Black Against Empire
Page 23
By March 1969, the Black Panthers opened another Free Breakfast for Children Program at the Sacred Heart Church in San Francisco’s Fillmore district.10 By April, the Party reported feeding more than twelve hundred children per day at nine facilities in Oakland, San Francisco, and Vallejo in California; in Chicago; and in Des Moines, Iowa.11
Seale went to prison that August, and David Hilliard, chief of staff of the Party, took the reins of the national Party organization. Hilliard continued to give priority to development of the Free Breakfast for Children Program, and during his tenure, the program spread like wild-fire, becoming the most important Panther activity.12 By November, the Party reported feeding children free breakfast daily in twenty-three cities across the country, from Seattle to Kansas City and New York.13 At the height of the effort, between 1969 and 1971, at least thirty-six breakfast programs were operating nationwide with larger chapters running multiple sites.14
David Hilliard was born May 15, 1942, in rural Rockville, Alabama, the youngest of Lee and Lela Hilliard’s twelve children. David’s father always worked—often as a logger or tapping turpentine. His mother always worked when she was not nursing one of her babies. With such a large family, the Hilliards were poor, living in a four-room shack without flush toilets and scraping together meals. As the baby of the family, David was protected. He became an independent thinker, quite stylish and averse to drudgery. Extremely willful in his dealings with the world, he remained exceptionally loyal and deferential to family elders.15
Under Jim Crow, blacks were expected to kowtow to whites. The Hilliards, though, did not always comply. After a fight with a white man in the early 1950s, David’s eldest brother, Bud, fled to Oakland, California. David later recalled being impressed by Martin Luther King and nonviolent civil rights activists but disagreeing with their approach: “The passivity of the civil rights demonstrators contradicts my family’s most fundamental belief: you don’t stand idly by and be kicked, you fight for yourself.”16 When David was eleven, his mother moved to Oakland to join Bud, bringing David and eventually other family members along. In Oakland, David became close friends with fellow elementary school student Huey Newton. This friendship eventually shaped the course of his life. At seventeen, he married his sweetheart, Patricia, dropped out of high school, and entered the workforce. Within three years, he and Patricia had three children: Patrice, Darryl, and Dorion.
David Hilliard’s ascent to Party leadership was gradual. He was first and foremost loyal to Huey, his childhood friend. As he became increasingly involved in the Party, the Panthers became his family. Until the summer of 1969, when he was thrust into primary Party leadership, Hilliard was always deferential, following the lead of Huey, then Eldridge, then Bobby. He was not eager to participate in big, head-on confrontations with the state and did not participate much in the early patrols of police, the armed rallies in Richmond, the armed action in Sacramento, or later confrontations; he went along with Eldridge on the April 6, 1968, armed action only under duress.
Rather than gravitating toward the military side of the Party, Hilliard saw the Party as one big extended family, building on the communal traditions he had experienced in the black rural South. He later recalled, “When I think about the influences that inspired the spirit and work of the Black Panther Party . . . the most important members of the Party . . . were imbued with the moral and spiritual values of their parents; and the work that went into the Party, our dignity as an independent people, the communal ideal and practice that informed our programs, all stem in part from the civilization of which my mother and father were so representative a part.”17
In addition to his communal ethic, his working man’s sense of organization, discipline, and efficiency—gained during a work life that included laboring on the docks—became an important characteristic of his leadership. He proved to be a good administrator, in constant communication with the diverse and rapidly growing local leadership of the Party in cities across the country. He worked hard to keep the local chapters around the country united under a singular program. Under his leadership, the Panthers’ community service programs flourished. And through the period of the greatest repression, the Party continued to grow. Hilliard’s leadership and especially the community programs he championed contributed significantly to that growth.
During the year Hilliard served as the senior ranking Panther not in prison or exile, from August 1969 through August 1970, the Black Panther Party developed an impressive array of community programs in Panther chapters throughout the country. These programs eventually included the Free Breakfast for Children Program, liberation schools, free health clinics, the Free Food Distribution Program, the Free Clothing Program, child development centers, the Free Shoe Program, the Free Busing to Prison Program, the Sickle Cell Anemia Research Foundation, free housing cooperatives, the Free Pest Control Program, the Free Plumbing and Maintenance Program, renter’s assistance, legal aid, the Seniors Escorts Program, and the Free Ambulance Program.18 Larger and more established chapters tended to run the most diverse range of programs. The histories of specific programs in local chapters were often episodic, at times short-lived, depending upon the strength and viability of a given chapter at a particular moment. Virtually all chapters ran at least a Free Breakfast for Children Program at some point.
