Black Against Empire

by Joshua Bloom

  5. MARTYRS

  1. Earl Caldwell, “Guard Called Out,” New York Times, April 5, 1968, 1; Walter Rugaber, “A Negro Is Killed in Memphis March,” New York Times, March 29, 1968, 1.

  2. King Papers Project, Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, Stanford University; on the Memphis rebellion, see Caldwell, “Guard Called Out,” 1.

  3. The NAACP in particular did much of the foundational work upon which the Civil Rights Movement built and provided crucial legal and political support for the insurgents throughout.

  4. Martin Luther King Jr. quoted in Jose Yglesias, “It May Be a Long, Hot Spring in the Capital,” New York Times, March 31, 1968, SM30.

  5. Yglesias, “It May Be a Long, Hot Spring,” SM30.

  6. Martin Luther King Jr. quoted in Ben A. Franklin, “Dr. King Hints He’d Cancel March If Aid Is Offered,” New York Times, April 1, 1968, 20.

  7. Max Frankel, “President Offers U.S. Aid to Cities in Curbing Riots,” New York Times, March 30, 1968, 1, quote from 30. For a detailed exploration of King’s and Johnson’s complex working relationship, see Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed America (New York: Mariner Books, 2006).

  8. Senator Robert Byrd in Max Frankel, “President Offers U.S. Aid to Cities,” 30.

  9. Martin Luther King Jr. in Earl Caldwell, “Court Bars March in Memphis; Dr. King Calls Order ‘Illegal,’” New York Times, April 4, 1968, 30.

  10. “President’s Plea,” New York Times, April 5, 1968, 1.

  11. Nan Robertson, “Johnson Leads U.S. in Mourning,” New York Times, April 6, 1968, 25.

  12. Homer Bigart, “Leaders at Rites,” New York Times, April 10, 1968, 1.

  13. John Kifner, “Followers Sing on Final March,” New York Times, April 10, 1968, 33.

  14. According to sociologist Doug McAdam, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference initiated about a quarter of all black insurgent events during the 1960s through 1968, the year of King’s death. That year, SCLC was responsible for fully 36 percent of all black insurgent events initiated by formal movement organizations. But in 1969, the percentage fell by half, to only 18 percent, and in 1970, to only 8 percent. McAdam’s statistics likely underestimate SCLC’s precipitous decline as they do not account for the rise of spontaneous actions of black urban rebellion. Similarly, he estimates that while SCLC attracted more than $1 million annually in external income between 1965 and 1968, while King was still alive, external income plummeted to $500,000 in 1969 and $400,000 in 1970. See Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1982).

  15. Andrew Young in Earl Caldwell, “Nonviolent Rights Movement Faces Uncertain Future as Doubts Rise It Can Survive Loss of Dr. King,” New York Times, July 1, 1968, 17.

  16. Stokely Carmichael, “Stokely on King,” transcript of press announcement via the Liberation News Service, republished in Black Panther, May 4, 1968, 10.

  17. The other Panthers in the entourage were Wendell Wade, Terry Cotton, Charles Bursey, Donnell Lankford, Warren Wells, and John L. Scott—all in their late teens or early twenties.

  18. Eight Panthers were arrested, and six Panthers and two policemen were wounded, none critically. Accounts differ about how the shoot-out began and what the Panthers were doing there. There is also conflicting evidence about the conditions under which Hutton was killed. Two black Oakland police officers involved in the conflict, Gwynne Peirson and Eugene Jennings, testified that Hutton was outright murdered by white police officers after surrendering to them. This testimony was repressed, and the grand jury found the killing of Hutton justified. Gwynne Peirson left the police force and completed a PhD at Berkeley. His 1977 doctoral dissertation, “An Introductory Study of Institutional Racism in Police Law Enforcement,” discusses the incident, 169–171. Officer Jennings’s April 10, 1968, testimony, also describing Hutton’s death as a murder by white police, was secret until thirty-seven years later when he released a copy of the original testimony transcript. David Hilliard and Lewis Cole, This Side of Glory: The Autobiography of David Hilliard and the Story of the Black Panther Party (New York: Little, Brown, 1993), 182–93; Eldridge Cleaver, “Affidavit #2: Shoot-out in Oakland,” in Eldridge Cleaver: Post-Prison Writings and Speeches, ed. Robert Scheer (New York: Random House, 1969), 80; Daryl E. Lembke, “Oakland Tense in Wake of Police, Panthers Battle,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1968, 3; “Black Panther Chief Demands Indictment,” Los Angeles Times, April 13, 1968, A16; “Panthers Ambushed, One Murdered,” Black Panther, May 4, 1968, 4; “Oakland Police Attack Panthers,” New Left Notes, April 15, 1968, 1.

