Black Against Empire
Page 18
Less than two months after the Black Power conference, as the Panthers organized their first patrols in Oakland, SDS formally embraced draft resistance at its National Council meeting at Berkeley.57 An accompanying report published by SDS in January 1967 compared anti-draft resistance to “the revolt of slaves against their masters” and said that SDS was moving into a new phase, from “protest to resistance.”58
The new approach to draft resistance was compelling because of its universality. The black anti-imperialism championed by SNCC compared the plight of blacks in the United States with the plight of the Vietnamese and others throughout the world who were waging struggles against colonialism and imperialism. At SNCC’s invitation, student antiwar activists came to see themselves as fighting for their own liberation from the American empire. The imperial machinery of war that was inflicting havoc abroad was forcing America’s young to kill and die for a cause many did not believe in. Young activists came to see the draft as an imposition of empire on themselves just as the war was an imposition of empire on the Vietnamese.59
SDS leader Greg Calvert encapsulated this emerging view in the idea of “revolutionary consciousness” in a widely influential speech at Princeton University that February. Arguing that students themselves were revolutionary subjects, Calvert sought to distinguish radicals from liberals, and he advanced “revolutionary consciousness” as the basis for a distinct and superior morality: “Radical or revolutionary consciousness . . . is the perception of oneself as unfree, as oppressed—and finally it is the discovery of oneself as one of the oppressed who must unite to transform the objective conditions of their existence in order to resolve the contradiction between potentiality and actuality. Revolutionary consciousness leads to the struggle for one’s own freedom in unity with others who share the burden of oppression.”60
The speech marked a watershed in the New Left’s self-conception.61 Coming to see itself as part of the global struggle of the Vietnamese against American imperialism and the black struggle against racist oppression, the New Left rejected the status quo as fundamentally immoral and embraced the morality of revolutionary challenge. From this vantage point, the Vietnam War was illegitimate, and draft resistance was an act of revolutionary heroism.
As this radicalized draft resistance came to life, it had an explosive impact on an antiwar movement that had been weak and disoriented. In the first few months of 1967, a flurry of “We Won’t Go” statements, antidraft unions, and pickets at induction centers took place throughout the country, many instigated by SDS, but some arising independently.62
A quarter million people turned out on April 15, 1967, for the Spring Mobilizations against the War in New York and San Francisco—the largest antiwar protest to date in American history. Speakers in New York included Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel of the SCLC, Floyd McKissick of the Congress of Racial Equality, singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, and Stokely Carmichael. As Carmichael spoke, members of the crowd shouted out “Black Power!” He called the war “brutal and racist” and demanded an end to the draft. Many marchers took up the chant started by SNCC: “Hell No, We Won’t Go!” Some protestors displayed flags of the National Liberation Front of Vietnam, asserting that they were not only appealing for America to have a better policy but also allying themselves with the Vietnamese revolution.63 In San Francisco, a contingent of black nationalists led the march carrying a streamer that read “The Vietnam N.L.F. Never Called Us Niggers.” Keynote speaker Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King’s wife, told the audience that “freedom and justice in America are bound together with freedom and justice in Vietnam.” Future Panther minister of information Eldridge Cleaver, at that time a representative of the Organization of African Unity, added, “We are against this racist, vicious power structure.”64
Because of the high stakes—potentially five years in prison—and the lack of wider support, very few had seriously considered public burning of draft cards as a viable tactic. But in unprecedented defiance of U.S. legitimacy, over 150 people burned their draft cards during the rally in Central Park that day.65
Two weeks later, Muhammad Ali, the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, refused induction, arousing further acts of draft resistance. Due in no small part to the influence of Malcolm X, early black resistance to the draft was widespread, not limited to SNCC. Muhammad Ali was a member of the Nation of Islam, recruited by Malcolm X in 1963. As heavyweight champion, he soon became a symbol of Black Power. Every time he stepped into the ring, much more than the title was at stake.66 In early 1966, as the demand for troops in Vietnam increased, the Selective Service System expanded its pool for draft eligibility, and Ali was reclassified as I-A—ready and eligible.67 In February 1966—months before SDS’s first tentative support of SNCC’s antidraft stance—Ali told the press, “I’m a member of the Black Muslims and we don’t go to wars unless they are declared by Allah himself. I don’t have no personal quarrel with those Vietcong.”68
Ali’s statement posed a clear challenge to the legitimacy of the war effort, and many politicians were quick to condemn him. Pennsylvania congressman Frank Clark called Ali “a complete and total disgrace to the land.”69 When Ali, then still using his original name, Cassius Clay, refused to apologize for his remarks, Governor Kerner of Illinois, Mayor Daley of Chicago, and other political figures sought to cancel his scheduled championship fight in Chicago.70 Closed-circuit telecasts of his fights were banned in Boston, Miami Beach, and elsewhere.71 The government confiscated his passport.72
