view of victim’s family, the discussion with the county sheriff and date of the next rally. (The Black Panther Black Community News Service, 25 April 1967) The Black Panther Party newspapers were also called the Black Panther Community News Service, printed about 500 issues and were published for 13 years to September, 1980. The distribution was both national and international and from 1968 to 1971 the newspapers were selling over three hundred thousand copies each week for twenty-five cents. (Remembering the Black Panther Party Newspaper, April 25, 1967- September 1980) The Black Panther newspapers always claimed to present only truth. The often quoted description for the newspapers was: “The Black Panther Community News Service, free from the distortion, bias, and lies of the oppressor controlled mass media.“ which was written by the Black Panther Party’s Field Marshal Landon Williams in his article The Black Panther: Mirror of the People. (Bloom, p. 250; The Black Panther – Mirror of the People)

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9 Sacramento

The armed patrols and rallies were getting attention both from the African American communities as well as from the government. A bill, AB-1591 or better known as Mulford Act, was introduced by assemblyman Don Mulford six weeks after Huey Newton confronted the policeman while escorting Betty Shabazz from the airport. The purpose of this bill was to repeal the law that was making public carry of a loaded firearm legal in the state of California. (Bloom, p. 57) The Black Panther party found out about the first reading from local newspapers on the first of May, 1967, and decided to act. Knowing that there is almost no chance to do anything about the bill passing and having their strategy effectively destroyed Huey Newton and Bobby Seale decided to use this opportunity and get the coverage by the media that was sure to be present there. Before driving to Sacramento, where the assembly was taking place, Panthers voted that the leader for this action should be Bobby Seale instead of Huey Newton who was perceived as the public face of the Party. This decision was made in fear of Huey Newton’s safety in case the shooting would occur. (Seale, Seize the Time, p. 90) The next day thirty Panthers drove eighty miles to the capital city. The group consisted of twenty-two male members of the Party, all armed with either M-1 rifles, 12-gauge shotguns or handguns, six unarmed women, Eldridge Cleaver who was carrying a camera to document the action for Ramparts magazine and Bobby Seale who was visibly armed with a pistol. (Pearson, p. 130) Right after getting out of their cars the Panthers caught attention of the press. The Black Panthers Party members, who were all wearing their full uniforms, got out of the cars, loaded their firearms, placed them on their shoulders to visibly point them towards the sky, and in a tight formation marched towards the capitol building. (Seale, Seize the Time, p. 90) On their way towards the building Panthers unknowingly passed the future president Ronald Reagan, who, as the Governor of California, hosted a meeting on the lawn of the Capitol and had to be escorted away. (Bloom, p. 60) The police was trying to unsuccessfully confiscate their guns but had to fall back because every citizen had the right to observe an Assembly by the constitution and there was no law that would prohibit guns in the capitol building. (Seale, Seize the Time, p. 92)

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Once they were inside the capitol building (Fig. 3) and later once again on the stairs in front of it, Bobby Seale read carefully prepared statement titled Executive Mandate Number One. The most famous is the first sentence of the speech: “The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense calls upon the American people in general and the black people in particular to take careful note of the racist California Legislature which is now considering legislation aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless at the very same time that racist police agencies throughout the country are intensifying the terror, brutality, murder, and repression of black people.” (Armed Black Militants Protest At The California Capitol, May 2 1967) This sentence was supposed to make it clear to everyone that The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense hated the white power structure and not all people of the Caucasian race (Pearson, p. 134) as well as to proclaim the power of their vision. (Bloom, p. 61) After reading the Executive Mandate the Party got back into their cars and started to drive back to Oakland. The police followed them, hailed them to stop their cars and charged everyone present with an obscure of Fish and Game Code violation, which prohibited driving cars with loaded firearms, to get everyone present, including Eldridge Cleaver who was not carrying any gun and was on parole, into the custody. The charges were later changed to conspiracy to invade the assembly chambers, a felony, and in Bobby Seale’s case a makeshift accusation of carrying a concealed pistol, even though his weapon was visibly in a holster during the whole action. (Bloom, pp. 60-61; Seale, Seize the Time, p. 96) The bail for the Party members was set to $2,200 per member. (Seale, Seize the Time, p. 102) Although the strategy that the Black Panther Party used had been outlawed once the bill passed, together with a new law that prohibited carrying any weapon inside the capitol building, the Party got the coverage they wanted. The events of the Assembly were covered by a daily press all around the United States of America, including New Your Times, Washington Post or Chicago Tribute. (Bloom, p. 61) On fifteenth of May, 1967, The Black Panther Party also released a second issue of their Community News Service with the main headline being “The Truth about Sacramento” and a picture of an obese pig with a headline “Support your local police”. Unlike the previous issue this release had a newspaper format and was eight pages in total. (The Black Panther Black Community News Service, 15 May 1967)

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10 Vanguard

Once Eldridge Cleaver got released from the custody by the district attorney he was ready to start working on freeing the rest of the Party’s members. (Bloom, p. 79) Eldridge Cleaver, together with Huey Newton, established contact with many left-wing organizations, including the Social Workers Party, Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the Ramparts-affiliated Community for a New Politics. The relationship with the Communist Party under Robert Bruce Avakian was one of the most significant and widely known. Avakian, who is of Caucasian origins, proclaimed that it is a duty of white radicals in America to support the black revolution. (Bloom, pp. 81-82) On twenty-ninth of June, 1967, Bobby Seale, who was awaiting the verdict outside of the police custody on $5,000 bail, called a press conference on the steps of San Francisco Hall of Justice. (Bloom, p. 92) The conference did not had a lot of media coverage but Bobby Seale read Executive Mandate Number Two in which he tried to persuade Stokely Carmichael, a well-known activist for Civil Rights Movement and one the of leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to join the Black Panther Party by investing him with a rank of Field Marshal. Furthermore the Executive Mandate Number Two announced that the United States of America is divided into two very different territories – imperialistic and revolutionary. The Black Panther Party also presented itself as a sole legitimate alternative to US government. This newly founded confidence showed when the Black Panthers critiqued the participants of the CORE conference (Congress of Racial Equality) in July, 1967, for being counterrevolutionary, subservient to “White power Structure” and started to address them as ‘bootlickers’. (Bloom, pp. 93-94) Despite Huey Newton’s and Eldridge Cleaver’s effort Bobby Seale and five other members of the Party were sentenced to a jail time. (Eye on the Prize, episode 9) Bobby Seale started to serve his sentence in August 1967 and was released on the eighth of December, 1967. (Seale, Seize the Time, pp. 108-116)

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11 The death of Police Officer John F. Frey

On the twenty-seventh of October, 1967, Huey Newton celebrated the end of his probation (for stabbing a man in 1964). Huey Newton started by having a dinner together with his family and later went on to have a drink at the party. When the party ended at around five in the morning Huey Newton, in his girlfriend’s tan 1958 Volkswagen Beetle, decided to drive home. (Bloom, p. 99) The car, which was under Oakland’s police department surveillance as one of the vehicles associated with the Black Panther Party, was stopped by a single officer in a patrolling police car for a roadside check. The Officer in the car was twenty-three year old John F. Frey, who served in the department for eighteen months and already managed to build a reputation of being aggressive and using racial slur towards African Americans. (Pearson, p. 145) John Frey, after being given Huey Newton’s driver’s licence and car registration called for a backup which arrived shortly afterwards. After the second Officer, Herbert Heanes, 24, arrived Huey Newton was thoroughly frisked for any concealed weapon by John Frey. What happened after this point is shrouded in confusing contradictory testimonies. No matter which version is correct Huey Newton was shot once into the stomach, Herbert Heanes was shot three times but survived, and John Frey died an hour later in the hospital with four gun wounds. (Pearson, p. 146) Herbert Heanes testified that while he was standing at the back of Frey’s patrol car Huey Newton and John Frey suddenly started to scuffle. Several shots were fired and Frey fell on the road. Assuming that the shots were fired by Huey Newton, Herbert Heanes fired on Huey Newton and successfully hit him in the stomach area. Several shots were then fired towards Herbert Heanes from an unknown source and while he was lying on the ground Huey Newton fled the scene. Herbert Heanes later stated that he did not see Huey Newton holding a gun, was unable to identify who shot him and had wounds inflicted in melee combat that he did not remember receiving. (Pearson, p. 146) It should also be mentioned, as it became one of the Black Panther Party argument over the next two years, that Frey was taller than Huey, being over six feet tall (over 182cm), heavier, weighing over two hundred pounds (90 kg), (Bloom, p. 99) and a former member of the Clayton Valley High School’s wrestling team. (Police Officer John F. Frey)

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In Huey Newton’s version Frey searched him in a manner that was intended to degrade him as much as possible. The officer then pushed him towards the back door of Heanes’ car. At this point Huey Newton opened his law book, prepared to quote his rights as many times before. As he began to open his book Frey allegedly said “You can take that book and shove it up your ass, nigger.” After this Frey stepped in front of Huey Newton and tried to land a left hook. While Huey Newton, momentarily dazed, was trying to stand back up Frey drew his service revolver, pointed at him and shot him into the stomach. Suddenly a rapid volley of shots was fired. Newton, not knowing what just happened, was suddenly moved or propelled away after which he fell into unconsciousness. (Newton and Blake, pp. 174-177) Later, while being cross-examined at the trial in October, 1968, Huey Newton admitted a simple assault, contradictory to his own version, but insisted on having no idea, who shot John Frey and Herbert Heanes. (Newton and Blake, pp. 236-237) After the shooting occurred Huey Newton made it into the home of Party’s Chief of Staff, David Hilliard, who took him to the Kaiser Hospital. While being treated with the gunshot a police came in and handcuffed Huey Newton to the stretcher, on which he was examined. (Pearson, p. 147) A reporter came in and took photography of the scene on which Huey Newton was visibly shackled to the hospital gurney, his naked torso tensed and contracted. The shot got widely distributed across the media (Fig. 4). Two weeks after the photo was taken Alameda County grand jury charged Huey Newton with first-degree murder, assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping. (Pearson, p. 147) Up to this date it is unclear what exactly happened that day and who killed John Frey. Huey Newton never officially admitted to take any part in the shooting but one of the witnesses, who was stopped by Huey Newton and ordered to drive him away from the scene, stated that Huey Newton told him, “I just shot two dudes.” (Pearson, p. 147) A similar testimony was given in 1989 by one of Huey Newton’s close friends, Willie Payne, shortly after Huey Newton died. (Pearson, pp. 7; 146)

As will be shown in the following chapters the difference between Police and Party’s version was nothing rare. For the Black Panther Party these events were another presentable evidence of the police harassment and brutality towards the people of colour. Huey Newton was shown

32 as the first martyr of the Party’s struggle and in the following months, during the “Free Huey!” campaign, as a symbol of the resistance against the unjust system.

