U.S. $40.00 | Canada $49.95 | U.K. 25.

00

STEPHEN SHAMES is one of

Americas leading photographers dealing with

social issues, whose career began with his work with the Black Panthers.
Describing his work, the New York Times said, Mr. Shames follows in the
honored tradition of Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine. Among his eight books,
Outside the Dream,
Dream, his exploration into child poverty in America, earned
him the accolades of President Jimmy Carter and Senators Edward Kennedy and Bill Bradley. His work has been widely exhibited and is in the
permanent collections of many museums. He lives in New York City.

BOBBY SEALE was the chairman of the Black Panther Party during its
most vital years. He is the author of Seize the Time: The Story of the Black
Panther Party and Huey P. Newton (1970) and A Lonely Rage: The Autobiography of Bobby Seale (1978). Born in Liberty, Texas, he worked as a mechanic after a stint in the Air Force. He met Huey Newton at Merritt College, where they were both enrolled in the early 1960s, and together they
founded the party. A political activist and community organizer, he lives
in Vallejo, California.

Jacket front: Panthers line up at a Free Huey rally in DeFremery Park, Oakland, July
28, 1968. Photograph by Stephen Shames
Jacket back: Bobby Seale speaks at a Free Huey rally in DeFremery Park, Oakland,
1968. Left is Kathleen Cleaver. Photograph by Stephen Shames

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The Ten Point Platform and Program of What We Want,

What We Believe, culminating with the opening paragraphs
of the United States Declaration of Independence, reflected the
objectives of the party. Huey and I drafted the first version of this
program at the North Oakland Neighborhood Service Center.
The Ten Points simply says what black people have been crying
for four hundred years.We want freedom. We want power to
determine the destiny of our black community. We believe that
black people will not be free until we are able to determine
our destiny. Bobby Seale
Shames and Seales book is the most comprehensive and
measured book on the complex and intimate history of the Black
Panther Party. It is a close-up view of the Ten Point Program that
combines community empowerment with pride and activism.
Looking at the photographs today, I am reminded of recent Black
Lives Matter protests calling for recognition of black humanity.
It shows how young black men and women sought to give voice
to injustices and celebrate their beauty, and style and rights.
Deborah Willis, New York University

U.S. $40.00 Can. $49.95 U.K. 25.00

ISBN: 978-1-4197-2240-0
ISBN 978-1-4197-2240-0

9 781419 722400

54000

Coming toward the end of the epic period of Americas Civil Rights
Movement, the Black Panther Party burst on the scene, seeking to bring
social justice to African American communities. In words and photographs, Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers tells the story
of this revolutionary political organization, which was founded on October 15, 1966, by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. The words are
Seales, with contributions by other former party members; the photographs, including many icons of the 1960s, are by Stephen Shames, who
also provides an introduction.
Admired, reviled, emulated, misunderstood, the Black Panther Party
advocated armed self-defense to counter police brutality, and initiated a
program of patrolling the police with shotgunsand law books. But their
equally enduring legacy is in their programssuch as Free Breakfast for
Children, which helped to inspire a national movement of community organizing for economic independence, education, nutrition, and health care.
Seale believed that, no kid should be running around hungry in school,
a simple credo that led FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to call the breakfast
program, the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP
and destroy what it stands for.
Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers is a window into
the lives and times of Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, and their comrades in
the partys vital years. Shamess camera captured the charisma of the young
Newton; Seales focused energy; Eldridge Cleavers intensity; the disciplined
style of Kathleen Cleaver and Angela Davis; Emory Douglas laying out the
Panther newspaper; George Jacksons and Bobby Huttons funerals; and
Panthers marching at rallies and feeding children. Virtually all of the major
figures are portrayed, with accompanying commentaries by Seale, Kathleen
Cleaver, Ericka Huggins, and many others, that touch on everything from
politics to style.
Published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of
the Black Panther Party, Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers
comes at a time when the nation is once again roiled by the consequences
of racial injustice and debating the persistent legacy of racism and poverty.

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20

Bobby Seale and Huey

Newton in front of the
Black Panther Party
National Headquarters,
1048 Peralta Street,
Oakland, 1970

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BOBBY SEALE: I was raised in Berkeley, California, in the old University Village,
in the government projects built during World War IIthats where my family
moved to when they came to California from San Antonio. The kids in the
village gave me and my friend Steve Brumfield the nickname Nigger Tarzan.
It was affectionate, not derogatory in the sense of using the n word. There
were long green lawns on the side of the buildings where Steve and I practiced
lance fighting, with drawn punches and blows and running back and forth,
standing each other off, and our lances clashing. We would have just our jeans
on and our moccasins. We had cool leather vests we made, but we were naked
under the vests. And the water sprinklers would be going. All the younger kids
would see us, waving us on. They thought we were something else, man. They
look like a Nigger Tarzan. Hey, Nigger Tarzan. They bad. They tough, man.
Bobby and Steve, Nigger Tarzan, they tough.
At around age eleven, I saw this black man beat his wife viciously. As I
looked through the clothesline fence, he caught up with this woman, and hes
beating her with this Army .45 pistol, and kicking her and stomping her. Then
a car drives up across the street. A uniformed soldier jumps out: You gonna
stop beatin my sister like that! Runnin across the street. And by the time he
got to the sidewalk, the guy with the pistol turnedbam bam bam!and shot
and killed that soldier right in front of my eyes. I hated that. That black soldier
being killed like that by that man who was beating that woman.
So the police came, and theres crowds of people around. Then the police
start asking, Whos seen the person who did this? Im a little kid in the back
of the crowd. I saw him! I saw him! I saw him!
Well, Mrs. Freeman lived in the apartment upstairs and was good friends
with my mother, watching us when mama was downtown. Shut yo mouth,
Bobby boy! She grabbed me and put her hand over my mouth, You shut yo
mouth, dont you say nothin like that. That man come back here and shoot
you and all your family. Bobby boy you come on in here. And she dragged me
across the courtyard and put me inside my house. And dont you come outside.
And dont you say nothing, Mrs. Freeman told me. I have never forgotten that.
Then finally when I heard that the man got caught, I was so happy. I was despising bullies, even then. I grow up, and then I see a big old racist power structure,
thats a political bully. Its just a bigger and more profound oppressor, right?
As a teenager, I identified then with the Lakota, with the Native Americans,
because I read so much about them. I read about Sitting Bull. I read about Crazy Horse. I read about Chief Gall. I knew there were eight groups that made
up the so-called Sioux Nation. Their real name is the Lakota. The word Sioux
is French; it is not Native American. It means cutthroat. It has nothing to do
with their true culture and history.
At night, Steve and I would go up in the Berkeley Hills, from El Cerrito to
the other side of the San Pablo Dam, where there were small ranches that had
corrals. We would sneak in there at night with our own handmade bridles, and
we would take two horses, put the bridles on first, and then walk them out of the
corral, grab that manejust like wed see the Native Americans do in the moviesand throw our legs and bodies up on that bare back, then ride these horses,
man, in the Berkeley Hills. Because when we saw the film Hondo, with John
Wayne, it was the Native Americans who were riding these horses. We want to
ride some goddamn horses like that. We identified with the Native Americans
kicking Custers ass. We were on the Native American side in this context.
Several times as a teenager I had dreams about war. Dreaming that we had
to leave the Bay Area because sooner or later theyre going to drop an atomic
bomb. Get in the old car and go north on the highway. Then, when the bomb
in my dream would drop, well be at the edge, before it ever reaches us, and it
never catches us.
When I went into the United States Air Force, at the Castle Air Force Base in
Merced, California, I became an honor student. I got a 7-skill level that would
take me all the way up to being a warrant officer. The head sergeant loved my
work because I could clean up all the gigs on a B-52 bomber in two weeks,