On April 28, 1967, the day Ali was to be inducted into the army and two weeks after the card burning in Central Park, young black protestors including H. Rap Brown flocked to the induction center in Houston. When Ali’s name was called, he refused to step forward. “Why should they ask me and other so-called Negroes to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home,” Ali explained to the press, “and drop bombs on brown people in Viet Nam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?”73 Ali was sentenced to a maximum penalty of five years in jail and a $10,000 fine for refusing induction.74
Ali’s actions, on the heels of the Central Park card burning, suggested that widespread draft resistance was possible. Many in government and the press worried that if the resistance grew large enough, the war effort might be compromised. The influential New York Times columnist Tom Wicker explained,
The issue raised by the remarkable Ali remains, because he has made it quite clear that whether or not the courts finally rule in his favor, whether or not the Government, in both its administrative and judicial processes, has given his claims due and fair hearing—whether or not, in short, his position is legally justified, he will simply refuse to serve in the armed forces. . . . What would happen if all young men of draft age took the same position? . . . If the Johnson Administration had to prosecute 100,000 Americans in order to maintain its authority, its real power to pursue the Vietnamese war or any other policy would be crippled if not destroyed. It would then be faced not with dissent, but with civil disobedience on a scale amounting to revolt.75
Preparations were under way for massive antiwar protests in Washington, D.C., and Oakland in October 1967. Smaller actions were planned for the same time in Los Angeles, Portland, Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, St. Paul, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Ann Arbor, Yellow Springs, Champaign-Urbana, Bloomington, Puerto Rico, and London.76 Following the ghetto rebellions in July, the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE), a national coalition of peace organizations, announced at a press conference that it supported the urban uprisings and said that the actions planned for October would “obstruct the war machine.” MOBE proclaimed there was “only one struggle—for self-determination—and we support it in Vietnam and in black America.”77
A new spirit had swept the antiwar movement. That October, draft card burnings increased almost tenfold.78 Activist scholars Paul Lauter and
Florence Howe described the spontaneous outbreak of a draft card burning at the Pentagon:
Suddenly as the daylight died two or three tiny flames burst from different places in the crowd. There was only red in the west, and the earth was black, when dozens of draft cards began to burn, held aloft, amid increasing cheers and applause. One by one, the lights flickered, burned, then went out. The burnings traveled to the other side of the Mall, beyond the soldiers that split our large group from a small one on the right, and eventually down to the grassy plains below. The sight silenced even the cheering.79
Thousands of draft resisters stormed the Pentagon. Military police and U.S. marshals beat the demonstrators and released tear gas, reoccupying the grounds yard by yard. Among the protestors, 647 were arrested and 47 hospitalized.80 A line had been crossed. No longer were the students and antiwar activists simply Americans expressing their view within established channels. Now, inspired by Black Power and emboldened by the ghetto rebellions, many antiwar activists declared themselves revolutionaries, seeking self-determination through resistance.
New Left: Free Huey
While Black Power was a key influence on the emerging draft resistance movement, the Black Panther Party remained relatively insignificant politically until April 1968. Few in the New Left outside the Bay Area had done anything to support the Panthers. SDS, by far the largest and most influential New Left organization—with thirty-five thousand members at three hundred colleges and universities—had no relationship to or position on the Panthers.81 The organization’s New Left Notes, the largest New Left newsletter, had not carried a single story on the Black Panther Party.82
This situation changed with the assassinations of King and Hutton. For many young activists opposed to the Vietnam War, King had embodied the hope that America had a moral conscience and that justice would prevail through peaceful means. His assassination dashed their hopes. Following the slayings of King and Hutton, hundreds of thousands of students joined SDS-led actions on campuses from coast to coast, often in coalition with black student organizations. In Boston, twenty thousand students marched on city hall demanding that the police and National Guard “be kept out of the ghetto.” At Michigan State University in East Lansing, students took over the administration building and held a sit-in, demanding the addition of black history courses, equal hiring practices, and sanctions against companies that discriminated against blacks. The response to King’s death fueled SDS’s planned “Ten Days of Resistance” to protest the war, and at least fifty colleges and almost a million students participated in a nationwide “student strike” on April 26.83
After the April killings, the New Left increasingly looked to the Black Panthers for leadership. Already embracing anti-imperialism by the time of King’s assassination, SDS now made support for the Black Panther Party one of its key causes. On April 12, 1968, SDS affirmed its support for the Black Panther Party:
Students for a Democratic Society . . . demands the immediate release of Eldridge Cleaver, Huey P. Newton, and all other political prisoners being detained by the state of California. The racist cops of Oakland, who have long oppressed and denied basic human rights to black people, are the real criminals loose on the streets of our country. They are the ones, along with the slumlords and politicians in the white power structure, who should be imprisoned, not Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, or any other black man fighting for self-determination and freedom.84
