by Joshua Bloom
FREE BOBBY AND ERICKA!
Whoever was ultimately responsible for deciding to murder Alex Rackley, there was no credible evidence of Bobby Seale’s involvement. The government’s strained efforts to pin the murder on him became a rallying point for potential allies. Many progressives already saw Seale as a target of government repression. Despite his minimal involvement in the protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, a federal grand jury indicted him on March 20, 1969, for conspiracy to incite riots along with the other “Chicago Eight”: Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John Froines, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Lee Weiner.
At the time, Seale’s attorney Charles Garry was undergoing surgery. When the judge refused to delay the trial, Seale insisted on representing himself. The judge denied him that right, and Seale insisted he was being railroaded. Seale refused to be silenced and continued to press his constitutional right to defend himself, arguing, “You have George Washington and Benjamin Franklin sitting in a picture behind you, and they were slave owners. That’s what they were. They owned slaves. You are acting in the same manner, denying me my constitutional rights.”28
On October 29, the judge—unwilling to let Seale defend himself and unable to silence him—ordered Seale shackled to a chair and gagged. Seale continued to bang his chair and shout through his gag, demanding the right to defend himself. On November 5, the judge sentenced him to four years in prison on sixteen counts of criminal contempt of court and severed his case from that of the remaining seven defendants.29 Every newspaper and TV news program featured depictions of Seale bound but undeterred.
Many potential allies saw the conspiracy charges against Bobby Seale as a state effort to stifle political dissent. On September 16, following Seale’s arrest in San Francisco, an interdenominational group of ministers and priests held a sit-in at the U.S. marshal’s office in San Francisco, nonviolently taking over the office. They argued that the conspiracy charges against Seale were “designed and enforced for the purpose of suppression of political dissent” and that “the Department of Justice is relating to the Panthers like the Department of Defense is relating to the Vietnamese.” Eight of them were arrested.30 The month after Seale was gagged and shackled in the Chicago court, the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (New MOBE)—the largest antiwar coalition in the United States at the time—sent a telegram to the Black Panther Party decrying the violation of Seale’s rights and his mistreatment in court. New MOBE called for the immediate dismissal of charges against Seale and impeachment of the judge.31
Solidarity committees in Scandinavia launched a wave of rallies, displaying signs with pictures of Seale under the headline “Kidnapped” and others reading “Kapitalism + Racism = Fascism.” Allies flew Black Panther editor “Big Man” Howard to Stockholm to speak on Seale’s persecution at a joint anti-imperialist rally with the National Liberation Front of Vietnam.32 In November South Africa’s leading anti-apartheid organization, the African National Congress (ANC), sent a letter to the Black Panther Party expressing concern for political prisoners Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. The ANC also offered a shared vision of liberation: “Our struggle like yours is part of the larger struggle against international imperialism now being conducted in Vietnam, in the Middle East and most of the Third World. We, therefore, unhesitantly express our solidarity with you in your efforts to free Comrade Bobby and Huey. More than this we wish to express our solidarity with the Black Panther Party in its life and death struggle against our common enemy: fascist racism. It is not without significance that our demand is identical to yours . . . Power to the People!”33
After Seale’s indictment in August for his alleged involvement in the Connecticut conspiracy, the Black Panther Party national office sent Doug Miranda to New Haven to develop and lead the Panther chapter there. Miranda, nineteen, had developed a reputation as one of the most effective young organizers in the Party. National headquarters chose him for the crucial role of organizing support for Seale and Huggins.
Miranda had joined the Black Panther Party through his involvement in the Third World Strike for Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State College (see chapter 12), and he had demonstrated his organizing skills during the launch of a Panther chapter in Boston. Party leaders recognized Miranda as one of their best organizers. He built trust and won loyalty. When needed, Miranda could also mete out discipline. At one Panther meeting in Boston, Miranda ordered latecomers to stand with their arms outstretched. “Repeat after me,” he commanded. “Tardiness is a hardy corrosive that would destroy the party. I would rather destroy my arms than destroy the party!” His success with Harvard students also proved he knew how to deal with privileged allies. Once in New Haven, Miranda demonstrated his intellectual acuity to Yale students, trouncing a representative of Students for a Democratic Society in a public debate on Marxism. Miranda ably raised funds to support the New Haven chapter by securing regular donations from wealthy students, an activity that the FBI closely monitored through wiretaps.34
Under Miranda’s leadership, the New Haven Panther chapter quickly developed. He set up an office on Sylvan Avenue in the predominantly black neighborhood called “the Hill.” At a news conference on October 1, Miranda announced the formation of the Coalition to Defend the Panthers as a central part of their effort to mount a defense outside the courtroom. The coalition would focus on fund-raising for the legal defense and would challenge the vilification of the Panthers in the mainstream press, seeking to create a political climate conducive to the Black Panthers’ case. The Panthers wanted the coalition to be a source of broad support, encompassing progressives and liberals and not just radicals: “The Coalition will be broad enough to include people who do not necessarily agree with the whole Panther program, but who do believe in any case that the Panthers are being persecuted for their political beliefs. The main line of the Coalition in its educational work will be that the Panther case has received such prejudicial coverage in the press that a ‘fair trial’ is impossible, and that therefore the Panthers should be freed immediately.”35
