by Joshua Bloom
In January 1969, to manage the rapid growth of the Party and constrain impolitic actions of the new members, the Central Committee froze membership. On January 12, Bobby Seale told the press, “We now have 45 [chapters]. . . . We aren’t taking in any new members for the next three to six months. . . . We are turning inward to tighten security, [to] get rid of agents and provocateurs and to promote political education among those who have joined the Panthers but still don’t understand what we’re all about.”8
The Black Panther Party derived its power largely from the insurgent threat it posed to the established order—its ability to attract members who were prepared to physically challenge the authority of the state. But this power also depended on the capacity to organize and discipline these members. When Panthers defied the authority of the Party, acted against its ideological position, or engaged in apolitical criminal activity, their actions undermined the Party, not least in the eyes of potential allies. The Panthers could not raise funds, garner legal aid, mobilize political support, or even sell newspapers to many of their allies if they were perceived as criminals, separatists, or aggressive and undisciplined incompetents. The survival of the Party depended on its political coherence and organizational discipline.
As the Party grew nationally and increasingly came into conflict with the state in 1969, maintaining discipline and a coherent political image became more challenging. The tension between the anti-authoritarianism of members in disparate chapters and the need for the Party to advance a coherent political vision grew. One of the principal tools for maintaining discipline—both of individual members and of local chapters expected to conform to directives from the Central Committee—was the threat of expulsion.
By the spring of 1969, the individual most responsible for tending to the political image of the Party was David Hilliard. With Huey Newton in jail, Eldridge Cleaver in exile, and Bobby Seale in high demand as a public speaker, Hilliard managed the Party’s day-to-day operations. His responsibilities only increased when Seale was incarcerated in August. Hilliard personally carried much of the burden of maintaining Party discipline.
In an interview about the New York 21 in April 1969, Hilliard sought to protect the image of the New York chapter and the Party by challenging the notion that New York Panthers had planned to blow up department stores: “It is very absurd to think of an organization with the magnitude of the Black Panther Party, with some 40 chapters at this point, to risk the destruction of one of our most revolutionary chapters, one of our better organized chapters, by going around talking about blowing up department stores. It is something that our Central Committee does not endorse. It is just another lie.”9
Hilliard explained the importance of the purge for maintaining Party discipline: “We relate to what Lenin said, ‘that a party that purges itself grows to become stronger.’ The purging is very good. You recognize that there is a diffusion within the rank and file of the party, within the internal structure of the party. So the very fact that you purge strengthens the party. . . . You will become stronger, more of a fortress. . . . Our doors are not open to anyone that decides that they want to join the party.”10 Later that year, in an interview from exile, Eldridge Cleaver echoed those ideas, explaining the need for purges:
One thing that’s important, a lot of people don’t understand why a lot of people were purged from the Party. During the time when Huey Newton was going to trial . . . because of the necessity of mobilizing as many people as possible . . . we started just pulling people in. . . . In order to maximize the number of people we pulled in, we did not argue with people if they put on a black leather jacket or black berets, or said that they were Panthers. They just walked in and said they support Huey Newton and they wanted to join our organization. We didn’t have time to conduct our political education classes. . . . They proved to be very undisciplined . . . so we just came down hard.11
As the Party continued to expand in 1969 and 1970, so did conflicts between the actions of members in local chapters across the country and the political identity of the Party—carefully groomed by the Central Committee. When members violated discipline, the Party leadership often expelled them and published these expulsions in the Black Panther. A sampling of a few of these purges provides a sense of the ongoing efforts of the national Party to restrain undisciplined, embarrassing, and “counterrevolutionary” actions by members in local chapters around the country:
In February 1969, the Party published a statement by John Huggins after his death in which he declared, “The Black Panther Party, So. California chapter, in compliance with the directive of the Central Committee of the Black Panther, has moved to purge this chapter’s ranks of provocateur agents, kooks, and avaricious fools.”12
In March, the Party expelled thirty-eight members of the east Oakland chapter, listing each by name. The Party purged twenty-six members of the Vallejo chapter, listing them by name and charging them with being “Renegade, Counter-Revolutionaries, and Traitors.”13
In April, shortly before the Rackley murder, the Party expelled a Connecticut Panther on suspicion of being a provocateur.14
In May, the Party expelled a Chicago member for speaking in the name of the Party without authorization.15
In June, the Party expelled two members for cooperating with a Senate investigation of the Panthers, and it purged three members of the Harlem branch.16
In July, the Party purged Chico Neblett, a national field marshal of the Party, and sixteen other members of the Boston chapter. The Party gave the following rationale: “A bunch of cultural nationalist fools led by Chico Neblett attempted to undermine the people’s revolution. These pea-brained counter-revolutionaries tried to go against the teachings of the Minister of Defense and take over the Boston Branch of the Black Panther Party. They failed in their attempt and were purged from the party. Chico joined the party with the other boot-licker Stokely Carmichael . . . talking about some madness he called Pan-Africanism. . . . By going against the teachings of Huey P. Newton, Chico has said ‘fuck the people,’ fuck the Party, and the complete and total liberation of blacks here in fascist America.”17
In August, the Party expelled a Denver Panther for threatening other Party members.18
In the following months, the Party expelled three more members from east Oakland “because of their individualistic views and aversion to discipline.”The Party also expelled a member from Chicago because he “refused to relate to organizational discipline,” and ejected two members of the Harlem branch for “embezzling,” and “showing a disregard for the principles which guide our party.”19
CONCESSIONS
The resilience of the Black Panthers’ politics depended heavily on support from three broad constituencies: blacks, opponents of the Vietnam War, and revolutionary governments internationally. Without the support of these allies, the Black Panther Party could not withstand repressive actions against them by the state. But beginning in 1969, and steadily increasing through 1970, political transformations undercut the self-interests that motivated these constituencies to support the Panthers’ politics. As mainstream Democratic leaders opposed the war and Nixon scaled back the military draft, blacks won broader social access and political representation, and revolutionary governments entered diplomatic relations with the United States, the Panthers had greater difficulty sustaining allied support.
