Black Against Empire

by Joshua Bloom

  Eldridge Cleaver wrote, “If we understand ourselves to be revolutionaries, and if we accept our historic task, then we can move beyond the halting steps that we’ve been taking. . . . Then there will be a new day in Babylon.”28 So long as King persisted in his efforts to broaden civil rights insurgency, many young activists held on to the hope that he would succeed. But when King and Hutton were killed, a new day arrived. As the federal government inched toward establishing a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., Hutton became the first martyr of the Panther revolution.

  ECLIPSING SNCC

  In the spring of 1968, the Black Panthers joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to begin discussions with Third World representatives in the United Nations in an effort to advance their program. The Panthers sought support for the “Free Huey!” campaign and for a proposed black plebiscite. The goal of the plebiscite, according to Eldridge Cleaver, was to give blacks in America the opportunity to vote “whether they want to be separated into a sovereign nation of their own, with full status and rights with the other nations of the world, including UN membership and diplomatic recognition by the other nations of the world.” Malcolm X had earlier publicized this notion. James Forman, then jointly appointed the chairman of international affairs of SNCC and the minister of foreign affairs of the Black Panthers, conducted an informal poll of key U.N. representatives and found some support for the proposed plebiscite.29

  Underlining the importance of the proposal, on May 4, the Black Panther Party expanded point ten of its Ten Point Program to read, “We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace, and as our major political objective, a united nations supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.”30

  The Panthers and SNCC developed plans for a high-profile joint delegation to the United Nations in July. But by the time of the trip, tensions were building within SNCC, and the organization was struggling to redefine itself in the post–civil rights era. Stokely Carmichael and James Forman wrestled for control, advancing different visions of SNCC’s role within the Black Power movement and of its relationship with the Panthers.31

  Forman and Carmichael both traveled to Oakland for the “Free Huey!” rally at the start of Newton’s trial on July 15.32 Then, on July 19, both Forman and Carmichael traveled to New York for a Panther press conference at the United Nations and a series of community rallies in Harlem, Brooklyn, and Newark to support the plebiscite. There, they met up with a Panther contingent that included Chairman Bobby Seale, Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver, Chief of Staff David Hilliard, Father Earl Neil, Minister of Education George Murray, and Field Marshall Donald Cox. Fliers were printed, and a flurry of meetings were called to advance the U.N. campaign. A Panther press statement said that in addition to support for the “Free Huey!” campaign and the black plebiscite, the Panthers were calling upon “the member nations of the United Nations to authorize the stationing of UN Observer Teams throughout the cities of America wherein black people are cooped up and concentrated in wretched ghettos.” After meeting with several U.N. delegations and talking with the press, the Black Panthers filed for status as an official “nongoverning organization” of the United Nations.33 While the notion of the black plebiscite was intriguing to many, it failed to gain traction.

  Underneath the united activity, SNCC was fragmenting. The evidence suggests that the Black Panthers sided with Carmichael against Forman. On Wednesday July 24, a delegation of Carmichael supporters and Panthers confronted Forman at his office on Fifth Avenue in New York City. The press reported allegations that a Black Panther stuck an unloaded pistol into Forman’s mouth and squeezed the trigger three times, but Forman denied the story.34 Nonetheless, shortly after the July trip to New York, SNCC sided with Forman, passing a resolution terminating Stokely Carmichael’s position, and officially cutting off their relationship with the Panthers. The SNCC resolution claimed that Carmichael had engaged “in a power struggle both within and outside of S.N.C.C. with another organization member (Forman) which . . . threatened the existence” of SNCC.35

  With Jim Crow vanquished and SNCC struggling to transition out of the South and remain politically relevant, the Black Panther Party captured the imagination of the younger generation of black activists. Legendary SNCC founder Ella Baker, speaking in 1968, explained SNCC’s predicament: “S.N.C.C. came North when the North was in a ferment that led to various interpretations of what needed to be done. With its own frustrations, it could not take the pacesetter role it took in the South. They were unable to sense that the milieu and factors of change were more than they had dealt with before. And the frustration that came to individuals that had gone through the Southern experience rendered them unable to make a historical decision that perhaps their days were over.”36 The New York Times noted the Panthers’ eclipse of SNCC: “The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which emerged from the rural South eight years ago to become a pacesetter in the national Civil Rights movement, is in serious decline. It has lost much of its power and influence to the northern slum-born Black Panthers.”37