At the time of its launch, the coalition comprised fifteen organizations, including national left and progressive organizations such as SDS and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; black community organizations from New Haven such as the Hill Parents Association; Yale organizations such as the Yale Divinity School Association and the Yale Black Law Students organization; and New Haven’s leading leftist organization, the American Independent Movement.36
On October 8, the New Haven Black Panthers launched the John Huggins Free Breakfast for Children Program at the Newhallville Teen Lounge on Shelton Avenue. They teamed up with a welfare rights organization called Welfare Moms of New Haven to promote the breakfast program and build support for the Black Panther Party. Soon, they were feeding seventy to eighty kids each morning. On Wednesday nights, the Panthers held a popular ideology class on Columbus Avenue. They intermittently distributed free clothing and worked with existing black community groups on lead-abatement projects in black neighborhoods. Several months later, an open house at the Panther Community Information Center on Sylvan Avenue attracted hundreds of people, mostly working-class and low-income black residents of the neighborhood.37
Women’s Liberation, a predominantly white feminist group in New Haven, planned a rally for November 22, 1969, to protest the plight of the five women Panthers incarcerated there. The group argued that, with the women being held without bail and not allowed visitors, their “right to interview lawyers crucial to the preparation of their defense has been denied in direct violation of their constitutional rights.” Three of the five incarcerated Panther women were pregnant. Women’s Liberation argued that the women were being denied adequate diet, exercise, and health care. “To hold these women under these conditions while they’re still in pre-trial status makes a mockery of the ‘presumption of innocence’ which is their constitutional guarantee.” On the day of the rally, about five thousa
nd women and their male allies gathered at Beaver Pond Park and marched to the courthouse chanting, “Off Our Backs!” “Power to the People!” and “Free Our Sisters, Free Ourselves!” A group of New Haven mothers on welfare led the procession, followed by women members of the Black Panther Party and representatives of predominantly white feminist organizations from several states, with men marching in solidarity behind them.
At the courthouse, Beth Mitchell, the communications secretary of the Harlem Black Panther Party, addressed the crowd: “We demand immediate freedom for the Connecticut Panthers and for all political prisoners. We demand an end to their isolation and sleepless nights. We demand adequate diet, exercise, and clothing. We demand their right to choose counsel. We demand their right to prenatal and maternity care by doctors of their choice. We demand the right for these mothers to make their own arrangements for the custody of the children in accordance with their wishes and the wishes of the Black Panther Party.”38
To build support for their case, the Panther national leaders also sent Charles “Cappy” Pinderhughes, a former journalist, to accompany Miranda and develop a local newsletter. The People’s News Service captivated and informed, advancing the Panther perspective and helping to mobilize support for Seale, Huggins, and the other Panthers in New Haven. In March, J. Edgar Hoover ordered the New Haven FBI to “furnish six copies of this bulletin on a regular basis,” noting that the “paper is chock full of reports—from jail, from New Haven black neighborhoods, about police confrontations, conditions at Elm Haven [housing projects], diatribes against the system, news on national Panther cases. . . . [It retains] real local flavor.”39 By April 1970, the FBI noted that thirty “hard core” committed Black Panther members, supported by many more peripheral members and allies, were working around the clock to forge a strong and organized Panther presence in New Haven.40
As the New Haven Panthers mobilized, allied support grew, albeit slowly at first. On December 18, five Yale students interrupted a large class in Harkness Hall and recited a list of names of Black Panther Party members who had been killed. The students told the press they were “protesting the persecution of the Black Panther Party.” The Yale administration did not take kindly to the intrusion and expelled all five students, informing them that they could reapply for admission the following term if they wanted to return.41
The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, at their meeting in Philadelphia on February 14, 1970, passed a resolution expressing solidarity with Bobby Seale and the Black Panthers:
We call upon our lawmakers and all agencies of the government to respect the human and constitutional rights of all members of society. An orderly society with freedom and justice for all will not be attained until and unless the right of each individual to live in human dignity, to be free from racial discrimination, and to express his political views without persecution is recognized and enforced. We reaffirm our support of those, like . . . the Black Panther Party, who courageously assert their constitutional rights in the face of lawful and oppressive governmental interference.42
On March 2, six hundred people—many of them black—rallied in front of the American embassy in London calling for the release of Bobby Seale and expressing solidarity with the Black Panther Party. A number of the protestors fought with police, and sixteen were arrested. On March 14, the National Student Union in Kamerun (now Cameroon) wrote to the Black Panthers to express its solidarity and to assert that the Panthers’ struggle in the United States was an extension of the international fight against colonialism, analogous to the victorious Kamerun armed struggle against French imperialism. The Black Nationalist Malcolmites and the British Tricontinental Organization also extended their solidarity and support.43