The breakfast program quickly became an important public face of the Party as well as its cornerstone activity. In 1969, it moved front and center for the Party programmatically, politically, ideologically, and publicly. The Party claimed to have fed twenty thousand children in the 1968–69 school year and said it hoped to feed one hundred thousand in 1969–70.19 As “the most respected and popular” of the Party’s programs, former Detroit Panther JoNina Abron has observed, these breakfast services enjoyed widespread support within black neighborhoods.20
The Free Breakfast for Children Programs adopted a rigorous common routine. Members had to be at the sites early in the morning, in time to prepare the food and be ready for the arriving children before they ate and then headed off to school. Transporting some of the children from home to the site and then to school was another vital yet often trying logistical job. While the children ate their meal, members taught them liberation lessons consisting of Party messages and black history. Miriam Ma’at-Ka-Re Monges recalled that in the breakfast program at the Ralph Avenue Community Center in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, “Party Members and students cooked and served large pots of grits and eggs. We cajoled supermarkets for donations and we fed hundreds of children. Most importantly, we also nourished their minds with Black History lessons as they ate their meals. Sometimes we fed parents of the children.”21 The Brownsville breakfast program was not unique in its willingness to feed not just the hungry children but also other hungry community members.
Feeding “hundreds of kids a day and approximately 1,200 per week” as the Los Angeles chapter did at one time demanded strong publicity, marketing, organizational, and executive skills. In Los Angeles, Flores Forbes notes,
The organizing effort began with us going door-to-door in the projects, passing out free papers with leaflets advertising the program. We talked to parents, kids, and storeowners near the projects. We explained why we had started the program: to help the kids grow and intellectually develop because children can’t learn on an empty stomach. The breakfast program was an excellent organizing tool, helping us make friends and comrades in the projects. . . . The response was overwhelming. All types of parents agreed to host and serve our efforts. We held the program in the homes of junkies, drug dealers, regular public assistance recipients, gamblers, and gang bangers. Store owners donated bread, eggs, bacon, sausage, milk, and paper products. In addition to our organizing activities, we cooked, served the food, knocked on doors to let the kids know which apartment the food was being served in, and on many an occasion made last-minute pick-ups of donations from stores.22
Businesses donated food and supplies to the local breakfast programs
for a mix of reasons, including altruism and the promotion of positive community relations. Businesses that chose not to help out faced the Party’s wrath. At times the Panthers’ cajoling blended into harassment and strong-arming. Far more common were boycotts and pickets of businesses that refused to assist the programs. Equally common was the tactic of calling out, or publicly shaming, those who refused to help. Churches and other community-based organizations that refused to help, notably those who refused to sponsor or allow breakfast programs on their premises, faced similar treatment. For starters, the Panther newspaper and Panther representatives railed against the nonsupportive businessperson or community leader as a “capitalist pig.” Other epithets included “religious hypocrites,” “lying preachers and merchants,” and “avaricious businessmen.”23
Multiple ideological goals linked these programs, which, broadly speaking, helped to “raise public consciousness about hunger and poverty in America.”24 More specifically, the free breakfast programs high-lighted the fact that hunger impeded a child’s ability to learn. Politically, the breakfasts shed light on the government’s failure to address childhood poverty and hunger—pointing to the limits of the nation’s War on Poverty. The U.S. government spent only $600,000 on breakfast programs in all of 1967. Government-sponsored breakfast programs grew rapidly as the Panthers pioneered their free breakfast program. By 1972, government-sponsored breakfast programs were feeding 1.18 million children out of the approximately 5 million who qualified for such help.25
Attacking the serious problem of childhood hunger was a way to win people’s hearts and minds. “While we might not need their direct assistance in waging armed revolution,” acknowledged Forbes, “we were hedging our bets that if we did, they would respond more favorably to a group of people looking out for their children’s welfare.”26 The FBI and police agreed. In Baltimore, as in other places, they castigated these programs “as a front for indoctrinating children with Panther propaganda.” As a result, the national repression apparatus went into overdrive to destroy the free breakfast programs. Police and federal agents regularly harassed and intimidated program participants, supporters, and Party workers and sought to scare away donors and organizations that housed the programs, like churches and community centers. Safiya A. Bukhari discovered that participation in one of the Harlem free breakfast programs fell off after the police spread a false rumor among black parents that the children were being fed “poisoned food.” A police disinformation campaign in Richmond, California, suggested that the Party used the Free Breakfast for Children Program to spread racism and to foment school riots. Student participation began to decline, forcing local Panther leaders to combat the official disinformation.27
The police were not above raiding breakfast program locations, even while the children were eating. The Baltimore Panther branch was comparatively small, but as Judson L. Jeffries demonstrates, the branch endured “an excessive amount of violent repression, and not even children were spared harassment by the police.” One morning, the Baltimore police disrupted the children’s breakfast, barging menacingly onto the premises. A witness recalled, “They walked around with their guns drawn and looked real mean. The children felt terrorized by the police. [The police] were like gangsters and thugs.” The Black Panther explained that in Baltimore, “the hired mercenary pig forces” terrorized the community, the Party, and especially the Free Breakfast for Children Program. Ronald Davis, co-coordinator of the Baltimore program, reported that “the foul minions of legal brutality and murder” had encircled the church sponsoring the program. The police were, he wrote, “armed to the teeth with the weaponry of the fascist war machine. After holding the people in check, with guns, the pigs proceeded to force their way into the Children’s Breakfast Program under the false excuse of looking for . . . suspects. Once the Gestapo shock troopers left the Breakfast Hall, they kicked in the door of Sister Angeline Edison, a former member of the Party, and kidnapped her and her son from her home with guns pointed at her and surrounding her, all under the pretentious lies of justice.”28
