by Joshua Bloom
As the United States scaled back the war in Vietnam; reduced the military draft; improved political, educational, and employment access for blacks; and improved relations with former revolutionary governments around the world, the Black Panthers had difficulty maintaining support for politics involving armed confrontation with the state.
More comfortable and secure with the ability of mainstream political institutions to redress their concerns—especially the draft—liberals went on the attack, challenging the revolutionary politics of the Black Panther Party. On January 14, 1970, the Party held a fund-raiser at the Park Avenue duplex of Leonard Bernstein, the conductor laureate of the New York Philharmonic. The Panther delegation was led by Field Marshal Don Cox and included members of the New York Panthers, wives of the New York 21, and Party lawyers. About ninety members of New York’s high society attended, including Cynthia Phipps, Otto Preminger, Mrs. August Heckscher, and of course Felicia and Leonard Bernstein. The guests discussed Panther ideology, and the Panthers collected $10,000 in donations. The next day, the New York Times published a devastating account of the event by women’s-page editor Charlotte Curtis in which she ridiculed Bernstein for hosting the meeting.35 Tom Wolfe took up the parody in a major feature—almost twenty-five thousand words long—published in New York magazine. In his semifictional account, “Radical Chic,” Wolfe depoliticized the Party’s support, portraying the Black Panthers as hustlers cashing in on their street credentials by catering to the exotic tastes of the super-aesthetic elite. In November, Wolfe republished the essay in book form, adding the related essay “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.”36
The following February, the New Yorker published a long article by Edward Jay Epstein questioning the veracity of some of the Panthers’ claims of repression by police, specifically challenging the idea that Panther deaths “represent a pattern of systematic destruction.” Reviewing the available evidence about violent confrontations in which Panthers had been killed, Epstein wrote, “The idea that the police have declared a sort of open season on the Black Panthers is based principally, as far as I can determine, on the assumption that all the Panther deaths . . . occurred under circumstances that were similar to the Hampton-Clark raid. This is an assumption that proves, on examination, to be false.”37 At that time, documentation of the FBI’s role in the national repression of the Black Panther Party, particularly its COINTELPRO activities, was unavailable, so Epstein’s detailed review of the circumstantial evidence and conclusion that there was no coordinated repression of the Party seemed convincing. Epstein’s argument was widely quoted in the news media and did a lot to undermine allied support for the Black Panthers.38 David Frost invited Panther lawyer Charles Garry to debate Edward Epstein on his show, where Frost and Epstein teamed up against Garry to attack his claims of coordinated repression of the Panthers.39
The liberal establishment avoided such attacks on the Panthers when the Party was a small local organization. And such jabs would have found less resonance in 1968 and 1969 as black rebellions swept U.S. cities and political leaders offered no credible redress to the draft. But liberal readers of the New Yorker and New York magazine were much more apt to embrace ridicule of the Black Panthers’ anti-imperialism once their children were not likely to be drafted and killed in Vietnam.
Ironically, even as attacks on the Panthers by the liberal establishment gathered steam, the Party peaked both in notoriety and in the level of financial support it garnered from donors.40 This created a political pressure cooker. At the same time that the Party was becoming increasingly dependent on allies, broad support for its revolutionary politics was becoming harder to maintain. The Party faced steadily increasing pressure from potential supporters to defend its image.