That month, as the Connecticut trial approached, the famous French author Jean Genet traveled to New Haven to support the Panthers. He took up the core Panther notion that black communities in the United States were treated as “the Black Colony” and argued that Bobby Seale was being persecuted for refusing to follow the docile script laid out for blacks by their oppressors: “Bobby Seale and his comrades have over-stepped our [white] boundaries, they speak and act as responsible political people. . . . Because of his exceptional political stature, Chairman Bobby Seale’s trial which just started is, in fact, a political trial of the Black Panther Party, and on a more general basis, a race trial held against all of America’s Blacks.” French film-maker Jean-Luc Godard also traveled to New Haven to support the mobilization effort for Bobby Seale and the Black Panther Party. He told a packed crowd of six hundred gathered at the Yale Law School, “The outcome of this trial will very much affect the Panthers’ effort to make a class struggle instead of a race war in this country. United States political leaders are trying to destroy the liberation struggle of the people. . . . You must all participate in the political actions in this city, not just as individuals, but as members of a society struggling against the rise of fascism.”44
THE PANTHER AND THE BULLDOG
In mid-March, with the pretrial hearings for the New Haven Panthers approaching, the Black Panther Defense Committee opened its own office on Chapel Street in New Haven and began organizing a massive nonviolent protest for May 1—May Day—in support of the Panthers. The lead organizer for the committee was Ann Froines, whose husband, John Froines, was one of the Chicago Seven (known as the Chicago Eight before the judge severed Bobby Seal’s case). The committee sought to tap into Panther alliances with national antiwar and countercultural leaders.45
As pretrial hearings for Panther Lonnie McLucas began in mid-April, Panthers and their allies in New Haven mobilized. They first targeted Yale, seeking to force the university to take a stand on the Panther trials. About seventeen hundred people, mostly Yale students, gathered in the campus’s Woolsey Hall for a Panther presentation. Artie Seale, Bobby’s wife, told the crowd, “Either you’re with us or against us.” A group entered the courthouse chanting pro-Panther slogans; police arrested two people from the group and expelled the rest from the building. The protesters rallied with Panther speakers Doug Miranda and Artie Seale across the street from the courthouse on the New Haven Green. Some students smashed windows at the nearby Chapel Square Mall and fought with police. Police arrested five people, including a Yale graduate student charged with photographing the police on the courthouse steps in violation of a local “emergency directive.”46
The trial was a central concern of the Panther organization nationally, and that afternoon, David Hilliard attended the pretrial hearings accompanied by Panther minister of culture Emory Douglas and French author Jean Genet. At this point, Hilliard was the highest-ranking Panther leader not in jail or exile, and he had been in charge of the Party’s daily operation since Seale had been arrested in late August. When Seale’s lawyer Charles Garry handed Hilliard a note, police grabbed Hilliard and tried to seize the paper. Douglas and Genet defended Hilliard. Police confiscated the note, arrested Hilliard and Douglas (but not Genet), and the judge sentenced each to six months in jail—the maximum sentence for one count of criminal contempt of court. In the eyes of many potential supporters, the arrests and sentencing were further evidence that the government and legal system were targeting Panthers.47
The incident was a turning point for Panther support in New Haven, especially among Yale students. The Panthers had argued that police in Chicago and New Haven had targeted Seale because of his political views and influence. That Hilliard—the top Panther leader who was still free—was incarcerated so swiftly for a questionable infraction supported this argument. The next day, April 15, 1970, a group of four hundred Yale students passed two resolutions supporting the fourteen Black Panthers awaiting trial in New Haven. One resolution called for a three-day moratorium on classes. The other called for Yale to donate $500,000 to the Black Panther legal defense fund.48
Doug Miranda met with various Yale groups to build student support. At one meeting, he told Yale students, “You ought to get some guns, and g
o and get Chairman Bobby out of jail.” After the meeting, a group of black Yale undergraduates confronted Miranda about his incendiary tactics. Miranda said he did not actually expect the Yalies to use violence, “But they ain’t done shit yet except talk. We’re trying to get a strike going here, man! Now you can’t just tell them, ‘Strike!’ You’ve got to give them something more extreme, and then you let them fall back on a strike.”49
The next day in Cambridge, Massachusetts, an offshoot of the Students for Democratic Society and Abbie Hoffman of the Chicago Seven organized a rally at Harvard University in support of the New Haven Panthers. About 3,000 people showed up, and Harvard locked the gates along the protestors’ route, shutting them out of the campus. The crowd threw rocks and bricks through windows, lit trash fires, and fought with police. Police beat marchers—including female students from Radcliffe—with nightsticks; 214 people were hospitalized.50
The potential for violence in New Haven was much greater. On April 19, about fifteen hundred people crammed into Yale’s Battell Chapel for a Panther teach-in. Doug Miranda called for a student strike: “Take your power and use it to save the institution. Take it away from people who are using it in a way it shouldn’t be used. You can close down Yale and make Yale demand release. You have the power to prevent a bloodbath in New Haven. . . . There’s no reason why the Panther and the Bulldog [Yale’s mascot] can’t get together! . . . That Panther and that Bulldog gonna move together!” Audience members jumped to their feet to deliver a standing ovation. Students rushed to join the preparations, and Miranda’s imagery became a central organizing motif. Students printed graphic images of the panther and bulldog logos on T-shirts and pamphlets to aid in organizing the strike for May Day.51