First, major concessions by the political establishment and the Nixon administration on the Vietnam War eroded the basis of war opponents’ support for the Panthers politics. At the disastrous Chicago convention in August 1968, the Democratic Party leadership had pushed through a prowar candidate and prowar platform against the will of the Democratic Party base and lost the presidency as a result. But since then, the Democratic Party leadership had increasingly called for an end to the Vietnam War. In a party caucus organized by Democratic national chairman Fred Harris on September 26, 1969, about a dozen U.S. senators and a dozen U.S. representatives mapped out a strategy to “fo
rce a confrontation with the [Nixon] Administration that could lead to the withdrawal of all American troops from Vietnam.” The caucus decided to push for a congressional resolution endorsing the nationwide antiwar “moratorium” protests organized for October 15 and considered attempting to prevent the U.S. Senate from meeting on that day as a gesture of solidarity with the protestors.20 On October 6, in the buildup to the October 15 protests, a bipartisan committee unveiled a resolution cosponsored by 108 U.S. congressmen, about one-quarter of the House of Representatives, calling for withdrawal of troops from Vietnam.21 On October 9, seventeen U.S. senators and 47 U.S. representatives sent an open letter to the Vietnam Moratorium Committee endorsing the upcoming national antiwar protest.22
Richard Nixon responded dramatically to the growing antiwar consensus. Elected president in 1968 on a Law and Order platform, he promised both to quell the antiwar rebellions in the streets and to quickly end the war in Vietnam and bring the troops home. In office, he promised “Vietnamization” of the war, shifting responsibility for the war to U.S. allies in Vietnam and allowing gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops. Even as Nixon increased repression of domestic activists, he made good on this promise to de-escalate. When he took office in January 1969, U.S. troop levels were at their peak, with over 540,000 military personnel in Vietnam. In the first year of his presidency, 12,214 U.S. soldiers were killed there. But by 1970, there were about 475,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam, and 4,221 U.S. soldiers were killed that year, about a third the number killed the previous year. By the end of 1971, troop levels had dipped below 160,000, with 1,381 U.S. troops killed, about one-ninth the number in 1969.23
Perhaps even more important, Nixon sharply reduced the military draft that had motivated many young people to embrace revolutionary anti-imperialism. Vietnam War draft inductions peaked in the late 1960s, with more than 225,000 soldiers inducted every year from 1965 through 1969. The Nixon administration inducted fewer than 165,000 new soldiers in 1970 and fewer than 95,000 new soldiers in 1971. By then, the majority of Americans embraced arguments against the war. Yet as long as Nixon followed through on his de-escalation of the war, people had less reason to embrace the anti-imperialist politics that had generated the antiwar movement—contributing to the moderation of the antiwar movement even as it grew.24 Once it appeared the war would be ended through institutionalized political means, those principally committed to ending the draft and war no longer shared a personal stake in radically transforming political institutions. Many now increasingly saw the Panthers’ call for revolution as unnecessary.