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Bobby Seale and Huey Newton

in front of the first Black Panther
Party headquarters, 5624
Grove Street, Oakland, c. 1967
Photograph by Howard Robbins

when we had four. He made me lead man. I loved my high-tech job.

Then I was happily stationed at Ellsworth Air Force Base, near the Black
Hills of South Dakota. The land of the Lakota. Well, there was segregation in
the Rapid City, the closest town to our base. Of course, white GIs went to the
white places in town. The black GIs went to the two black places. And I knew
we loaded atomic bombs onto these B-52 bombers, but I didnt have any politics back in the late 1950s.
I was up for the buck sergeant promotion. I didnt have the time in grade,
but sergeant says, Im putting Seale up because hes already a lead man, and
he can clean up a B-52 bomber. He had gotten the approval of the commanding officer.
Another sergeant wanted his friend to be the next buck sergeant over me. So
what this buck sergeant did one morning, he dressed up in this thick, padded
winter clothing. In the shop, just before we start work, two or three minutes to
eight, he walks past me and he says, You little black nigger. I grabbed a piece
of metalthis is heavy 75ST grade aluminum, its about four feet longand
started hitting this guy. See, I didnt know how to handle it then. I didnt have
any real politics about racism in 1956. Im hitting this guy hard as hell, OK?
But I notice hes wearing all this protection. So while Im hitting and beating
him, and thinking Im getting something, Im really not getting anything. A tech
sergeant broke up the fight.
Later on I realized he tricked me to go off emotionally. So naturally I got a
summary court-martial. Not a special. It caused me to go to the stockade for
thirty days. I lost the buck sergeant position. Lost all my corporal stripes and
Im in the stockade. Two years later, I got in another cursing argument with my
commanding officer and I got kicked out of the United States Air Force with
what they call a 39-16 bad conduct discharge after three years, ten months,
and eleven days of a four-year enlistment tour.
Some years later Im a student at Merritt College when Malcolm gets killed,
and I get very, very upset. I believed that the CIA, connected with Lyndon
Baines Johnson, had Malcolm X killed. Whether I was right or wrong, thats
what I believed. I had a one-man riot. I left my house and started throwing
bricks at big, fancy cars with white guys driving. Only those cars. I considered
them the enemy. While I was wrong, that was my emotion. I walked down the
street, a block or so, and I kicked in a couple of windows. After I had my riot
and got my little stuff together, I realized that what I was doing as a one-man
riot was just emotional crap. I retreated into the Berkeley Hills for a week to
get myself together. While Dr. Martin Luther King was also my civil rights real
hero, I was determined to make a Malcolm X out of my own self. I would fight
for constitutional democratic civil human rights.
I decided that I needed to start a new organization. They killed Malcolm
X, and it was my need, at this point in my life, to start a new organization. I
thought Huey Newton seemed to be articulate and he understood the need for
a correct social science perspective on black people. He seemed to know some
black history. Huey was going to law school. He had graduated from Merritt
College with a two-year associate arts degree in sociology. With my copy of
Frantz Fanons book The Wretched of the Earth in my hand, I found out where
Huey lived. Huey, man, you need to help me start a new organization. What
do you think? He says, No, its too hard starting a new organization. Its hard
because black people dont know enough about their history. I forgot Huey
and I went off to organize students on the Merritt College campus.
For my research in surviving Africanisms in black American language, I
had acquired a special library card at the University of California in Berkeley,
where I found I could find damn near any information in the world. At Merritt
College I teamed up with my close friend Virtual Murrell, and we organized
twelve more sisters and brothers, including my future wife, Artie McMillian.
Over a two-month period meeting at my house twice a week, our Black History
Fact Group hammered out four different courses: two in African studies and
two in black American studies. We organized two hundred studentsincluding
Richard Aoki and ten or fifteen of our white left radical friendsto come to a

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meeting with the dean, and by September 1965 we got black history into the
curriculum at Merritt College. We roll over into 66, and I changed the name
of the Black History Fact Group to the Soul Students Advisory Council. Virtual
and my brother, John Seale, registered our Soul Students Advisory Council as
an official organization on the campus.
Virtual and I organized a rally at the Merritt College campus. We were going
to protest and teach young black males that you should not have to go and let
yourself be drafted into the war in Vietnam. We packed that little auditorium
it had six hundred seats in it, but it was standing-room only, and so it was seven
hundred people in there. We had a big program, also signing up students to
support and work with SSAC.
I left a message for Huey at his house to check out the rally. Huey came at
the very tail end, when I was reciting a poem by Ronald Stone: Uncle Sammy
Call Me Fulla Lucifer. That poem caused these seven hundred people to say,
Wow! Yeah, they did, really. Huey was shocked. You organized all these people? You put this together? And I assured him, Yes! Yes! Yes! Huey, I put it all
together. And Huey joined the Soul Students Advisory Council.
On October 22, 1966, my birthday (and I did not remember it was my birthday until the end of the day), Huey and I founded the party. In the first two
weeks there were six members. They were Reggie and Sherwin Forte. Little
Bobby Hutton. Elbert Big Man Howard. Myself. And Huey P. Newton. Big
Man was a part-time student, and he also worked full time as a printer. Bobby
Hutton was a student at Tech High School. Sherwin Forte was a student. Huey
was still in night law school. I worked for the Oakland Department of Human
Resources as the community liaison with the North Oakland Neighborhood
Service Center.
STEPHEN SHAMES:

23

They agreed that Bobby would be chairman, and Huey

would be minister of defense. As one of their first acts, Bobby and Huey published the Ten Point Platform and Program. The Panthers preached the right
of black people to self-determination, which included the right to self-defense.

