by Joshua Bloom
At 1:00 P.M. on June 29, 1967, Bobby Seale called a press conference on the steps of the San Francisco Hall of Justice. With television cameras rolling, Seale unfurled and read Minister of Defense Huey Newton’s “Executive Mandate No. 2” drafting Stokely Carmichael into the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and investing him with “the rank of Field Marshall, delegated the following authority, power and responsibility. . . . To establish revolutionary law, order and justice in the territory lying between the Continental Divide East to the Atlantic Ocean; North of the Mason-Dixon Line to the Canadian Border; South of the Mason-Dixon Line to the Gulf of Mexico.” At the press conference, Seale presented a challenge to Carmichael: “I know you have questions you want answered, but there is only one question that is pertinent at this time, and that is this: Whose Authority and Program is Stokely Carmichael going to acknowledge, that of the warmonger Lyndon Baines Johnson or Minister of Self Defense, Huey P. Newton.” The front page of the Black Panther pointed out that Carmichael was the first well-known “Afro-American leader” to take a stand against the draft and that many others had followed in his path, including Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King.61
Although the press conference drew little coverage, it dramatically illustrated the Black Panther Party’s evolving self-perception. The Party not only presented the United States as an imperialist power but also positioned itself as the sole legitimate alternative. By presenting Carmichael with a choice between two authorities—President Lyndon B. Johnson or Huey P. Newton, minister of defense of the Black Panther Party—the Panthers implied that if Carmichael did not accept Newton’s authority, then he accepted Johnson’s. Further, in delegating Carmichael to “establish revolutionary law” for the entire United States east of the Mississippi, Newton did not simply claim authority over Black America but posed a revolutionary challenge to America as a whole.62
In the same issue in which the Panthers enlisted Carmichael for revolutionary leadership, they removed the disclaimer from their Ten Point Program. They now proclaimed rather than argued the viability of the program. Carmichael would eventually join the Black Panther Party, but not until the following year. While the Party was not yet very large or influential, by the end of the summer, it had reinvented the politics of self-defense. The intense wave of summer rebellions demonstrated the Party to be highly attuned and bolstered the leadership’s confidence in its revolutionary vision. This new confidence expressed itself in Party relations with other political organizations.63
Bootlickers
As the Party began to take more seriously its goal of becoming the vanguard of the black revolution, it came into increasing conflict with more moderate black political organizations. In July 1967, CORE held a conference in Oakland, bringing together representatives from a range of black political organizations: representatives of the local CORE chapter led by Wilfred Ussery, Floyd McKissick and James Farmer from the national CORE, Afro-American Association leader Donald Warden, Elijah Turner, California Assemblyman Willie Brown, SNCC Chairman H. Rap Brown, and Muhammad Ali. CORE asked the Black Panthers to serve as bodyguards for the event but refused to allow Newton to speak or to list the Black Panther Party in the program as a conference participant. The organization took the further step of asking the sheriff of San Mateo County to telephone Newton and Seale to inform them that they could carry guns for that day only as body guards at the event.
The Panthers were insulted and offended. Refusing to participate on these terms, they published a response in their newspaper that articulated their developing view of their political role and distinguished this role from that of CORE and its allies. The Panthers argued that black people “must develop the concept of a Foreign and Domestic Policy for Afro-America. . . . We have to start viewing reactionary black leaders as BLACK AGENTS OF THE WHITE MOTHER COUNTRY. And reactionary black organizations can be viewed as BLACK FRONTS FOR THE WHITE MOTHER COUNTRY.”64
Following the conference, the Black Panther began to critique not only the police and white political leaders but also black political leaders and organizations that it viewed as counterrevolutionary. On July 20, the Black Panthers introduced their “Bootlicker” column. The idea was to identify “bootlicking,” or counterrevolutionary, black leaders who were subservient to the “White power structure.” The column was replete with photos, derogatory graphics, and articles critical of black leaders and organizations they saw as accommodationist—not only Ussery and CORE, but also California Assemblyman Willie Brown and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.65
Paper Panthers
The Black Panther Party did not confine itself to criticizing mainstream black political organizations. Increasingly confident in positioning the organization as a vanguard party, the Panthers also criticized other black nationalist organizations that did not live up to their revolutionary rhetoric. A particularly bitter rift had occurred between the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Black Panther Party of Northern California, led by Huey and Bobby’s former comrades from the West Coast RAM. A disagreement about tactics had been brewing for years, even when Huey and Bobby had worked with the Soul Students Advisory Council at Merritt College. The split widened as Huey and Bobby’s Black Panther Party for Self-Defense gained in stature. Jockeying for media attention, RAM twice accepted credit for Panther activities, including the Black Panther escort of Betty Shabazz and the action in Sacramento. The fact that RAM carried unloaded weapons, a tactic that Huey adamantly opposed, did not help matters.