CONTRADICTIONS
The contradictory pressures of retaining the support of ever more complacent allies, on the one hand, and continuing the politics of armed self-defense against the police, on the other, came to a head when Huey Newton was set free. On August 5, 1970, Newton was released from prison on a technicality. By that time, the vast majority of current members of the Black Panthers had joined the Party while Newton was in prison, and almost all had worked for his release. The release was a hard-won victory, and ten thousand people gathered outside the Alameda County jail to celebrate. Surrounded by a sea of supporters, Newton climbed atop the Volkswagen of his lawyer Alex Hoffman—a makeshift stage in the hot sun. David Hilliard and Geronimo Pratt, the two most influential Panthers not in prison or exile at that time, flanked Huey. Chief of Staff Hilliard, wearing a long black trench coat and black sunglasses, stood behind Newton with outstretched arms and proudly announced Newton’s freedom to the crowd. Geronimo Pratt did not have the formal rank that Hilliard did but was widely recognized and respected. He was the deputy minister of defense and the leader of the Los Angeles chapter that had successfully withstood the onslaught of the police and federal agents eight months earlier. Wearing a stylish brimmed hat, dark jacket, and black sunglasses, he surveyed the crowd for any threats to Newton’s safety. In the heat of the sun and the enthusiasm of the crowd, Newton began to sweat. In a symbolic gesture, signifying his liberation won by the people, Huey stripped off his shirt, displaying his prison-buffed physique to awestruck supporters.41
Many Panthers hoped that Huey would resolve the challenges the Party faced and lead them successfully to revolution. But his release had the opposite effect, exacerbating the tensions within the Party. Some rank-and-file Panthers took Huey’s long-awaited release as a prelude to victory and a license to violence, and their aggressive militarism became harder to contain.42 Organizationally, the Party had grown exponentially in Newton’s name but was actually under the direction of other leaders. His release forced a reconfiguration of power in the Party.
Paradoxically, Newton’s release also made it harder for the Party to maintain support from more moderate allies. It sent a strong message to many moderates that—contrary to Kingman Brewster’s famous statement three months earlier—a black revolutionary could receive a fair trial in the United States. The radical Left saw revolutionary progress in winning Huey’s freedom, but many moderate allies saw less cause for revolution.
When Newton first got out of prison, he presented a highly militarized and insurrectionary vision for the Party. In an interview about a week after his release, he stated,
Our program is armed struggle. We have hooked up with the people who are rising up all over the world with arms, because we feel that only with the power of the gun will the bourgeoisie be destroyed and the world transformed. . . . I think that [the most important inspiration for the Black Panthers is] not only Fidel and Che, Ho Chi Minh and Mao and Kim Il Sung, but also all the guerilla bands that have been operating in Mozambique and Angola, and the Palestinian guerillas who are fighting for a socialist world. . . . The guerillas who are operating in South Africa and numerous other countries all have had great influence. We study and we follow their example. We are very interested in the strategy that’s being used [by Carlos Marighella] in Brazil, which is an urban area, and we plan to draw on that.43
However romantic some may have found the analogy between the Black Panther Party and guerilla groups abroad, or the Party’s advocacy of guerilla-type actions, the Party never directly organized guerilla warfare. Unlike the situation in Vietnam or Cuba, guerilla warfare was never politically practical in the United States. In the United States, the state capacity for violent repression was enormous, many constituencies had significant recourse through institutionalized politics and civil society, and only a very small portion of the populace supported guerilla warfare tactics. Within three months of his release, Newton had moderated his position considerably to fit the responsibilities of managing the national Panther organization and to maintain support from allies. In a November 18, 1970, speech at Boston College, Newton downplayed armed struggle and emphasized the role of the Party in providing community social service programs, which he now called “survival programs”:
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Tonight, I would like to outline for you the Black Panther Party’s program and also explain how we arrived at our ideological position and why we feel it necessary to institute a Ten Point Program. A Ten Point Program is not revolutionary in itself, nor is it reformist. It’s a survival program. We feel that we, the people are threatened with genocide because racism and fascism is rampant. . . . We intend to change all of that. In order to change it, there must be a total transformation. But until such time that we can achieve that total transformation, we must exist. In order to exist, we must survive, so, therefore, we need a survival kit. The Ten Point Program is a survival kit, brothers and sisters. In other words, it is necessary for our children to grow up healthy, with minds that can be functional and creative. They cannot do this if they do not get the correct nutrition. That is why we have a breakfast program for children. We also have community health programs. We have a bussing program. . . . This too is a survival program.44
In the same speech, Newton also heralded the idea of “revolutionary suicide.” Unlike guerilla warfare, which is an offensive strategy, the idea was basically defensive:
We say that if we must die, then we will die the death of the revolutionary suicide. The revolutionary suicide that says that if I am put down, if I am driven out, I refuse to be swept out with a broom. I would much rather be driven out with a stick, because with the broom, when I am driven out, it will humiliate me and I will lose my self-respect. But if I am driven out with the stick, then at least I can remain with the dignity of a man and die the death of a man, rather than die the death of a dog. Of course, our real desire is to live, but we will not be cowed, we will not be intimidated.45
As Newton settled into leadership of the national Black Panther organization in late 1970, tensions between the Central Committee and some of the local chapters increased. Relations were especially charged between the New York chapter, one of the largest and best organized, and the national leadership. As mobilization for the New York Panther 21 became one of the Party’s highest-profile campaigns, financial and ideological tensions widened this growing gulf.