BOBBY SEALE: The Ten Point Platform and Program of

What We Want, What

We Believe, culminating with the opening paragraphs of the United States
Declaration of Independence, reflected the objectives of the party. Huey and
I drafted the first version of this program at the North Oakland Neighborhood
Service Center. While we worked, Huey went upstairs to the legal aid office
and found the California Supreme Court ruling that said all citizens have a
right to stand and observe a police officer carrying out his duty. Downstairs
in my office, I found the Declaration of Independence of the United States of
America. I started reading it aloud to myself and paraphrasing the first two
paragraphs. When we finished, I typed it up on an oil stencil and ran it off on
an A.B. Dick mimeograph machine.
We still needed a name. A week later, Huey dropped by my house, and I
showed him a letter I had received from the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama. They had a logo of a pouncing panther. Three hours later
Huey is back: You know, the nature of a panther is, if you push him in the
corner, hes going to try to move to get out of your way. But if you go back
and push him back from another way, sooner or later, hes going to come out
of that corner and wipe your ass out, because he dont like being pushed in the
corner. What about the Black Panther Party, as a political organization? I say,
OK, Black Panther Party. Well, what about self-defense? Black Panther Party
for Self-Defense. Huey says, OK, good: Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.

STEPHEN SHAMES: The first program activity by the Panthers was the community patrols to monitor police brutality, to make law enforcement serve the
needs of the people living in the community rather than being what Huey called
an occupying army, in 1966. Bobby and Huey patrolled the streets of Oakland
with law books, tape recorders, and guns. The Black Panther patrols galvanized
the community and gained nationwide attention by policing the police.

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Elbert Big Man Howards Black

Panther membership card

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BOBBY SEALE: I have to give Huey credit for his legal research connected
with our citizens constitutional rights in evolving the police patrols, because it
was brilliant. I did the early training in handling guns. We patrolled police, but
we were about more than patrolling police. As Huey put it one time, we were
trying to capture the imagination of the people.
HUEY NEWTON:

Were not a self-defense group in the limited fashion that you

usually think of self-defense groups. I like to use the example, when Fidel Castro started the revolution along with Che Guevara there were twelve of them
altogether. They realized they wouldnt be able to topple the oppressive regime
in Cuba. What they were essentially was an educational body. They engaged
with the Army, they fought with the Army, and they showed people that the
Army was not bulletproof and that the Batista regime was not a regime that
was impossible to topple. So the people started to feel their strength.
The Black Panther Party feels very much the same way. We think that this
educational process is necessary. It is the people that will cause the revolution,
the people that will cause the change in the country. The Black Panther Party
is simply the vanguard of the revolution. And we plan to teach the people the
strategy and the necessary tools to liberate themselves.15

KHALID RAHEEM: We dont glorify violence. We dont glorify weapons. We

dont glorify the gun culture. But we do not believe in unconditional pacifism.
We advocate our right to defend ourselves.
GLORIA ABERNETHY: Guns were important as symbols of defense and resistance: abuse in Oakland, California would not be met with a turned cheek.
People of color are asked to endure. We are expected to be better people,
and, for the most part, we are. White people can be human. React as human,
make human mistakes, and fight back as humans. Even as children, we must be
the responsible, empathic, and forgiving party.

24

BOBBY SEALE: You see people like Robert Williams in Monroe, North Carolina,
in 1959 holding a protest rally, trying to get five-and-dime stores to hire black
folks. The NAACP can try to take this to court. It was necessary to do that,
to get a ruling against these people for discriminating against black folks. But
along come some racists in the night, the Ku Klux Klan, riding in twenty cars
through the black community, shooting all over the place, at peoples houses
and so on. Robert Williams says, Now theyre trying to intimidate us not to
have a peaceful march. Theyre trying to kill us. Im an ex-Marine and I have to
get the people some guns because the local sheriff is not doing anything about
it. Thats taking on the power structure, the cops, and the racists to protect
constitutional human rights.
Now, whats so wrong with that? Its black folks doing this. Its people of color doing this. Any white group that gets attacked is gonna defend themselves,
and the governor and the politician are gonna say, OK, right on. Now, whats
wrong with us doing the same goddamn thing?
The party was not about a need for a shootout. This is the wrong impression.
STEPHEN SHAMES:

Oakland policemen gather at a Free

Huey demonstration in front of the
Alameda County Courthouse, 1968.
Bobby Seale recalls that there were
friendly Oakland policemen: one
told him, Not all the white guys are
bad cops.

Although Oakland was one-third black in 1966, only sixteen of the departments 661 officers were African American. The Oakland police
had a fearsome reputation. They pretty much did what they wanted, with little
scrutiny from politicians or the press. Seale and Newton sought to protect the
weak and the innocent from abuses of police power. In October 1966, they
decided to police the police, carrying legal weapons and law books.

HUEY NEWTON:

In America, black people are treated very much like the Vietnamese people or any other colonized people because were used, were brutalized by the police in our community. They occupy our community as a foreign
troop occupies territory. The police are there in our community not to promote

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our welfare or for our security or our safety, but they are there to contain us,
to brutalize us and murder us, because they have their orders to do so just as
the soldiers in Vietnam have their orders to destroy the Vietnamese people. . . .
The police in our community couldnt possibly be there to protect our property because we own no property. They couldnt possibly be there to see that
we receive due process of law for the simple reason that the police themselves
do not [follow] due process of law. So it is very apparent that the police are
only in our community not for our security but for the security of the business
owners and also to see that the status quo is kept intact.16
ELBERT BIG MAN HOWARD: At this period in time, the struggle for civil rights

was raging. Malcolm X had told the nation that "its the ballot or the bullet"he
was telling us to defend ourselves. If any man puts his hands on you or yours,
you had a right, you had an obligation, to fix him so he would never be able
to do it again. I believed in these teachings and still do. I was truly angry but
I think that my anger was always tempered with discipline and reasonable
thought and my patrols in the streets never led to unnecessary bloody confrontations. The young brothers that rode with me had to follow the rules of
engagement set forth by Chairman Bobby Seale and Minister of Defense Huey
P. Newton. I actually think that the bright red pickup truck with a bunch of
black brothers in it was on the Oakland PD blotter with the words "avoid confrontation." As a result, there was no loss of life in the community. That is not
to say there were not ambushes, harassment, and false arrests.

#7 We Want an Immediate End

to Police Brutality and Murder
of Black People, The Black Panther,
June 27, 1970

BOBBY SEALE:

25

Its nighttime. Huey has a walkie-talkie, and hes driving one

car, and I have another walkie-talkie, Im driving the other car. I say, Huey!
Huey! A block away, a police car is on the right. We should parkpark!
We park and everybody gets out of the car. I line up fourteen Panthers and
we walk down to the corner on Seventh Street, in the nightlife district of West
Oakland. Theres quite a few people on the sidewalk. Seventh Street is a very,
very wide street. Its three lanes on this side and three lanes on that side, plus
parking. The police car is parked at least two car-widths away from the curb.
The cop is sitting in the passenger-side seat. His arrestee has his butt on the
trunk with his arms folded. It must have been a traffic ticket violation, because
this guy is not handcuffed.
As we walk up, a woman comes out of Slim Jenkinss juke joint. Shes
dressed very nicely. She takes in our little uniforms and says, Well, I see you
guys are rather spiffy.
I tell the Panthers, Stand off the curb. Some of us are carrying long guns,
and others have handguns in holsters. The ones with the handguns strapped to
their sides have handfuls of the Ten Point Platform of the Black Panther Party.
Theres twenty, thirty people watching, and a few more are gathering. An
old man comes out the liquor store. What the heck is this here? What they
got, sticks in their hands? This big, tall black man says, Them aint no sticks,
Jimmy. Them goddamn guns, man. You better leave them people alone.
Guns? Im gonna get the hell out.
When he heard somebody say guns, thats when the cop kind of looked up.
Huey now has his back to the policeman. He says, No one leave. You have a
right to stand here. Weve checked the law. All citizens have a right to stand
and Huey points but he doesnt lookto observe these police officers whove
been brutalizing our people in the community. So no one leave. The law is on
your side. The cop is now standing: You have no right to observe me! Huey
says, No, a California Supreme Court ruling states that every citizen has a
right to stand and observe a police officer carrying out their duty, as long as
they stand a reasonable distance away. A reasonable distance in that particular
ruling is constituted as eight to ten feet. Im standing approximately twenty
feet from you, and well observe you, whether you like it or not. The woman
from the juke joint says, Well, go ahead on and tell it, brother!
The cop says, Is that gun loaded? Huey says, If I know its loaded, thats
good enough. Well, I have a right Step back, you have no right whatso-

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ever. Citing a court ruling, Huey continues, You cannot remove my property
from me without due process, so step back. You cannot touch my weapon.
The tall black dude says, Man, what kind of Negroes are these?
Huey jacks a round in the chamber. So does everybody else with long guns,
about seven more peopleclack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack. Suddenly the
cop is pissed. Hes not afraid. Hes pissed. Hes realizing how many of us have
got guns. He sees me, and he sees Huey, and the sister standing next to me, in
her long earrings.
Then he goes and gets his arrestee, puts him in the car protecting his head
you know how they protect the headand he drives off.
I say, Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Bobby Seale. Now, this is Brother
Huey P. Newton, hes the minister of defense of the Black Panther Party, and Im
the chairman of the Black Panther Party. Party members here will pass out our
Ten Point Platform and Program. We are a new organization here in the community, and were here to organize political, electoral, community unity. Were
going to organize every vote in our black community. Were going to change
the laws of police brutality. Were going to get full employment for our people.
Were going to have real change in our community. Come to our political education meetings. The next day, twenty-one people show up. Only about three of
them join. We tell them, You do not have to carry a gun to be a member of the
Black Panther Party. You dont have to carry a gun. Its not about that.
STEPHEN SHAMES:

On April 1, 1967, Denzil Dowell, an unarmed twenty-twoyear-old construction worker, was shot and killed by sheriff s deputies at Third
Street and Chesley Avenue, in the unincorporated area of North Richmond.
The Panthers held rallies in North Richmond. Police did not interfere, because
every Panther was armed and no laws were broken. Some community people
also brought guns.

BOBBY SEALE: People already knew me in North Richmond. That was one
of the reasons the Dowell family called me and the Black Panthers, via Mark
Comfort, who was a protest organizer. I had organized in North Richmond in
1964 and 1965 before Malcolm was killed. I put a program for youth jobs in
that community. I taught African American history, not only for the one hundred young people that our program hired, but for their relatives and other
adults. I packed a little church every Saturday and I taught them black history.
Huey handled the one-on-one talk and relationship with the family: the mother,
the brothers, and the sisters of Denzil Dowell. He did a fantastic job. Huey said,
We need to go downtown and protest with the D.A. We took the family with us.
We got about forty community people in there along with Black Panthers. We had
our shotguns and pistols. We didnt point them at anybody. The D.A. said, Im in
the city of Richmond proper. Denzil Dowell was shot just outside of the city limits
of Richmond. Now, youre talking to me and Im going to try to sympathize with
you, but youre going to have to go see the sheriff of Contra Costa County.
So we set up a meeting and took the family and a whole hoard of people to
see the goddamn sheriff. They wouldnt let us bring our guns inside the building, so we put our guns back in the car. Then we had it out with the sheriff. The
sheriff says, Well, I cant do anything for you, you have to go to Sacramento.
Oh, they just brushed us off.
These one-on-one relationships with people in the community led to other
investigations of the killings of young brothers and sisters. We also worked
on landlord problems. We helped stop a person from being kicked out on the
streets in San Francisco. Eldridge Cleaver led that one, because Eldridge lived
over in Frisco. Thats how the Winston-Salem chapter in North Carolina got
started: Larry Little and Nelson Malloy stopping a sister from being evicted
standing on the porch with guns and telling the sheriff theyre not going to put
this womans stuff out in the streets. There was a big stand-off there for three
or four days. Tried to make sure that sister had somewhere to go.
The community saw us as protectors. When you stand up for somebody,
they say, Well, thank you.

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STEPHEN SHAMES: In response to the Panthers police patrols, Governor Ronald Reagan of California signed the Mulford Act in 1967.
BOBBY SEALE:

They did it because of the Black Panther Party. They made the
law say, No one can carry a loaded weapon within city limits. And within 150
feet of public property inside city limits. Public property included all roadways,
which means that you would have to be 150 feet from a public sidewalk before
you could load your weapon. Im not going to go out and patrol police without
a loaded weapon. So we stopped patrolling police.

STEPHEN SHAMES: The National Rifle Association did not utter a peep of Second Amendment protest. Can you imagine what they would say if President
Obama proposed a national Mulford Act today?
BOBBY SEALE:

The NRA wanted us arrested for carrying guns back in those

days. Yes, they did.

STEPHEN SHAMES: On May 2, 1967, thirty armed Panthers and their supporters went to the California State Capitol at Sacramento to protest the bill. The
Black Panther Party burst upon Americas consciousness when media from all
over the world covered this protest.
BOBBY SEALE:

27

Huey found out that State Assemblyman Donald Mulford was

putting in the bill and said, Were going to have to go to Sacramento. We
decided that I would read Executive Mandate No. 1, denouncing the Mulford
Act. Working at the Black House, me, Huey, and Eldridge Cleaver fed information to Eldridge, who typed it up. Eldridge was the real writer. He took our ideas
and contributed some points himself.
I called Mark Comfort, and he brought four or five of his people over in his
vehicle. The Dowell brothers had two carloads of people. Eldridge had a carload, with a sister and Emory Douglas. I had organized two carloads four and
five deep using my 1952 Chevy, which Tucker drove, and my brother Johns
brand new car, which I drove. Including my wife, Artie, there were six women.
All in all, we had thirty people. I got Huey voted out of going with us. He stayed
in Oakland to handle any press in case something went wrong. That was the
real reason I made it a point to lead the delegation to the state capitol.
When we got to Sacramento, Governor Ronald Reagan was on the front
lawn, speaking to preteen Future Leaders of America. Reagan was off to our
right, sixty or seventy feet away, and the kids got interested in us walking up
there with all these rifles and shotguns resting on our shoulders. So the kids
came running over. The press followed the kids. We were more interesting
with the guns. Im wearing a big .45 strapped to my side, and I read Executive
Mandate No. 1.
Then I walk up those broad steps. Inside the press is milling around, and I
dont know which way to go. I ask, Where in the hell is the spectator section?
and somebody says, Well, you got to go upstairs. So we pile into three large
elevators. Now, you have to imagine, its crowded and the shotguns and rifles
are sticking up between the people and the TV cameras.
The doors open and someone says, This way, Seale. Halfway down the
hall, theres the oldest Capitol guard and a little knee-high swing gate. He says,
You cant come in here. I say, We dont have a constitutional right to go in
the spectator section to watch the state assembly make legislation? Well, the
press start jumping over this knee-high thing, and in the process of doing that,
several of them knock the guard back and he loses his balance. We follow them
through. I think Im going to the spectator section until I see these little tables.
Were on the floor of the assembly! Not the spectator section!
The cameras rush in past me. Then I see two assemblymen under their
desks! Because these party members that are walking ahead of me had rifles
on their shoulders and Tucker with a pistol by his side. I hear the assembly