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12 Kathleen Cleaver (née Neal)

Kathleen Cleaver (*1945), originally from Tuskegee, Alabama, wanted to fight against injustice from a young age. Inspired by women like Diane Nash or Gloria Richardson she joined SNCC in 1966 and as a secretary of SNCC’s Campus Program she was tasked with organizing meetings and conferences. On one of these meeting she met Eldridge Cleaver with whom she immediately felt in love with. In November, 1967, three weeks after Huey Newton was arrested, she moved to San Francisco to join the Black Panthers Party and be closer to Eldridge. It took the couple only a month and a half to get married. Kathleen Cleaver was always very ambitious woman and that did not change after joining the Black Panther Party. Having no previous criminal record and having more formal education than the majority of members she was soon appointed to sit on the Central Committee as communications secretary, spokesperson and press secretary for the whole party. Her task in the Committee was to organize demonstrations, write leaflets, held press conferences, attend court hearings, design posters, speak at rallies and appear on television programs. All of that was done to help Huey Newton. (Bloom, pp. 105-107) Another important role of Kathleen Cleaver was to help black women to integrate into the organization and to be a role model for them to follow. This role proved to be vital for the Party’s function due to the fact that during 1969 and 1970 women contributed sixty percent of the Party’s membership. (Josephs, p. 403)

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13 “Free Huey!” campaign and the new allies

With Huey Newton in custody and Bobby Seale in prison the Black Panther Party was without both cofounding leaders for the first time in the Party’s history. The new temporarily leader had become Eldridge Cleaver whose program was to prevent Huey from facing the execution in the gas chamber. The main idea of the campaign was to present him in a way that would imply that Huey Newton is an innocent political prisoner who did nothing wrong. This campaign started with the Black Panther Black Community News Service releasing its sixth issue showing the photo Huey Newton seated in a wicker chair and a headline “Huey Must Be Set Free!” (Bloom, p. 101) The similar headline was introduced in many of the following issues – for example the issue from June, 1968, had a title “Free Huey Now” and the one from September, 1968, was printed out with a headline “World Awaits Verdict. Free Huey … or the Sky’s the limit!” showing that the Party is not going to leave the issue be. The Black Panther Party also cleverly used the events of the Stop the Draft Week which was taking place in Oakland on the twentieth of October, 1967. After the protest rally against the Vietnam War concluded the Black Panther Party tightened up their alliances with the Black Power organizations and New Left groups who started to rally in support of Huey and presented his imprisonment as a parallel to the struggle of a black revolutionary. (Bloom, p. 104) These alliances lead to two important conventions. The first one was the coalition with the Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) which was trying to enough signatures to officially register a candidate for the 1968 ballot but lacked the support of the African American community due to having almost exclusively white membership. (Pearson, p. 149) Because The Black Panther Party was getting into the national spotlight, after the events that happened in Sacramento in May and the shooting in October, it had become PFP’s prime candidate to provide the legitimacy of Peace and Freedom Party’s racial politics. The coalition between both parties was then proposed on the twenty-second of December, 1967. (Bloom, p. 109) For the Peace and Freedom Party this step brought much needed support from African American communities that were supporting the Black Panthers and helped them to achieve around eighty thousand additional signatures in less than two weeks (The PFP was reporting to have around twenty-five thousand out of sixty-seven thousand

35 signatures required just a week before their coalition with The Black Panther Party became public) On the other side the Peace and Freedom Party contributed three thousand dollars (part of the money that would pay for the lawyer) and let the Black Panther Party use their sound equipment for the “Free Huey!” campaign (Bloom, pp. 108-109). Additionally several Party members unsuccessfully ran on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket in the following year’s elections – Bobby Seale and Kathleen Cleaver for State Assembly, Eldridge Cleaver for the President of United States and Huey Newton for Congress (Footnotes) The second important convention was a merger with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a party that was well established on the national political stage, on the seventeenth of February, 1968. On this day The Black Panther Party organized a huge rally in the Oakland Auditorium in to the occasion of Huey Newton’s twenty-sixth birthday. Amongst the speakers at the rally were also three most prominent members of SNCC: James Forman, H. Rap Brown, and Stokely Carmichael. The first speaker of the day was Bobby Seale, followed by SNCC leaders. (Bloom, pp. 111-114) Unlike Bobby Seale, H. Rap Brown highlighted the necessity of Huey Newton’s freedom by using weapons as a way to oppose to whites as a race. After Brown finished his speech Stokely Carmichael elaborated on his idea and stated that: “The major enemy is the honky and its institutions of racism. That’s the major enemy! That is the major enemy! And whenever anybody prepares for revolutionary warfare, you concentrate on the main enemy!” (H. Rap Brown & Stokely Carmichael in Oakland (1968) | KQED Archives) Although both SNCC speakers supported Huey Newton’s release their speeches were in a clear contradiction to the Black Panther Party anti-racist politics. According to Bobby Seale the merger occurred because: “It had become clear to Stokely, to James Forman, to Rap Brown, and to a lot of other people that brother Huey Newton, the Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party, had become the central leader of the revolutionary movement that was coming out of the black community on a new and a higher level than it had ever been before.” (Seale, Seize the Time, pp. 126-127) On the sixteenth of March, 1968, the Black Panther Party released the eleventh issue of their community newspaper. In this issue the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense dropped “for Self-Defense” from their name (Bloom, p. 114) together with the release of Executive Mandate Number 3 (The Black Panther Black Community News Service, March 16, 1968). The Executive Mandate ordered every member of the Black Panther

36

Party to ‘acquire the technical equipment to defend their homes’ against police officers as a reaction to events of the sixteenth of January, 1968, when police invaded the home of Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver and illegally searched it without a warrant. (Bloom, p. 107) Any member who would fail to do so would be expelled from the Party. Because of this order every member of the Black Panther Party could be officially considered armed in the eyes of the police forces.

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14 Huey Newton as a symbol

As was mentioned in the previous chapter Huey Newton started to be perceived as a perfect example of a modern revolutionary and a political prisoner. Huey Newton himself was stripped of any of his characteristics and even of his own identity as it was not important for the symbol he was representing. The unofficial hymn of the rallies was “Black is beautiful, Free Huey! Set our warden free, Free Huey!” (The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution) and the rallies were attended by people of all races. To support the campaign, and to furthermore show Huey Newton as a victim of the unjust white system, the Black Panther Party released a documentary named ‘Huey!’ in 1968. During the rallies speakers were using phrases such as “Huey said…” or “He told us to tell you …” (Huey!) and the Black Panther Party’s leaders were leaving his wicker throne empty and clearly visible to everyone. Hugh Person wrote that: “From the mouths of Free Huey activists, Huey began to sound like a messiah. Their enthusiasm to see Huey set free paralleled the Christian enthusiasm for the second coming.” (Pearson, p. 153)

The case for Huey Newton’s trial read The People of California v. Huey P. Newton and the trial date was set for the fifteenth of July, 1968. None of the jury members was Huey Newton’s “peer”, as the Black Panther Party demanded, and there was only one African American out of twelve members. (Herb and Tooks, p. 41) The decision of the jury was delivered on the eighth of August, 1968. The verdict changed the first degree murder of the police officer John F. Frey to voluntary manslaughter and found Huey Newton innocent of shooting at Officer Heanes. (Newton and Blake, pp. 242-244) The sentence for this crime, after taking into account Huey Newton’s criminal history, was two to fifteen years in prison. The case got reopened in less than a year in May, 1970. Huey Newton was then released from the prison on the fifth of August, 1970, on a technicality. (Bloom, p. 353)

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15 The aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’ assassination

After James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. on the fourth of April, 1968, African American communities erupted into riots in more than 120 cities all around the United States of America. During these riots twenty-one thousand people were arrested and forty-six killed. (Bloom, pp. 115-116) Two days after Martin Luther King Jr. died the Black Panther Party members got into a shoot-out with the police forces which resulted in seven members of the party being arrested together with Eldridge Cleaver, who was also shot in the foot and rear, and Lil’ Bobby Hutton, the first ever member of the Black Panther Party, killed, at the age of seventeen, by the police forces. (Bloom, pp. 118-119; The John Brown Society, pp. 13-14) In the version released by the Black Panther Party Eldridge Cleaver, Lil’ Bobby Hutton and a number of other Panthers were driving in their cars around Oakland while collecting food from volunteers for a picnic barbecue that was supposed to take place on the seventh of April, 1968. This picnic was supposed to serve as a fundraiser to pay the lawyer of Huey Newton. Suddenly patrolling Oakland police officers ambushed them with no previous provocation and started shooting at them. Eldridge Cleaver and Lil’ Bobby Hutton were unarmed and hid in a nearby house’s cellar. The whole street was blocked by the police reinforcements and the heavily armed officers started to fire at the concrete walls of the house. One of the ricocheted bullets hit Eldridge Cleaver and wounded him in a foot. Lil’ Bobby Hutton reacted by taking all of Eldridge Cleaver’s clothing off, leaving him only in socks, to see where exactly was he wounded. Because the officers started using the gas cartridges both Panthers decided to surrender and move out of the house. Eldridge Cleaver had to be supported by Lil’ Bobby Hutton due to his injury. Once they were outside the cellar police officers told them to “Start running for the squad car”. Eldridge Cleaver was unable to do so but Lil’ Bobby Hutton obeyed the order, made several steps and was suddenly struck down by around twelve shots. The Black Panther Party’s weapons, which were confiscated by the police, were then supposed to be in a locked trunk of a car, which was parked a few miles away, and not present at the scene at all. (The John Brown Society, pp. 13-14) Eldridge Cleaver admitted that these events happened differently on the twelfth of May, 1980, in his interview for The New West Magazine by admitting he orchestrated

