by Joshua Bloom
But state repression of the Panthers intensified after Nixon’s election. Even before Nixon took office in January 1969, police and federal agents began staging raids on Panther offices. It is not clear whether the wave of raids of Panther offices that followed was the independent response of local police to the victory of Nixon’s Law and Order campaign in the polls or whether the FBI systematically encouraged the change in policy nationwide. In either case, no form of repression was more direct, more provocative, or more violent. In January 1968, Newton had issued Executive Mandate No. 3, commanding Panthers to defend their homes and offices with guns against trespass by police who could not produce legal warrants. Panthers around the country took this mandate seriously, preparing for unwarranted raids by police and in some cities fortifying their offices for attack. In this context, raids on Panther offices were essentially acts of war—usually planned confrontations in which authorities expected armed resistance.
At 8:00 A.M. on December 18, 1968, police and federal agents stormed the Panther office in Indianapolis, shooting tear gas canisters through the window and arresting three Panthers. They then ransacked the office. Photos show everything in the office tossed about and destroyed. Federal marshals claimed they were searching for unregistered weapons, but they found none.53
After a wedding reception for Lauren Watson, chair of the Denver Black Panthers, at a Panther office and cultural center in December 1968, police raided and ransacked the center. They ripped and damaged books and cultural objects. Photos taken after the raid show the center in disarray, with strewn papers and broken furniture. The wedding had been attended by some of Denver’s most prominent black leaders, and the black press covered the raid. No Panthers were in the office at the time of the raid.54
On December 27, 1968, one hundred police and FBI agents—weapons drawn—knocked down the door of the Des Moines Panther headquarters. They ransacked the office, confiscated some papers, and arrested two Panthers on charges of arson at a local lumber company.55
That same month, at 4:15 on a Sunday morning, two white men dressed in police uniforms pulled up in front of the Newark Black Panther office in an unmarked vehicle and threw two small bombs at the office. The bombs shattered parts of the front wall and window and started a fire in the office; four Panthers were injured, including Carl Nichols, who suffered a broken arm and burns on his legs. Police spokesmen alleged that the Panthers were the ones who had earlier shot up the front of the Newark police station with a machine gun but denied Panther charges that the bombing of the Panther office was retaliation for that shooting.56
The New York chapter of the Black Panther Party was one of the largest, most active, and most effective. At 1:00 A.M. on April 2, 1969, based on the allegations of three paid informants, a New York grand jury indicted twenty-one Black Panthers for plotting to bomb department stores, police stations, and the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. At 5:00 in the morning, New York police simultaneously raided five Black Panther houses, arresting twelve Panthers. Other members of the chapter were already in police custody; a few escaped capture and went into exile. Those indicted were Afeni Shakur (the mother of future rap star Tupac Shakur), Lumumba Shakur, Dhoruba (Richard Moore), Sekou Odinga (Nathanial Burns), Jamal (Eddie Joseph), Joan Bird, Cetawayo (Michael Tabor), Kuwasi Balagoon (Donald Weems), Robert Collier, Richard Harris, Ali Bey Hassan (John J. Casson), Abayama Katara (Alex McKiever), Kwando Kinshasa (William King), Baba Odinga (Walter Johnson), Shaba Ogun Om (Lee Roper), Curtis Powell, Clark Squire, Larry Mack, Mshina (Thomas Berry), Lonnie Epps, and Mkuba (Lee Berry). While the evidence against them was flimsy, the judge set bail prohibitively high: $100,000 each for most of the “Panther 21.” Although all twenty-one defendants were eventually acquitted, most of them remained in jail for two years while the trial proceeded, incapacitating most of the New York Panther leadership. The case became a major cause for further mobilization of Panthers and their allies across the United States.57
Just after midnight on April 27, 1969, a bomb exploded in the Des Moines Black Panther headquarters, demolishing one side of the building, including the bathroom, kitchen, conference room, and distribution room. Photos show half the building obliterated, with large sections of the walls and roof destroyed. Six Panthers were in the other half of the building at the time; miraculously, no one was seriously hurt. Police arrived less than thirty seconds later, cordoned off the building, and began seizing documents from inside the house. When some of the Panthers objected, police used mace against them and arrested three of them for disturbing the peace and resisting arrest. The Panthers charged the police with bombing the office and argued that the unnatural quickness of their arrival after the explosion showed that they knew of the bombing in advance.58