  ALLIES

  On May 14, Kathleen Cleaver announced Eldridge’s candidacy for the Peace and Freedom Party nomination for president. Eldridge was temporarily in Vacaville Prison on a parole violation stemming from the confrontation with police in which Bobby Hutton had been killed. The conflict increased Cleaver’s notoriety, and the Black Panther carried a full-page promotion of his candidacy for president, along with a full-page spread on Kathleen Cleaver’s campaign for the California State Assembly. The Panthers saw both campaigns as opportunities to build influence and broaden their support within the Left. Kathleen’s candidacy directly challenged Willie Brown, the popular incumbent black California state assemblyman who had refused to support the Panthers. Eldridge Cleaver’s run for president represented disaffection with both the Democratic and Republican Parties and was, in the words of the New York Times, an effort “to use the traditional election process to win an audience and to organize for the radical movement.” As Eldridge explained in a “black paper” presented at a Peace and Freedom Party convention, the Panthers sought to “focus attention . . . on a revolutionary leader with a revolutionary program within the conventional political context. . . . In practical terms, this kind of campaign becomes another tool for political organization for black power. . . . We want to pull people out of the Democratic Party, out of the Republican Party, and swell the ranks of the Black Panther Party and the Peace and Freedom Party.”38

  After building an alliance with Latinos within the Peace and Freedom Party and after a series of state primaries and much wrangling, Eldridge Cleaver emerged as the clear favorite. On August 18, he formally secured the nomination of the national Peace and Freedom Party convention as its candidate for president of the United States with 161.5 delegate votes, outshining the 54 votes for the runner-up, civil rights activist and comedian Dick Gregory.39

  On August 25, the Panthers held a rally at De Fremery Park in west Oakland that they ceremoniously renamed Bobby Hutton Memorial Park in honor of the martyred Panther youth. The rally attracted a cross-section of Panther supporters, bringing them together to strengthen their anti-imperialist identity, binding them across race and social position to forge a revolutionary rejection of American empire.40

  The crowd gathered in the hot sun and under the cool shade of the park’s oaks to listen to the speakers and show their support for Huey Newton. Although Hutton Park lies in the heart of Black west Oakland, more than half the people who turned out that day were whites, Latinos, and Asian Americans. The crowd was a rich tapestry of the times and vividly represented the diverse allies that increasingly supported the Black Panther Party. Hundreds sat on the grass, mostly young nonblack activists. Some were older and more professional looking, such as the wom
an in her fifties with a striped blouse and permed blonde hair sitting behind two young activists, one wearing a leather vest and the other without a shirt. Hundreds more, mostly black, stood stretched out across the park, under the trees, near the neighboring houses, squeezing into view of the stage. There were well over a thousand people in all. A heavyset man in his thirties—almost twice the age of many Panthers—with short cropped hair and wearing a checkered button-down shirt leaned back with arms crossed and chewed on a cigarette butt as he listened to the speakers. Another black man, tall and muscular with a goatee and Italian felt hat, stood nearby, crossed his arms, and listened. A woman in her early twenties wearing a paisley print dress and head wrap and sandals and adorned with gold bracelets and hoop earrings held her fingers to her lips and tilted her head pensively. A heavyset grandmother with a print dress and Malcolm X glasses held up her homemade “Free Huey” banner with both hands, and her grandchildren stood nearby with homemade “Free Huey” headbands, complete with flower ornaments. Dozens of photographers weaved through the crowd snapping photos. Uniformed Panthers stood at attention along the periphery for the crowd to see. Another Panther strode pointedly through the crowd, talking logistics into a boxy walkie-talkie with an antenna the size of a fishing rod. Police were scattered along the park’s edges, with helicopters circling above them for backup.

