by Joshua Bloom
As the U.S. government sought to repress the Black Panthers, international political support continued to widen the revolutionary movement. Only concessions could break the insurgent cycle.
FIGURE 27. On December 8, 1969, hundreds of officers from the Los Angeles police department, equipped with M16 rifles, military gear, and armored vehicles, raided the Black Panther office at 41st and Central Avenues. The Black Panthers held the officers at bay in a five-hour miniwar before surrendering. (Wally Fong / AP Photo)
FIGURE 28. A few of the thousands of supporters who rallied December 11, 1969, in support of the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles express their anger about the police raid several days before. (Wally Fong / AP Photo)
FIGURE 29. Robert Bryan (middle), Lloyd Mims (right), and another member of the Black Panther Party, handcuffed and chained, await arraignment in Los Angeles after surrendering following the miniwar with police, December 11, 1969. (AP Photo)
FIGURE 30. Fred Hampton was the charismatic leader of the Chicago Black Panther Party. (© Bettmann / Corbis / AP Images)
FIGURE 31. Chicago police, working with federal agents and a paid infiltrator, shot Fred Hampton in the head as he lay in bed in the early morning of December 4, 1969, killing him and then dragging his corpse into the hallway to support the pretext that he had participated in a shoot-out. Police also killed Black Panther Mark Clark, wounded four others, and arrested all seven survivors on charges of attempted murder. When the federal conspiracy was uncovered and the case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the state dropped the charges against the Panthers and eventually agreed to pay the estates of Hampton and Clark and the survivors of the raid $1.8 million to settle the case. (Chicago Police Department)
FIGURE 32. This graphic by Emory Douglas on the cover of the Black Panther illustrates the Party’s view that the government wanted to vilify and kill Chairman Bobby Seale. The government first indicted Seale for causing a riot outside the 1968 Demo cratic Convention in Chicago, despite his minimal participation in the protests there, and then charged him with ordering the murder of a Black Panther member in New Haven. Courts found Seale not guilty on all charges. (© Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation)
FIGURE 33. A group of Seattle Black Panthers, led by Elmer Dixon, emulate the Black Panther action in Sacramento, standing on the steps of the state capitol in Olympia to protest a bill that would make it a crime to exhibit firearms in Washington, February 29, 1969. Seattle was one of the first cities outside of Oakland to open a Party chapter during the period of the Panthers’ greatest repression and greatest growth from mid-1968 through 1970. (Governor Daniel J. Evans Photograph Collection, Washington State Archives)
FIGURE 34. Vanetta Molson, head of the Black Panther free breakfast and free clinic programs in Seattle, talks with Aaron Dixon, leader of the city’s Black Panther chapter, January 1971. Another Party member answers an incoming phone call. (© Bettmann /Corbis / AP Images)
FIGURE 35. Allies rally in New York City’s Central Park on April 8, 1969, to protest the repression of the Black Panther Party. (© J P Laffont / Sygma / Corbis)
FIGURE 36. After the police shooting of a black woman sparked an urban rebellion in Lima, Ohio, on August 6, 1970, police and National Guardsmen armed with military equipment raided the office of the National Committee to Combat Fascism there. The Black Panther Party began opening committee offices in the summer of 1969, allowing nonblacks to join, whereas regular Black Panther Party chapters admitted only black members. (Gene Herrick / AP Photo)
FIGURE 37. Black Panther Party members surrender to Detroit police following an urban rebellion in the city on October 25, 1970, in which four police cars were set on fire, one police officer was killed, and another was wounded. Hundreds of police and two tanks surrounded the Black Panther Party office, and fifteen Black Panther party members—eight women and seven men—held the police at bay for nine hours. (Richard Sheinwald / AP Photo)
FIGURE 38. Helmeted police wearing armored vests, carrying automatic rifles and carbines, and driving armored vehicles attempt to evict a group of Black Panthers occupying a unit in the Desire Housing Projects in New Orleans on November 19, 1970. When hundreds of neighbors came to the defense of the Panthers, the police withdrew. (© Bettmann / Corbis / AP Images)
FIGURE 39. “Big Man” Elbert Howard (speaking), deputy minister of defense, and Audrea Jones (in white hat), leader of the Boston chapter of the Party, hold a press conference in front of the Black Panther Party office in Philadelphia in September 1970 during a national Party convention. (Stephen Shames / Polaris Images)
FIGURE 40. Black Panther Party members congregate in front of the Party’s Community Information Center in Washington, DC, 1970. The banner over the window reads “Free Clothing; Free Bobby; Free Huey.” The Black Panther standing on the steps in the black dress is Maria Edwards. (David Fenton / Getty Images)
FIGURE 41. Omaha Black Panther Party members (left to right) Robert Cecil, Robert Griffo, Frank Peate, Gary House, and William Peak leave the Omaha Central Police Station June 27, 1969, just after their release from questioning. (AP Photo)
