by Joshua Bloom
7. BREAKFAST
Epigraphs, part 3: Hampton quoted in 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), 227; Hoover memo reproduced in Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars against Dissent in the United States (Boston: South End Press, 1990), 144; Hampton quoted in Masai Hewitt, “Seize the Time—Submit or Fight,” Black Panther, December 13, 1969, 3.
1. Episode recounted in Devin Fergus, Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics 1965–1980 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009), 103–5; Benjamin R. Friedman, “Picking Up Where Robert F. Williams Left Off: The Winston-Salem Branch of the Black Panther Party,” in Comrades: A Local History of the Black Panther Party, ed. Judson L. Jeffries (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 7; Benjamin Friedman, “Fighting Back: The North Carolina Chapter of the Black Panther Party” (master’s thesis, George Washington University, 1994), 57–58.
2. Friedman, “Picking Up Where Robert F. Williams Left Off,” 64.
3. Mumia Abu-Jamal, We Want Freedom (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2004), 197.
4. Black Panther, April 6, 1969, 14
5. Hilliard and Cole, This Side of Glory, 159.
6. Earl Caldwell, “Cleaver Is Sought As Coast Fugitive for Defying Order,” New York Times, November 28, 1968, 1.
7. Paul Alkebulan, Survival Pending Revolution, ch. 2. Alkebulan provides the most insightful and thoroughly documented treatment of the founding of the community programs. For additional contributions, see Andrew Witt, “‘Picking Up the Hammer’: The Community Programs and Services of the Black Panther Party with Emphasis on the Milwaukee Branch, 1966–1977” (PhD diss., Loyola University, 2005); and Ashley Chaifetz, “Introducing the American Dream: The Black Panther Party Survival Programs, 1966–1982” (master’s thesis, Sarah Lawrence College, 2005).
8. Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, and David Hilliard, “Breakfast for Black Children,” Black Panther,” September 7, 1968, 7; “Volunteers Needed to Help Prepare and Serve Breakfast for School Children,” Black Panther, October 19, 1968, 2; “Volunteers Needed to Help Prepare and Serve Breakfast for School Children,” Black Panther, November 2, 1968, 7; “Breakfast for School Children,” Black Panther, December 21, 1968, 15. These notices announce the breakfast program but imply that the program had not yet begun (“The first of these programs will exist at Downs Memorial Church” in Oakland and Concord Baptist Church in Berkeley—emphasis mine). We could find no credible evidence that such programs were actually started in 1968, or ever at the sites mentioned in the articles.
9. “Breakfast for School Children,” 15. The announcement giving Beckford-Smith as a contact also appears in three other issues of the Black Panther: January 4, 1969, 16; January 25, 1969, 21; and March 23, 1969, 23. For the date of the first Black Panther breakfast program, see also Father Earl A. Neil, “The Role of the Church and the Survival Program,” Black Panther, May 15, 1971: “In January, 1969, St. Augustine’s co-sponsored the first Free Breakfast Program with the Black Panther Party.” For early news coverage, see Tim Findley, “School Kids: The Panther Breakfast Club,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 31, 1969 (quote in text from this article. For further details on Beckford-Smith’s role, see Father Earl A. Neil, “Black Panther Party and Father Neil,” personal statement produced in preparation for a 2002 Black Panther reunion, copy in Joshua Bloom’s possession.
10. “Black Panthers Serve Free Breakfasts to Youngsters,” Berkeley Gazette, March 11, 1969; “Breakfast for Schoolchildren in Double Rock and Hunters Point” and “Richmond Breakfast for School Children,” Black Panther, March 31, 1969, 9; “Black Panthers Serve Free Breakfasts to Youngsters,” Berkeley Gazette, March 11, 1969.
11. “Some Chapters and Branches of the Black Panther Party with Breakfast Programs,” Black Panther, April 27, 1969, 3. For an early programmatic statement, see Bobby Seale interview in Movement newspaper, March 1969, republished as “Chairman Bobby Seale,” Black Panther, March 3, 1969, 10.
12. In addition to Hilliard’s own account in This Side of Glory (211–12, 227), Father Earl A. Neil testifies to David Hilliard’s important and early role in building the Party relationship with St. Augustine Church, even before the creation of the first breakfast program there; Neil, “Black Panther Party and Father Neil,” personal statement produced in preparation for a 2002 Black Panther reunion.
13. The twenty-three cities are Berkeley, San Francisco, Richmond, Oakland, Los Angeles, Watts, and San Diego in California; Seattle, Washington; Eugene, Oregon; Denver, Colorado; Indianapolis, Indiana; Kansas City, Missouri; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Chicago, Illinois; Boston, Massachusetts; New York City, Queens, Peekskill, White Plains, and Brooklyn in New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; and New Haven, Connecticut; “List of Chapters and Branches with Breakfast Programs,” Black Panther, November 15, 1969, 17. Beginning in July 1969, almost every weekly issue of the Black Panther carried coverage of Panther community service programs around the country. The Black Panther carried no coverage of actual Panther community service programs before January 1969 and very little before July 1969.