From 1969 onward, increasing electoral representation as well as affirmative action programs and growing access to government employment and elite education also weakened the basis of support for the Panthers’ revolutionary politics among blacks. From the end of Reconstruction (1877) until 1969, no more than six black people had held a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives at once. But just two years later, black representation more than doubled, with thirteen black people holding seats in the U.S. House of Representatives by 1971. The number continued to grow throughout the decade, reaching eighteen seats in 1981 and more than forty seats today.25 Following the disaster at the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago, the Democratic Party reached out to black electoral activists and reformed the nomination process with the McGovern-Fraser Commission. Black representation among party delegates more than doubled by 1972, to about 15 percent.26 Black electoral representation generally ballooned in the early 1970s. Whereas in March 1969, 1,125 black people held political offices across the United States, by May 1975, the number had more than tripled to 3,499. This figure included 281 black officeholders in state legislative or executive offices, 135 mayors, 305 county executives, 387 judges and elected law enforcement officers, 939 elected board of education members, and 1,438 people holding other elected positions in municipal government.27 During this period, a variety of radical black organizations decided to work toward a unified black electoral program that would cross the political spectrum. This notion was promoted in the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary—what political scientist Cedric Johnson called a “shotgun wedding of the radical aspirations of Black Power and conventional modes of politics.” While the programmatic statements of the convention contained radical rhetoric, the principal political outcome was to help establish moderate black “politicos . . . as the chief race brokers in the post-segregation context.”28
While the liberal establishment sought to redress black radicalism through social spending by extending Johnson’s Great Society programs and facilitating the expansion of black electoral representation, President Nixon intensified the government’s repression of black radicals. But even the right-wing Republican president sought to appeal to moderate blacks, bringing more into the middle class by expanding both civil service opportunities and official affirmative action outreach. Nixon had long advocated jobs programs as a way to redress black radicalism. In the summer of 1967, following the massive rebellions in Newark and Detroit, Nixon took the position that “jobs is the gut issue” in racial unrest.29 In 1969, his first year in office, Nixon pushed through the first federal affirmative action policy, the “Philadelphia Plan,” which established explicit, government-determined quotas for hiring blacks and other minorities on federally funded construction projects.30
Also during this period, many top predominantly white colleges and universities expanded their enrollment of blacks and other underrepresented students of color. These institutions also developed black studies programs in the wake of campus protests. Scholars have documented the crucial role of Black Panther Party activists at San Francisco State College in fomenting the national movement. They have also pointed to the important role of wealthy philanthropists—especially the Ford Foundation—in shaping black studies programs as a means of social control. While fewer than 5 percent of research universities offered black studies programs in 1967, by 1971, more than 35 percent did.31
Ballooning electoral representation, government hiring, affirmative action, and reform of college and university access and curricula granted blacks greater institutional channels for participating in American society and politics. This increasing access to mainstream institutions undercut the basis for blacks’ support of the Panthers’ politics.
At the same time that the domestic climate was shifting, the international basis of support for the Black Panther Party began to contract as the United States opened diplomatic relations with revolutionary governments around the world. Chinese state sponsorship of a Black Panther delegation in 1970 and then the high state honors shown Huey Newton during his visit in 1971 indicated the extent of global support for the Party. Yet underneath the surface symbolism, the 1971 visit also indicated that the foundations of global support for the Panthers’ revolutionary politics were shaky at best. Earlier that spring, China had welcomed the professional U.S. table tennis team, giving rise to the popular term “ping-pong diplomacy.” Newton’s state-sponsored visit to China also followed the visit of Henry Kissinger and came amid planning for a visit by President Nixon himself. During an event honoring Newton and the Panthers, Premier Zhou Enlai revealed the importance of ping-pong diplomacy to the Chinese government by attributing it to Mao Zedong himself—chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and the top Chinese political leader. Zhou said China was ready to negotiate with the United States or to fight it, as the case may be.32 Apparently Chinese sponsorship of the Panthers was part of a symbolic politics intended to send Zhou’s message to the United States. As Sino-U.S. relations improved in the 1970s, China’s support for the Panthers evaporated.
Algerian support for the Panthers also weakened as relations with the United States improved. The U.S. government had recognized Algerian independence in 1962 and established diplomatic relations. But Algeria severed diplomatic relations in 1967 following the Arab-Israeli War. While challenging U.S. geopolitical hegemony, Algeria became an important locus of support for independence movements t
hroughout Africa and the world in the late 1960s. But economic relations with the United States continued and the U.S. government maintained an Interests Section through the Swiss embassy in Algiers. When Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver arrived in Algeria in 1969, American oil companies and personnel were already heavily involved in the Algerian oil industry. The Panthers received support from the Algerian government but in the shifting geopolitical context, their status was never secure. Even before the Algerian government granted the Panthers formal diplomatic status and an embassy in Algiers, an Algerian official told the Cleavers that Algeria would eventually resume diplomatic relations with the United States. In the 1970s, Algerian relations with the United States improved, and support for the Panthers deteriorated. In 1972, Algeria terminated the Panthers’ diplomatic status and expelled them from the country. So while the Panthers enjoyed strong support from Algeria as a foreign liberation movement from 1969 until 1971, the shifting geopolitical situation soon dissolved this relationship.33
Cuban support for the Black Panthers also shifted during the late 1960s. When Eldridge Cleaver fled to Cuba as a political exile in late 1968, Cuba not only provided safe passage and security but promised to create a military training facility for the Party on an abandoned farm outside Havana. This promise was consistent with the more active role Cuba had played in supporting the Black Liberation Struggle in the United States in the early 1960s, when it sponsored the broadcast of Robert Williams’s insurrectionary radio program “Radio Free Dixie,” as well as publication of his newspaper, the Crusader, and his book Negroes with Guns. But, as the tide of revolution shifted globally toward the end of the decade, security concerns took on higher priority in Cuban policy. Eager to avoid provoking retaliation from the United States, Cuba distanced itself from the Black Liberation Struggle, continuing to allow exiles but refraining from active support of black insurrection. The government never opened a military training ground for the Panthers, instead placing constraints on the political activities of Panther exiles.34