39 an assault on the police patrol. (Coleman, pp. 17-27) The whole story was then exposed by him in an interview with Henry Louis Gates Jr. in spring 1997 (Gates). Eldridge Cleaver, Lil’ Bobby Hutton and twelve other members of the Black Panther Party armed up, got into three cars and started looking for a patrolling police. When they found a group of unsuspecting officers they started an hour and a half long shootout that got three police officers, together with Eldridge Cleaver and one other Panther, wounded. Eldridge Cleaver described this as “… the first experience of freedom that I had. I was free for an hour and a half because repressive forces couldn’t put their hands on me…” (Gates) After the shooting Panthers split up and Lil’ Bobby Hutton hid with Eldridge Cleaver in a house that was not associated with the Party. The shootout occurred in the same fashion as was described by the Party together with the police using the gas cartridges to force the Party members out. Eldridge Cleaver’s wife, Kathleen Cleaver, later explained why her husband was naked while being arrested: “Eldridge told Bobby Hutton to ‘Take off all your clothes, so they can’t say you are concealing a weapon. When you surrender take off everything.’ But Bobby was embarrassed and he just took off his shirt and kept on his pants.” (The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution) While outside of the gas-filled house the police officers pushed half-naked Lil’ Bobby Hutton away with the command “Run nigger.” (Seale, About Lil’ Bobby Hutton) Lil’ Bobby Hutton then stumbled only about five feet before he was shot dead. (Gates) The assault on the police forces was the first occurrence of the Black Panther Party actively attacking the police forces, which was in a contradiction with their philosophy that the panther never attacks until there is no other option. (Bloom, p. 119) Professor Donna Murch, a historian specializing amongst others in the Black Power and Civil Rights movement (Dona Murch), explained that: “Eldridge Cleaver was worried that if the Panthers didn’t take decisive action they would cease to be the vanguard. So he had this idea of actually actively attacking the police.” (The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution)

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover later used the killing of Officer Frey together with the assault on the police as a justification to fully launch the FBI’s Counter Inteligence Program (COINTELPRO) against the Black Panther Party in order to dismantle, discredit and destroy them completely.

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16 The funeral of Lil’ Bobby Hutton

The funeral of Lil’ Bobby Hutton took place on the twelfth of April, 1968, and became a rallying point for the party. One hundred uniformed Black Panther Party Members formed the honour guard for the carried coffin and two thousand people packed into the Ephesian Church of God in Christ in Berkeley, California. (Bloom, p. 119) Besides the Black Panther Party leaders one of the speakers, who delivered eulogies at the funeral, was the actor Marlon Brando. Marlon Brando addressed the present African Americans and stated that: “You’ve been listening to white people for four hundred years. They said they were going to do something. They have done nothing as far as I am concerned … That could had been my son lying there.” (Marlon Brando Eulogizes Black Panther Bobby Hutton (1968) - from the EDUCATION ARCHIVE.) On the twenty-fifth of August, 1968, the Black Panther Party unofficially renamed DeFremery Park in West Oakland to Bobby Hutton Memorial Park (Bloom, p. 125). Since April, 1998, there is also annually hosted “Lil’ Bobby Hutton Day” by the former members of the Black Panther Party. (Seale, About Lil’ Bobby Hutton)

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17 COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counterintelligence Program) was a project that was run by FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) from 1956. COINTELPRO was originally aimed to disrupt the activities of the Communist Party of the United States but it was later expanded to include a number of other domestic groups in 1960s. Ultimately the FBI disclosed six official COINTELPRO programs: the Communist Party of the United States (from 1956), the Groups Seeking Independence for Puerto Rico (from 1962), the Social Workers Party (1963), the White Hate Groups (including groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party, from 1964), the Black Nationalist – Hate Groups (including for example the Nation of Islam, the RAM, the SNCC and the Black Panther Party, from 1967) and the New Left (from 1968) (FBI Records: The Vault, COINTELPRO) On the twenty-fifth of August, 1967, John Edgar Hoover, the first Director of the FBI, wrote the first page of his plain against the Black Nationalist – Hate Groups where he explained the purpose of the program as following:

“The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavour is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate- type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and disorder. The activity of all such groups of intelligence interest to this Bureau must be followed on a continuous basis so we will be in a position to promptly take advantage of all opportunities for counterintelligence and to inspire actions in instances where circumstances warrant… No opportunity should be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques the organizational and personal conflicts of the leaderships of the groups and where possible an effort should be made to capitalize upon existing conflicts between black nationalist organizations.” (COINTELPRO Black Extremist Part 01 of 23, pp. 3-4)

An example of COINTELPRO capitalizing upon an existing conflict between two organizations can be seen in escalating the conflict between the Los Angeles Black Panther Party and Karenga’s US (which will be talked about in chapter 19.1)

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COINTELPRO also played their role in the conflict between Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver (as will be demonstrated in chapter 23). When it came to the FBI and police collaborators in the Party it was jokingly said that if there was a meeting of ten Panthers, four of them were agents or informers. (Herb and Tooks, p. 48) The program against the “Black Nationalist – Hate Groups” had five goals (COINTELPRO Black Extremist Part 01 of 23, pp. 69-70): “1. Prevent coalitions of militant black nationalist groups” – this goal stated that there is a strength in unity and that coalitions between black nationalist groups would be the first step towards a true black revolution. “2. Prevent rise of a “messiah” who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement.” – there were four names listed in this goal – deceased Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. (who died exactly one month after the goals were written), Elijah Muhammed (the leader of Nation of Islam) and Stokely Carmichael (who, as the goal stated, had the necessary charisma to be a real threat in this way). No leaders of the Black Panther Party were named in this point but COINTELPRO later considered Fred Hampton. (Chapter 21) “3. Prevent violence on the part of black nationalist groups.” – the most important part of this goal is its last part that reads: “through counterintelligence it should be possible to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence.” This strategy was often utilized by COINTELPRO and by the police. The leaders of the Black Panther Party were jailed on several occasions for years just to be acquitted of all charges later. (Chapter 19.3 and 21) “4. Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability, by discrediting them to three separate segments of the community.” The discretization of the Black Panther Party leaders was done on several occasions. Eldridge Cleaver was widely rumoured to be an informer or government agent (Herb and Tooks, p. 47) and COINTELPRO proposed to convey the impression that Stokely Carmichael is a CIA informant. (The Freedom Archives, COINTELPRO, p. 132) “5. A final goal should be to prevent the long-range growth of militant black nationalist organizations, especially among youth. Special tactics to prevent these groups from converting young people must be developed.” Due to this goal Hoover later labelled the Black Panther Party Survival Programs (mainly the Free Breakfast Program) as a treat. On this account Huey Newton wrote in his dissertation thesis: “The tactics employed to ruin the breakfast program illustrate the lengths to which the bureau

43 would go” (Newton, War Against The Panthers: A Study Of Repression In America, p. 54) Famous and often quoted is also Hoover’s fiscal annual report from the sixteenth of July, 1969, that stated that: “Of these (violence-prone black extremist groups), the Black Panther Party, without question, represents the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” (Black Panther Greatest Threat to U.S. Security) How serious was this statement can be seen on the number of COINTELPRO actions aimed against the Black Panther Party. Out of two hundred ninety-five actions initiated by COINTELPRO two hundred thirty-three (seventy-nine percent) targeted the Black Panther Party. (Bloom, p. 210)

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18 Ericka Huggins (née Jenkins)

Ericka Huggins, born in Washington, D.C., joined the Black Panther Party when she was eighteen years old and soon became a prominent figure of the Los Angeles chapter of the Party. (Bloom, pp. 139-140) After her husband was killed, together with their friend Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, on seventeenth of January, 1969, Ericka Huggins moved to New Haven in Connecticut where she opened a new chapter of the Black Panther Party at Yale University. (Bloom, p. 247) Ericka Huggins was arrested, together with Bobby Seale and several other Black Panther Party members, in May, 1969, as the main suspect in the investigation of Alex Rackley’s murder. Similar to “Free Huey!” campaign the Black Panther Party started “Free Bobby, Free Ericka” to get them out of the prison. Ericka Huggins was released from prison on twenty-fifth of May, 1971 (Bloom, pp. 249-256) Besides being the first woman that led a chapter of the Black Panther Party Ericka Huggins became writer and editor for the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service in late 1971 and was appointed as a Director of the Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School from 1973 to 1981 (Huggins, Biography).