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Why Was Denzil Dowell Killed,

The Black Panther, April 25, 1967.
This was the first issue of the party
newspaper.

4/5/2016 2:35 PM

Bobby Seale, right, and Bobby Hutton, with gun, at the California State Legislature
protesting the Mulford Act, May 2, 1967. Photograph by Ward Sharrer

president pro tem bangin the gavel and shouting, The cameras and the press
are not allowed on the assembly floor while in session! Youre not allowed!
Bang! Bang! Bang! Hes not talking about the guns, hes talking about the cameras. Assemblymen are standing around now, looking, others crouching behind
their desks. I said, Mark, Mark, you guys, come on. Were in the fucking wrong
place. Man, lets get the fuck out of here! I mean, Im trying to be polite about
the fact that Im in the wrong place, right? Now the headline says, Black Panthers Invade Capitol. It was all an accident. Im up here apologizing for the
fact that were in the wrong place.
We walked out, got in our cars, drove blocks away into a service station.
Then an old policeman riding a tricycle police motorcycle and giving out
tickets stops at the corner. The party members are stretching. Some are using
the restroom. They left their guns lying on the seats of the cars. Suddenly
somebody says, Chairman, Chairman, Chairman, that cop, hes got his gun
out! Hes got his gun out! And I turned around and looked, and he had his gun
out. Not pointing it at anybody, but its out of his holster. Hold it! I walked
toward the cop. Put your gun away. Dont pull your gun on us. If you want
to make an arrest, you do that. Panthers start pulling out rifles: Clack, clack,
clack, clack, clack. He puts his gun back in his holster.
Then he gets on his radio: Well, theyre all down here and they got guns
and stuff, I saw them. A voice comes back: Well, you got to arrest them.
What do I arrest them for? Arrest them on any goddamn thing. The governor wants them arrested. Im standing there listening to this shit.
Five minutes later the police had the place surrounded. I heard later on, the
National Guard had been called out, and they were two or three blocks away.
Then they methodically started arresting people. I told the group, Just take
the arrest.
Everybody got arrested except the women, and theyre the ones who drove
the cars back. There were six cars and six women. They even arrested Eldridge,
who was there with a camera for Ramparts magazine. Eldridge did not have a
gun. He wasnt allowed to carry a gun, being on parole at the time.
That was Sacramento. That gave the Black Panther Party international
notoriety. There we were, a ragtag organization, front-page news around the
world. I found out we were on the front page of the London Times, the front
pages of papers in Africa and India.

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GLORIA ABERNETHY: When I heard about Sacramento, I said, Yep, thats for
me. I joined in my senior year of high school, in the spring of 1968.
BOBBY SEALE: They put me in jail in July 1967 for possession of a firearm.
In September, Huey came to visit me. He said, The partys over. We lost the
office. They did lose the office; they didnt have the resources. I was the one that
always had the resources, cause I had that paycheck. But now Im in jail, and
theyd fired me from my job at the Department of Human Resources. It wasnt
an angry firing, because the guy who fired me, he loved me: Bobby, theyre
forcing me to fire you. They fired me because I led that armed delegation to
the California State Legislature. I said, Well, Huey, I can reorganize it. No,
no. The party is over. We dont have anything. I said, Huey, I will reorganize
the party.
Then Huey got shot.
STEPHEN SHAMES:

At 4:56 A.M. on October 28, 1967, Officer John Frey of the

Oakland police was killed and Officer Herbert Heanes wounded after stopping
Huey Newton and Gene McKinney. Huey was wounded, arrested, and charged
with first-degree murder.

BOBBY SEALE:

29

Im in jail out in Livermore ValleyBig Greystone, Alameda

County Jail. Its got high ceilings, with a curved, raftered roof. A prisoner
maybe way over here at the other end, a block away, calls out, Hey, Seale! I
say, Yeah? Your boy Huey, whats up? Got shot last night. What are you
readin? Tribune. Give it to me. Sending it around. What cell? Twentynine. Coming up.
He sent it around, and I see a picture of Huey on the gurney. That famous
picture of Hueys forearm over the back of his head, handcuffed to the lower
portion of the gurney. So I say, Damn, and I pace the floor.

KATHLEEN CLEAVER: Huey got shot in October. It was the same month that
Che Guevara was killed. Eldridge called me and said, Youve got to come out
here and help us. The group I met when I reached the Bay Area consisted
of Eldridgethe only leader not in jail and old enough to vote (but being a
paroled convict, he was prohibited from exercising the franchise)and several
teenagers: Bobby Hutton, Reginald Forte, Sherwin Forte, Oleander Harrison,
and maybe Emory Douglas. This was all of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense that I had met. Bobby was in jail in Santa Rita. Hueys in prison. They
didnt have their office any longer. They didnt have any newspaper. Thats
when Eldridge went public. He was in the party, he was minister of information, but he was underground.
So he took the position that Huey must be set free.
Eldridge said, It is far more important for us to save Hueys life than for me
to stay free on parole. He had become very enamored of Huey. He knew that
once he became publically identified with the Black Panthers, his parole would
be at risk. Huey was facing the gas chamber.
BOBBY SEALE:

Im released from jail about five and a half weeks after Huey
defends himself against Officer Frey, who shot Huey first. Im surprised that
Im being released. I found out that I had a good behavior record in prison and
I was released thirty days early. I didnt have fights, nothing like that.
I get back home, and I call Eldridge Cleaver. Eldridge was key. He had money;
he had resources. I had nothing. I said, Eldridge, youre selling your book?
He says, Yeah. You got any money? Yeah, Chairman, I got money. He had
quite a bit of funds coming in, it seems, from Soul on Ice.
Eldridge gave me a couple hundred dollars. I say, I need a car. I need to
operate. He kicked the money up, bought me a used Ford station wagon, and
then he bought himself a Ford station wagon.
Were running together, doing things. I told Eldridge, Well, weve got to

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Warning to America, illustration by

Emory Douglas, The Black Panther,
June 27, 1970

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reorganize the Black Panther Party. We need resources. Give us money for airline tickets. Why? Were going to fly to Washington, D.C. Eldridge and I,
we did it together, to see Stokely Carmichael. Were going to talk to Carmichael
about freeing Huey.
Eldridge and I really worked together on the Free Huey campaign. Eldridge
begins to forge a coalition with the Peace and Freedom Party. Eldridges emphasis was Free Huey, so were going to form this coalition. He was instrumental
in getting that initiated. And thats what we did, man.
Then, when Bunchy Carter and John Huggins changed their Wretched of
the Earth organization to the Southern California chapter of the Black Panther
Party, a whole merging thing started happening.
ERICKA HUGGINS:

John Huggins and I joined the Black Panther Party to support freeing Huey from prison. We moved to California and went to the very
first Free Huey birthday rally in Los Angeles in 1967. That did it. We found the
Black Panther Party and it changed our lives.