The financial conflict centered around who should control the money raised for the Panthers in New York. The lead East Coast fund-raiser was a white Jewish New Left ally, Martin Kenner. Kenner became director of the Black Panther Defense Committee in mid-1969 and began soliciting funds from progressives, largely to support the legal defense of the New York 21. He organized the famous dinner party at Leonard Bernstein’s house and reached out broadly to potential allies on the left. The money just trickled in at first. But with the publicity of the Chicago and New Haven trials, the murder of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and the raid on the L.A. office, the money started pouring in. Kenner later recalled, “Fred Hampton was murdered in Chicago. Four days later was the attack, on December 8, of the L.A. Panther[s]. . . . At that point . . . the money started coming in to our offices in unbelievable amounts. We just had some ads in the paper and we got unsolicited, huge amounts of money. Thousands and thousands of dollars. . . . We had people just opening envelopes all day long.” In January 1970 alone, at least $100,000 came in small donations. David Hilliard sent Masai Hewitt and Donald Cox to New York to help raise money. Soon some individuals were making single donations of $100,000 or more.46
According to Kenner, while donors contributed the funds because of the notoriety of the Black Panther Party generally, the New York Panthers thought they should be able to control the funds since most of the money was raised in their city:
There . . . got to be bad blood because the Panther 21 said they felt neglected or something like this, and I just was horrified by this, because I knew how strongly David [Hilliard] had fought for them, and I also knew the origin of where their support came from, which wasn’t from their own. Because later on, to jump ahead, it really pissed me off because they said “Hey, all of this was support for us.” But I knew if it was the Panther 21 we wouldn’t have been able to do anything. . . . If it wasn’t for the chaining of Bobby and . . . the notoriety . . . none of these things would have happened. . . . They totally separated themselves, and they refused to acknowledge it.47
Further, according to Kenner, “part of this had to do also with the lawyers involved.”48 Some of the lawyers working on the New York 21 case were working in the background on a pro bono basis, while others were getting both pay and media attention. As a result, some of the lawyers who were not getting paid had hard feelings. When the Central Committee used some of the money raised in New York for other purposes, such as bailing out Panthers arrested in Los Angeles, the unpaid New York lawyers asked, “How could you do this?”49
On August 18, Geronimo Pratt skipped an appearance in Los Angeles Superior Court on charges of possession of a bomb, and the court issued a bench warrant for his arrest. Facing multiple trials, Geronimo went underground.50 He later recalled that he had wanted to avoid spending time in court that he could be spending building guerilla cadres in the South and conducting paramilitary training for Panther members so they could better defend themselves.51 On September 21, the L.A. Superior Court revoked Pratt’s bail and issued a further bench warrant for his arrest for failing to appear in court on charges of conspiracy to commit murder in the December 8 shoot-out. The Party posted $30,000 bail, all forfeited when he failed to appear in court.52
At first, the Party continued to support Geronimo. In an August 29 article in the Black Panther, and again in a statement to the press on September 24, 1970, the Black Panther Party explained that Geronimo had gone underground. The statement explained that police were targeting Geronimo for extreme repression and that he had been unjustly jailed thirty-seven times, as well as beaten and shot at by police numerous times since January 1969, when he was appointed deputy minister of defense and placed in charge of the Southern California chapter of the Party. The Party emphasized Geronimo’s illustrious military career—noting the thirteen medals he had received before his honorable discharge—and argued that “due to what the U.S. knew he could do with the very knowledge they had given him, and with his brilliant mind and devotion to his people, he suffered the severest attacks by the local and national police from that time on.” Geronimo went underground, the statement said, so that he would be free “to continue his hard work for the people.”53
