Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Philip S. Foner - Black Panthers Speak
Philip S. Foner - Black Panthers Speak
PHllP S. FONER
NEW fOREWORO BY BARBARA RANSBY
By Philip S. Foner
The Black Panthers Speak
The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass
(4
vols.)
1654-1865
(4
vols.)
THE
BLACK
PANTHERS
SPEAK
Edited by Philip S. Foner
("!J
HaymarketBooks
Cl1icago, IL
[email protected]
www.haymarketbooks.org
Trade distribution:
In the US, Consortium B ook Sales and Distribution, www.cbsd.com
In Canada, Publishers Group Canada, www.pgcbooks.ca
In the UK, Turnaround Publisher Services, www.turnaround-uk.com
In Australia, Palgrave Macmillan, www.palgravemacmillan.com.au
All other countries, Publishers Group Worldwide, www.pgw.com
ISBN: 978- 1 -60846-328-2
Cover design by Ragina Johnson. Cover image of Black Panther Party members
demonstrating on the steps of the Alameda County Courthouse for the release
of Huey Newton (Copyright Bettmann/Corbis and AP Images).
Published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation
and the Wallace Global Fund.
Excerpts from The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon, copyright 1963 by Presence
Africaine, are published with the permission of Grove Press, Inc. "Huey Newton Talks to the
Movement about the Black Panther Party, Cultural Nationalism, SNCC, Liberals and White
Revolutionaries"; "You Can Murder a Liberator, but You Can't Murder Liberation;' by Fred
Hampton; and "Black Caucus Program: An Interview" are published with the permission
Movement. "Bobby Seale Explains Panther Politics" is published with the permission
Guardian. "An Open Letter to Stokely Carmichael;' by Eldridge Cleaver, is published
with the permission of Ramparts. "We Will Win: Letter from Prison;' by Afeni Shakur,
and "To Judge Murtagh: From the Panther 21" are published with the permission of Ray.
"People's Medical Care Center" is published with the permission of Daily World. "Ten-Point
of the
of the
Health Program of the Young Lords" is published with the permission of the
Y. L. 0.
Contents
Foreword by Barbara Ransby
P reface by Julian Bond
Introduction
Black Panther National Anthem
1.
2.
ix
xxi
xxi i
xi i i
7
8
14
Black Lawye rs
14
16
On Violence
19
20
Correc t i ng M i s t a ke n Ideas
21
23
24
25
Ed itorial Statement
26
26
27
Erica's Poem
29
30
31
32
3.
T h e Ch icago 8
32
P igs-Pa nthers
34
On Cr i t i c i sm of Cuba
37
39
40
41
45
47
Febr u a ry 1 7, 1 968
Huey Newton Ta l ks to the Movemen t About the
Black Panther P a r ty, Cultural Nation a l i sm, SNCC,
Liberals a n d W h ite Revol u t io n a r ies
50
4.
67
To the R.N.A.
70
74
5.
77
78
81
88
B r i ng It Home
93
97
98
100
104
108
1 17
6.
7.
1 22
124
128
130
8.
9.
121
137
138
145
146
151
154
1 59
161
164
Community Activities
167
To Feed O u r Ch i l d ren
168
W hy t h e Free B re a kfast?
1 69
Liberation Schools
1 70
171
1 73
1 76
177
179
180
181
183
185
196
212
219
220
222
223
225
229
234
235
238
239
Latinos Walkout
243
Getting Together
245
246
249
252
254
Appendixes
257
257
257
263
265
267
27 2
Foreword
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, later simply the Black
Panther Party (BPP), was founded in Oakland, California, in 1966
by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, two students at Merritt Col
lege who were influenced by the political upsurge in the country
and angered by the continued police violence and harassment in
African American communities, including Oakland. They were
later joined by Eldridge Cleaver, David Hilliard, and others. Es
timates are that at their peak, the Panthers claimed thousands
of members and many more supporters, including a number of
prominent celebrities, artists, and intellectuals. Romanticized by
some and vilified by others, they became icons of the Black Power
movement, but the organization was eclectic and complex and its
story is a nuanced one. Its macho image disguises a reality where
the struggle against sexism was intense and ongoing. The stoic,
militant urban-warrior profile camouflaged a profound commit
ment to the organization's survival and service programs. And
the "all-things-Black " exterior cloaked the internal politics of sol
idarity and internationalism.
I was nine years old when the Black Panther Party was founded,
but its emergence would have a profound impact on my evolv
ing consciousness as a young Black woman growing up in the late
1960s and early '70s. I remember the familiar image of large Af
ro-wearing men and women hawking Panther newspapers on De
troit street corners: "Black Panther paper, young sister? " And then
I remember the funeral of a friend's brother who died way too
young. He was a Panther. The funeral took place in a local Cath
olic church with a casket draped in a red, black, and green flag
and pallbearers wearing black berets, leather jackets, and Black
Panther buttons, fists raised as they honored a fallen comrade and
brother. Their slogan, "All Power to the People," was ubiquitous. It
ix
Foreword
xi
Panther leadership knew at the time that they were being targeted,
but later, with the release of formerly classified documents through
the Freedom of Information Act, the vastness and ruthlessness of
the government campaign against the Panthers was revealed. FBI
director J. Edgar Hoover insisted, "The Black Panther Party, with
out question, represents the greatest threat to [the] internal securi
ty of the country."1 COINTELPRO was designed to eliminate that
perceived threat.