HEALTH CARE AND BEYOND
The success of the Panthers’ Free Breakfast for Children Program led the Party to initiate free health clinics and a range of other community programs. Many blacks were poorly served by the health care system, and some had never seen a doctor. Despite the health care initiatives within the federal government’s War on Poverty—particularly the newly created neighborhood health centers targeting the needs of inner-city communities—many residents in these communities received only limited, if any, health care attention.29
In response, the Party created a series of free medical clinics across the country. These clinics relied on the volunteer services of local doctors, medical students, interns, residents, nurses, and community folk as well as donated or low-rent clinic space. These public Panther-run clinics, such as those in Berkeley and Cleveland, offered services to all who came, black and nonblack alike. In some cities, like Baltimore, the Party formed coalitions with like-minded individuals and groups to run free clinics in the community.30
For the Party, the focus was plain and urgent: to address within its limited resources the pressing health care concerns of poor black communities that sorely lacked adequate medical facilities and professionals. Clinic services “included first aid care, physical examinations, prenatal care, and testing for lead poisoning, high blood pressure, and sickle cell anemia.” If necessary, clinicians referred patients to specialists for follow-up care. There were at least eleven such clinics, including those in Kansas City, Seattle, and New Haven. Chicago’s Spurgeon “Jake” Winters Free Medical Care Center was one of the best-run and most-respected Panther health clinics, serving over two thousand people in its initial two months. “Medical teams from the Winters clinic went door-to-door assisting people with their health problems,” according to Abron. “The clinic’s staff included obstetricians, gynecologists, pediatricians, and general practitioners.” Milwaukee’s People’s Free Health Center emphasized preventive medicine and health care education on “sickle cell anemia, drug abuse, children’s health and birth control” as well as free health care screenings. The clinic also sponsored discussions on black social relations, including relations between black women and men, and concerns of black youth.31
The Party’s sickle-cell-anemia testing program and its Sickle Cell Anemia Research Foundation made a serious contribution to black health care in America. The Party worked hard to publicize the seriousness of the disease, which afflicts about one in five hundred African Americans.32 Before the Panthers launched a public awareness campaign in 1971, black and mainstream awareness of the disease was limited. After the Panther’s publicity offensive on behalf of battling the disease, more and more blacks learned of the disease and got tested for it. In the Panther clinics, health care professionals referred those with the disease or with the sickle-cell trait for further counseling and, if necessary, treatment. The Panthers’ Sickle Cell Anemia Research Foundation provided a public face to the disease, promoting pioneering work that led to advances in scientific understanding and medical treatment of the disease.33
The Party’s health care programs included efforts to combat drug addiction. Often led by ex–drug addicts who worked with the Party, these initiatives focused on treatment and rehabilitation. In Boston’s South End neighborhood, “Project Concern” was “run by ex-addicts who have acquired a political consciousness and therefore realize the necessity of quitting drugs in order to survive.” The Party lauded the project’s ideological thrust as well as its health advocacy and gave special praise to the brothers who ran and participated in the program. These brothers built their program “on the revolutionary ideology of capitalism plus dope equals genocide.” Dope, they argued, was part of the oppressor’s plan “to ensure our enslavement.” A similar initiative, People for the People, offered “drug control and education” in “the heavily drug-infested” community of Corona-East Elmhurst in Queens, New York.34
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nbsp; Despite these successes, state repression continued. Local police and the FBI worked to undermine the Party’s health clinics and the Panthers’ health care activism. In 1971, Cleveland Panthers worked hard to transform their health clinic into a larger People’s Free Health Clinic. On August 18 that year, a dynamite explosion severely damaged the clinic. The blast was widely believed to be the handiwork of the state, and Panther Jimmy Slater suggested that the police and FBI counterintelligence were responsible for blowing up the clinic, though definitive proof is lacking. “Any positive program that served and mobilized the community was attacked. It was one of the things we had going on that served a lot of people who needed free medical aid, and it was attacked to undermine the party’s efforts.”35
That same summer, early Sunday morning on July 5, the Party’s Franklin Lynch People’s Free Health Center in Boston was hit by thirteen shots, causing limited damage. Due to the loud noise of the July 4 fireworks and firecrackers, the attack went undetected until early Sunday morning. The shots were allegedly fired by local police, and clinic patrons and workers, community folk, and party members were outraged. The Boston Party chapter resolved that “the strength, the love and determination of the people has built the Free Health Center up to what it is today, and the same strength, love, and devotion of the people will make the Free Health Center stand up to future attacks by Mayor White’s Gestapo pig force.”36
The Party’s advocacy of public health care for blacks revealed the group’s deep commitment to a holistic view of health that was both environmental and physical. For the Party, the well-being of individual black bodies and the collective black community reflected the overall welfare of the larger black body politic. Improving the health status of blacks thus went hand in hand with improving their political, economic, and social status. In the Party’s view, black political activism and black public health activism were interwoven.