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19 Founding of new chapters

Killing of Martin Luther King Jr. and the nationwide exposure of Lil’ Bobby Hutton’s funeral changed how the Black Panther Party was perceived by the people of colour all around the United States of America. Up to early April of 1968 the Party was a local organization in Oakland with a satellite chapter that was starting to form in Los Angeles. Thanks to the medial exposure, together with political, legal and financial supports provided by the Black Panther Party’s allies, the Party started to expand rapidly and become the most influential black movement organization in the United States by December, 1968. In eight months after Lil’ Bobby Hutton’s funeral the Black Panther Party opened chapters in twenty different cities in the United States. The most important chapters were in Los Angeles, California; New York City, New York and Seattle, Washington, but the Black Panther Party was also present in Albany, New York; Bakersfield, California; Boston, Massachusetts; Chicago, Illinois; Denver, Colorado; Fresno, California; Indianapolis, Indiana; Long Beach, California; Newark, New Jersey; Omaha, Nebraska; Peekskill, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Richmond, California; Sacramento, California; and San Diego, California. (Bloom, p. 159) The expansion of the Party did not stop there and by 1970 Panthers had chapters in sixty-eight cities. (Seale, The Chapters of the Black Panther Party)

19.1 Los Angeles Black Panther Party and the clash with US

Los Angeles chapter was founded in March, 1968, by Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, Eldridge Cleaver’s friend from prison, and was the first Black Panther Party chapter outside of the Oakland Bay Area. (Alkebulan, p. 59) Other leaders of the Los Angeles chapter were John Jerome Huggins, Jr. and his wife Ericka Huggins. The party was extremely popular in Los Angeles, gaining between fifty and a hundred new members each week (Seale, About “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins), and soon gained a lot of power by organizing Los Angeles gangs (Lords of the Revolution: The Black Panthers) From 1965 the Black Power organizations were centred in Lost Angeles on the Black Congress – a seemingly united front of more than twenty African American organizations. The Black Congress included organizations such as Community Alert 46

Patrols (an organization that pioneered the police patrols and inspired Huey Newton to start the police patrols), Freedom Draft Movement, Afro-American Association, Self Leadership for All Nationalities Today, Black Student Alliance and many more. Every organization in the Black Congress had its own program which made the Congress internally disunited. This characteristic later proved to be easily exploitable by COINTELPRO. Another member of the Black Congress was John Floyd’s Black Panther Political Party which started independently on the Black Panther Party in Oakland. The most influential organization in the Black Congress was Ron (Maulana) Karenga’s US, where in this case US is an objective pronoun with the meaning referring to “us, African Americans”. (Bloom, pp. 140-143) Bunchy Carter announced the launch of Los Angeles chapter at the poetry reading organized by the Black Congress. After reading his poems “Niggertown” and “Black Mother” Bunchy Carter declared that the imprisoned Huey Newton was the leader of the Black Liberation Struggle and that nobody, including John Floyd, is permitted to use the Black Panther logo or name without approval from the Central Committee in Oakland. This announcement forced Floyd to change the name of his group to West Coast chapter of Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee. (Bloom, pp. 143-145) After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. the Black Panther Party absorbed many of the smaller organizations and by early 1969 the Black Congress ceased to exist. The relationship between the Black Panther Party and Karenga’s US also started to be more and more hostile as the Black Panther party started to be the leading force of African American movements in Los Angeles. These two parties started to have disputes over territories of influence and US was trying to start a conflict by provoking panthers. (Alkebulan, p. 59) On the fifth of August, 1968, the chapter had its first clash with the police. During the Watts Summer Festival at Will Rogers Park a shooting occurred and six people got wounded. Police forces decided that the Panthers were to blame and tried to arrest four of the Party’s members while they were driving in a car. Because the Black Panthers refused to submit their weapons and come peacefully gunfire occurred. At the end two police officers were wounded and two Black Panthers were shot dead at the spot and one succumbed to his injuries afterwards (the Panthers were between eighteen and twenty-two years old). The last panther escaped the scene. (Tyler, pp. 65-68)

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The most important event from the chapter’s history happened on seventeenth of January, 1969. The first conflict between US and the Black Panther Party sparkled on eighteen of February, 1968, over organizing one of “Free Huey!” rallies and if the police should be allowed to provide security for the event (US wanted the police to be present, while the Black Panther Party wanted to provide the security for the event). (Bloom, p. 145) By the fall of the same year COINTELPRO was accelerating their program to undermine the influence of the Black Panther Party. (Bloom, p. 218) The memorandum to Los Angeles police from the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover written on the twenty-ninth of November, 1968, reads: “The Los Angeles Office is currently preparing an anonymous letter for Bureau approval which will be sent to the Los Angeles Black Panther Party (BPP) supposedly from a member of the US organization in which it will be stated that the youth group of the US is aware of the BPP ‘contract’ to kill Ron Karenga, leader of US, and they, US members, in retaliation, have made plans to ambush leaders of the BPP in Los Angeles. It is hoped this counterintelligence measure will result in an “US” and BPP vendetts [sic].” (COINTELPRO, Black Extremist Part 07 of 23, p. 35) As a result of COINTELPRO’s plan of pushing both groups against each other three members of US, George and Joseph Stiner, and Claude Hubert, ambushed Bunchy Carter and John Huggins outside of the Campbell Hall. Both Black Panther Party leaders succumbed to their gunshot injuries on the spot. (Bloom, p. 218) On the evening of Bunchy Carter’s and John Huggins’s death the SWAT police officers surrounded the Black Panther Party headquarters in Los Angeles (The amount of participating officers varies depending on the source of information – Black Panther For Beginners, p.45, states there were between seventy five and one hundred LAPD SWAT members while Bloom, p. 219, estimates the number to be about one hundred fifty). In the raid the police arrested all seventeen Panthers that were present in the house, including the newly widowed Ericka Huggins. (Herb and Tooks, p. 45) None of the arrested Panthers was convicted and the charges were soon dropped. (Bloom, pp. 218-219)

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19.2 Seattle Black Panther Party

The Seattle chapter, the first authorized Black Panther Party chapter outside of California, was co-founded by brothers Elmer and Aaron Dixon in April, 1968. In less than two months the Seattle chapter had over three hundred members – high school students, people, who ran poverty programs in Seattle, college students, Vietnam veterans and even a few members of Asian community. Majority of these members was in their teens and twenties and only a few were over thirty. (Seale, Seattle Chapter of the Black Panther Party) Seattle chapter also produced five issues of their own newspapers called Ministry of Information Bulletin. (Special Section Black Panther Party) The Black Panther Party members from Seattle were mainly helping with local issues in the same way the Black Panther Party did in 1966 and 1967. For example the Seattle chapter was patrolling in front of Rainier Beach High School to ensure the security of the African American students and the members of the Party were patrolling the police in the same way Bobby Seale did with Huey Newton. In May, 1968, the Seattle Black Panther Party started to come into conflict with the local police. Aaron Dixon was arrested together with one other member (Buddy Yates) for interference with an arrest, one other party member (Gary Owens) was charged for addressing the policeman as a “pig” and three members (Bobby Harding, Bobby White and Joe Atkins) were accosted and beaten by the Seattle Police. (Seale, Seattle Chapter of the Black Panther Party) The first causality of the Seattle chapter was a seventeen years old member, Welton ‘Butch’ Armstead who was shot and killed in front of his house by a policeman. (Murder of Butch Armstead) The most famous moment from the chapter’s history happened on twenty-eighth of February, 1969. A group of Panthers, led by the Black Panther party Lieutenant Elmer Dixon, mirroring Bobby Seale’s action in Sacrament from 1967, drove into the state capitol in Olympia to protest the bill that would make openly carrying a firearm in public illegal in Washington. Unlike in Sacramento the Seattle Panthers did not enter the building. (February Archives Treasure #1: Black Panther Protest Photos)

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19.3 New York City Black Panther Party

When the Black Panther Party started to expand one of their first targets was to establish a chapter in New York City’s Harlem. Harlem had a rich history with black nationalistic movements long before the Panthers were formed. In late 1910s and 1920s Marcus Mosiah Garvey had several offices of Negro Improvement Association in New York City and in the 1950s and 1960s Malcolm X lived in Harlem and had a huge influence on its people. (Bloom, p. 48) This also meant the police was prepared and was actively trying to prevent the Black Panther Party to form a chapter in New York City. (Seale, Seize the Time, p. 137) New York City’s chapter started to form a few weeks after Martin Luther King’s funeral in April, 1968, under the influence of the Black Panther Party’s captain Joudon Ford. (Bloom, p. 149) The rank of captain meant the person was generally considered to be a coordinator, teacher of revolutionary principles to new recruits, gun instructor and at the same time a someone, who was obligated to communicate with headquarters and to submit reports on daily basis. (Seale, Seize the Time, pp. 61; 213; 214; 217) As a prelude to the actual formation of the chapter The Black Panther Party’s leaders, Bobby Seale and Kathleen Cleaver, organized a benefit performance on the twentieth of May, 1968, at the Fillmore East in East Village. The aim of this event was to raise two hundred thousand dollars needed for the bail of Eldridge Cleaver and the seven Panthers arrested in the aftermath of the death of Lil’ Bobby Hutton. (Bloom, p. 149; Seale, Seize the Time, p. 137) The chapter itself was officially formed two days later in Harlem under leadership of Lumumba Abdul Shakur, the first husband of American activist Afeni Shakur. (Bloom, pp. 149-153) Other chapters in New York City included Brooklyn, Bronx, Corona, Jamaica and Washington Heights (Alkebulan, p. 85). New York City’s chapters can be used as a prime example of how the Black Panther Party was treated outside of West Coast of the United States. The Harlem’s chapter started by focusing on issues of housing, schools and welfare but unlike with other chapters the New York City’s Panthers were actively repressed by the police whenever they tried to gather. The first encounter between members of the Harlem’s Party and Police forces happened on the first of August, 1968, when two young members, seventeen and twenty years old, were trying to attract a crowd by shouting into a bullhorn and calling the police by terms, adopted by the Black Panther

