Black Against Empire

by Joshua Bloom

  5. Memo, Special Agent in Charge, New Haven, to Director of FBI, Washington, D.C., May 9, 1969; and memo, Director of FBI, Washington, D.C., to Special Agent in Charge, New Haven, “Re: SF Airtel 9 May, 1969 ‘Black Panther Party New Haven Division, RM-BPP,’” cited in Williams, Black Politics/ White Power, 137.

  6. On Sams’s stabbing of another Panther and his expulsion from the Party, see quote from Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins defense brief in Freed, Agony in New Haven, 250; Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 22–26.

  7. Sams quoted in “The Enforcer,” Newsweek, August 17, 1970, 33.

  8. Williams, Black Politics/White Power, 140.

  9. Carter 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), 249; Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 27.

  10. Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 28–33; Williams, Black Politics/White Power, 140–41; Freed, Agony in New Haven.

  11. Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 8–10.

  12. James F. Ahern, Police in Trouble: Our Frightening Crisis of Law Enforcement (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1972), 32–34; Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 4–5.

  13. Darnton, “8 Black Panthers Seized in Torture-Murder Case,” 24.

  14. Jennifer Smith, An International History of the Black Panther Party (New York: Garland, 1999), 98–99; “Canada Turns Over Panther,” New York Times, August 22, 1969, 33.

  15. Justice Department quoted in Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 68–69, citing an “urgent” teletype on August 12, 1969, to the special agent in charge in New Haven from the FBI director; and a memo from the assistant attorney general, September 9, 1969.

  16. “Black Panther Chief Seized in Berkeley in Torture-Slaying,” New York Times, August 20, 1969, 15.

  17. Williams, Black Politics/White Power, 164; Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 218; “Notes on People . . . George Sams,” New York Times, September 19, 1974, 49.

  18. Joseph Lelyveld, “Role in Murder Laid to Panther,” New York Times, August 1, 1970, 26; “New Haven Judge Ends Panther Case,” New York Times, November 20, 1971, 35.

  19. “New Haven Judge Ends Panther Case,” 35.

  20. Diane Henry, “Wiretap Case,” New York Times, December 4, 1977, 520.

  21. 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), 360.

  22. Beyond the possibilities that Sams was taking orders from the FBI or from the Panther leadership in killing Rackley, it is also possible that he was acting on his own sadistic impulses. But circumstantial evidence makes this explanation highly improbable. The FBI later charged that, under the direction of the Black Panther national office, Black Panthers tortured and murdered a suspected informant in Baltimore in July 1969. While the FBI informed the Baltimore police of these charges in November, the police waited until April 30, 1970—the eve of the major mobilization in support of Bobby Seale in New Haven—to act on them. As Yale students and other Panther supporters prepared to rally on the New Haven Green, Baltimore SWAT teams working with the FBI raided seventeen Baltimore homes, offices, and bars. Equipped with bulletproof vests and combat firearms, they broke down doors and arrested six Panthers on charges of murder. Some of the local Panthers were acquitted and others convicted, but the prosecution never established any involvement by the national leadership of the Panthers. That multiple torture-murders of rank-and-file Panthers would have occurred coincidentally within weeks of each other is unlikely. On the events in Baltimore, see Judson L. Jeffries, “Revising Panther History in Baltimore,” in Comrades: A Local History of the Black Panther Party (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 18–35; “Free Breakfast in Baltimore,” Black Panther, June 21, 1969, 15; “Baltimore Police Hold 10 Panthers,” New York Times, May 1, 1970, 42; “Baltimore Seeks to Extradite Man Wanted in Killing,” New York Times, October 25, 1970, 41; “Man Is Acquitted in Torture Killing,” New York Times, April 14, 1971, 5. See also Steve McCutchen, “Selections from a Panther Diary,” in The Black Panther Party [Reconsidered], ed. Charles E. Jones (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1998), 115–35.

  23. William O’Neal, Captain of Security, “FBI Informer,” Black Panther, February 17, 1969, 9.

  24. “Panthers on Trial,” Time, May 11, 1970.

  25. Freed, Agony in New Haven, 25.

  26. “Chicago F.B.I. Raids Office of Panthers,” New York Times, June 5, 1969, 94.

  27. Smith, An International History of the Black Panther Party.

  28. The “Trial” of Bobby Seale, edited transcript of the trial (New York: Priam Books, 1970), 90.

  29. Ibid.; J. Anthony Lukas, “Seale Put in Chains at Chicago 8 Trial,” New York Times, October 30, 1969, 1; J. Anthony Lukas, “Seale Found in Contempt, Sentenced to Four Years,” New York Times, November 6, 1969, 1. After Seale’s case was severed from the other seven, the defendants made a mockery of the proceedings and turned the trial into a political circus, attracting continued international attention and support.