  19. Bobby Seale, press conference at Oakland Hall of Justice, recording BB 5543, Pacifica Radio Archives, North Hollywood, California.

  20. Lawrence E. Davies, “Black Panthers Denounce Policemen,” New York Times, April 13, 1968, 12; “Brando at Oakland Funeral for Slain Black Panther, 17,” Los Angeles Times, April 13, 1968, B1.

  21. Cleaver, “Affidavit #2,” 92.

  22. Lawrence E. Davies, “Black Panthers Denounce Policemen,” New York Times, April 13, 1968, 12.

  23. Harry Edwards quoted in Dick Halgren, “San Jose Professor Joins Black Panthers,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 12, 1968, cited in Hugh Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994), 157.

  24. Shabazz, Carmichael, and Brando in “Brando at Oakland Funeral,” B1.

  25. “Letter from New York,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 17, 1968, cited in Pearson, Shadow of the Panther, 156.

  26. See Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes (New York: New York University Press, 2009).

  27. See Joshua Bloom, “Opportunities for Practices” unpublished manuscript.

  28. Eldridge Cleaver, “On Meeting the Needs of the People,” Ramparts, September 8, 1969.

  29. For Cleaver’s description of the purpose of the plebiscite and the early role of James Forman, see Eldridge Cleaver, “Black Paper by the Minister of Information,” Black Panther, May 4, 1968, 12.

  30. Point 10 of Ten Point Program as amended in the Black Panther, May 4, 1968, 7. Previous versions of point 10 read only “We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace” (as published in the Black Panther through the last issue before King’s assassination, Black Panther, March 16, 1968, 4). Philip Foner and other historians have been somewhat confused about this timing because some later issues of the Black Panther published amended versions of the Ten Point Program and Platform under the header “October 1966 Black Panther Party Platform and Program.”

  31. Gerald C. Fraser, “S.N.C.C. in Decline after 8 Years in Lead: Pace-Setter in Civil Rights Displaced by Panthers,” New York Times, October 7, 1968.

  32. James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries (1972; repr. Washington, DC: Open Hand Publishing, 1985), 534.

  33. “Free Huey at the U.N.,” Black Panther, September 14, 1968, 3; John Leo, “Black Panthers,” New York Times, July 28, 1968, 41; Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, 534–38.

  34. Fraser, “S.N.C.C. in Decline”; Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, 522–43.

  35. Fraser, “S.N.C.C. in Decline.”

  36. Ella Baker quoted in ibid.”

  37. Ibid.

  38. “Cleaver of the Panthers Is Nominee of Leftists,” New York Times, August 19, 1968, 32; Eldridge Cleaver, “Black Paper by the Minister of Information,” Black Panther, May 4, 1968, 12; “Eldridge Cleaver for President,” Black Panther, May 18, 1968, 17; “Kathleen Cleaver for Assemblywoman,” Black Panther, May 18, 1968, 18; “Imprisoned Black Panther Enters Race for President,” May 14, 1968, 31.

  39. “Black-Brown Caucus of the Peace and Freedom Party,” audiotape 018–680702–000A, H. K. Yuen Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (hereafter Yuen Collection); Daryl E. Lembke, “Negro, Latin Delegates in Peace Party Accord,” Los Angeles Ti
mes, March 18, 1968, 3; John Kifner, “Freedom Party Endorses Candidates,” New York Times, July 22, 1968, 27; Dorothy Townsend and William Tully, “California Peace Party Favors Panther Leader for President,” Los Angeles Times, August 4, 1968, EB; “Cleaver of Black Panthers Is Nominee of Leftists,” New York Times, August 19, 1968, 32; Joel R. Wilson, “‘Free Huey’: The Black Panther Party, The Peace and Freedom Party, and the Politics of Race in 1968” (PhD diss., University of California, Santa Cruz, 2002), 347. Interestingly, Cleaver attempted to recruit Carl Oglesby of SDS as the vice presidential candidate. Oglesby deferred to SDS authority, and SDS declined the nomination. SDS had several concrete political reasons for making this decision. SNCC’s relationship with the Panthers was new, the Panthers and SNCC were in a dispute at the time, and many SDS chapters still had strong relationships with SNCC; SDS had political differences with the Peace and Freedom Party. See [Mike Klonsky], “Why Oglesby Won’t Run,” New Left Notes, September 9, 1968, 8 (the editorial is unsigned, but authorship can be inferred from New Left Notes, September 16, 1968, 3); and Bernardine Dohrn, “White Mother Country Radicals,” New Left Notes, July 29, 1968, 1. According to Oglesby’s later account, he wanted to accept the nomination but was blocked because of interpersonal power struggles within SDS at the time; see Carl Oglesby, Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Antiwar Movement (New York: Scribner, 2008), 202.