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Party. After the police forces arrived both Panthers were forced to lie on the ground where they were handcuffed. The police, under pretence that the Panther were resisting the arrest, started to brutally beat them, to the point that the older of the Panthers had to be treated for head lacerations, and later arrested them for assault, harassment, and resisting arrest. Both Panthers were put on parole later that afternoon. (Bloom, pp. 154- 155) On the twenty-first of August, 1968, a group of young African-Americans, including several members of the Brooklyn Black Panther Party, ignited a pile of trash and attacked the arriving policemen and firemen with bricks, cans, stones and bottles. This incident later included looting, when several storefront windows got smashed. The police arrested seven participants of the riots. The district attorney asked the court to set an extra high bail on the some of the participants in believe that they were members of the Black Panther Party and showed a lack of respect for authorities. The judge then granted the request and set the bail to fifty thousand dollars for two members of the party and eleven thousand five hundred dollars for third one (the rioters that were not a part of the Party were granted more standard bail of one and a half thousand dollars). When a small group of Panthers went to support their co-members at a preliminary hearing they got attacked by off-duty and out-of-uniform policemen and had to be escorted by a court guard out of the building. (Bloom, pp. 156-158) The most famous event connected to the New York City’s chapter of the Black Panther Party is the trial known under names the Panther 21, the New York 21 or the New York Panther 21. At five in the morning on the second of April, 1969, the New York City police simultaneously raided five Black Panther Party houses and arrested twenty-one members of the Party. (Bloom, p. 213) The Black Panthers were arrested for events that happened earlier that year and were charged with planned coordinated bombing and long-range rifle attack. On the seventeenth of January, 1969, dynamite had been placed in three different locations in the New York City. The first location was at the Forty-fourth Precinct station in Bronx, but the dynamite was switched with a phoney in time by an undercover police agent that had infiltrated the party, so only a blasting cap exploded. The second location was Twenty-fourth Precinct station in Manhattan, where the phoney sticks had been improperly lit. The last location was at the Queens Board of Education office, where the real dynamite was said to blow a hole in the side of the

51 building by one of the informants. The same day the police arrested one Black Panther Party member, Joan Bird, near the Forty-fourth Precinct station, while two more unknown men escaped the scene. There was also found a long-range rifle that, according to informants, was intended to be used to shoot at the police officers that would be rushing out of the burning building. (Christenson, p. 349) The bombing allegations were made by three paid police informants that infiltrated the New York City’s chapter. (Bloom, p. 213) The police released eight of the arrested Party members before the trial date and charged the remaining thirteen with arson, conspiracy, and attempted murder. (Herb and Tooks, p. 54) The bail for every Party member was then set by the Judge Charles Marks to one hundred thousand dollars. While the trial was underway two of the accused Black Panthers, Richard Moore (Dharaba) and Michael Tabor (Cetewayo), fled the country (Christenson, p. 349). Among the prosecuted were also the leaders of the Harlem Black Panther Party Lumumba Shakur and his wife Afeni Shakur. (Bloom, p. 213) The trial took more than two years and at the thirteenth of May, 1971, all thirteen prosecuted Party members were acquitted of all charges. (The Courtroom Cast) These events had two major impacts on the New York City’s chapter of the Party - the party was incapacitated for two years as the leaders were in the jail (Bloom, p. 214) and the Panthers, that were prosecuted, also felt neglected by the party as most of the funds and energy was focused on “Free Huey!” and on “Free Bobby, Free Ericka!” (the reasons for the second campaign can be found in chapter 22) and they received no help from Oakland. (Christenson, p. 351) These events later lead to a separation of New York City’s Black Panther Party from the Oakland chapter as the Harlem’s leadership believed they should be more autonomous and control their own finances. (Bloom, p. 356)

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20 Survival programs

Eldridge Cleaver was released in June, 1968, on fifty thousand dollars bail. The decision granting him the release was however reversed in the November and Eldridge Cleaver decided that he will rather flee from the country to avoid the trial for the events that lead to the death of Lil’ Bobby Hutton. (Lords of the Revolution: The Black Panthers) With Huey Newton still in the prison Bobby Seale became the sole leader of the Oakland Black Panther Party. Bobby Seale had already had experience in creating community programs from the time when he was working for the North Oakland Neighborhood Service Centre in the department of Human Resources and became the main initiator in the creation of the Black Panther Party community programs. (Bloom, p. 181) From early 1969 to the disbandment of the Party in 1982 the Black Panther Party organized and ran over sixty different community programs in various cities of the United States of America. These programs, known also under the collective name survival programs, were operated by Black Panther Party members under the slogan “survival pending revolution”. (Seale, Survival Programs and COINTELPRO). The book ‘The Black Panther Party: Service to the People Programs’ quoted the description of the program from Huey Newton’s book ‘To Die for the People’ as following:

We recognized that in order to bring the people to the level of consciousness where they would seize the time, it would be necessary to serve their interests in survival by developing programs which would help them to meet their daily needs. For a long time we have had such programs not only for survival but for organizational purposes. Now we not only have a breakfast program for schoolchildren, we have clothing programs, we have health clinics which provide free medical and dental services, we have programs for prisoners and their families, and we are opening clothing and shoe factories to provide for more of the needs of the community. Most recently we have begun a testing and research program on sickle-cell anemia; and we know that 98 percent of the victims of this disease are Black. To fail to combat this disease is to submit to genocide; to battle it is survival.

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All these programs satisfy the deep needs of the community but they are not solution to our problems. That is why we call them survival programs, meaning survival pending revolution. (The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation and Hilliard, pp. 3-4)

Besides the programs mentioned by Huey Newton the Black Panther Party also ran other programs such as Community learning centre, Seniors Against a Fearful Environment (known also under an acronym SAFE), People’s Free Ambulance Service, People’s Free Employment Program, Intercommunal Service, Free Plumbing and Maintenance Program or Legal Aid and Educational Program. (The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation and Hilliard, pp. 10; 17; 21; 45; 47; 69; 78)

The first, and at the same time the most famous, community program was the Free Breakfast for Children, which began in January 1969 in church in the Fillmore district of San Francisco. (Seale, Free Breakfast For Children Program and COINTELPRO) The reason to start the Free Breakfast for Children were, according to an interview with a former party member David Lemieux, studies that showed that the children who did not had a good breakfast in the school were less attentive and suffered worse results than those, who were well fed. (The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution) The food that was cooked in the program was donated by the community and various shops and markets. Dairy farmers were donating milk that would be otherwise dumped away to guarantee a certain market price and bakeries were donating a few days old baked goods that were no longer sellable. Important were also potato skins donated by restaurants which served as a basis for hash browns. Convenience stores then donated food on a regular basis at least once a month. Some of the shop owners, who had an issue with trusting the Black Panther Party, were persuaded to donate food with the implied violence and if the Panthers were unhappy with the results their shops were boycotted by the community, firebombed or owners were beaten into cooperating. (Pearson, pp. 198-199) The first day the program opened in Oakland eleven children were served at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church. At the end of the same week the number went to one hundred and thirty-five (Bloom, p. 182). At its peak the program was employing five thousand Black Panther Party members to cook and serve the food five times a week in

54 forty-nine different cities and around six thousand children were served across the country each week. (Lords of the Revolution: The Black Panthers)

Outside of the African American communities the programs were often treated by the media as Panther’s public stunts or a way to indoctrinate the children. For example The New York Times released two articles about the breakfast program alone. The first one was released on the seventh of December, 1968, and suggested that the Free Breakfast for Children program is “a means of improving its (Party’s) image” while the second article, that was released on the fifteenth of June, 1969, was titled “Black Panthers Serving Youngsters a Diet of Food and Politics.”. (Russonello) COINTELPRO Official, G. C. Moore, evaluated the Free Breakfast for Children in an official Memorandum on the fourth of June, 1969, as:

“They (the Free Breakfast for Children programs) were started to instill [sic] poisonous propaganda into the minds of small children. It is the same trick used by communists, fascists, and other totalitarians for centuries … Before any additional well-intentioned, uninformed “humanitarian” attempt to aid this so called party, they had better acquaint themselves with the pressure techniques, the illegality, the violence, and the racist activities of the group itself. The attempts to poison the minds of the black children of this country will fail… This group must be continually exposed for what it is and not for what it is not, and that is representative of the black man. [sic]” (COINTELPRO Black Extremist Part 16 of 23, pp. 32-34)

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21 Fred Hampton

In December, 1968, Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, was negotiating a working alliance and a potential merging of the parties with Jeff Fort, a leader of a black street gang that was known as the Black P. Stone Nation. (Churchill, p. 135) The Black P. Stone Nation was originally formed at the start of 1960s and at the time the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party formed in its neighbourhood it had already had a membership between thirty-five hundred and eight thousand members. The Black P. Stone Nation was also involved in a number of illegal activities, including drug trafficking and extortion. COINTELPRO tried to reproduce its successful strategy by pushing two black nationalist groups against each other as they managed to do in Los Angles but the results were not what they expected. Although the merger was prevented both Fred Hampton and Jeff Fort were aware that the government might be involved and the violence between two groups was prevented. (Bloom, pp. 227-229) The COINTELPRO however evaluated Fred Hampton as a dangerous and charismatic leader and started to look for a way to get rid of him. In the middle of November, 1969, COINTELPRO specialist Roy Mitchell recruited William O’Neal to infiltrate the Illinois chapter. William O’Neal quickly became a personal bodyguard of Fred Hampton and a chief of security for the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party. His new position allowed him to give FBI a detailed floor plan of the panther “pad” (an apartment ran by the Black Panther Party that was under nonstop surveillance by the party, served as a hideout and usually accommodated around ten Party’s members at a time (The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution)) where Fred Hampton lived together with his girlfriend and other members of the Party. Shortly before the police raid, that was planned on the fourth of December, 1969, William O’Neal slipped a substantial dose of secobarbital (a strong sedative) in the Hampton’s drink, making him comatose and unable to respond. (Churchill, p. 136-140) Around four in the morning a fourteen-man police team, armed with submachine guns, raided the panther “pad”. Deborah Johnson (Fred Hampton’s girlfriend at the time) and Blair Anderson, who was present at the panther “pad” at the time, both described the attack as sudden and agreed that the police forces started to fire without any warning through the door of the apartment and proceeded to the bedroom where

