Black Against Empire

by Joshua Bloom

Inflamed by Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and the killings at Kent State, and bolstered by widespread outrage, students across the country took up the call of the anti-imperialist Panther supporters at Yale and went on strike. More than four million students at 1,300 colleges participated in campus protests that month. One and a half million went on strike, shutting down at least 536 college campuses—many for the remainder of the academic year. According to a survey of college presidents by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, 57 percent of the nation’s colleges experienced a “significant impact” as a result of student protests in May 1970. More than 100 colleges reported that armed officers from outside the university, including city or state police, the National Guard, army troops or marines, came onto campus to quell student protests that month. At Mississippi’s Jackson State College, a historically black institution, police shot eleven students on May 14, killing two of them, further fueling anti-imperialist rage.79

  The political dynamics across three U.S. cities highlight the attraction of different constituencies to the Panthers’ politics through 1969 and much of 1970. In Chicago, assassination of the charismatic Fred Hampton led to broad intervention by moderate blacks. In New Haven, repression catalyzed extensive mobilization by students and antiwar progressive allies. And in the Black Power ferment of Los Angeles, state repression of the Panthers made the Party stand out from the alternatives—militarizing activists, drawing financial support from affluent allies, and ultimately encouraging increased membership. The more the state took repressive action against the Black Panthers, the more the Party’s membership, allied support, and political influence grew. Where would the cycle of insurgency lead?

  PART FOUR

  Revolution Has Come!

  The sharpest struggles in the world today are those of the oppressed nations against imperialism and for national liberation. Within this country the sharpest struggle is that of the black colony for its liberation; it is a struggle which by its very nature is anti-imperialist and increasingly anti-capitalist. . . . Within the black liberation movement the vanguard force is the Black Panther Party. . . . We must keep in mind that the Black Panther Party is not fighting black people’s struggles only but is in fact the vanguard in our common struggles against capitalism and imperialism.

  —Students for a Democratic Society, National Council Resolution, April 4 1969

  You are Black Panthers, We are Yellow Panthers!

  —M. Hoang Minh Giam, North Vietnamese Minister of Culture, Hemispheric Conference to End the War in Vietnam, November 19, 1968

  12

  Black Studies and Third World Liberation

  In August 1968, George Mason Murray, the Black Panther minister of education, traveled to Cuba to represent the Black Panthers at a conference sponsored by the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAAL). The oldest son of a Presbyterian minister, Murray had grown up poor, one of thirteen children in a religious family in rural Mississippi. He became a civil rights activist and left Mississippi. In 1963, he arrived in San Francisco and enrolled in San Francisco State College. Murray was a serious student who sported short-cropped hair and a tie. He soon gained admission to graduate school in English at SF State and became the first black director of the undergraduate tutorial program there, enthusiastically recruiting young blacks from San Francisco to take advantage of the university’s educational resources. The program reached its peak enrollment under his direction. At SF State, the powerful tide of Black Power began to pull on Murray. He grew out his hair and began to wear a black leather jacket. He renounced Christianity and joined the Nation of Islam for a short period. He became active in the university’s Black Student Union (BSU). Soon he joined the Black Panther Party.

  Murray threw himself wholeheartedly into the Black Panthers. His fiery eloquence made him an important Party spokesman, and he was quickly promoted, joining the Central Committee as minister of education by April 1968.1 He believed black liberation required a global revolution against imperialism, which in turn required a cultural revolution, new ways of being black. There was widespread debate within the Black Liberation Struggle at the time about the relative importance of black culture and black politics. Murray became an important voice in this debate, articulating a Black Panther position that black culture would have to be revolutionary if it was to liberate black people:

  The only culture worth keeping is the revolutionary culture. . . . Our culture must not be something that the enemy enjoys, appreciates, or says is attractive, it must be repelling to the slave master. It must smash, shatter and crack his skull, crack his eyeballs open and make water and gold dust run out. . . . We are changing, we are deciding that freedom means change, changing from the slaves, the cowards, the boys, the toms, the clowns, coons, spooks of the 50’s, 40’s, 30’s, into the wild, courageous, freedom fighting, revolutionary black nationalists.2

  When Murray traveled to Cuba in August 1968 to promote the “Free Huey!” campaign, leaders of anticolonial and revolutionary movements around the globe embraced the Panthers. “The genuine freedom of Huey Newton,” declared the Executive Secretariat of OSPAAAL, “will be brought about as the result of the revolutionary action of the Afro-Americans and of the white people who are willing to run the same risks; as the result of new Watts, Newarks, Detroits and Clevelands. In this endeavor they will have the backing and the solidarity of the peoples and the revolutionary combatants of Africa, Asia and Latin America.”3 When Murray’s turn came to speak at the OPAAAL conference, he affirmed the necessity of a global revolution against imperialism and the Black Panther Party’s commitment to solidarity with revolutionary struggles throughout the Third World:

  We have vowed not to put down our guns or stop making Molotov cocktails until colonized Africans, Asians and Latin Americans in the United States and throughout the world have become free. . . . We want to tell the people who are struggling throughout the world that our collective struggle can only be victorious, and the defeat of the murderers of mankind will come as soon as we create a few more Vietnams, Cubas and Detroits. . . . The Black Panther Party recognizes the critical position of black people in the United States. We recognize that we are a colony within the imperialist domains of North America and that it is the historic duty of black people in the United States to bring about the complete, absolute and unconditional end of racism and neocolonialism by smashing, shattering and destroying the imperialist domains of North America. In order to bring humanity to a higher level, we will follow the example of Che Guevara, the Cuban people, the Vietnamese people and our leader and Minister of Defense, Huey P. Newton. If it means our lives, that is but a small price to pay for the freedom of humanity.

  Illustrating his point, he argued that, “every time a Vietnamese guerilla knocks out a U.S. soldier, that means one less aggressor against those who fight for freedom in the U.S.”4

  Murray’s speech in Cuba achieved his goal of being “repelling to the slave master.” When he returned to SF State, he found himself at the center of a controversy. On September 26, perhaps emboldened by the national political climate in the buildup to the 1968 presidential election, the conservative Board of Trustees of the California State Colleges voted eight to five to ask President Smith of SF State to cancel Murray’s teaching appointment and assign him to a nonteaching position. President Smith knew he would face strong protest from faculty and students if he canceled Murray’s teaching appointment. Hoping to avoid this response, he denied the trustees’ request that Murray be reassigned, arguing that as an instructor, Murray had a right to intellectual freedom.5

  In 1968, more than half of San Francisco’s youth were black, Latino, Asian American, or Native American, but SF State’s student body was more than three-quarters white.6 By the fall of 1968, black student activists at the university had developed a strong anti-imperialist perspective. As early as 1966, Black Student Union president James Garrett had said that the black student struggle was “no different fr
om that of the Vietnamese. . . . We are struggling for self-determination . . . for our black communities; and self-determination for a black education.”7 A popular Black Student Union poster featured an Associated Press photo of an American soldier grabbing a Vietnamese woman by the hair and pressing his gun so hard against her temple that ridges of skin had formed around the muzzle. The caption read, “Today the Vietnamese, tomorrow the blacks.”8

  Earlier in 1968, despite opposition from the administration, the Black Student Union had obtained support from the Faculty Senate to create a black studies program, and it had hired Nathan Hare, a radical sociologist, to establish the program. In April 1968, Hare submitted “A Conceptual Proposal for Black Studies,” in which he outlined an anti-imperialist framework and argued for more than a “mere blackening of white courses.” He noted that successful development of a black studies curriculum required not only a substantive shift but also a significant increase in black student enrollment, methodological innovation, and community involvement. He took an activist approach that sought to position black studies as part of a transformation of the black condition rather than its perpetuation. “Black studies will be revolutionary or it will be useless if not detrimental,” Hare wrote. As the black studies proposal gained steam in the spring of 1968, students formed the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), which united the BSU with Latino and Asian American organizations. The TWLF called for “educational self-determination” and developed a proposal for an ethnic studies program that would include black, Latino and Asian American curricula to be developed along similar anti-imperialist lines. The TWLF and the predominantly white Students for a Democratic Society forged a strategic alliance to demand special admission of four hundred freshmen of color, the creation of nine minority faculty positions, and the elimination of ROTC (the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) training on campus. That spring brought sit-ins, confrontations with police, and some minor victories, including the firing of the college president, Smith’s predecessor.9

  The student movement at SF State looked to the Black Panther Party for leadership. The BSU office featured the “Free Huey!” poster and framed pictures of Kathleen Cleaver and Stokely Carmichael.10 By the time George Murray returned from Cuba, the Black Panther Party was helping organize black student unions throughout the state and nationally to advance black university admissions and curricula. With the help of Virtual Murrell, who had worked with Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in their days at the Soul Students Advisory Committee at Merritt College, the Black Panther Party organized a Black Student Union Statewide Convention for October 26, 1968, to discuss the national organization of black students. The promotional materials for the conference emphasized point 5 of the Black Panther Party program: “We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.” The keynote speakers were Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, David Hilliard, and George Murray.11 Out of the convention, the black student unions formed a statewide union and began to organize on the national level. They also adopted a ten-point program and platform that imitated the Ten Point Program and Platform of the Black Panther Party.12

  Two days before the statewide convention, Murray spoke to an audience of two thousand at Fresno State College to promote anti-imperialist black student unions. He argued that black students’ struggle was part of the global struggle against imperialism and compared it to the American Revolution. Murray blasted the trustees for trying to have him fired

  because of some so-called anti-American remarks that I was supposed to have made in Cuba, remarks like this: Every time an American mercenary is shot, that’s one less cat that’s going to be killing us in the United States. That’s the truth. That’s a fact. Dig this: in Detroit and in Newark (we can not deny it) the 101st airborne division and the 82nd airborne division of the infantry, soldiers from Viet Nam, were sent into the black community. Their ranks had been partially depleted by the victorious fighters of the National Liberation Front. So that when they came into the black community (it’s sad to say because a lot of those soldiers were brothers) their ranks had been depleted because they were criminals fighting against another people of color.13

