Black Against Empire

by Joshua Bloom

  NOW TURN THE RECORD OVER AND PLAY THE OTHER SIDE

  I have tried to mislead you. I am not humble at all. I have no humility and I do not fear you in the least. If I pretend to be shy, if I appear to hesitate, it is only a sham to deceive. By playing the humble part, I sucker my fellow men in and seduce them of their trust. And then, if it suits my advantage, I lower the boom—mercilessly. I lied when I stated that I had no sense of myself. . . . My vanity is as vast as the scope of a dream, my heart is that of a tyrant, my arm is the arm of the Executioner. . . . I wish to be the Voice of Doom itself. I am angry at the insurgents of Watts. They have pulled the covers off me and revealed to all what potential may lie behind my Tom Smile.18

  Beverly responded in kind:

  I know you little and I know you much, but whichever way it goes, I accept you. Your manhood comes through in a thousand ways, rare and wonderful. I’m out in the world, with an infinity of choices. You don’t have to wonder if I’m grasping at something because I have no real measuring stick. I accept you.

  About the other side of the record: Did you really think I didn’t know? Another facet of the crystal might be an apter term. I have a few facets myself. I do not fear you, I know you will not hurt me. Your hatred is large, but not nearly so vast as you sometimes imagine; it can be used, but it can also be soothed and softened.19

  In this reply, Beverly expresses more than personal love and acceptance. She embraces Cleaver’s humanity, and in doing so, expresses her own. She not only accepts Cleaver’s rage, but suggests it can be softened. She sees herself as righting the racial wrongs he has suffered. By validating his humanity, she is standing up to the racism that denied it. Like Cleaver’s, her love is political as well as personal. As a civil rights lawyer, she dedicates her life to fighting for justice. In loving Cleaver and validating his humanity, she seeks to challenge the social injustices that deny him his humanity.

  Eldridge understood that Beverly needed him as much as he needed her. He was aware that Beverly wanted to see her love of him as politically righteous. He saw their romance as politically transformative rather than simply individual, and appealed to Beverly in these terms:

  It is not that we are making each other up and it is not ourselves alone who are involved in what is happening to us. It is really a complex movement taking place of which we are mere parts. We represent historical forces and it is really these forces that are coalescing and moving toward each other. And it is not a fraud, forced out of desperation. We live in a disoriented, deranged social structure, and we have transcended its barriers in our own ways and have stepped psychologically outside its madness and repressions.20

  Beverly took a keen interest in Eldridge’s writings, and because prison authorities prohibited Cleaver from distributing his essays, she smuggled the manuscripts out of prison, hidden inside legal documents. She brought them to Edward Keating, the publisher of Ramparts, who was impressed by Cleaver’s work.21 He shared Cleaver’s writings with luminaries such as Norman Mailer and Norman Podhoretz, who in turn praised the work. Amid these successes, Cleaver, still in prison, asked Axelrod to marry him.22 By the time Cleaver was released on parole in December 1966, having spent nine years in the penitentiary, he had a job as a writer at Ramparts, a publisher for his book—and a fiancée.23 The book, Soul on Ice, a collection of Cleaver’s prison writings, was published in February 1968 and became an instant sensation, selling more than a million copies within months and eventually several million.24

  The mid-1960s in the United States were a time of intense exploration of questions of race and sexuality. As Jim Crow crumbled, people increasingly challenged the boundaries of racial segregation, including the powerful taboos against interracial sex. In finding legitimate love from Beverly Axelrod, a white woman, Cleaver saw a powerful form of redemption: refusing to play Uncle Tom, he was able to be his “terrible” true masculine self. In entering into this relationship, Cleaver considered himself to be striking a fatal blow to white supremacy. Soul on Ice also depicts the relationship as a means for Axelrod to help transform society. Not only does she help him find “liberation” in his portrayal, she gets to be “a rebel, a revolutionary”—a different kind of white woman.25 Through her romance with him, Beverly realizes her particular humanity, crossing over the line from participating in the oppressive system to becoming a revolutionary. More generally, Cleaver’s writings suggest that by embracing each other and sharing the commitment to destroy the oppressive system, black and white revolutionaries could realize their humanity.