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Fred Hampton was sleeping. Several police officers then started to shoot through the wall and the closed door of the bedroom in the general direction of the bed where they were informed Fred Hampton slept. (The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution) This description was later confirmed by the evidence that showed all the bullets came from one direction. (Lords of the Revolution: The Black Panthers) During the raid Fred Hampton was shot three times from outside of the room and then twice more in the head at point-black range. Mark Clark, another member of the Party that was present in the panther “pad”, was killed as well and three members were wounded by the gunfire. All surviving members of the Party were then handcuffed, beaten and charged with aggressive assault and attempted murder. (Churchill, p. 140) Although the police fired over ninety bullets and two Panthers died the grand jury later returned no indictments against the police. (Herb and Tooks, p. 72) The death of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark was not an isolated phenomenon. From the spring 1967 to early 1969 nineteen members of the Black Panther Party were killed and more than a thousand were arrested. In 1969 alone twenty-seven Black Panthers were killed by the government forces and seven hundred forty-nine were jailed or arrested. (Herb and Tooks, p. 73)

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22 The murder of Alex Rackley and the New Haven Black Panther trials

“The Rackley case became one of the most controversial Panther cases of all, a prime example of the question of which illegal activities could be blamed on genuine party leaders, and which on agents-provocateurs or just plain deviants in the party.” (Pearson, p. 194)

On the seventeenth of May, 1969, the Black Panther Field Marshal George Sams arrived with the chapter’s recruit from New York City, Alex Rackley, to the New Haven in Connecticut. George Sams had a record of severe violation of Party’s policy about using drugs and openly drinking while serving as a member of New York’s chapter. He was also previously accused of beating and raping a female Party member when she refused to have sex with him and was expelled from the Party for stabbing another Black Panther in Oakland. Stokely Carmichael however personally requested his reinstatement to the party, due to the fact, that George Sams previously served as his bodyguard. Shortly after arriving in New Haven George Sams accused Alex Rackley of being an FBI informant and with the help of two Black Panther Party members, Warren Kimbro and Lonnie McLucas, tied him to a chair. The body of Alex Rackley was found three days later, on the twentieth of May, 1969. (Bloom, pp. 247-249) The FBI received the word about the murder on the twenty-first of May, 1969. The official reports stated that: “The examination of the afore mentioned body indicated that the victim (who was already identified as Alex Rackley in the report) shot [sic] once thought the forehead, once through the chest, stab and burns were observed about the body of the victim.” (AR - 69.05.22 - Investigation of the Homicide of Alex Rackley) The raid on the New Haven chapter’s headquarters, where Alex Rackley was tortured, was conducted the following day, on the twenty-second and the police arrested Ericka Huggins, Warren Kimbro, Lonnie McLucas and five other members of the Black Panther Party. Sams was arrested in early August in a gun incident and on the basis of his testimony the police also arrested the Chairman of the Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale. (Bloom, pp. 249-250) While in the custody George Sams, Warren Kimbro (who shot Alex Rackley to the head) and Lonnie McLucas (who caused the gunshot wound to the chest) got offered

58 light sentences for turning state’s evidence and pining the murder on Panther higher- ups. George Sams and Warren Kimbro agreed with the deal and both served four years before being released. Lonnie McLucas was the only one who maintained the innocence of party leaders and was slated to face trial. (Bloom, p. 250) The trial of Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins officially began in October 1970 (the five party members got their charges dropped) and the jury selection took six weeks, which was a record at the time. (Bisbort, Bobby Seale’s Shadow) Because Bobby Seale’s attorney, Charles Garry, was undergoing a surgery and the judge refused to postpone the trial he demanded a right to defend himself. (Bloom, pp. 251-252) When it was time to make the opening statement Bobby Seale stood up but the judge ordered him to sit down. Bobby Seale responded to this with: “If you deny my rights I see you only as a racist, a fascist and a bigot.” (Lords of the Revolution: The Black Panthers) and “You have George Washington and Benjamin Franklin sitting in a picture behind you, and they were slave owners… You are acting in the same manner, denying me my constitutional rights.” (Bloom, p. 252) After several days of similar speeches and exchanges with the judge Bobby Seale was ordered to be gagged and chained to his chair for the rest of the trial. (The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution) The courtroom sketches of gagged and chained Bobby Seale were soon released outside of the courtroom, causing outrage in the public. (Lords of the Revolution: The Black Panthers) On the twenty-fifth of May, 1971, after two years in prison, the judge dismissed all charges against both Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins for lack of sufficient evidence. (Pearson, p. 235-236) The Black Panther Party’s lawyer, Michael Koskoff, however wrote:

“As far as the Panthers were concerned, the trial was less successful, nationally, it revealed a part of them they didn’t want people to see. In Connecticut itself, the Panthers were destroyed, which of course was what J. Edgar Hoover wanted.” (Bisbort, Bobby Seale's Shadow - continued)

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23 The demise of the Black Panther Party

With Eldridge Cleaver in exile, Huey Newton incarcerated for killing the police officer John Frey and Bobby Seale awaiting the trial in New Haven the leader of the Black Panther Party became David Hilliard, the Chief of Staff of the Oakland Black Panther Party. (Bloom, p. 344) With the rapid growth of the Party and the impossibility to train the new members properly in the same way as it was done when the party had just a handful of members the Black Panther Party was riddled with agents and provocateurs. To tighten the security and to get rid of unwanted elements in the Party the Central Committee decided to conduct several purges amongst the membership. The first purge was done in January, 1969. During the purge the Black Panther Party was not accepting any new members and the members that were found undisciplined, embarrassing to the party, and “contrarevolutionary” were publicly expunged in the Black Panther Party’s newspapers. (Bloom, pp. 344-346) The tension between the Black Panther Party chapters, Party’s allied support and the central committee had three main factors. The first one was that the FBI and the COINTELPRO switched their focus from raid and arrests of the members, which were helping the party to gain the support of the public, to more subtle actions. Instead of the direct repression the government organization sought to sow internal conflicts through agent provocateurs and foster impolitic violence. The leaders of local chapters were also often facing trials for actions of other subordinates as could had been seen in the previous chapter. The second factor why the tension was raising was the success of the Party in courtrooms which created a conflict between promoting insurrection and maintaining the Party’s image. According to Bobby Seale the Black Panther Party was winning ninety-five percent of their courtroom cases between 1968 and 1971 (Seale, Survival Programs and COINTELPRO) which was showing that the Black Panthers could get justice in court and not only by the armed resistance and shootouts with the police forces. The last factor, which was probably the most important, was the shift of party’s politics and the Party’s focus. From 1967 to 1969 forty-five percent of political editorial articles in the Party’s newspapers were advocating the “revolution now”. In 1970 the

60 number jumped to sixty-five percent just to drop to sixteen percent by 1971 and to less than one percent between 1972 and 1973. On the other hand the articles that were advocating the “traditional politics” were more and more common. Between 1967 and 1969 there were only seven percent of such articles and the number dropped below four percent in 1970, compared to thirty-two in 1971 and almost sixty-seven between 1972 and 1973. Thanks to this shift the more and more allies (such as anti-war activists and black moderates) were less willing to support the party. (Bloom, pp. 365-369)

After Huey Newton got released from the prison on the fifteenth of August, 1970, the Black Panther Party got back its original leader after more than three years. Huey Newton however surprised many by softening his militant stance and “rejecting the rhetoric of the gun.” Instead of the “Black Messiah”, J. Edgar Hoover was so afraid about, the Party got Huey Newton who was supporting the community programs. (Lords of the Revolution: The Black Panthers) As it turned out Huey Newton also proved to be a very poor public speaker who tended toward lecturing more than dynamic speeches, which were expected from him. (Pearson, pp. 226-227) Huey Newton continued with the purges and on the twenty-third of January, 1971, expelled the leadership of the Los Angeles Black Panther party for requesting money from the Party to pay for a trial of one of its leaders. (Bloom, p. 360) Later, on the twenty-first of February, 1971, the all members of New York Panther 21 were expelled from the Black Panther Party for an open letter that was questioning the distribution of money in the Party. (Bloom, p. 361) Around the same time as Huey Newton got released from the prison Eldridge Cleaver surfaced, after more than two years underground, in Algeria, where he started an international branch of the Black Panther Party. According to Kathleen Cleaver the original idea for this branch was to train people in guerrilla tactics and send them back to the United States. Unlike Huey Newton Eldridge Cleaver was still supporting the armed revolution as the only way the Party should take. (Lords of the Revolution: The Black Panthers) Kathleen Cleaver later explained that:

“Those people who were on the other side of this issue politically did not see the Black Panther Party as a vehicle for social service. We saw it as vehicle for political transformation, radical change, for revolution. So we couldn’t get excited about survival.” (The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution)

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The FBI saw this ideological split as an opportunity and started forging letters. Huey Newton was given letters that were saying that Eldridge Cleaver was trying to kill him and accusing certain people of being informants. At the same time Eldridge Cleaver was receiving letters that Huey Newton disrespected him or that he is distancing himself from him. (Lords of the Revolution: The Black Panthers) This dispute came to conclusion on the twentieth of March, 1971, when Huey Newton arranged a phone call with Eldridge Cleaver to promote an upcoming rally and to show the party was not split ideologically. In the public phone call Eldridge Cleaver did not follow Huey Newton’s plan and openly criticized Party’s politics, expulsion of Panther 21 and Los Angeles leadership and chose to denounce David Hilliard, blaming him for Party’s problems and ineffectiveness. (Herb and Tooks, pp. 95-96) Ten minutes later Huey Newton called Eldridge Cleaver back and notified him, unaware that Eldridge Cleaver was recording the call, that he had expelled him and the whole international section of the Party. (The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution) Huey Newton later wrote a chapter about Eldridge Cleaver in his second book, Revolutionary Suicide, in 1973, which started with:

“A revolutionary party is under continual stress from both internal and external forces. By its very nature a political organization dedicated to social change invites attack from the established order, constantly vigilant to destroy it. This danger is taken for granted by the committed revolutionary. … But he has two far greater enemies – the failure of vision and the loss of the original revolutionary concept. Either of these can lead to alienation from those the revolutionary seeks to set free. Eldridge Cleaver was guilty of both.” (p. 328)