14. See Andrew Witt, “A Sampling of Locations of Black Panther Party Community Programs Nationwide,” appendix E in The Black Panthers in the Midwest: The Community Programs and Services of the Black Panther Party in Milwaukee, 1966–1977 (New York: Routledge, 2007), 111–13.
15. Except where otherwise noted, this biographical information is drawn from Hilliard and Cole, This Side of Glory, and Joshua Bloom’s discussions with Hilliard.
16. Hilliard and Cole, This Side of Glory, 114.
17. Ibid., 27.
18. Charles E. Jones and Judson L. Jeffries, “‘Don’t Believe the Hype’: Debunking the Panther Mythology,” in The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered], ed. Charles E. Jones (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998), table 1, 30; “Breakfast Programs Being Initiated,” Black Panther, May 25, 1969, 8.
19. Black Panther, October 4, 1969, 7.
20. JoNina M. Abron, “‘Serving the People’: The Survival Programs of the Black Panther Party,” in Jones, Black Panther Party [Reconsidered], 182; see also Flores Forbes, Will You Die with Me? My Life and the Black Panther Party (New York, Atria, 2006), 50; and Judson L. Jeffries, “Revising Panther History in Baltimore,” in his Comrades, 23, for similar points.
21. Miriam Ma’at-Ka-Re Monges, “‘I Got A Right to the Tree of Life’: Afrocentric Reflections of a Former Community Worker,” in Jones, The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered], 139.
22. Forbes, Will You Die with Me? 50.
23. “Capitalist Attacks Breakfast for Children,” Black Panther, April 20, 1969, 15; “Vallejo Chapter Starts Breakfast for Children,” Black Panther, March 31, 1969, 9; “Indiana Breakfast,” and “Boston Breakfast,” Black Panther, July 19, 1969, 16.
24. Abron, “Serving the People,” 184.
25. Andrew Witt, “Picking Up the Hammer: The Milwaukee Branch of the Black Panther Party,” in Jeffries, Comrades, 180.
26. Forbes, Will You Die with Me? 50.
27. Jeffries, “Revising Panther History in Baltimore,” 23; Safiya A. Bukhari quoted in Abu-Jamal, We Want Freedom, 169–70; Joe Cuba, “Breakfast Sabotage,” Black Panther, November 15, 1969, 17.
28. Jeffries, “Revising Panther History in Baltimore,” 32, 43; “Report Concerning an Attempted Vamp on Baltimore Chapter,” Black Panther, May 19, 1970.
29. Alondra Nelson, “Black Power, Biomedicine, and the Politics of Knowledge,” (PhD diss., New York University, 2003), 103–206; Karen Davis and Cathy Schoen, Health and the War on Poverty: A Ten-Year Appraisal (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1978); Alondra Nelson, Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011).
30. Jeffries,” Revising Panther History in Baltimore,” 22.
32. This statistic comes from the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD.
33. Nelson, “Black Power,” 144–206.
34. “Revolutionary Drug Program Serves the People,” Black Panther, October 31, 1970; “People for the People,” Black Panther, November 28, 1970, 6.
35. Charles E. Jones, “‘Talkin’ the Talk and Walkin’ the Walk’: An Interview With Panther Jimmy Slater,” in Jones, Black Panther Party [Reconsidered], 148.
36. “Racist Bandits Attack People’s Free Health Center,” Black Panther, July 18, 1970.
37. Friedman, “Fighting Back,” 84–85.
38. Ibid., 80–81.
39. Ibid., 81; Friedman, “Picking Up Where Robert F. Williams Left Off,” 74–76.
40. “Excerpts from an Interview with Huey,” Black Panther, August 1, 1970, 10–11; “The National Committee to Combat Fascism Opens in Denver, Colorado,” Black Panther, September 5, 1970; “Free Bussing Program in Boston,” Black Panther, November 21, 1970, 2; Ryan Nissim-Sabat, “Panthers Set Up Shop in Cleveland,” in Jeffries, Comrades, 126–27; Witt, “The Milwaukee Branch,” in ibid., 181, 196–97; Judson L. Jeffries and Malcolm Foley,” To Live and Die in L.A.,” in ibid., 270.
41. Ronald Stark, cited in Witt, “The Milwaukee Branch,” 198.
42. Abron, “Serving the People,” 186–87.
43. Ibid., 187.
44. JoAnn Bray quoted in Nissim-Sabat, “Panthers Set Up Shop in Cleveland,” 126–27.
45. Katherine M. Charron, Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); Daniel Perlstein, “SNCC and the Creation of the Mississippi Freedom Schools,” History of Education Quarterly 30, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 297–324; Sandra E. Adickes, Legacy of a Freedom School (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
46. Witt, The Black Panthers in the Midwest, appendix E, 113–14; Abron, “Serving the People,” 185.
47. Omari L. Dyson, Kevin L. Brooks, Judson L. Jeffries, “‘Brotherly Love Can Kill You’: The Philadelphia Branch of the Black Panther Party,” in Jeffries, Comrades, 223; Nissim-Sabat, “Panthers Set Up Shop in Cleveland,” 119; Monges, “I Got a Right to the Tree of Life,” 140.