  Parts of Soul on Ice are deeply misogynist and sexist—a disturbing aspect of the text that received insufficient attention amid its initial embrace by a primarily masculinist literary establishment. In the essay “On Becoming,” Cleaver claimed that after the Till murder, when he was back on the street, he had become a rapist, first practicing on black women and then repeatedly raping white women “as an insurrectionary act.” “It delighted me,” wrote Cleaver, “that I was defying and trampling upon the white man’s law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women.” Upon his return to prison, Cleaver wrote, he became deeply ashamed and believed that he had gone astray “not so much from the white man’s law as from being human.”26 While it is impossible to measure Cleaver’s sincerity, this is the story with which Cleaver presented himself to the world—and the story sold.

  Now a well-known author, Cleaver cultivated a growing coterie of Left-Progressive friends and supporters, notably in the Bay Area. Unlike most other black nationalist organizations, the Panthers embraced cross-racial politics. In practical terms, Cleaver played a crucial role in helping the Party forge powerful alliances with nonblack individuals and organizations.

  By the time of the action in Sacramento, Cleaver was becoming increasingly involved in Panther activities. As the Panthers’ needs for legal assistance and financial support grew, Cleaver’s connections to Beverly Axelrod and Ramparts became increasingly important. Cleaver was still on parole and had made a point of attending the Sacramento action as a reporter rather than a Party member. At the time of his arrest, he was unarmed, carrying only a camera. Still newly out of prison, Cleaver now faced a revocation of parole because of his arrest in Sacramento. Axelrod represented Cleaver in court, arguing that Cleaver had been arrested with the other Panthers only because he was black. To support her argument, she pointed out that a black woman from Sacramento with no affiliation with the Black Panthers had also been arrested because she happened to be black and happened to be in the same place at the same time.27 The district attorney acknowledged that Cleaver had been carrying only a camera and dropped the charges against him.28

  The Black Panther

  As the Panthers reached out to communicate with members, recruit new members, and garner support and funds for their cause, they developed the Black Panther newspaper as a key tool of their revolution. Cleaver’s connections were very helpful in this endeavor. From the start, the newspaper served as a unique and dynamic voice of the Black Liberation Struggle. Rank-and-file Black Panthers did most of the work on the paper, including the writing and layout. But especially in the newspaper’s early period, Cleaver’s friends provided critical technical support, helping with editing and publishing.

  Three days after the Sacramento action, Huey and Bobby began to work with Cleaver on the second issue of the Party’s paper, which would be its first full-format edition.29 They laid out the paper at Beverly Axelrod’s house in San Francisco. The cover included a postcard that Beverly contributed featuring a woodblock picture of a fat pig with the headline, “Support Your Local Police.” Eldridge and Barbara Arthur, an undergraduate at the University of California, wrote articles, and the Panthers called in a radical white photographer who brought over his cameras and tripods to take the pictures for the issue. For the photo shoots, Eldridge brought in the zebra-skin rug, rattan chair, and African shields and composed the famous picture of Huey Newton on his wicker throne. The photographer also shot an un
identified Black Panther woman in a similar scene. She stands in striking profile with a hood covering most of her face, a heavy rifle grasped in her right hand.30

  Campus Rallies

  The Panthers also reached out to students on college campuses. As soon as Bobby Seale was released on bail from the arrest in Sacramento, Peter Camejo of the Young Socialist Alliance at the University of California, Berkeley, scheduled an event on campus to set the record straight about the Black Panther Party’s political positions.31 Twelve Panthers came to campus on May 10, 1967, and Bobby Seale was the featured speaker. Seale asked, “Why don’t cops who patrol our community live in our community? I don’t think there would be so much police brutality if they had to go and sleep there.” The audience of several thousand, composed mostly of white students, clapped loudly. Seale emphasized that the Black Panther Party was not racist. “You’ve been told that the Black Panthers . . . make no bones about hating whites,” said Seale. “That’s a bare-faced lie. We don’t hate nobody because of color. We hate oppression.”32