On April 28, 1969, after a Panther rally to mobilize support for the “Free Huey!” campaign, police raided the San Francisco office of the Black Panther Party. Carrying Thompson submachine guns and M16 rifles, police kicked in the front door, shooting bullets into the office and filling it with tear gas. Eleven Panthers fled through the back door, and police arrested all of them. Nine of the eleven were later released without charge; Cleveland Brooks was booked for disturbing the peace, and Panther Field Marshal Donald Cox was arrested for suspicion of assault on a police officer.59
At 1:00 A.M. on June 5, 1969, police surrounded Panther headquarters in Milwaukee and arrested five Panthers standing outside on charges of carrying concealed weapons and loitering.60
At 9:15 P.M. on June 15, 1969, police sought to disperse a gathering of blacks in a local park across the street from the Black Panther Party office in Sacramento. The crowd, including many women, resisted, and the confrontation became violent, with police spraying mace and beating people, who in turn threw rocks and bottles at the police. Police tried to cordon off the crowd, and many of the participants retreated to the Black Panther office. Police fired dozens of shots into the office, and Panthers escaped out the back doors. Police then ransacked the office, smashing windows, strewing papers on the floor, and breaking office equipment. Shooting between police and local residents continued for six hours. Fifteen people, many of them police, suffered gunshot wounds. By the end of the episode, police had arrested thirty-seven people, including several Panthers, whom they beat in jail.61
On July 14, 1969, police raided the Black Panther office in San Diego, confiscating the weapons stash—which the Panthers claimed were all legal—overturning the desks, and strewing papers on the floor.62
On August 9, 1969, at 9:00 P.M., dozens of police surrounded the Black Panther Party office in Richmond, California. The Panthers called their radio contacts, who promptly made an announcement on air, and dozens of people from the neighborhood quickly turned out to observe the police. After a short while, the police got in their cars and left.63
In the early morning of September 2, 1969, police surrounded a Panther house in San Diego and ordered the occupants—two women and a baby—to leave their home. When the police could not produce a warrant, the women refused to leave or to let the police in. The police fired tear gas canisters into the house through a window. Neighbors turned out and began throwing rocks and bricks at the police, who proceeded to arrest most members of the crowd. Eventually, the two women came out of the house with the baby, and the police arrested them too. Next the police ransacked the house, seizing Panther arms and ammunition. They claimed they were looking for Ronald Freeman, a Panther captain, who was wanted on suspicion of murder.64
On September 23, 1969, FBI agents and Philadelphia police surrounded the Philadelphia Black Panther headquarters. They arrested everyone inside and confiscated the Panthers’ files and an M14 rifle.65 These and other actions only served to incite people’s anger.
The political realignment of 1968 held far-reaching consequences for the Black Panthers that would set the context for the next phase of the Party’s development through 1969 and much of 1970. Nixon’s “Law and Order” victory intensified state repression of the Panthers. Simultan
eously, large portions of society, including many black people and opponents of the war, felt betrayed by the political establishment. For many, harsh repression confirmed the anti-imperialist view that the government did not serve the interests of the people. Even as right-wing Nixon seized the presidency, the Left expanded and deepened its commitment to fight imperialism. The more the state attempted to repress the Panthers, the more influential the Party would become.
9
41st and Central
By January 1969, the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party had consolidated its status as a leading black nationalist organization in the city, rivaled only by Ron Karenga’s US organization. The Los Angeles Panther chapter was not yet a large organization, but the killings of Panthers Bartholomew, Lawrence, and Lewis by police in the shoot-out at the gas station during the Watts festival in August 1968 had not scared everyone away either. If anything, the fact that these Panthers stood their ground and fought the police to the death strengthened the Party’s revolutionary credentials and drew new recruits, including alienated Vietnam War hero Geronimo Pratt.