On April 15, the cover of New Left Notes featured a photo of Bobby Hutton and a long article on the Panthers under the headline “Oakland Police Attack Panthers.” The article detailed the police slaying of Hutton and examined the repressive actions against the Panthers over the preceding months.85 The issue also ran a full reproduction of the Panther Ten Point Program and implored SDS members to combat repression of the Black Panthers. The “systematic political persecution of the Black Panther Party MUST BE RESISTED. Distribute information about the Panthers and raise money for their work and defense. Funds should be sent to our brothers.”86 In July, the SDS convention passed a major resolution in support of the Black Panthers asserting that “Huey must be set free!” They pledged to “give full support, in whatever manner is needed,” both to free Huey and to support the Panthers generally.87
Monday July 15 marked the opening day of Huey Newton’s trial on charges of murdering a police officer. The Panthers argued that Newton, not Officer Frey, was the one who had been attacked and that the trial was yet another act of political repression. They brought their case to the court of public opinion, organizing a rally in front of the imposing granite Alameda County courthouse in Oakland that morning.88
Numerous New Left organizations participated in the mobilization, including the Western Mobilization against the War, the Brown Berets, the Peace and Freedom Party, and the Iranian Students Association. By 10:00 A.M., over twenty-five hundred supporters had gathered, surrounding the courthouse, filling the courthouse plaza, and spilling into the street. Members of the Oakland Sheriff’s Department, wearing helmets covering their faces and armed with billy clubs and guns, guarded every doorway to the courthouse. Reporters came from across the country and as far away as London to cover the event.89
At the top of the courthouse steps, 250 members of the Black Panther Party lined up, the women standing on the top tier. The women wore simple dark-colored knee-length dresses with belts, their hair in naturals. The men, standing in three files below, wore the Panther uniform of black leather jackets, light turtleneck sweaters, and black berets cocked to the right. An assigned section leader began a chant, and soon the Panthers were rocking, clapping, and singing in unison:
(Women)
No more brothers in ja-il,
(Men)
Off the pigs!
(Women)
The pigs are going to catch he-ll,
(Men)
Off the pigs!
(Women)
No more brothers in ja-il,
(Men)
Off the pigs!
(Women)
The pigs are going to catch he-ll,
(Men)
Off the pigs!
Members of the Asian American Political Alliance carried signs with Chinese lettering reading “Chairman MAO says: FREE HUEY” and “Yellow Peril supports Black Power.”90 A large flagpole stood in the middle of the courthouse plaza, and someone in the crowd shouted, “Cut the rope! Take the fuckin’ flag down!” After a brief debate among the Panther supporters, Bob Avakian cut the rope on the flagpole, sending the American flag to the ground. Several demonstrators grabbed the flag and lit it on fire. A phalanx of police wearing riot helmets and thrusting nightsticks quickly beat a path through the crowd to the flagpole. The pitch of the chant intensified as uniformed Panthers pushed toward the police:
(Women)
No more pigs in our community,
(Men)
Off the pigs!
Bobby Seale told the crowd that if Huey “is going to be tried at all, he’s got to be tried by his peers—not the Negro maids working up on the hill but his peers, people on probation, people they’ve been running through their jails. . . . Huey ain’t on trial, the black people are on trial here.” Seale argued that this was not the time or place to fight the police. But, he warned, “If anything happens to Huey P. Newton, the sky’s the limit.” The Panthers then began a circular march around the courthouse, fists pumping a Black Power salute in time with the chant:
Black is beautiful,
Free Huey!
Set our leader free,
Free Huey!
SDS fully embraced the “Free Huey!” campaign, emphasizing the centrality of the Panthers to the New Left and suggesting that mobilization to resist repression of the Panthers was necessary to achieve its own political goals. In coverage of the Free Huey rally in Oakland, SDS declared, “The real question for the Panthers and the whole radical movement in this country remains: Can Huey be set free?”91
Cleaver at Berkeley
By th
e fall of 1968, the Panthers became such a potent symbol of revolution that simply asking them to speak was often considered a highly disruptive act. Such was the reaction when several undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, organized an experimental course on racism in America called Social Analysis 139X, Dehumanization and Regeneration of the American Social Order. At the time, few black studies courses were available on campus, and the students sought to challenge dominant perspectives on race. They convinced several professors to facilitate the course, including sociologist Troy Duster and psychologist Edward Sampson, and they invited Eldridge Cleaver to deliver ten guest lectures.92
The reaction of establishment political leaders was immediate and extreme. Within twenty-four hours of the public announcement of the class, California governor Ronald Reagan demanded that the University of California Board of Regents promptly uninvite Cleaver and blasted the university administration, declaring, “In one single act, the Berkeley administrators would undo years of academic commitment and dedication to the highest values of the teaching profession.” Max Rafferty, the conservative state superintendent of public instruction, and Jesse Unruh, Democratic leader of the State Assembly, also jumped on board to condemn the university administration. The State Senate and Assembly both voted to censure the university.93