BOBBY SEALE:

Capitalism Plus Racism Breeds

Fascism, The Black Panther, June
14, 1969

The first Free Huey rally was at the Oakland Auditorium,

where seven thousand people took every seat. That was February 17, 1968.
I spoke. Ron Dellums spoke. In that rally, H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael,
and James Foreman are in the Black Panther Party. This was a merger between
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panther Party.
SNCC was already popular on its own. It had moved forward organizing people, with voter registration drives down South, Lowndes County in Alabama,
and everything else, all right? But now theyre in my organization.
Of course, you have to look on the other side. Power structure doesnt like
that. Stokely Carmichael insisted to Dr. King that he come out against the war
in Vietnam, and finally he did. Problem is, J. Edgar Hoover then labeled Martin
Luther King as a violent militant. How rotten can this guy get?

STEPHEN SHAMES:

The Panthers mobilized and built coalitions to free Huey.

They organized numerous rallies at the Alameda County Courthouse, in DeFremery Park in Oakland, and on Sproul Plaza at the University of California at
Berkeley. The FBI tried to stop their legal political activity.

30

BOBBY SEALE: I remember one time, Im at a rally on the courthouse steps.

Over here is a group of ten or twelve reporters in suits. Somebody walks over to
me and whispers in my ear, The guy out there on the left in the bright Hawaiian
shirt is some kind of agent or provocateur. I say, What? Why you telling me
that? See that reporter over there? That reporter was telling me to tell you.
I go on to speak for ten minutes, then theres applause. I say, By the way,
you with the Hawaiian shirt. He said, Me? I say, Are you some kind of police
provocateur in our ranks here? Me? he says. No, what are you talking about?
Then somebody behind pushed him, and another guy tried to swing. Then it
dawned on me. I say, Hold it. Leave him alone, dont touch him! Somebody
just told me some shit.
The reporterthe bastard who pointed him outI found out later he
was an FBI agent. Where did I see him next? It was months later, when I got
arrested. Im in the carwhos in the front passenger seat? This is what they
were doing, man.

Free Huey Newton! Cuban postcard

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BILLY X JENNINGS: In June of 1968 I was going to Laney College in Oakland.

I heard a chant: Free Huey. A friend and I walked to the Alameda County
Courthouse. A Free Huey rally was going on. Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver were speaking. I was reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Here Im seeing the same thing. What they are talking about in the book is what Bobby and
Eldridge are talking about. That caught my attention.
Eldridge is talking about point number six of the Ten Point Program: Black
men must be exempt from military service. I was seventeen. On September
8, I would turn eighteen and have to register for the draft. So when Eldridge

20/5/2016 5:42 PM

ed about black men being exempt from military service, that caught my ear.
Nobody wanted to be drafted and go to Vietnam. In my high school, people
were going to Vietnam and getting shot.
BOBBY SEALE: Were going to try to get Huey out of jail. Huey was our symbol
for resistance, and he was in jail. We wanted to free Huey, and we were going
to free Huey. Free Huey! Free Huey!
Well, lets understand the scene. If you kill Huey Newton, the skys the limit.
Thats what we were saying. Eldridge Cleaver coined that phrase and got it
popularized. Its an anarchistic statement. Eldridges idea is we needed to wage
war, and he was sincere about that to the point that he was doing stuff that I
didnt want him to do.
On September 8, 1968, Hueys found not guilty of first-degree murder. Then
hes found not guilty of second-degree murder. Hes convicted only of thirddegree voluntary manslaughter. Immediately when I hear that, I say, Call every
Black Panther Party officer and tell them they will not go into the streets. No,
you will not. I want that order. Im talking to Eldridge on the phone. Eldridge
is saying, Whats wrong with that? No, Eldridge. Theyre not talking about
putting him in the electric chair. I dont want that kind of shit. I dont want party
members out there.
The police were rioting. Youve got to understand something. They brought
National Guard, they had highway patrol, and they had the regular police in
the cities of Oakland and Berkeley. They were ready. They were waiting and
armed. I knew this. Nobody rioted. I kept Oakland cool.
Then the police couldnt find any rioters. These two cops decided to shoot
up the Black Panther office. They shot it up, thats what they did. Of course,
we made hay out of it the next day with the press: Look what the police did.

31

Huey Newton Talks to the

Movement pamphlet

STEPHEN SHAMES:

The Panthers grew rapidly into a national revolutionary

party after Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis.
Riots occurred in major cities across the country, but Oakland remained calm
due to the partys efforts there.

BOBBY SEALE:

As I wrote in my second book, A Lonely Rage, you find yourself

in an alone kind of a situation. Somebodys doing me wrongI go into a rage.
But then I learned to control this rage. Wait a minute, Ive got to control this
rage. I cant just boom-boom-boom.

STEPHEN SHAMES: But that rage . . . a lot of black kids grow up, and theyre
angry at whats going on.
BOBBY SEALE:

Well, I understood it, and I learned to control it. Dont riot,

organize. When Martin Luther King was killed, there were four hundred riots
going on around the country. I mean, within a day.
Somebody called up and said, Theyre out here rioting in North Richmond. I jumped up. Well, lets get out to Richmond. I took a couple carloads
of Panthers with me. We had a few shotguns, and I had my own .357 Magnum
pistol. Then we saw some white guys in pickup trucks and a van at one of the
entrances where you get into the North Richmond black community. Somebody says, Theyve got guns, man. I said, Yeah, theyre probably waiting for
blacks to come out here, so they can shoot em.
We drove on in, got into the area, man. I got outta the car, and I had a little
megaphone: All right, everybody. This is Bobby Seale! These people knew me.
Get these kids off the street! Whats wrong with you? And all of you! Mr.
Jenkins, sir, come here. Yeah, Bobby, what is it? Help me get these kids off
the street, and get these kids in the house. Everybody go home. We dont want
people out rioting. It took about an hour, man, going through that community.
Youve got thirty-eight thousand people in North Richmond at that time. But
we finally got that whole place cleared out. There was no police in there. But
the press was in there.