David Hilliard, one of Huey Newton’s childhood friends who became active in the Party, coined the phrase “Paper Panthers” to describe the RAM group. RAM members were armchair revolutionaries who did not know the first thing about fighting an actual revolution, argued Hilliard, who would soon rise to the rank of chief of staff, assum ing primary leadership of the Party’s operation. The phrase stuck, and after the Newark rebellion in July 1967, the Black Panthers published a graphic of a “Paper Panther” in their newspaper replete with bullet holes and labels identifying the group as “conservative,” “misguided,” “reactionary,” and “counterrevolutionary.” The message was clear: The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was the truly revolutionary Party, the vanguard of the black revolution, and no substitutes would be accepted.66
Mockery was not enough to resolve the conflict. According to Newton’s memoirs, he confronted Roy Ballard of the Black Panther Party of Northern California about the rumor that Ballard’s group carried unloaded guns. Ballard reportedly admitted that he did not even own any bullets. Huey reported that a few weeks later, he and his Panthers “went to San Francisco where the ‘Paper Panthers’ were having a fish fry, and issued an ultimatum: They could merge with us or change their name or be annihilated. When they said they would do none of these things, we waded in. I took on one and hooked him in the jaw. It was a short battle, ending a few moments later when somebody fired a shot in the air and people scattered. After that, the Paper Panthers changed their name.”67
GENDER IN THE VANGUARD PARTY
As the Black Panthers garnered influence and self-confidence and sought to redefine their political strategy, the gender politics of the Party shifted as well. All the original Party members were men. They sought to educate and politicize the male “brothers on the block.” And part of their project was to assert a strong black masculinity. In Newton’s early essay “Fear and Doubt,” he described the crisis of manhood he saw facing black men: “As a man, he finds himself void of those things that bring respect and a feeling of worthiness. . . . He ultimately blames himself. . . . He may father several illegitimate children by several different women in order to display his masculinity. But in the end, he realizes that he is ineffectual in his efforts. . . . He is asked to respect laws that do not respect him.”68
Contrary to some critics, Newton laid out a position that was distinct from the Moynihan Report—a policy study for the War on Poverty issued in 1965 by the U.S. Department of Labo
r—which blamed the social castration of black men on the pathology of black matriarchal culture. Newton saw the problem not as a cultural difficulty endemic to black people but as a form of oppression imposed on black men by the racist social structure. In the Black Panthers’ program to assert a revolutionary masculinity, black men were to become men by standing up against and seeking to destroy the oppressive system that was denying them their humanity. This politics challenged both the Uncle Tom role of black male deference to white power and the civil rights politics of turning the other cheek in pursuit of integration.69
Within months of its founding, the Black Panther Party attracted the participation of women, who soon became trusted and invaluable members. From the start, women participated in all Party activities, including the more militant ones. The Party’s initial tactic of challenging the police principally attracted men but also attracted some women. The Panther entourage that confronted the police while escorting Betty Shabazz at the San Francisco Airport included women. And women Panthers participated in the “invasion” of the capitol building in Sacramento. Pictures of Panther women carrying guns appeared in the earliest issues of the Black Panther. Early issues of the newspaper represented women as valued Party members: as soldiers, poets, and writers.
In the summer of 1967, as Party influence grew, more women joined the Party. With the Party’s growing confidence in its role as a revolutionary vanguard, Panther women increasingly wrote, and were written about, in the Black Panther. Not surprisingly, these pioneer Panther women applauded the idea of revolutionary nationhood and the bold masculinity of the Black Panther Party. In a recruitment pitch aimed at women, Barbara Arthur emphasized the appeal of a black political organization led by and consisting of revolutionary black men: “The Black Panther Party is where the BLACK MEN are. I know every black woman has to feel proud of black men who finally decided to announce to the world that they were putting an end to police brutality and black genocide. . . . Become members of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, Sisters, ‘we got a good thing going.’”70
Sister Williams not only embraced the pride and power these men exuded, but she also noted the deep appeal of the revolutionary love that Panther men held for “their brother”: “Respect and dignity have long been abstractions to the majority of Black Men. This is no longer the case. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense are Black Men with pride, self-respect and most of all love for their brother. These Black Men who express fervor, spirit and boldness of heart kindle in me, a Black Woman, the feeling of wanting to help plan, work, experience, and most of all share not only these feelings with him but the togetherness of wanting and now going about getting our freedom together.”71 Williams endorsed the Party as essential to black liberation. She validated the Party’s claim to be the vanguard of the black revolution.