  30. “Clergy in Support of Chairman Bobby,” Black Panther, November 8, 1969, 4.

  31. Telegram, Staff and Steering Committee of the New Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam Telegram, October 30, 1969, reproduced in Black Panther, November 8, 1969, 8.

  32. Black Panther Party Solidarity Committee Stockholm, “People in Scandinavia Getting Hip to U.S. Fascism: Demand Release of Bobby Seale,” Black Panther, October 25, 1969, 21; “Big Man” Howard, “Big Man Speaks to NLF in Stockholm, Sweden,” transcript in Black Panther, November 18, 1969, 2.

  33. M. P. Naicker, director of publicity and information, African National Congress, letter reprinted in Black Panther, November 22, 1969, 7.

  34. David Hilliard, conversation with Joshua Bloom, May 3, 2011, on the Panther leaders’ view of Miranda; Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 88–90, for biographical details on Miranda; Michael T. Kaufman, “Yale Rally Cry: ‘Bulldog and Panther,” New York Times, May 1, 1970, 40; New Haven FBI office, “Urgent” teletype, September 25, 1969, in John R. Williams Papers, cited in Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 88 (end note). The date on the FBI teletype shows that the appointment was made after Seale’s indictment in August.

  35. “Defense of the New Haven Panther 14,” Black Panther, October 25, 1969, 6.

  36. Ibid. See also “Connecticut Prisoners,” Black Panther, October 25, 1969, 6, for an example of the public relations work of these allies; and “New Haven Coalition to Support B.P.P.,” Black Panther, November 1, 1969, 4, for several organizations’ statements of support.

  37. “Defense of the New Haven Panther 14,” 6; Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 89; “Mothers Support Breakfast Program,” Black Panther, November 1, 1969, 21; “Open House at the New Haven Community Information Center,” Black Panther, April 6, 1970, 9.

  38. “Womens Liberation Group Up—Tight,” Black Panther, November 8, 1969, 8; Charles “Cappy” Pinderhughes, Lt. of Information, New Haven Chapter, Black Panther Party, “Free Our Sisters,” Black Panther, December 6, 1969, 2. Cathy Forman provided an unpublished account of and various organizational materials from Women’s Liberation in New Haven about the Black Panthers; copies in Joshua Bloom’s possession. The group grew out of New Haven’s American Independent Movement.

  39. Hoover in Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 95.

  40. Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 89.

  41. “Yale Suspends 5 on Charges of Disrupting a Lecture,” New York Times, December 19, 1969, 36.

  42. Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom, “Statement of Repression,” February 15, 1970, reprinted in Black Panther, March 15, 1970, 5.

  43. Eric Desmond, National Secretary, “Letter from British Tricontinental Organization”; and Afro Ogun Olaudah, Minister of Education, Malcolmites, “An Open Letter to Huey Newton and Bobby Seale,
” Black Panther, March 28, 1970, 7; Union Nationale des Etudiants du Kamerun (National Union of Kamerun Students), Black Panther April 6, 1970, 9; “British Solidarity with the Movement to Free Bobby Seale,” Black Panther, April 25, 1970, 16.

  44. Jean Genet, “Bobby Seale, The Black Panthers and Us White People,” Black Panther, March 28, 1970, 7; Jean Luc Godard statement transcribed in Black Panther, April 25, 1970, 4.

  45. Kaufman, “Yale Rally Cry,” 40; Homer Bigart, “Yale to Open Gates This Weekend to Protesters Assembling to Support Black Panthers,” New York Times, April 30, 1970, 39.

  46. Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 117–18.

  47. Ibid., 118.

  48. “Moratorium Urged at Yale,” New York Times, April 17, 1970, 35.

  49. Miranda in Taft, Mayday at Yale: A Case Study in Student Radicalism (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1976), 25.

  50. Donald Janson, “Damage Estimated at $100,000 after Harvard Riot,” New York Times, April 17, 1970, 35; Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 119.

  51. Miranda quoted in Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 132–33; Kaufman, “Yale Rally Cry,” 40.

  52. “Yale Strike Urged to Back Panthers,” New York Times, April 21, 1970, 1.

  53. Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 135.

  54. Joseph B. Treaster, “Strike Rally at Yale,” New York Times, April 22, 1970, 1.

  55. Joseph B. Treaster, “Attendance at Yale Is Cut ‘50% to 75%’ by Pickets Supporting Black Panthers,” New York Times, April 23, 1970, 29; Treaster, “Strike Rally at Yale,” 1.