But the harmony was not sustainable. Living underground cost money and raised political problems. Going underground was different from going into exile. When Geronimo went underground, he became an outlaw. Hiding out to avoid trial within the United States was a violation of the law, a declaration of war on the legitimacy of the United States within its own territory. This was a very different position from the denunciation of U.S. legitimacy by an exile. Exiles posed no immediate challenge to the law. Going underground also sacrificed the moral high ground of fighting in the courts—an activity that garnered much support from allies. Further, anyone who sheltered Geronimo was also breaking the law.
Moreover, living underground was expensive. Because of Geronimo’s stature and support within the Party, he believed that the Party should financially sustain him underground. Huey Newton disagreed. Geronimo’s friends recalled, “Newton stated that Geronimo demanded money. This is a half-truth. The leadership of the Panthers had refused to help him in his underground efforts while he and those with him were threatened with survival. . . . The refusal to support Geronimo made it more difficult for him to elude the pigs.”54
On December 9, 1970, the FBI and local police arrested Geronimo in Dallas, Texas, on the charges stemming from the December 8, 1969, siege. Along with Geronimo, they arrested Panthers Melvin “Cotton” Smith, Ellie Stafford, and Roland Freeman.55 David Hilliard later recalled, “G.’s underground unit self-destructs. The guys call, complaining they need money, they’re bored, they’re in trouble. They have stupid shoot-outs, lack any self-discipline, and Geronimo can’t control them. We create a telephone tree to avoid speaking to them on the bugged Central HQ lines. They use the wrong num
bers anyway, saying adventuristic, incriminating things. Even when we chastise them, they continue in their unrestrained ways. In early December the police capture Geronimo in Dallas.”56 The underground activities plus the lack of discipline, possibly instigated by agent provocateurs, threatened to seriously damage the image of the Party.57
Meanwhile, from their refuge in Algeria, members of the International Section of the Party promoted immediate guerilla warfare against the U.S. government. Eldridge Cleaver and Field Marshal Donald Cox regularly exhorted young blacks to violence in the pages of the Black Panther. In January 1971, Cox argued, “When a guerilla unit moves against this oppressive system by executing a pig or by attacking its institutions, by any means—sniping, stabbing, bombing, etc.—in defense against the 400 years of racist brutality, murder, and exploitation, this can only be defined correctly as self-defense.” He quoted Brazilian guerilla Carlos Marighella: “Today, to be an assailant or terrorist is a quality that ennobles any honorable man because it is an act worthy of a revolutionary engaged in armed struggle against the shameful military dictatorship and its monstrosities. . . . GUERILLA UNITS (self-defense groups) must be formed and blows must be struck against the slavemaster until we have secured our survival as a people.”58
MUTINY
Over time, as developments outside the Party made it harder to sustain allied support, the demands upon the national organization to maintain Party discipline increased. A swelling Party budget only exacerbated these tensions, heightening the need for Party discipline to please increasingly influential donors. Allocation of funding increasingly became a point of contention within the Party. Local leaders chafed at national Party discipline and the Party began to unravel. In the first two months of 1971, three of the most important Panther groups broke with the national organization.