In addition to earning a Purple Heart, Sergeant Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt—a former high school quarterback from Morgan City, Louisiana—had earned many honors in his first tour of duty in Vietnam, including the Soldier’s Medal and the Air Medal. He lost many friends in combat and had been wounded in action several times, including once by shrapnel from a land mine. Medics reported that only the extra sandbags with which Pratt had lined the bottom of his jeep had saved his life. In the incident that earned him the Soldier’s Medal, Pratt saved the lives of fellow soldiers when their helicopter crashed. Pratt’s citation read, “Pfc. Pratt, disregarding his own safety, entered the burning aircraft. Aware of the possibility of enemy activity in the area and the likelihood of an explosion in the helicopter, Pfc. Pratt made repeated trips into the aircraft until all five occupants had been removed and taken a safe distance from the flaming wreckage. His heroic and selfless action, at the risk of his own life, is in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflects great credit upon himself, his unit and the United States of America.”1
Pratt was a committed soldier, and he later recalled that he simply saw his ordeals in Vietnam as part of the job. He was ready, even eager, to return to Vietnam. But in the summer of 1967, Pratt was sent to Detroit to put down the black uprising there. He later recalled, “They took away our dignity as soldiers. One month we’re risking our lives for our country, and the next we’re getting ready to fire on our own people. I knew if the order came I couldn’t obey it.”2
When Pratt was sent back to Vietnam for a second tour of duty, he saw things in a new light. He began having nightmares and became critical of the war. “After a while,” recalled Pratt, “I began to see the war as another kind of racism. . . . All we ever heard was ‘gooks,’ ‘Buddhaheads,’ ‘slopes,’ same way our daddies heard ‘Krauts’ and ‘Japs.’ You got to make people subhuman before you kill ’em. I saw things I don’t want to remember. I did things I don’t want to remember. That second tour was a bad time.”3 Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in April 1968 was a wakeup call for Pratt. People back home had been telling him that a race war was approaching, and that they needed him. By June, he was back in Morgan City with an honorable discharge.
In September 1968, Pratt traveled to Los Angeles, where he met Bunchy Carter through a family friend. He arrived only a few weeks after police killed three Panthers at the Watts Summer Festival. Pratt agreed to share his military knowledge to help Bunchy train the Black Panthers in more effective self-defense measures. According to Pratt, Bunchy gave him the honorary name “Geronimo ji Jaga,” after the fierce warriors of the Jaga people of the Congo. Geronimo became Bunchy’s right-hand man and stayed in Los Angeles to train the Panthers.4
John and Ericka Huggins and Elaine Brown shared a communal apartment that served as an informal headquarters for the Party leadership, and the Panthers rented a two-story office where they conducted political education classes, meetings, and other official Party activities. In December 1968, Ericka gave birth to baby girl Mai Huggins. While Ericka cared for the baby, John and Elaine, along with Bunchy Carter and Geronimo Pratt, participated in the High Potential Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Funded partly by the federal government, the special program admitted black students deemed to have high potential despite a lack of formal academic credentials. The Panthers took college classes and worked to organize other black UCLA students. In line with instructions from the national office, they sought to organize L.A.’s first Free Breakfast for Children Program and set up a meeting with the head of food services at a UCLA dormitory to discuss whether the dorm would donate leftover food to the program.5 But before the Panthers could open the first community program, crisis struck.