  56. Joseph B. Treaster, “Yale Faculty Rejects Proposal to Cancel All Classes to Support Panthers,” New York Times, April 24, 1970, 23; Joseph B. Treaster, “Brewster Doubts Fair Black Trials,” New York Times, April 25, 1970, 1.

  57. Treaster, “Yale Faculty Rejects Proposal,” 23; Treaster, “Brewster Doubts Fair Black Trials,” 1; “Yale Student Petition Supports Brewster’s Stand on the Panthers,” New York Times, April 30, 1970, 1; Roy Reed, “Agnew Says White House Is Neutral in Florida Race,” New York Times, April 29, 1970, 1.

  58. Homer Bigart, “U.S. Troops Flown In for Panther Rally; New Haven Braces for Protest by 20,000,” New York Times, May 1, 1970, 1.

  59. Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 145.

  60. “Yale Chapel Offered as Haven if Panther Rally becomes Riot,” New York Times, April 27, 1970, 39. Yale’s chaplain at the time was Reverend William Sloane Coffin.

  61. Joseph B. Treaster, “National Guard Alerted for Panther Rally Duty,” New York Times April 29, 1970, 1.

  62. “Big Man” Howard in “Yale Student Petition Supports Brewster’s Stand on Panthers,” New York Times, April 30, 1970, 1.

  63. Kaufman, “Yale Rally Cry,” 40; Bigart, “Yale to Open Gates,” 39.

  64. Taft, Mayday at Yale, 29.

  65. Bigart, “Yale to Open Gates,” 39.

  66. Homer Bigart, “U.S. Troops Flown In for Panther Rally,” 1; Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 152.

  67. Homer Bigart, “New Haven Police Set Off Tear Gas at Panther Rally,” New York Times, May 2, 1970, 1.

  68. Ibid.; Bass and Rae, Murder in the Model City, 157.

  69. “Yale U. and the Panthers,” Chicago Daily Defender, May 7, 1970, 19.

  70. Richard Nixon quoted in Juan de Onis, “Nixon Puts ‘Bums’ Label on Some College Radicals,” New York Times, May 2, 1970, 1.

  71. Homer Bigart, “New Haven Rally,” New York Times, May 3, 1970, 1.

  72. 1970 Rockefeller Foundation survey in Daniel Yankelovich, The Changing Values on Campus: Political and Personal Attitudes of Today’s College Students (New York: Washington Square Press, 1972), 62, 64, 70.

  73. Joint editorial quoted in Michael T. Kaufman, “Campus Unrest over War Spreads with Strike Calls,” New York Times, May 4, 1970, 1; “Columbia Agrees to Halt Classes,” New York Times, May 3, 1970, 5.

  74. Reed quoted in Alan Adelson, SDS (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1972), 33.

  75. Ibid., 48–67; Linda Charlton, “Antiwar Strike Plans in the Colleges Pick Up Student and Faculty Support,” New York Times, May 5, 1970, 18; Michael T. Kaufman, “3,500 Columbia Protesters March to City College,” New York Times, May 6, 1970, 20.

  76. Kaufman, “Campus Unrest over War,” 1; Charlton, “Antiwar Strike Plans,” 18; Richard E. Peterson and John A. Bilorusky, May 1970: The Campus Aftermath of Cambodia and Kent State (Berkeley: Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, 1971), 15–19; Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan, Who Spoke Up? American Protest against the War in Vietnam (New York: Doubleday, 1984), 319.

  77. See Joe Eszterhas and Michael Roberts, Thirteen Seconds: Confrontation at Kent State (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1970), 57, 68.

  78. Irwin Unger, The Movement: A History of the American New Left, 1959–1972 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1975), 183–86.

  79. Richard E. Peterson and John A. Bilorusky, May 1970: The Campus Aftermath of Cambodia and Kent State (Berkeley: Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, 1971), 15–19; Charles DeBenedetti and Charles Chatfield, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 279–80; Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam Books, 1987), 409–10; Jeffrey P. Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 215–16.

  12. BLACK STUDIES AND THIRD WORLD LIBERATION

  Epigraphs, part 4: SDS resolution, New Left Notes, April 4, 1969, 1, 3; Giam statement in Raymond Lewis, “Montreal: Bobby Seale—Panthers Take Control,” Black Panther, December 21, 1968, 3.