  40. The description of the August 25, 1968, rally in Bobby Hutton Memorial Park draws from four sources: Gilbert Moore, A Special Rage (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 94–95; Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones, Black Panthers 1968 (Los Angeles: Greybull Press, 2002); Stephen Shames, The Black Panthers (New York: Aperture, 2006); Howard Bingham, Black Panthers 1968 (Pasadena, CA: AMMO Books, 2009). Some of the photographic images described here may depict similar rallies held by the Panthers in Hutton Park that summer, not specifically the August 25 rally.

  41. Cleaver quoted in Moore, A Special Rage, 95.

  42. Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS (New York: Random House, 1973), 663–64 (membership figures are listed chronologically on these pages).

  43. Draft induction statistics are from the Selective Service System, History and Records Division. The Selective Service defines World War II inductions as those occurring between November 1940 and October 1946; Korean War inductions, between June 1950 and June 1953; and Vietnam War inductions, between August 1964 and February 1973.

  44. “The Nation—Conchies to China,” New York Times, April 18, 1943, E2.

  45. Michael S. Foley, Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance during the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 19–20, 28.

  46. Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 183.

  47. Ted Sell, “Ratio of Negroes Killed in Vietnam Tops Whites,” Los Angeles Times, March 10, 1966, 16.

  48. See Staughton Lynd, “A Radical Speaks in Defense of S.N.C.C.,” New York Times Magazine, September 10, 1967, 271; Carson, In Struggle, 184.

  49. Michael Ferber and Staughton Lynd, The Resistance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 33.

  50. SDS often supported and emulated SNCC throughout the first half of the decade. In the words of the SDS National Office at the time, “We have followed SNCC’s evolution for years, learning from it, adapting its approaches in our own organizing efforts, and acting as allies when called upon to assist.” So the turn toward draft resistance at SNCC’s behest was not surprising. Paul R. Booth, “Letter to SNCC” from SDS National Office, New Left Notes, June 10, 1966, 3.

  51. Stokely Carmichael, Chairman of SNCC and Carl Oglesby, President of SDS, “Joint Statement of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Students for a Democratic Society on the Conscription Laws before the House Committee on the Armed Services,” reprinted in New Left Notes, July 8, 1966, 1.

  52. Ferber and Lynd, The Resistance, 34–35.

  53. Stokely Carmichael, audio reel 044–661029–000, Yuen Collection.

  54. In a sampling of nineteen antiwar fliers distributed on the UC Berkeley campus from August through October 1966, none emphasized the draft or resistance to it; box 313, Yuen Collection. While there is no way to construct a complete universe of antiwar fliers distributed on campus during this period, we have good reason to believe this sampling is representative. H. K. Yuen’s collection was near comprehensive, and he put most of the antiwar fliers for this period in box 313. The pre–and post–October 1966 variation within the fliers in this box is striking.

  55. SDS flier, 313–661119–000, Yuen Collection.

  56. See, for example, the following fliers in the Yuen Collection: “The Resistance,” flier 329–670425–000; “Tonight—Forum—Draft Refusal,” flier 329–670428–000; “We Won’t Go,” flier 329–670428–000; “Conference on Draft Refusal,” flier 329–670514–001; “Protest Congressional Draft Hearings,” flier 329–670508; “Picket Oakland Induction Center,” flier 329–670515–000.

  57. Carl Davidson, “Anti-Draft Resolution: Adopted by the National Council, Students for a Democratic Society, December 28, 1966, Berkeley, California,” New Left Notes, January 13, 1967, 1.