  At the front of the park sat the Peace and Freedom Party bus, its roof sporting a stage platform and sound system. The bus featured a large “Free Huey!” sign with dozens of bumper stickers supporting Cleaver’s presidential campaign as the Peace and Freedom candidate. A Black Panther security squad of two dozen young men lined up in front of the bus facing the crowd. They wore white T-shirts emblazoned with the Panther logo and “Black Panther Party” in bold print, each wearing black pants and a black beret cocked to the right. Bobby Seale spoke, then Stokely Carmichael, and next Kathleen Cleaver. Allies Reies Tijerina—the Chicano insurgent leader—Richard Aoki, and Bob Avakian took turns speaking.

  Someone cleared the mike and all eyes turned for the main event, the speech by Eldridge, the newly anointed national candidate for president on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. Cleaver exhorted the multiracial audience to “Free Huey!” He reminded his listeners of their collective identity—their shared rejection of American power—and of the importance of their struggle: “I would love to sit around on my ass drinking wine, smoking pot and making love to my wife, but I can’t afford to be doing that while all these pigs are loose. . . . Here I am, a convict. A whole lot of respectable people have nominated me for President. I’m not going to get elected . . . I’m a symbol of dissent, of rejection. Every page of American history is written in human blood, and we can’t endorse it. We cannot endorse it. Close it! Close the motherfucker and put it on the shelf.”41

  Origins of the New Left

  The multiracial New Left would prove a crucial ally of the Black Panther Party. Even before the founding of the Black Panther Party, Black Power helped to spark draft resistance and the development of the New Left. The New Left’s own self-understanding evolved in relation to Black Liberation Struggle. In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, the New Left imagined itself a revolutionary partner in Black Liberation. Stepping back and tracing the development of the New Left is key to understanding why it would so ardently embrace the Black Panther Party.

  Students for a Democratic Society, the main New Left organization, grew in part out of student involvement in the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s. It had a young, privileged, and predominantly white constituency. It was not anti-imperialist in the beginning. In the early 1960s, SDS spurned active draft resistance. As late as mid-1965, it had only three thousand nominal members nationally and little influence. The major growth of the New Left came with draft resistance between 1966 and 1968.42 This draft resistance built upon SDS’s embrace of revolutionary anti-imperialism and the Black Liberation Struggle.

  Contrary to popular thought, draft resistance was not simply a response to high rates of military induction. The U.S. government conducted a military draft continuously from the time before the nation’s entrance into World War II until the draft ended in 1973. Throughout this period, there was little opposition to the draft until widespread resistance began in 1967. In fact, almost ten times as many young men were drafted annually during the height of World War II—with a peak of more than 3.3 million draftees in 1943—than during the Vietnam War. Yet there was relatively little resistance to the draft. Similarly, draft resistance was negligible during the Korean War despite the fact that almost twice as many young men were drafted per year as during the Vietnam War—peaking at 551,806 in 1951. When wide draft resistance first erupted in 1967, annual inductions were only 228,263.43

  Through the first half of the twentieth century, open draft resistance was not a viable political option. When a war effort was widely considered legitimate, heavy repression could be leveraged against those who refused to fight for their country. During World War I, conscientious objectors were beaten, tortured, locked in solitary confinement, and some were sentenced to death, though never executed. During World War II, some conscientious objectors were used for live human medical testing, such as experiments subjecting them to repeated lice bites.44

  As the Johnson administration began to escalate the Vietnam War in 1965, most Americans still saw draft resistance as cowardly or even traitorous. A national poll that year found that 63 percent of Americans favored the draft and only 13 percent opposed it. Early acts of resistance were sometimes met with public violence. On March 31, 1966, 11 clean-cut white pacifists protested the draft in front of the district courthouse in South Boston. As the protest was announced on the radio, antagonistic counterdemonstrators began to arrive. This shouting crowd of around 250 soon surrounded the pacifists, calling them “cowards.” When four pacifists took out their draft cards and lit them on fire, the hostility exploded, with members of the mob shouting “Shoot them!” and “Kill them!” and then knocking the demonstrators to the ground and beating them.45