  General note on this chapter: Of all the treatments of the San Francisco State strike, one source stands out as especially detailed and insightful: Jason Michael Ferreira, “All Power to the People: A Comparative History of Third World Radicalism in San Francisco, 1968–1974” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2003). We also drew heavily on three other sources: William H. Orrick Jr., Shut It Down! A College in Crisis, San Francisco State College, October 1968–April 1969: A Staff Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, June 1969); William Barlow and Peter Shapiro, An End to Silence: The San Francisco State College Student Movement in the ’60s, (New York: Pegasus, 1971); and Dikran Karagueuzian, Blow It Up! The Black Student Revolt at San Francisco State College and the Emergence of Dr. Hayakawa (Boston: Gambit, 1971). The analyses, and any errors, are our own.

  1. For Murray’s appointment as minister of education by April 1968, see “Over 2500 Attend Funeral,” Black Panther, May 4, 1968, 16. As a newly appointed member of the Central Committee, Murray served as a pallbearer at Lil’ Bobby Hutton’s funeral. Barlow and Shapiro, An End to Silence, 206–7; Karagueuzian, Blow It Up! 32–33.

  2. George Murray “For a Revolutionary Culture,” Black Panther, September 7, 1968, 12.

  3. Executive Secretariat of the OSPAAAL, “OSPAAAL on Black American Revolution,” reprinted in Black Panther, September 7, 1968, 10; see also “Minister of Education Returns from Cuba,” Black Panther, September 14, 1968, 5.

  4. Transcript of George Mason Murray speech, Gramma News, Cuba, reprinted in Black Panther, October 12, 1968, 14.

  5. Mike Hall, “SF State Head Resists Panther Removal,” Daily Californian, September 30, 1968, 6; Smith quoted in Barlow and Shapiro, An End to Silence, 208.

  6. Student body composition in Ferreira, “All Power to the People,” 116.

  7. James Garrett quoted in ibid., 80.

  8. Orrick, Shut It Down! 96.

  9. Ferreira, “All Power to the People,” 105–11, Hare quotes on 107, 110.

  10. Karagueuzian, Blow It Up! 30, 31.

  11. “Black Students Union,” Black Panther, October 12, 1968, 9.

  12. “Black Student Union News Service,” Black Panther, December 21, 1968, 11; “10 Point Program and Platform of the Black Student Unions” and “Important” Black Student Unions,” Black Panther, February 2, 1969, 22; SF State BS
U demands, reprinted in Black Panther, January 25, 1969, 10.

  13. “The Necessity of Black Revolution,” transcript of Murray’s speech at Fresno State College, Black Panther, November 16, 1968, 13, 24.

  14. Karagueuzian, Blow It Up! 33–36.

  15. Ibid., Murray quote on 38–39.

  16. Barlow and Shapiro, An End to Silence, 217, 224.

  17. Carmichael quoted in Ferreira, “All Power to the People,” 121.

  18. Barbara Williams, “Our Survival Is Non-Negotiable!” Black Panther, January 25, 1969, 11.

  19. George Mason Murray, “Panthers’ Fight to the Death against Racism,” Rolling Stone, April 5, 1969, 14.

  20. Stewart in Ferreira, “All Power to the People,” 123.

  21. Ibid., 124.

  22. Ibid., 127.

  23. Ibid., 130.

  24. Ibid., 132.

  25. Brown quoted in Karagueuzian, Blow It Up! 72.

  26. Ferreira, “All Power to the People,” 141–42.

  27. In addition to supporting the students directly, the Black Panthers maintained ongoing news, editorial, and graphic coverage of the developments at San Francisco State in the Black Panther and encouraged readers to support strike activities. See, for example, the following stories in the newspaper: “Panthers/B.S.U. Close S.F. State College,” November 16, 1968, 8; “Riots Continue at San Francisco State College,” December 7, 1968, 4; “Panthers- B.S.U. Get It Together: Demands for George Murray’s Return Sparks San Francisco State College Violent Chaos,” December 21, 1968, 3; “San Francisco State Strike Spreads,” January 4, 1968, 2; “Panthers and B.S.U. Face ‘Racist Kangaroo Court System,’” January 25, 1968. Goodlett quote from Ferreira, “All Power to the People,” 142.

  28. Ferreira, “All Power to the People,” 142.

  29. Crutchfield quoted in Orrick, Shut It Down! 60.

  30. Ferreira, “All Power to the People,” 147.

  31. Ibid., 166–67.

  32. Ibid., 168.

  33. Dellums quoted in Orrick, Shut It Down! 73.

  34. Many anti-imperialist student activists demanded “Third World studies” but eventually settled for “ethnic studies.”