  On October 28, 1968, the one-year anniversary of Huey Newton’s incarceration, Donald Cox, field marshal of the Black Panther Party, and a contingent of five other Panthers visited San Francisco State. Murray called a BSU rally. Making circular motions in the air with his finger, he said, “I think we should have a demonstration for Huey today. He’d lay down his life for the people, and we should honor him.”14 As word spread, more than one hundred black students gathered on campus outside the BSU office. The crowd joined a call and response in support of Huey: “Black Is Beautiful” “Free Huey!” “Set our warrior free!” “Free Huey!” The black students marched around campus. By the time they arrived at the cafeteria, the group was two hundred strong. Ben Stewart, chair of the Black Student Union, directed as BSU members cleared off four tables and pulled them together to create a platform for speakers.

  Next George Murray called a student strike for November 6. He also spoke to the students about the need for black studies in revolutionary terms:

  Whether you Negroes recognize it or not, there is a revolution going on. There are people using guns to defend their communities. Your lunches are not only going to be disrupted, your whole lives are going to be disrupted, from today on. . . . Listen, you Motherfucker Smith [president of the university], we know you’re lying. . . . The Black Studies Department is no department at all. There are four and one-half million black and brown people in California and they all pay taxes to pay for the racist departments here, but none of their taxes go to black and brown people. There are no full-time jobs for the brothers and sisters on the faculty here. The crackers still say they have the right to say how many black and brown people will come into this school and how many will not. There are four and one-half million black and brown people in California, so there should be five thousand black and brown people at this school.15

  On the heels of the conflicts in Chicago, with the November elections right around the corner, Murray’s anti-imperialist activities became the target of establishment politicians. Apparently attempting to outdo the right, San Francisco’s Mayor Joseph Alioto, a Democrat, launched an investigation to see if criminal charges could be filed against Murray for encouraging students to bring guns to San Francisco State. On October 31, Chancellor Glenn Dumke, head of the Board of Trustees of the California State Colleges, ordered President Smith to suspend Murray, which he did that weekend.

  Murray’s dismissal added fuel to the fire. Uniting behind the revolutionary anti-imperialist perspective championed by the Black Panther Party, Murray attracted and consolidated support not only from radical black students but also from radical Latino, Asian American, and white students. Because of the political establishment’s failure to address the draft, the war, and persistent racial inequality, the Panthers also received extensive support from faculty members, less radical students, antiwar liberals, and critically, moderate black leaders seeking expanded black educational access and curricula that encompassed black experiences and perspectives.

  Building upon earlier demands for black and ethnic studies, the Third World Liberation Front issued a set of demands in the name of educational self-determination for Third World people. The list included not only the retention of George Murray and a full professorship for Dr. Hare, but creation of a full-fledged black studies department and school of ethnic studies with fifty faculty positions; control over the hiring, retention, and curricula for the departments; power to determine the administration of financial aid; and increased enrollment of students of color. Seeing racial oppression as an issue of internal colonialism distinct from the class exploitation experienced by poor whites, the TWLF also set up guidelines for white students’ participation, casting them in a supportive rather than leadership rol
e and creating a communications committee to coordinate white strike support.16

  On Election Day, November 5, 1968, the night before the strike was set to begin, Stokely Carmichael, prime minister of the Black Panther Party, addressed more than seven hundred students and community members at a meeting called exclusively for nonwhites: “We must go now for the real control. . . . We want the right to hire and to fire teachers. We want the right to control . . . courses at San Francisco State, and once we get that then George Murray becomes irrelevant. Because George Murray is under our control, and Mayor Alioto has nothing to say about it. But if we fight over George Murray, even if we win next week, then they’ll pick somebody else.”17

  The student strike at SF State and most of the critical campus rebellions that followed linked Black Power with a cross-race anti-imperialist perspective, often explicitly linking the fight for Black Power on campus to the Vietnam War and global anti-imperialism. Losing faith in the ability or commitment of the Democratic Party and the American system to address their needs, many young Americans of every race and class turned to the revolutionary anti-imperialist politics championed by the Black Panther Party. Student activists increasingly saw their struggle as larger than a fight about student enrollment or curricula. They defined the issue as one of global revolution against empire.

  Barbara Williams, a black student at SF State, wrote about this idea of a shared Third World commitment to self-determination: “We are conscious of our blackness, brownness, redness, yellowness and are moving with that knowledge back into our communities. We intend to reveal to the world our own place in this world’s history and to mark our place in space and time. For us, it is no ‘privilege’ to be a product of your racist universities and colleges from which emerge black men with white minds. We don’t intend to reflect your destructive apathy and noninvolvement and inhumanity.”18