48. Douglas Corbin, “The Oakland Black Panther Party School” (senior honors thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2004); Abron, “Serving the People,” 185–86.
49. Corbin, “The Oakland Black Panther Party School”; Abron, “Serving the People,” 185–86.
50. “Breakfast for School Children,” Black Panther, April 27, 1969, 4; “Breakfast for School Children,” Black Panther, May 19, 1969, 7; “Breakfast for School Children: Peekskill, NY,” Black Panther, July 5, 1969, 15; “San Diego Breakfast Moves Ahead Despite Continued Harassment,” Black Panther, July 26, 1969, 15; “Breakfast for School Children Programs,” Black Panther, December 27, 1969, 4.
51. Tracye Matthews, “‘No One Ever Asks, What a Man’s Role in the Revolution Is’; Gender and the Politics of the Black Panther Party, 1966–1971,” in Jones, Black Panther Party [Reconsidered], 270.
52. Ibid.; Frankye Malika Adams quoted in Abu-Jamal, We Want Freedom, 164.
53. Ericka Huggins, public lecture, Marcus Books, Oakland, California.
54. To Die for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton (New York: Random House, 1972), 81.
55. Matthews, “No One Ever Asks,” 206–71.
56. Bobby Seale, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton (1971; repr. Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1990), 412–13.
57. Monges, “I Got a Right to the Tree of Life,” 137.
58. Patricia A. Sullivan, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: New Press, 2009); Jesse T. Moore Jr., A Search for Equality: The National Urban League, 1910–1961 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981); Steven Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
59. Nissim-Sabat, “Panthers Set Up Shop in Cleveland,” 128.
60. Black Panther, May 2, 1969, 14.
61. Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Random House, 2008).
62. Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, 1965); Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (New York: Penguin, 2011).
63. Jones, “Talkin’ the Talk and Walkin’ the Walk,” 148.
64. Forbes, Will You Die With Me? 50.
65. Clarence Peterson cited in Dyson, Brooks, and Jeffries, “Brotherly Love Can Kill You,” 243.
8. LAW AND ORDER
1. Wallace Turner, “Coast Police Fire at Panther Camp,” New York Times, September 11, 1968, 37; “2 Officers Accused of Firing at Newton Office,” Los Angeles Times, September 11, 1968, 3.
2. Kenneth O’Reilly, “Racial Matters”: The FBI’s Secret File on Black America, 1960–1972 (New York: Free Press, 1991), ch. 1.
3. David Cunningham, There’s Something Happening Here (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 6.
4. O’Reilly, “Racial Matters,” chs. 2 and 3.
5. Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities [Church Committee], Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Final Report, S. Doc. No. 94–755 (April 1976), book 3, 79–184 (hereafter Church Committee Report).
6. Martin Luther King Jr., “Beyond Vietnam,” in Call to Conscience, ed. Clayborne Carson and Kris Shepard (New York: Warner Books, 2001), 133–64.
7. Memo, J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director, to Field Offices, August 25, 1967. All FBI memos cited in this chapter are available in the FBI Reading Room, FBI Headquarters, Washington, DC.
8. Ibid. The other five organizations listed in the memo are the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Congress of Racial Equality, both leading civil rights organizations that turned nationalist after 1966; the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Deacons for Defense, both proponents of armed black struggle with significant influence on the Black Panthers (see ch. 1 in this book); and the Nation of Islam.
9. Memo, J. Edgar Hoover to Field Offices, March 4, 1968; see also memo, G. C. Moore to W. C. Sullivan, February 29, 1968.
10. Memo, G. C. Moore to W. C. Sullivan, September 27, 1968.
11. Poll result reported in Melvin Small, Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 130.
12. Ibid., 103, 110–13, 117.
13. Ibid., 94. Except where otherwise noted, most of the events in this section are drawn from Small’s Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves and Charles DeBenedetti and Charles Chatfield, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990).
14. Small, Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves, 118–19; DeBenedetti and Chatfield, An American Ordeal, 200–202.
15. Small, Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves, 120–23.
16. “Bloody Path to Peace?” New York Times, February 1, 1968; “More Than a Diversion,” New York Times, February 2, 1968; “After the Tet Offensive,” New York Times, February 8, 1968; David Caute, The Year of the Barricades (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 11–12; George Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 (Boston: South End Press, 1987), 29–30; DeBenedetti and Chatfield, An American Ordeal, 209–10.
17. Captured NLF officer quoted by Bernard Weintraub, “Questioning of Captured Vietcong Yields Picture of a Determined Enemy,” New York Times, February 15, 1968, 4.
18. Small, Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves, 135.
19. DeBenedetti and Chatfield, An American Ordeal, 211.
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nbsp; 20. Small, Johnson, Nixon, and the Doves, 138.
21. Ibid., 137; DeBenedetti and Chatfield, An American Ordeal, 212.