FIGURE 42. A speaker at a Black Panther Party rally in Philadelphia on September 6, 1970, lights up the crowd with the chant “Power to the People!” (© Bettmann / Corbis / AP Images)
FIGURE 43. Black Panther minister of education George Murray started the student mobilization to demand black studies curricula and increased enrollment at San Francisco State College in the fall of 1968. The Third World Strike there drew broad participation of Latino, Asian American, and white students. Boldly confronting Nixon and Reagan’s Law and Order politics, the strike made regular university operations impossible through much of the academic year and eventually led the administration to institute black and ethnic studies programs, inspiring similar mobilizations around the country. (Stephen Shames / Polaris Images)
FIGURE 44. Asian American and Latino activists rally in support of the Black Panther Party on the steps of the Alameda County courthouse in Oakland, where Huey Newton was incarcerated, 1969. The Black Panther Party saw the Black Liberation Struggle as part of the global struggle against oppression and drew strong allied support from many nonblacks. (© Roz Payne)
FIGURE 45. Members of the Puerto Rican Young Lords Organization are led out of an East Harlem church in New York on January 7, 1970, by members of the sheriff’s office. More than one hundred policemen sealed off the area around the church in their effort to end the sit-in that began December 28. The Young Lords sought to use the church space in the morning to conduct their Free Breakfast for Children Program and were granted space by other churches in the neighborhood following the sit-in. (AP Photo)
FIGURE 46. A group of feminists march in support of the Black Panther Party in New Haven, November 1969. The Black Panther Party embraced the ideals of gender equality and gay liberation and sought to forge alliances with women’s and gay rights organizations. (David Fenton / Getty Images)
FIGURE 47. Black Panther chief of staff David Hilliard speaks at Yale University on May 1, 1970. Tens of thousands of supporters mobilized in New Haven that day in advance of the trials of Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins. Many believed that the government fabricated charges against the Panther leaders to repress the Party. Hilliard is accompanied by Elbert Howard (in beret) and New Left allies, including (on left) Tom Hayden and David Dellinger and (to right of Howard) Lee Weiner, Rennie Davis, and Abbie Hoffman. To avoid conflict with the Panthers, Yale president Kingman Brewster questioned the fairness of the judicial system, drawing outrage from President Nixon. The protest helped spark a nationwide wave of student protests in May 1970 and mobilized more than four million students, shutting down many campuses for the remainder of the year. (Fred W. McDarrah / Getty Images)
FIGURE 48. Hundreds of people rally in Stockholm, Sweden, on September 21, 1969, in solidarity with the Black Panther Party. Portraying their struggle as part of a global revolution against imperialism, the Black Panthers generated strong support and
powerful allies throughout the world. (© Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation)
FIGURE 49. Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther minister of information, meets with representatives of the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam and a translator in the Vietnamese embassy in Algiers. A photograph of NLF Chairman Nguyn Hu Th is prominently displayed. Algeria hosted diplomatic exchanges with revolutionary independence movements and supportive governments throughout Africa and the world in the late 1960s and early 1970s. (H. K. Yuen Collection)
FIGURE 50. Huey Newton is welcomed as an honored guest by Zhou Enlai, premier of China, in late September 1971. On October 1, tens of thousands of Chinese gathered in Tiananmen Square, waving red flags and applauding the Panthers. Revolutionary theater groups, folk dancers, acrobats, and the revolutionary ballet performed. Huge red banners declared, “Peoples of the World, Unite to Destroy the American Aggressors and Their Lackeys.” (© Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation)
PART FIVE
Concessions and Unraveling
The Black Panther Party, as a national organization, is near disintegration. . . . The committee hearings document the steady decline in [party membership] during the last year. Furthermore, the feud between Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton threatens the start of a time of violence and terror within what remains of the Panther Party. Probably only remnants of the party will remain alive here and there to bedevil the police and enchant a few of the young, but its day as a national influence and influence in the black community seems over. It is hard to believe that only a little over a year ago the Panthers . . . ranked as the most celebrated ghetto militants. They fascinated the left, inflamed the police, terrified much of America, and had an extraordinary effect on the black community. Even moderate blacks, who disagreed with their violent tactics, felt that the Panthers served a purpose in focusing attention on ghetto problems and argued that they gave a sense of pride to the black community. . . . Liberals and idealists who once sympathized with the Panthers have . . . withdrawn their support.