Powerful images of handsome black men and beautiful black women in the Black Panther projected the Party’s appeal to allies, supporters, and recruits. On occasion, the early Party imitated Madison Avenue tactics, blatantly exploiting black female beauty to sell the Party. Underneath an attractive photo of Panther secretary and newspaper editorial staff person Audry Hudson, was a caption that read in part, “Besides being very beautiful to look at, (as you can see for yourself) the sister is a very beautiful person. She has gotten herself together and enlisted in the struggle for the total liberation of her people. She is a welcomed addition to the swelling ranks of the Vanguard Party of the black liberation struggle.”72
Early articles by women in the Black Panther about issues of gender and sexuality ranged widely in tone, subject matter, and consciousness. In a complex analysis of the distinction between revolutionary and bourgeois black romantic relationships, Judy Hart contended, “At this stage in the black revolution the relationships between black men and black women are taking on new and crucial meanings. . . . With the black revolution being no more than the fusing of separate frustrations, desires, convictions, and strengths toward a common liberation, the black man and his woman cease to be simply a couple . . . but a fusing, a deepening of two black minds, souls, and bodies passionately involved not only in each other but in ‘the movement.’”73
Hart argued that within the constraints of bourgeois society, it is impossible for black women and men to work together. She appealed to black women to commit to the revolution and relate differently to black men. She wrote that bourgeois black women necessarily relate to black men as tools to use for their own gain, and in seeking to succeed according to the dominant society’s standards, they despise black men just as the racist society despises them. Hart decried the dysfunctional black household “in which the male can’t function unless he’s drunk, it’s the first of the month, or he’s physically asserting himself by yelling, beating, or fucking.” By embracing revolutionary struggle, a different kind of relationship becomes possible. “Socially, the Negro man becomes extinct, outmoded. Social barriers and distinctions disappear, replaced by a communal unity.” The revolutionary black man’s “total commitment . . . is an invitation to the black woman to join with him in the pursuit of a life together, removing the shackles of White Racist America and establishing a solid foundation of blackness from which to build.”74
Even in her nuanced treatment of gender and sexuality, Hart presented the man’s revolutionary role as central and the woman’s revolutionary role as supportive. This patriarchal orientation of Black Panther politics, common to most black nationalist and other movement organizations at the time, is evident throughout the Party’s early actions and communications. Telling contrasts, such as the iconic representation of Huey as “Black Warrior Prince” set against the relatively obscure representation of the Panther woman as “Woman Warrior,” speak to the initial masculine identity of the Party.
The Party’s founding, early history, and ongoing struggles as a male-oriented organization affected all men and women who subsequently joined the Party. Not surprisingly, therefore, making the Black Panther Party into a mixed-gender organization that modeled gender and sexual equality remained a hard-fought battle and an elusive goal. Difficult struggles to master these issues hounded the organization throughout its existence. Rhetorical commitments to gender and sexual equality at all levels of the Party could not on their own overcome real and fractious gender and sexual contradictions. However, over time, as more and more black women joined the Party, their work and leadership helped shape the entirety of the Party’s politics. Their influence was particularly critical in giving a more positive cast to the Party’s evolving gender and sexual politics and dynamics.
Women and some men in the Party demanded and led the Party’s often frank and difficult engagement with the increasingly wide range of gender equality issues, particularly the question of how to define black women’s role in a revolutionary nationalist movement. Thus, the rank-and-file members of the Party were the primary shapers of the organization’s internal gender politics. The talented and audacious black women who increasingly joined the Party were far more active than the men in forcing the Party to focus on critical gender and sexuality concerns. In the summer of 1967, these intra-Party debates on gender and sexuality were just warming up. During the next several years, these debates would become increasingly intense, shaped by the parallel conversations about gender and sexual issues within the Black Liberation Struggle and black communities, as well as in the growing Women’s Liberation Movement, Gay and Lesbian Liberation Movement, and sexual revolution.75
In the summer of 1967, with the core Panther practice of armed patrols of the police outlawed, yet with the Party’s stature enhanced by its Sacramento actions, Newton had sought to build upon the success of the police patrols and articulate a revised politics of armed self-defense against the police. Attracted to Newton’s courage, and building upon the Panther’s newfound fame, new Panther recruit Eldridge Cleaver used his networks and eloquence to forge powerful alliances with other leftists and black nationalists. The Newark and Detroit rebellions
, the largest and most violent of the period coming just weeks after publication of some of Newton’s key theoretical writings, revealed the Panthers to be highly attuned to ghetto sentiment—and deepened the Panthers’ confidence in their vanguard politics. And as the Party developed, it attracted more women members, who began to transform the gender politics of the Party. As the summer of 1967 gave way to the fall, the Panthers’ new politics were put to the test.
4
Free Huey!
After dinner with his family on October 27, 1967, Huey Newton walked to his girlfriend LaVerne Williams’s house at 5959 Telegraph Avenue in Oakland. It was Friday night, and the two had plans to go out. On the way over he thought about where they might go that evening. When he arrived, LaVerne was not feeling well. He offered to stay in with her, but she insisted that he go out and enjoy himself and lent him her car.1
Newton started up LaVerne’s tan 1958 Volkswagen Beetle and drove to Bosn’s Locker, his favorite bar. After casual conversation with friends over a rum and coke, he left the bar and went to the nearby Congregational church on Forty-Second and Grove. The church held Afro-American history classes on Wednesday nights, and Newton knew that there would be a church social on Friday. When he arrived, the social was in full swing, replete with dancing and cards. There he met up with Gene McKinney. They stayed until the social ended at 2:00 A.M. and then drove to a party at the home of Mrs. Verde Johnson on San Pablo Avenue near Thirty-Seventh. The pair of friends stayed until sometime after 4:00 A.M., at which point they decided to drive to a restaurant on Seventh Street that served soul food all night long.