In the fall of 1968, the FBI had accelerated a program to undermine the growing political influence of the Black Panthers. Taking note of the growing tension between the Black Panther Party and the US organization in Southern California, the FBI sought to escalate the conflict. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a memo to field officers on November 25, 1968, with the following instructions: “For the information of recipient offices a serious struggle is taking place between the Black Panther Party and the US organization. The struggle has reached such proportion that it is taking on the aura of gang warfare with attendant threats of murder and reprisals. In order to fully capitalize upon [Black Panther Party] and US differences as well as to exploit all avenues of creating further dissension in the ranks of the [Party], recipient offices are instructed to submit imaginative and hard-hitting counterintelligence measures aimed at crippling the [Black Panther Party].”6
Field offices quickly responded to Hoover with plans for escalating the conflict, and the Los Angeles office reported back to Hoover, “The Los Angeles Office is currently preparing an anonymous letter for Bureau approval which will be sent to the Los Angeles Black Panther Party supposedly from a member of the ‘US’ organization in which it will be stated that the youth group of the ‘US’ organization is aware of the [Black Panther Party] ‘contract’ to kill RON KARENGA, leader of ‘US,’ and they, ‘US’ members, in retaliation, have made plans to ambush leaders of the [Party] in Los Angeles. It is hoped this counterintelligence measure will result in an ‘US’ and [Black Panther Party] vendetta.”7
Tensions between Ron Karenga’s US organization and the Panthers came to a head over the leadership of the Black Student Union on the UCLA campus and the direction of the new Black Studies Program there. Karenga, as a formal community adviser appointed by the university administration, supported one candidate for director of the new program; the Black Panthers wanted a role in the decision-making process and opposed Karenga’s candidate. The university administration planned to announce the new director of the Black Studies Program on January 21. At two large and confrontational meetings of the Black Student Union on January 15 and January 17, no resolution was achieved. Most of the black students appeared to support the Black Panther position. Elaine Brown and John Huggins were elected to an ad hoc committee to represent Black Student Union concerns, and John Huggins and Bunchy Carter emerged as leading contenders in the upcoming election for the Black Student Union presidency.
At about 2:40 P.M. on January 17, as the Black Student Union adjourned and about 150 students poured out of the meeting at Campbell Hall, the conflict became violent. Ranking members of the US organization fired guns at Los Angeles Black Panther leaders; they shot John Huggins in the back and Bunchy Carter in the chest, killing them both.8
Fleeing campus, Panthers gathered at the Century Boulevard home shared by John and Ericka Huggins, their three-week-old daughter, Mai, and Elaine Brown. When Elaine Brown told Ericka that John had been killed, Ericka’s eyes glazed over; she started making coffee for the guests. About 150 police officers surrounded the house. Brown and two other Panther women hid under the bed with Ericka Huggins and Ma
i wrapped in a coat as police kicked down the door. Police arrested all seventeen Panthers in the house.9
Initially, no members of US were arrested. Playwright Donald Freed, the National Lawyers Guild, and other Panther allies quickly mobilized to raise bail and activate a legal defense. Within a few days, all charges against the Panthers were dropped, and the Panthers were released. Funeral services for Bunchy Carter took place at the Trinity Baptist Church in Los Angeles on Friday, January 24. Hundreds of people, including Kathleen Cleaver and James Baldwin, attended. Bobby Seale flew down to lead the services. While documentation of the FBI’s involvement in escalating the conflict with US would not be revealed for years to come, the Panther leadership believed from the start that the attack was part of a government plot. At Bunchy Carter’s funeral, Bobby Seale denounced Ron Karenga as a “reactionary” and a “tool of the power structure.”10
The Panthers rallied around their dead as martyrs in a revolutionary war against the U.S. government. On January 25, 1969, the front-page headlines of the Black Panther declared, “A Political Assassination.” Several articles in that issue argued that Ron Karenga and US were government pawns and that government forces had put them up to murder the Panthers to serve the ends of the state. The evidence the Black Panther presented to support this argument was circumstantial but powerful. The Panthers posited that their members had been attacked and killed by both police and the US organization, while US had never been attacked by police or by the Panthers. They pointed out that US received government funding; the Panthers did not. Panthers organized programs serving masses of poor black folks; US did not. The government conducted violent raids on Panther offices and activities nationally but had a peaceable relationship with US. US cooperated with the police to repress disturbances at high schools; the Panthers did not. Moreover, the Panthers argued that they were not especially invested in the outcome of the conflict at UCLA and would never have come to blows over it. The Black Panther explained, “[The] issue of the control of UCLA’s Black Studies Program is not an objective of the Black Panther Party. The Black Panther Party would not trade one block of Central Avenue [a low-income black neighborhood] for the whole city of Westwood [where UCLA is located] because the Black Panther Party is based on the masses of Black people, and gets its strength from the same.”11