—House Committee on Internal Security, August 1971
15
Rupture
On November 15, 1969, Black Panther chief of staff David Hilliard took the stage at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco at the West Coast Mobilization against the Vietnam War. As the senior Panther leader not in prison or exile, Hilliard was newly in charge of the national Party, having taken over when Bobby Seale was arrested in August. In the audience, more than one hundred thousand protestors rallied for peace—the largest protest ever held on the West Coast to date. Simultaneously, two hundred fifty thousand protestors gathered at the Washington Monument, which according to the New York Times was larger than any previous protest held in the U.S. capital—including the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The crowds included plenty of the young radicals who had mobilized draft resistance and embraced anti-imperialism and revolution. But unlike the smaller and more radical antiwar actions of previous years, these crowds also included a large portion of moderates—waving American flags and politely expressing their desire for peace. A variety of Democratic elected officials participated in that day’s mobilizations, including Senators Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern and San Francisco mayor Joseph Alioto.1
When Hilliard’s time came to speak, he told his listeners that their American flags were symbols of fascism. Feeling out of his element, angry and defiant, he shouted, “We say down with the American fascist society! Later for Richard Milhous Nixon, the motherfucker.” A segment of the audience booed, and Hilliard pushed further: “We will kill Richard Nixon. . . . We will kill any motherfucker that stands in the way of our freedom!” Much of the crowd reacted with chants of “Peace! Peace! Peace!” and Hilliard was eventually chanted and booed off stage, an experience that would undoubtedly shape his concerns as a Party leader in the months to follow.2
Underneath Hilliard’s rough handling of the crowd that day lay a deeper contradiction that would eventually destroy the Black Panther Party. The Party’s revolutionary politics of armed self-defense against the state had thrust it onto a national stage and won it significant political influence. But by late 1969, and increasingly into the 1970s, concessions by the political establishment to key constituencies eroded the bases of allied support for the Black Panthers’ politics.
PURGES
Maintaining discipline and protecting the Party’s reputation had always been a challenge. In the middle of the day on November 19, 1968, while using a Black Panther newspaper delivery truck clearly marked with large Black Panther logos painted on each side, William Lee Brent held up a gas station attendant in San Francisco at gunpoint, stealing eighty dollars. Seven other Black Panthers were in the vehicle at the time, but Brent acted alone. When police pulled over the vehicle, Brent jumped out and shot at the officers, injuring three.3
In noninsurgent organizations, established laws and customs are assumed and largely respected. Maintaining organizational coherence may be challenging, but transgressions of law and custom are generally outside of organizational responsibility. Within insurgent organizations like the Black Panther Party, law and custom are viewed as oppressive and illegitimate. Insurgents view their movement as above the law and custom, the embodiment of a greater morality. As a result, defining acceptable types of transgression of law and custom, and maintaining discipline within these constraints, often poses a serious challenge for insurgent organizations like the Black Panther Party. What sorts of violation of law and custom are consistent with the vision and aims of the insurgency? When William Lee Brent held up the gas station and shot three police, he was clearly breaking the law. But was he acting as a revolutionary or as a renegade from the revolution?
From early in the Party’s history, the organization had tangled with these questions, issuing specific rules for member conduct that would serve the Panthers’ political interests and threatening to expel anyone who defied these rules. Early in 1968, in response to politically embarrassing police raids of Black Panther homes without legal warrants, Newton issued Executive Order No. 3 mandating that members defend their homes against unlawful raids and that any member who fails to do so “be expelled from the Party for Life.”4
By the fall of 1968, as the Party became a national organization, it had to manage the political ramifications of actions taken by loosely organized affiliates across the country. The Central Committee in Oakland codified ten Rules of the Black Panther Party and began publishing them in each issue of the Black Panther. These rules established basic disciplinary expectations, warning especially against haphazard violence that might be destabilizing or politically embarrassing. They prohibited the use of narcotics, alcohol, or marijuana while conducting Party activities or bearing arms. The Party insisted that Panthers use weapons only against “the enemy” and prohibited theft from other “Black people.” But they permitted disciplined revolutionary violence and specifically allowed participation in the underground insurrectionary “Black Liberation Army.”5
Brent’s robbery attempt occurred about a month after the Central Committee first published these rules. Not only did he act without the blessing of Party leaders, but the robbery and shooting of police was also politically embarrassing to the Party because it appeared as if the Party was orchestrating apolitical crime—and executing it poorly. The Central Committee called a press conference to condemn Brent and purge him from the Party: “William Brent, who allegedly pulled an $80.00 holdup in our newspaper distribution truck, is considered to be either a provocateur agent or an insane man.” The Central Committee argued more generally, “The Black Panther Party doesn’t advocate roving gangs of bandits robbing service stations and taverns. Any member who violates the rules of the Black Panther Party is subject to summary expulsion.”6
At the same time, the Central Committee expanded the Rules of the Black Panther Party and published the new set of twenty-six rules in the Black Panther on January 4, 1969. Most of the new rules emphasized organizational accountability, especially pro
grammatic, ideological, and financial accountability to the Central Committee: “All chapters must adhere to the policy and the ideology laid down by the Central Committee of the Black Panther Party.” They stipulated that “all Finance officers will operate under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance.” To keep abreast of local activities, the committee also mandated that “all chapters must submit weekly reports in writing to National Headquarters.”7