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Panther national headquarters

after the police shot it up, September
29, 1968

4/5/2016 2:35 PM

You burn out your own community, a bunch of people get arrested, a bunch
of people get killed. And you destroy businesses. When you destroy those businesses, you have lost these jobs. That is not organizing. To me, it was supposed
to be the opposite. Youre going to organize the community, get the community
together.
After the killing of Martin Luther King, the Black Panther Party spread like
wildfire. Before, total membership was four hundred up and down the West
Coast. We had offices in Seattle, Washington; there was a small group in Portland; that Sacramento group; the San Francisco Bay Area; Palo Alto; Vallejo;
Marin County; the Southern California chapter; and the San Diego office. By
the time Nixon was elected presidentthat would be seven months later
we had five thousand members and forty-nine chapters and branches in cities
across the United States of America.
ELMER DIXON: I was the cofounder of

Panther Rally poster

the Seattle chapter with my brother Aaron. I grew up in a diverse neighborhood. I had friends who were white, Asian,
Latino. I saw the bombings of the churches on television. I marched with King
in 65, when he came to Seattle. I became a member of SNCC, as did Aaron. I
was president of the Black Student Union in college. I attended a BSU conference at San Francisco State after Kings assassination.
Bobby Hutton was also assassinated that week. We drove across the bridge
to Oakland and went to the funeral. I saw so many black people organized in
a military fashion, in uniforms, with guns, lined up inside the church. It was a
black army. The magnitude of it! I realized that there was a black revolution.
There were people standing up and fighting back. I wanted to be part of it.
That night Bobby Seale spoke at San Francisco State. His speech was so
fiery, you were either going to run and hide or become part of the revolution.
Some students were scared. We wanted to join. After the speech we told Bobby we wanted to form a chapter in Seattle. He said he would be there in two
weeks, and he was. We formed the first chapter outside of California.

BOBBY SEALE:

This was an explosive period. Young folks flooded into the

organization. I flew to all these chapters. I told them, Go to the college and get
with the left radical organizations on campus; you got all the white left radicals
and all the young Chicanos. You can draw some strength from the university
on the one hand, while you organize the grass roots in the community on the
other. At the same time, youre gonna develop your programs. I did that all
over the country.

32

ELBERT BIG MAN HOWARD:

The Panthers of Wrath are Wiser

than the Horses of Instruction, page
from an underground newspaper, with
a Stephen Shames photograph

Early on, we were not too organized in terms

of regular opening and closing hours, and staffing was not too together. I told
Chairman Bobby Seale we could not afford to be opening at twelve or one in
the afternoon or when someone decided to come in. I told the chairman if he
wanted to give me a set of keys, I would open every morning at nine and hold
it down until someone else came in later. I felt this gave us a more professional
look to the community. As a result, we were there to accept donations, sell our
newspaper, and take phone calls from people around the city, state, country,
and world. We had people coming in wanting to join. We took names and
phone numbers. There was tons of mail coming in. From the mail we received
a great many newsworthy articles for our newspaper. There was also a good
amount of hate mail. We began to receive invitations to speak to groups and at
rallies. It was from some of these invitations that I did my first speaking event.
I had never spoken before a group of people before.
The first group was a convention of San Francisco probation officers. I was
a little nervous, but I really got into it. In California, like in most states, parole
officers held godlike powers over a person on parole. These state employees
could send a person back to prison for any reason or no reason at all. My question to them was, What have you done to try and keep ex-cons from returning
to prison? Had any of them gone to employers to help get employment for
their charges that paid a living wage, a wage that allowed a person to take care

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of a family? How many had reached out to community institutions, churches,

and schools to help these people make it on the outside?
I asked how many had really got involved with their charges who needed
drug treatment, other than sending them back to jail. My final question to the
group was, Did your college education and training teach you to deal with
human beings with all their complex problems, or did your training just turn
you into a tool to keep the revolving doors of the penitentiary turning? In my
conclusion, I read our Ten Point Platform and Program. I think it went well for
being my first speech before a large group. It was not what they wanted to hear,
but I didnt care.

33

KHALID RAHEEM: I was a young person who had been kicked out of high
school. I found a job, but I really had no direction in my life. I had failed school
for several years. I wasnt inspired. I wasnt motivated by learning or education.
I really had very little political consciousness. I grew up in a neighborhood
that was gang affiliated. I hung out with my friends. I got drunk. I partied. I got
high. I had confrontations, fights. I did all the things that seemed to be done for
people in my circle. And lo and behold, one dayone morning, as a matter of
fact, because I worked night shiftI had gotten off of work. This was in early
1970. I was sixteen or seventeen years old and I was hanging with my friends,
and some brothers came through our neighborhood. They were members of
the Black Panther Party. They were passing out some information. They were
selling Panther papers. They invited us to the political education class. To make
a long story short, I wind up going and I wind up getting involved.
That was a turning point in my life. Eventually I dedicated all of my time to
working within the Black Panther Party. I mean, all of my time. I left the job. I
actually left home, packed up my stuff, and moved down to the offices of the
Black Panther Party in West Philadelphia.
Really, the thing that caught my eye when Panthers came through our neighborhood were their posters featuring the artwork of Emory Douglas, depicting
black people fighting against the cops [see p.113]. Black people standing up for
themselves. Black people being armed. Black people demonstrating courage.
That really impressed me and my friends. We liked the fact that this was an
organization made up of black people who were willing to stand up against
the police.
One of our biggest recruitment factors in getting people to even consider
the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, where I lived, was the brutality of the
Philadelphia Police Department. Oftentimes we would laugh and joke about
the fact that Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo probably did more to politicize
people than we did, because he was so vicious and overtly racist in how he
dealt with black peopleespecially black youth. When we came to neighborhoods with our message, The Black Panther Party says you have a right to
defend yourself, a lot of young people were ready to hear that message because
they had been so victimized at the hands of the Philadelphia cops.
We didnt understand racism. We certainly did not understand white supremacy. Or what capitalism was all about. And if you talked about socialism, if you
talked about democracy, we had no idea what those things really meant. But
we were attracted by the energy of a black organization standing up, picking
up the gun, and being willingbeing ableto fight back against the police.
That was the initial attraction. Then, later on, I remember going to my first
political education class and being attracted to those people who were teaching the class. Then a little later, as we hung around more, we started to understand what the Black Panther Party represented, just the idea. The hard work.
The dedication. The fact that this is a group of mostly young black men and
women, some of the bravest, most courageous, baddest dudes who did stuff
you didnt expect most people to do. Most folks didnt even know we got up
in the morning and prepared breakfast for kids. We would try to get ourselves
together so we could teach some other little people. I was a guy who had failed
high school, and at some point I was teaching at the Liberation School. I had
no motivation before then to be able to teach anybody anything.