  Although popular imagery portrays draft resisters as mostly white, black SNCC activists were among the first to mobilize resistance to the draft during the Vietnam War. SNCC activists almost universally opposed the war, and they had good reason.46 In 1966, the Pentagon admitted that “proportionately more Negroes have been killed in Vietnam ground combat than other Americans.”47 SNCC activists asked why black Americans should serve a country and a government that disrespected and mistreated them because they were black. A sense of betrayal by the federal government also fostered black anti-imperialism and draft resistance, especially among black movement leaders.48

  With the emergence of “Black Power,” SNCC activists had intensified their opposition to the war, inventing the slogan “Hell no, we won’t go!” SNCC launched daily demonstrations at the Atlanta induction center. Twelve blacks were arrested. By the fall of 1966, as white students began cautiously signing symbolic “We Won’t Go” statements, induction refusals by blacks were already widespread.49

  Feeling politically isolated for his embrace of draft resistance, Stokely Carmichael, SNCC’s chairman, approached SDS for support.50 In July 1966, at Carmichael’s behest, SDS and SNCC published a joint statement to the House Committee on the Armed Services cosigned by Carmichael and Carl Oglesby, president of SDS. The statement marked a crucial step in the antiwar movement. It asserted the three part anti-imperialist analogy that would later be adopted and spread by the Black Panther Party. Carmichael and Oglesby argued that blacks, Vietnamese, and draftees shared a common oppressor, and asserted a powerful moral justification for resisting the draft: “In a supposedly ‘free society’ conscription is a form of legalized enslavement of the worst kind: a slave had to serve his master’s economic interest with labor and sweat; but a draftee must serve the ‘national interest’ with murder and his own blood. Black men in the United States are forced to kill their colored brothers in Vietnam for $95 a month and the risk of de
ath, injury and disease; this is why we oppose the draft.”51

  Despite signing on to the joint statement, SDS had not yet fully embraced its implications and was still reluctant to organize draft resistance. Some smaller antiwar organizations such as End the Draft were trying to enlist SDS in draft resistance, but many SDSers were afraid of the repression likely to come with a serious challenge to the draft.52

  This changed in October 1966 when SDS organized the Black Power conference in Berkeley—the same conference that encouraged Newton and Seale to found their party—and invited Stokely Carmichael as the keynote speaker. Carmichael focused most of his speech on the question of Vietnam. “The war in Vietnam is an illegal and immoral war,” he said. He compared the plight of black people in America to the plight of the Vietnamese. He argued that in order to be relevant to most people, SDS needed to start organizing draft resistance: “The peace movement has been a failure because it hasn’t gotten off the college campuses where everybody has a 2S and is not afraid of being drafted anyway.”53

  In the months preceding the conference, while antiwar organizing was prevalent, there was little discussion of the draft on the UC Berkeley campus.54 The Black Power conference, however, dramatically changed the focus of the campus antiwar movement. The day after Carmichael’s speech, the campus chapter of SDS, the organizers of the conference, formed an antidraft committee and distributed a flier inviting the public to a workshop that evening: “One of the purposes of the Black Power Conference has been to stimulate new ideas and discussions as to where the Movement at Berkeley will go from here. Black Power offers a challenge to white radicals to organize themselves . . . STOP THE WAR! STOP THE DRAFT! . . . If you want to discuss possibilities of Direct Action to help stop the war and benefit yourself, come to the workshops.”55 Other antidraft activities on campus followed. A week later, the campus Community for a New Politics organized a workshop called You and the Draft. An organization called Resistance launched on campus and explained its position: “Today Vietnamese men, women and children will die. They will die at the end of an American soldier’s bayonet, they will burn to death from the napalm dropped from American planes. These executions are performed daily by ordinary American guys, most of whom are not in Vietnam by choice. They were drafted. Our government ordered them there.” Within months, there was a deluge of meetings, organizations, conferences, and protests on campuses across the country, all focused on the draft.56