Following the expulsion of the international section the party split into two different factions – the pro-Newton Black Panthers and the much more radical pro-Cleaver Black Liberation Army. This split led to violent clashes between the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. The most famous are the killing of Robert Webb by pro- Newton Panthers, torture and death of Samuel Napier by the Black Liberation Army and the execution of Fred Benett, head if the East Oakland chapter, who was suspected of turning pro-Cleaver. (Pearson, pp. 231-232)

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By early 1971 Huey Newton moved into a luxury penthouse apartment in Oakland’s Lake Merritt which caused an outrage amongst the Black Panther Party membership and allies. (Pearson, p. 231) When Bobby Seale came out of prison the Black Panther Party was down to twenty-eight chapters. At this time Huey Newton was addicted to cocaine and decided to change his title from Minister of Defense to Supreme Commander (Lords of the Revolution: The Black Panthers) (Huey Newton later changed this title to Servant of the People and then to the Supreme Servant of the People (Pearson, p. 227)) Later that year Huey Newton stated to David Hilliard that “the Party is over.” (Bloom, p. 381) By 1972 the Black Panther Party was down to less than two hundred members. (Herb and Tooks, p. 100) In attempt to consolidate the Party the Central Committee of the Black Panther Party decided to run Bobby Seale for Mayor of Oakland in 1973. All out-of-Oakland chapters were ordered to close all of their programs and move as many Party members as possible to Oakland. Bobby Seale received the second-most votes of all candidates but ultimately lost in a run-off with John Reading. (The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution)

In October 1973 Huey Newton expelled his childhood friend, and a former leader of the party, David Hilliard from the Party. (Pearson, p. 263) In summer, 1974, Bobby Seale left the party as well. According to Elaine Brown Huey Newton got angry about a remark Bobby Seale made and started yelling insults at him. He then ordered Bobby Seale to take off his shirt and proceeded to deliver twenty lashes to Bobby Seale’s back with a bullwhip. (Herb and Tooks, pp. 104-105) According to other sources Huey Newton then proceeded to sodomize Bobby Seale so violently that he needed a surgeon. (Pearson, p. 264) Bobby Seale however denied similar accusations that were suggesting that they were ever less than friends with Huey Newton (Kahli) and stated that he had left the Party because Huey Newton wanted to take over the drug trade in California. (Lords of the Revolution: The Black Panthers) Following the departure of Bobby Seale the Black Panther Party suffered a long and painful demise with the last office closing in 1982. (Bloom, p. 389)

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Conclusion

The story of the Black Panther Party is a story of a group that decided to pick an enemy that was powerful beyond their imagination. The police raids and the killing of Party’s members helped the Party to be known to the wide public and to attract members all-around of the United States. The Black Panther Party’s newspapers were completing this picture by always showing the Black Panther Party as heroes, who were risking their lives for people on daily basis to help the people against the oppressive government. Once the FBI switched the strategy the Panthers started to unknowingly destroy their own organization from within. The constant treat of other members being on the government’s payroll as informants and provocateurs was causing a mass paranoia in the Party. Huey Newton, who was seen as the promised messiah and the leader of an upcoming revolution by a lot of Party’s members, then finished the job by believing in his own superiority and by treating the Party as his personal gang. On one hand the Black Panther Party was feeding the kids, helping with education of the underprivileged communities and offering other services to the people they wanted to help, while at the same time they were preaching nationwide unrest, riots and a revolution within the United States of America to archive their goals.

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List of references

Cited sources (printed)

Alkebulan, Paul. Survival Pending Revolution: the History of the Black Panther Party. The University of Alabama Press, 2012.

Bloom, Joshua, and Waldo E. Martin. Black against Empire: the History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, with a New Preface. University of California Press, 2016.

Boyd, Herb, and Lance Tooks. Black Panthers for Beginners. For Beginners LLC, 2015.

Carson, Clayborne. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Harvard University Press, 1981.

Christenson, Ron. Political Trials in History: from Antiquity to the Present. Transaction Publishers, 1991.

The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, and David Hilliard. The Black Panther Party: Service to the People Programs. University of New Mexico Press, 2008.

Newton, Huey P., and J. Herman. Blake. Revolutionary Suicide. Writers and Readers Publishing, 1995.

Pearson, Hugh. The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America. Perseus Books, 1994.

Cited sources (digital)

“AR - 69.05.22 - Investigation of the Homicide of Alex Rackley.” FBI Docs, fbidocs.com/ar-690522.

“Armed Black Militants Protest At The California Capitol, May 2 1967.” YouTube, Youtube, 7 July 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD3uemBXG74. Accessed 24 Mar. 2018.

“BIOGRAPHY.” Ericka Huggins Official Website, www.erickahuggins.com/bio. Accessed 11 Mar. 2018.

“The Black Panther Black Community News Service.” The Black Panther Black Community News Service [Oakland], 25 April 1967, http://basicsnews.ca/bppdenzildowell/. Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.

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“The Black Panther Black Community News Service.” The Black Panther Black Community News Service [Oakland], 15 May 1967, www.basicsnews.ca/the-black- panther-may-15-1967-vol-1-no-2/. Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.

“The Black Panther Black Community News Service.” The Black Panther Black Community News Service [Oakland], 16 March 1968. The Freedom Archives, www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC513_scans/BPP_Paper/513.BPP.IC N.V2.N1.March.16.1968.pdf. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.

“The Black Panther Black Community News Service.” The Black Panther Black Community News Service [Oakland], 15 May 1967, www.basicsnews.ca/the-black- panther-may-15-1967-vol-1-no-2/. Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.

“Black Panther Party Platform and Program.” History of the Black Panther Party, web.stanford.edu/group/blackpanthers/history.shtml. Accessed 27 Feb. 2018.

The Black Panther Party. “Huey! (1968) [Black Panther Party Documentary Film] HD.” YouTube, YouTube, 21 Nov. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=euA6Q1XDTio. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.

“Black Panther Party Program: March 29, 1972 Platform.” The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service, 13 May 1972, archive.org/download/blackpanthers10Pnt/blackpanthers10Pnt.jpg. Accessed 29 Feb. 2018.

“Black Panther Greatest Threat to U.S. Security” Desert Sun [Palm Springs, California], 16 July 1969, https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=DS19690716. Accessed 15 Mar. 2018.

COINTELPRO Black Extremist Part 01 of 23. FBI Records: The Vault, FBI, 5 May 2011, vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black- extremists-part-01-of/view. Accessed 10 Mar. 2018.

COINTELPRO Black Extremist Part 07 of 23. FBI Records: The Vault, FBI, 5 May 2011, vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black- extremists-part-07-of/view. Accessed 10 Mar. 2018.

COINTELPRO Black Extremist Part 16 of 23. FBI Records: The Vault, FBI, 5 May 2011, vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black- extremists-part-12/view. Accessed 10 Mar. 2018.

COINTELPRO. FBI Records: The Vault, FBI, 5 May 2011, vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro. Accessed 10 Mar. 2018.

COINTELPRO. The Freedom Archives, 3 Sept. 2001. The Freedom Archives, www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/Black%20Liberation%20Disk/Black%20 Power!/SugahData/Government/COINTELPRO.S.pdf. Accessed 12 Mar. 2018.

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“Donna Murch.” Murch, Donna, Rutgers School of Arts and Science, history.rutgers.edu/faculty-directory/249-murch-donna. Accessed 7 Mar. 2018.

“Footnotes.” Revolutionary Suicide: Controlling the Myth of Huey P. Newton, American Studies at the University of Virginia, www.xroads.virginia.edu/~ug01/barillari/footnotes.html#29. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.

“Free Huey! ‘You Can Jail a Revolutionary, But You Can't Jail the Revolution.’” Revolutionary Suicide: Controlling the Myth of Huey P. Newton, American Studies at the University of Virginia, www.xroads.virginia.edu/~ug01/barillari/pantherchap2.html. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.

The John Brown Society. “An Introduction To The Black Panther Party.” Michigan State University: MSU Libraries, archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/AmRad/introblackpanther.pdf. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.

“Police Officer John F. Frey.” The Officer Down Memorial Page: Remembering All of Law Enforcement's Heroes, The Officer Down Memorial Page, Inc, www.odmp.org/officer/reflections/5125-police-officer-john-f-frey. Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.

“Special Section Black Panther Party.” Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project, University of Washington, depts.washington.edu/civilr/BPP_documents.htm. Accessed 15 Mar. 2018.

“The Courtroom Cast.” New York Magazine, 29 May 1972, pp. 53–54.. Accessed 12 Mar. 2018.

Bisbort, Alan. “Bobby Seale's Shadow - continued.” Gadfly Online., www.gadflyonline.com/home/8-6-01/FTR-bobbyseale2.HTML. Accessed 20 Mar. 2018

Bisbort, Alan. “Bobby Seale's Shadow.” Gadfly Online., www.gadflyonline.com/home/8-6-01/FTR-bobbyseale.HTML. Accessed 20 Mar. 2018

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, PBS Distribution, 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2rOVk0uoWM&t=6394s. Accessed 1 Mar. 2018.

Churchill, Ward. The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent. South End Press, 1990. Barry Krusch, https://www.krusch.com/books/kennedy/Cointelpro_Papers.pdf. Accessed 10 Mar. 2018.

Coleman, Kate. “Souled Out: Eldridge Cleaver Admits He Ambushed Those Cops.” New West, 12 May 1980. COLEMANTRUTH: The work of Kate Coleman, http://colemantruth.net/kate1.pdf. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.

Davenport, Dawn. “Honky.” Urban Dictionary, 27 Oct. 2004, www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=honky. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.

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Gates, Henry Louis. “Interview With Eldridge Cleaver | The Two Nations of Black America.” Frontline, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/race/interviews/ecleaver.html. Accessed 7 Mar. 2018.