  58. Greg Calvert, “Protest to Resistance,” New Left Notes, January 13, 1967, 1; see also Sale, SDS, ch. 16.

  59. SDS argued that students did not have to be drafted to be subjected to imperial imposition. Having called for nationwide draft resistance, in January 1967 SDS published extensive quotes from a Selective Service System memorandum on the concept of “channeling manpower.” The idea was that the draft functioned not only to obtain soldiers for the military but to manage human resources society wide. In short, SDS argued, whether or not students were actually drafted, the Selective Service System was subjecting them to the interests of empire. Freedom required resistance. Even those exempted from the draft because of student deferments could resist by refusing their deferment, signing “We Won’t Go” statements, joining antidraft unions, joining sitins at induction centers, or burning their draft cards. Selective Service System memo quoted in New Left Notes, January 20, 1967.

  60. Greg Calvert, “In White America,” speech, reprinted in Guardian, March 25, 1967.

  61. Sale, SDS, 319.

  62. Ferber and Lynd, The Resistance, 62.

  63. Douglas Robinson, “100,000 Rally at U.N. against Vietnam War,” New York Times, April 16, 1967, 1.

  64. Paul Hofmann, “50,000 at San Francisco Peace Rally,” New York Times, April 16, 1967; Daryl E. Lembke, “40,000 Parade in San Francisco for Viet Peace,” Los Angeles Times, April 16, 1967; on Cleaver at the Spring Mobilization in San Francisco, see Mike Culbert, “War Protest Marchers Filled Kezar Stadium,” Berkeley Daily Gazette, April 17, 1967, 1.

  65. Robinson, “100,000 Rally at U.N. against Vietnam War,” 1; Ferber and Lynd, The Resistance, 72–75.

  66. See David Remnick, King of the World (New York: Vintage, 1998).

  67. Foley, Confronting the War Machine, 10.

  68. “License for Bout Is Called Illegal: Attorney General in Illinois Seeks to Bar Fight after Clay Balks at Hearing,” New York Times, February 26, 1966.

  69. Herman Graham III, “Muhammad Ali and Draft Resistance,” in The Brothers’ Vietnam War: Black Power, Manhood, and the Military Experience (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 5:74.

  70. “License for Bout Is Called Illegal; “Clay Plans to Apologize in Chicago for Remarks about Draft Classification,” New York Times, February 22, 1966.

  71. “TV of Clay Fight Banned in 3 Cities,” New York Times, March 19, 1966, 22.

  72. Remnick, King of the World, 288.

  73. Graham, “Muhammad Ali and Draft Resistance,” 73 and 78.

  74. Charles DeBenedetti and Charles Chatfield, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 186.

  75. Tom Wicker, “In the Nation: Muhammad Ali and Dissent,” New York Times, May 2, 1967, 46.
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br />   76. “The Resistance Now,” flier 329–671016–005 (oversize), Yuen Collection.

  77. DeBenedetti and Chatfield, An American Ordeal, 187–88.

  78. Ferber and Lynd, The Resistance, 103.

  79. Paul Lauter and Florence Howe quoted in ibid., 136.

  80. Tom Wells, The War Within: America’s Battle over Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 194–97. DeBenedetti and Chatfield, An American Ordeal, 196–98.

  81. On SDS membership estimates for April 1968, see SDS telegram, April 12, 1968, reproduced in New Left Notes, April 15, 1968, 7; see also Sale, SDS. On the previous lack of relations between SDS and the Panthers, see Bernardine Dohrn [the interorganizational secretary of SDS], “White Mother Country Radicals,” New Left Notes, July 29, 1968, 1.

  82. We went through all the issues of the New Left Notes from its founding in January 1966 through April 1968 (108 issues) and found no mention of the Black Panther Party—no discussion of the May 1967 event in Sacramento, no discussion of Huey’s confrontation with Frey or his arrest, no discussion of the “Free Huey!” campaign or the birthday mobilizations in February or the merger with SNCC. The publication contained numerous stories about SNCC, Black Power, race and racism, and the role of whites in mobilization throughout this period. But only starting in April 1968 did it begin covering the Black Panther Party, and this coverage was extensive.

  83. “We Made the News Today, Oh Boy,” New Left Notes, April 15, 1968, 3, cited in Lawrence David Barber, “‘The Price of the Liberation’: The New Left’s Dissolution, 1965–1970” (PhD diss., University of California, Davis, 2003), 1:36; Sale, SDS, 428–29.

  84. SDS telegram, April 12, 1968, reproduced in New Left Notes, April 15, 1968, 7.

  85. “Oakland Police Attack Panthers,” New Left Notes, April 15, 1968, 1.