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Evidence and Intimidation of Fascist

Crimes by U.S.A., The Black Panther,
February 21, 1970. Photograph by
Stephen Shames

Who Are the Real Criminals?, flyer

protesting police brutality against the
Black Panthers in Philadelphia

20/5/2016 5:43 PM

Martin Luther King Jr. waits to

speak at the University of California
at Berkeley, March 17, 1967

BOBBY SEALE: I formed a coalition with the SCLCSouthern Christian Leadership ConferenceMartin Luther Kings organization. Five or six weeks before
Dr. King was killed, the Reverend Dr. Ralph Abernathy, who worked directly
with Dr. King at SCLC, calls me. I was in this little dinky office that we have on
Grove Street, down the street from the black church. He says, Dr. King has had
me call you, and quite a few other organizations, to ask, would you be willing
to participate in a broad roundtable in which more than one hundred organizations of people of color will hopefully participate in helping to outline and
hammer out an economic rights program for all the people? This is very, very
important. I said, Yes, we will definitely participate in that. Black Panther
Partyyou can put us down. I will be there. Yeah. He says, Would you help
to organize people to participate in the Poor Peoples March on Washington, a
year or so from now? I say, Yes, the Black Panther Party will definitely participate. Please tell Dr. King that I admire him very much. Ive always admired him
from the time I saw him speak in 1962, here in Oakland, California. He inspired
me then. We will definitely be participating.
The party formed coalitions with other progressive organizations, including
Cesar Chavezs United Farm Workers movement, AIM [the American Indian
Movement], the Asian Red Guard, the Young Lords, the Peace and Freedom
Party, SDS [Students for a Democratic Society], Young Patriots.
A lot of young white kids became sensitive to the oppression of the African
American community. They were looking at us resisting. And they themselves
were resisting. A lot of young white people became involved in one way or
another with the protest. We didnt play a color thing, this is about all power to
all the people.
STEPHEN SHAMES:

My generation of white baby boomers was the first generation toas a groupreject the basic tenet of American racism: white superiority. We saw Martin Luther King and the civil rights activists as heroes who
were trying to get America to live up to the ideals our teachers told us about
in school. The Panthers were a part of that. It may come as a surprise to some
people that the Panthers ran candidates for political office as early as 1968,
when Eldridge Cleaver ran for president.

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BOBBY SEALE: When the Peace and Freedom Party came around, Eldridge
forged that relationship. We went to Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Peace and Freedom Party had their convention there. Eldridge was nominated to run for president. Eldridge garnered almost three million votes. Whether we win or not,
were going to lay the foundation for running for political officeand this is in
early 1968. Nixon was running for president of the United States of America.
Nixon, you know, was the foe.
In our local area, Kathleen Cleaver would be nominated for state assemblyman against Willie Brown in San Francisco. I would be nominated for state
assembly in Oakland. Huey was nominated for a congressional district. Later, Ron
Dellums took that seat. We had voter registration drives that we did with the
Peace and Freedom Party. Do you know that we got the percentage we needed
in Alameda County to actually run candidates under the Black Panther Party?

Stokeley Carmichael at Sproul Hall,

University of California, Berkeley,
February 17, 1968

KATHLEEN CLEAVER: I did not know how to drive, and Eldridge and I lived in
San Francisco, while all the others were across the bay in Oakland. Wherever I went, someone drove meif not Eldridge, then another Pantheruntil
1968, after I became a Central Committee member and also a candidate for
the Peace and Freedom Party for the assembly district in which I lived. That
election gave rise to the campaign poster I made called The Ballot or the Bullet. My activity mostly involved writing, going to meetings, being interviewed
on radio or by reporters, speaking at rallies, sending out press releases, and
a bit of poster designing. My title was communications secretary. Across the
country, as the Black Panther Party expanded, the position of communications
secretary was established, and in many chapters these were women.

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BOBBY SEALE: We coined the phrase, Power to the people. Huey and I came
up with a functional definition of power: Power is the ability to define phenomena, and in turn make it act in a desired manner. Thats what its about: getting
the programs out there, registering the people to vote, and taking over these
political power seats. You cannot run around here just yelling and hollering,
Black power! Black power! unless you are going to organize to go after those
political-ass power motherfucking seats.
This is all part of my design. Most people misunderstood where I was coming from, when I say I wanted a mass organization across the country, what
Huey was never up on. I dont know if you need a mass organization. We
dont need no big organization, I say.
No, we want a mass organization because we need to get people elected to
political office so we can change the racist laws all across the United States of
America. Listen to me, Huey, when you take in every seat, part-time or fulltime, every county seat, supervisors seat, state legislators seat, city council
seat, in all the cities inside each county, its over five hundred thousand political
seats, but, there are hardly any people of color in the mid-60s duly elected to
political office. So its high time that we help change that demographic. We
want a nationwide organization.
These are the sons of bitches that make the laws. They make the racist
laws. They can repeal the racist laws. So whether youre black, white, blue, red,
green, yellow, or polka-dot, what we need to do is unite the people and get our
kind of people in political office, and this is what were going to do.
That was my goal objective and my political strategy, OK?

Support Eldridge Cleaver for

President poster

STEPHEN SHAMES: The Black Panther Party also organized a Community

Control of Police referendum in Berkeley. It lost by only one percentage point.

35

BOBBY SEALE:

Were going to start out with community control of that particular community institution thats affecting our lives, and this is the police
department. Were going to try to implement what we call community control
of police, which includes changing who runs the police department, as a way
to unite the people. We came up with a plan for Berkeley, one for Richmond,
one for Oakland, and one for San Francisco. The only one we got on the ballot
was Berkeley.
Our community control had teeth. We aint going to have just the police
investigating the police, were going to have the peoples committees investigating the police. Then, if there are any complaints from the citizens in the
community about police brutality and undue force, they would have an investigation. Were not saying we aint gonna have a police department. We know
weve got crime out here and were gonna stop criminals. But as much as possible, we want everybodys rights to be recognized at the same time.
Panthers also ran for all the Model Cities board jobs. We won every seat in
Berkeley. The West Oakland board, we had a majority of the seats there. Thats
the concept of community control. The Black Panthers managed Model Cities
money in Berkeley. But Nixon got rid of the Model Cities. He got the Congress
to cut that off because we wanted to take over the political seats.
Coalition politics was a necessary thing. It is something that the power
structure, the Nixon administration, hated. They hated this coalition politics,
with all of the different organizations, young and old, white, black, Chicano, all
together. This is the true history of the original Black Panther Party, its true legacy, and an example of how we, the people, must continue the work together
as the Black Panther Party did with its allies, through coalitions to proactively
preserve our constitutional rights. This is the thing we need. And thats the true
revolution. See, revolution is not about a shootout. Never was. Revolution is
about re-evolving more political, economic, and social justice power back into
the hands of the people. Thats what real revolution is about.

Black Panther Candidates poster

1968: Ballot or the Bullet, Kathleen

Cleavers campaign poster, The Black
Panther, September 28, 1968

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Bobby Seale sells Maos Red

Book to raise money at the first
San Francisco Peace March
against the Vietnam War, Kezar
Stadium, April 15, 1967

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