IntelligentChannel. “Marlon Brando Eulogizes Black Panther Bobby Hutton (1968) - from the EDUCATION ARCHIVE.” YouTube, YouTube, 15 Nov. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g05Sb9CcnE. Accessed 7 Mar. 2018.

Jennings, Billy X. “Remembering the Black Panther Party Newspaper, April 25, 1967- September 1980.” San Francisco Bay View, 4 May 2015, www.sfbayview.com/2015/05/remembering-the-black-panther-party-newspaper-april- 25-1967-september-1980/. Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.

Josephs, Samuel. “Whose Revolution Is This? Gender's Divisive Role in the Black Panther Party.” HeinOnline, 2008, heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/grggenl9&div=17&id=&page= . Accessed 12 Mar. 2018.

KQEDart. “H. Rap Brown & Stokely Carmichael in Oakland (1968) | KQED Archives.” YouTube, YouTube, 11 Feb. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym0h6NusUw0. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.

KRON News. “Eldridge Cleaver on Guarding Betty Shabazz (Updated over a Year Ago).” Eldridge Cleaver on Guarding Betty Shabazz - San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive, San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive, 2 Nov. 2012, diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/209117. Accessed 27 Feb. 2018

McCurdy, Devon. “Forty Acres and a Mule.” The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed, University of Washington, www.blackpast.org/aah/forty-acres-and-mule. Accessed 22 Feb. 2018

“Murder of Butch Armstead” Black Panther Party Seattle Chapter Peoples News Service [Oakland], November 1969, http://depts.washington.edu/civilr3/pdf/bpp/bpp2.pdf. Accessed 15 Mar. 2018

Newton, Huey P. “War Against The Panthers: a Study Of Repression In America.” University of California, Santa Cruz, 1980, Libcom, libcom.org/files/WATP.pdf. Accessed 17 Mar. 2018.

Newton, Huey. “The Revolutionary Communalism of the Black Panther Party.“ Boston College, 18 November 1970. Translationcollective, Accessed 1 Mar. 2018.https://translationcollective.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/intercommunalism.pdf. Accessed 23 Feb. 2018.

PBS. “Eyes On The Prize - (Part 9) Power! 1967–1968.“ Youtube, YouTube. 15 Apr. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ktcv6BOL38. Accessed 20 Feb. 2018.

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Randall, Kahli. “Former Black Panther Draws Crowd of More than 600.” University of Michigan: The University Record, 23 Jan. 1996, www.ur.umich.edu/9596/Jan23_96/artcl20.htm. Accessed 22 Mar. 2018

Russonello, Giovanni. “Fascination and Fear: Covering the Black Panthers.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 Oct. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/us/black-panthers-50-years.html. Accessed 16 Mar. 2018

Schaffer, Cliff. “California Drug and Marijuana Arrests, 1960-67.” Schaffer Library of Drug Policy, www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/moscone/chap1.htm. Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.

Seale, Bobby. About “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins. Facebook, 6 Sept. 2017, 9:40 p.m., https://www.facebook.com/bobby.seale01/posts/10155813133234558. Accessed 22 Feb. 2018.

Seale, Bobby. About Lil’ Bobby Hutton. Facebook, 21 Feb. 2018, 10:12 p.m., https://www.facebook.com/bobby.seale01/posts/10156281089614558. Accessed 22 Feb. 2018.

Seale, Bobby. Free Breakfast For Children Program and COINTELPRO. Facebook, 18 Nov. 2017, 10:26 p. m., https://www.facebook.com/bobby.seale01/posts/10156016582009558. Accessed 22 Feb. 2018.

Seale, Bobby. Seattle Chapter of the Black Panther Party. Facebook, 20 Aug. 2017, 10:16 p.m., https://www.facebook.com/bobby.seale01/posts/10155763415749558. Accessed 22 Feb. 2018.

Seale, Bobby. Seize The Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party. Libcom, https://libcom.org/files/STT.pdf. Accessed 10 Mar. 2018.

Seale, Bobby. Survival Programs and COINTELPRO. Facebook, 14 Feb. 2018, 11:55 p.m., https://www.facebook.com/bobby.seale01/posts/10156261496819558. Accessed 22 Feb. 2018.

Seale, Bobby. The Chapters of the Black Panther Party. Facebook, 2 Mar. 2018, 3:24 a.m., https://www.facebook.com/bobby.seale01/posts/10156305562084558. Accessed 2 Mar. 2018.

Tyler, Bruce. The Rise and Decline of the Watts Summer Festival, 1965 to 1986. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40642389. Accessed 12 Mar. 2018.

Williams, Landon. “THE BLACK PANTHER - MIRROR OF THE PEOPLE.” The Black Panther - Mirror Of The People, www.itsabouttimebpp.com/our_stories/Chapter3/BPP_Mirror_of_the_People.html. Accessed 27 Feb. 2018.

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Wyman, Kim. “February Archives Treasure #1: Black Panther Protest Photos.” From Our Corner: Washington Secretary of State Blog, 11 Feb. 2015, blogs.sos.wa.gov/FromOurCorner/index.php/2015/02/february-archives-treasure-1- black-panther-protest-photos/. Accessed 15 Mar. 2018

Secondary sources (printed)

Brown, Elaine. A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story. Anchor Books , 1992.

Cleaver, Eldridge, and Ishmael Reed. Soul on Ice. Dell Publ., 1999.

Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. Bantam Books, 1987.

Hilliard, David, and Lewis Cole. This Side of Glory: the Autobiography of David Hilliard and the Story of the Black Panther Party. Little, Brown and Company, 1993.

Hrubec, Marek. Martin Luther King Proti Nespravedlnosti. Filosofia, 2010.

Liberatore, Paul. The Road to Hell: the True Story of George Jackson, Stephen Bingham, and the San Quentin Massacre. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1996.

Ture, Kwame, and Charles V. Hamilton. Black Power: the Politics of Liberation in America. Vintage Books, 1992.

Viorst, Milton. Fire in the Streets: America in the 1960's. Simon and Schuster, 1979.

Secondary sources (digital)

“Black Panther Newspapers - Index 2 (1969, 1970).” It's About Time: Black Panther Party Legacy & Alumni, www.itsabouttimebpp.com/BPP_Newspapers/bpp_newspapers_index_2.html. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.

COINTELPRO Black Extremist Part 11 of 23. FBI Records: The Vault, FBI, 5 May 2011, https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black- extremists-part-09-of/view. Accessed 10 Mar. 2018.

“The Revolutionary ‘Intercommunalism’ of Huey P. Newton, Black Panther.” e-Flux Conversations, e-Flux, 27 Oct. 2017, conversations.e-flux.com/t/the-revolutionary- intercommunalism-of-huey-p-newton-black-panther/7255. Accessed 2 Mar. 2018.

Beale, Andrew, and Cassady Rosenblum. “The Black Panther Party's Ten-Point Program, 50 Years Later.” Oakland North, 4 Nov. 2016, oaklandnorth.net/2016/11/04/the-black-panther-partys-ten-point-program-50-years- later/. Accessed 27 Feb. 2018.

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Chiles, Nick. “8 Black Panther Party Programs That Were More Empowering Than Federal Government Programs.” Atlanta Black Star, 26 Mar. 2015, atlantablackstar.com/2015/03/26/8-black-panther-party-programs-that-were-more- empowering-than-federal-government-programs/. Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.

Cleaver, Eldridge. On the Indeology of the Black Panther Party. The Freedom Archives, https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/Black%20Liberation%20Disk/Bla ck%20Power!/SugahData/Books/Cleaver.S.pdf. Accessed 8 Mar 2018.

Doniphan , Blair. “The Black Panther Filmography.” CineSOURCE Magazine, 16 May 2015, www.cinesourcemagazine.com/index.php?/site/comments/reviewing_the_black_panther _filmography/. Accessed 27 Feb. 2018.

Lords of the Revolution: The Black Panthers, VH1 Productions, 2009, www.youtube.com/watch?v=EukElITplo4&t=2198s. Accessed 1 Mar. 2018.

McGhee, Dawn. “New York 21 - Black Panther Party Reel (SD).” YouTube, YouTube, 23 May 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d3E6LuCeVQ. Accessed 5 Mar. 2018.

Perkins, Robert. “Some Truth About The Black Panthers.” YouTube, YouTube, 24 Sept. 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tlw_Kp0By10. Accessed 3 Mar. 2018.

PBS. “ Eyes On The Prize - (Part 12) A Nation of Law 1968–1971.“ YouTube, YouTube. 15 Apr. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1BlbVOOH7I. Accessed 20 Feb. 2018.

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List of appendices

Figure 1 - What We Want, What We Believe (1966) Figure 2 – Huey Newton seated in a wicker chair Figure 3 - Black Panthers in Sacramento Figure 4 - Huey Newton in hospital following the incident with Officer John Frey

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Figure 1

What We Want, What We Believe (1966)

(The Black Panther Party - Ten-Point Program and Platform, October 1966; Retrieved from: https://archive.org/download/Blackpntrs10Pnt.66/Blackpntrs10Pnt.66.jpg)

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Figure 2

Huey Newton seated in a wicker chair

(Huey Newton seated in a wicker chair, 1967; Retrieved from: https://www.pbagalleries.com/view- auctions/catalog/id/334/lot/101836/Large-poster-of-Huey-P-Newton-for-the-Black- Panthers-the-famous-photograph-of-him-seated-in-a-wicker-chair-with-two-weapons)

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Figure 3

Black Panthers in Sacramento

(Lil’ Bobby Hutton carrying a shotgun (left) and Bobby Seale carrying Executive Mandate Number One at the state Capitol in Sacramento, May 1967; Retrieved from: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/474144667003318871)

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Figure 4

Huey Newton in hospital following the incident with Officer John Frey

(Huey Newton handcuffed to the hospital gurney; Retrieved from: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug01/barillari/pantherchap2.html)

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