  Seale explained the Panther’s anticolonialist politics: “We’re going to arm ourselves and protect ourselves from white racist cops. White cops are occupying our community like foreign troops. They’re there to hurt us and brutalize us, and we got to arm ourselves because they’re shooting us up already.” Barbara Arthur, a fellow student of many of those in the crowd, announced, “I represent the women’s department of the Party. We believe that an education system which still teaches and preaches that white is right, black is wrong” is itself wrong. Reminding the students about the Denzil Dowell case, she added, “[When] black men are armed, racist cops are going to take a second thought before harassing a black man.”33

  On Friday, May 5, the Black Panthers held a rally at San Francisco State College to raise bail money for the Sacramento arrestees, drawing heavily on support from the burgeoning Black Power Left. Cleaver’s friend and renowned black nationalist poet LeRoi Jones (soon known as Amiri Baraka) was the keynote speaker. He praised the Black Panthers while calling the police “killers” and President Johnson a “mass murderer.” Jones urged black people to arm themselves: “You’d better get yourself a gun if you want to survive the white man’s wrath. Those white policemen aren’t here to protect you, they’re here to kill you.” Playwright Ed Bullins also spoke and called black people a “captive nation.”34

  Setting the Terms of White Support

  On May 3, the day after the Sacramento action, Newton went on the radio and made a plea for bail support. The Panthers needed $5,000, 10 percent of the $50,000 bail, to get the Party members back on the street.35 The Party had to compete for funds with other Black Power and left-wing organizations. As the Black Panthers sought to attract support from the broader universe of left-wing activists, largely through Cleaver’s networks, they also strove to define the character of these relationships. The Panthers’ reach was expanding rapidly. Radical groups lined up to help the Black Panthers with their legal defense, including the Ramparts-affiliated Community for a New Politics (CNP), the Communist Party, and the Socialist Workers Party.36 Representatives of these groups—including Roscoe Proctor, a black member of the Communist Party; Peter Camejo and Bob Himmel from the Socialist Workers Party; and Bob Avakian from the CNP—formed the Black Panther Legal Defense Committee and assisted in the defense of the Black Panthers arrested in Sacramento. By mid-July, however, the committee had fallen apart. Avakian, who worked as a researcher at Ramparts, continued to work with the Party. But as the Legal Defense Committee fell apart, the Black Panthers cut off formal ties with the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party, publicly condemning the patronizing attitudes of some on the white Left.

  Eldridge Cleaver wrote a scathing critique in the Panther newspaper titled “White ‘Mother Country’ Radicals.” In the article, Cleaver noted that whites had historically played an important role in black independence struggles internationally, particularly in supplying guns, money, and information. He argued that white radicals in America, however, had failed to live up to this standard, instead acting as if they “are the smartest” and attempting to dominate Black Power politics. Cleaver then defined the kind of relationship the Black Panther Party sought with radical whites—one in which they would offer material contributions, information, and skills. Reflecting the black demand for self-determination dating back at least to the nineteenth-century roots of the Black Liberation Struggle, Cleaver explained that whites must learn to listen to blacks and follow black leadership. Whites would not be allowed to run the show in the Party; their role had to be subordinate. The Black Panthers intended to direct their own Party. The Party lauded Bob Avakian as an acceptable voice of radical White America, perhaps because of his supportive role in the Legal Defense Committee. The Black Panther published an article by Avakian echoing Cleaver’s critique, endorsing the idea that white radicals in America had a duty to support the black revolution. The paper also contained photos of Avakian posing with a pistol.37

  LONG HOT SUMMER

  More than any other group at the time, the Black Panther Party was highly attuned to the wave of ghetto rebellions. Following Sacramento, as envisioned in Newton’s theoretical writings, the Panthers sought to position their Party as the vanguard of this black revolt, aiming to shape its raw energy into a powerful, organized, revolutionary force. In mid-June 1967, Bobby Seale published an article about the urban rebellions in the Black Panther called “The Coming Long Hot Summer.” Seale predicted that the rebellions would expand explosively, creating the impetus for a black revolution:

  Since July 18, 1964, the Harlem “riots,” there have been some fifty rebellions in the black communities throughout the nation. These fifty rebellions include the most recent rebellions of black people that have occurred within the last few weeks, some ten or fifteen. If one would look closely, and check this three year history, he will find that in damn near every rebellion a racist cop was involved in the starting of that rebellion. And these same pig cops, under orders from the racist government, will probably cause 50 or more rebellions to occur the rest of this year alone, by inflicting brutality or murdering some black person within the confines of one of our black communities. Black people will defend themselves at all costs. They will learn the correct tactics to use in dealing with the racist cops. . . . The racist military police force occupies our community just like the foreign American troops in Vietnam. But to inform you dog racists controlling this rotten government and for you to let your pig cops know you ain’t just causing a “long hot summer”, you’re causing a Black Revolution.38

  In the summer of 1967, the wave of rebellion did in fact swell. Through the early summer, most local rebellions were small, like the Hunters Point riot in San Francisco in response to the killing of Matthew Johnson by police the previous year. None had anything like the scope or destructive capacity of the Watts rebellion in 1965. Yet in black communities throughout the country, small rebellions continued to erupt, often triggered by incidents of police brutality. Then came Newark, and Detroit.

  Newark

  In 1967, the black community in Newark, New Jersey, was emblematic of the ghetto isolation and containment from which rebellions grew. At that time, Newark was the thirtieth largest city in the United States, with a population of four hundred thousand. As blacks migrated to Newark in the late 1950s and early 1960s, whites deserted the city; in 1960, Newark was still 65 percent white, but by 1967, it was more than 52 percent black and 10 percent Cuban and Puerto Rican. Yet whites maintained near-total political control. From Mayor Hugh Addonizio to seven of nine city council representatives and seven of nine board of education members, the city leadership was almost entirely white. Whites also dominated the city commissions. The police were almost all Italian American. Almost all of those the police arrested, though, were black. Tensions between the black community and the police had escalated to the point that the mayor had handed over responsibility for investigating charges of police brutality to
the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI heard only cases that involved a violation of federal civil rights. While apparently taking the mayor off the hot seat, this move effectively shut down all channels for redress.

  Very few black families, fewer than 13 percent, owned their own homes. Black residents had minimal access to education. Newark’s per capita expenditures on education were significantly lower than those in the surrounding areas, and 70 percent of the children in the Newark public school system were black. Almost half of Newark’s black children did not finish high school. In 1960, more than half of the city’s adult blacks had less than an eighth-grade education, and 12 percent were unemployed. Newark had the highest rates of crime, venereal disease, substandard housing, maternal mortality, and tuberculosis in the country.39 Organized crime was rampant. Most people convicted of crimes were black, and the majority of the victims were also black. Like the city government, organized crime—the operation, the money and power—was run by Italian Americans.

  On Wednesday July 12, three weeks after the publication of Bobby Seale’s article predicting a spread of urban rebellions, John Smith, a black cab driver, was pulled over by Newark police officers John DeSimone and Vito Pontrelli.40 Just across the street from the police station, residents from the high-rise towers of the Reverend William P. Hayes Public Housing Projects watched as the policemen dragged Smith, apparently beaten too badly to walk, across the pavement and into the station. By 10:00 P.M., a crowd had gathered outside the police station, mostly comprised of housing project residents and cab drivers, who had been notified over their radios.

  The police and “community leaders” asked the crowd to disperse. Then someone lit a match. In a small arc, two glass bottles full of liquid capped with burning rags passed over the crowd. Shattering against the wall of the police station, the Molotov cocktails burst into balls of flame. Frenzied police officers scrambled out of the station. Local officials from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) tried to calm the crowd and persuade people to march to city hall, but some in the crowd hurled stones and later broke the windows of several liquor stores and set a car on fire. The police put on riot helmets and moved to disperse the crowd.