From 1968 on, there was a series of killings and court cases that
devastated the organization. In April 1968, seventeen-year-old
Bobby Hutton was shot dead by police after his arrest in Oakland.
In January 1969, John Huggins and Alprentice (Bunchy) Carter
were killed during a confrontation with cultural nationalists in
Maulana Karenga's US organization after a meeting on UCLA's
campus. Huggins left behind his wife and comrade Erica Huggins
and their infant daughter, Mai. The following December, young
Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed in a bloody
nighttime police raid on Chicago's West Side. And there were ar
rests and trials that further tapped the resources of the group and
undermined its ability to carry out its work. The Panther 21 trial
in New York and the New Haven Nine in Connecticut were two of
the most high-profile cases, but the most dramatic was the surreal
courtroom scene that surrounded Bobby Seale's indictment as a
part of the 1969 Chicago Eight trial, an outgrowth of the 1968
protests at the Democratic National Convention. During the trial,
the judge ordered Seale bound, gagged, and shackled in his chair
in order to silence his outbursts, after which his trial was separat
ed from his co-defenders, leaving them as the Chicago Seven.
By 1970 dozens of Panther leaders had been jailed, their offices
had been raided in multiple cities, members had been wounded
and killed, and two prominent leaders, Eldridge and Kathleen
Neal Cleaver, were in exile in Algeria. It was a violent and tumul
tuous time in the United States and the world, and the Black Pan
ther Party was in the thick of the fray.
In the words of the Panthers' eloquent young Chicago martyr
Fred Hampton, "You can kill a revolutionary, but you can never
xii
Th e B l a c k Panthers Speak
kill the revolution." The revolutionary ideas and ideals that the
Panthers embraced were indeed bigger than them. Their reach was
long and it touched young radicals around the globe. More import
ant even than what the Panthers did or said is what they represent
ed. The organization's powerful symbolism extended well beyond
its membership and has lived long after its demise. A narrow read
of what the Panthers symbolized would focus on its youthful, mil
itant defiance to the violent racism and police brutality suffered
by urban Black populations. The actions that first earned them
notoriety were their armed police-monitoring efforts and their in
sistence on the right to bear arms for community self-defense. But
there was more. The Panthers also engaged in the gender-bending
practice of promoting women warriors and male community ser
vants. They, like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC), also recalibrated notions of intergenerational work. No
longer was the accepted protocol simply to defer to wise elders and
seasoned political experts. Equally significant was their broad and
forward-looking Third World internationalism. Finally, their class
politics were pivotal. Working-class Black youth were not viewed
as angry rebels or as young proteges of successful movement vet
erans, but as strategists and revolutionary change agents in their
own right-at least, that was the aspiration. This praxis was in
formed by the Panthers' appreciation of Marxist, and specifically
Maoist, ideas about class struggle, nationalism, and revolution.
Over the years there has emerged a growing body of scholarship
on the Panthers, including significant research on the role of gen
der in Party politics and the importance of the organization's "sur
vival" or community service programs. These scholars are re-en
gaging the Black Panther Party with the benefit of hindsight as well
as the challenges of distance and time. But this re-engagement is
not simply an academic pursuit. The Panthers remain a source of
political fascination and inspiration, even as their legacy is hot
ly contested, their mistakes fully acknowledged, and their losses
deeply mourned. Panels, conferences, reunions, memorials, and
memoirs have provided opportunities for new revelations, insights,
and debates regarding the history of the Black Panther Party.
Foreword
xiii
The issue of gender, the role of women in the Party, and the ide
alized notion of Black manhood continue to be significant points
of interest and analysis when it comes to the Panthers. Initially, the
gender discourse around the Panthers was male-centered, ground
ed in the assertion of Black manhood through self-defense. Even
some women in the Party expressed their own humanity in mas
culine terms in those days. Elaine Brown's poem in this volume is
a good example. She ends it with: "We'll just have to get guns and
be men." At the same time, Panther ideas and symbolism may have
both inhibited and ignited radical Black feminist (or womanist)
consciousness and actions. Angela Davis, the late June Jordan, and
other Black feminists trace their political lineage, in part, to a crit
ical engagement with the politics and practices of the BPP.
xiv
were set
argues that the BPP had considerable sway among Black campus
activists in the 1970s.4
The Panthers also stood in solidarity with the rising new na
tions of the former colonial world, with the expectation that many
of those countries, from Cuba to Algeria to Vietnam, were head
ed toward a more humane alternative to capitalism. History did
not unfold the way they hoped. Still, into the twenty-first century,
Foreword
xv
Taste
of Power, she offers her own take on the nexus between sex, power,
and violence in the Panthers.5
xv i
Foreword
xvii
xviii
I.
2014
2.
3.
2012).
Alondra Nelson, Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight
Against Medical Discrimination (Minneapolis: University of Minneso
ta Press, 2011).
4.
Beth Richie, Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and the Build Up
of the Prison Nation (New York: NYU Press,
2012);
Michelle Alexan
der, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
(New York: New Press,
2010);
2012).
See
also Peniel E. Joseph, ed., The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the
Civil Rights-Black Power Era (New York: Routledge,
2013),
and Don
na Murch, Living for the City: Migration, Education and the Rise of the
Black Panther Party in Oakland, California (Chapel Hill: University of
5.
20 (2008);
Foreword
xix
What a Man's Role in the Revolution Is': Gender and the Politics of the
Black Panther Party,
6.
1966-1971,"
2005).
Huey P. New ton, "The Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Move
1970), in
2002).
Preface
In April, 1 970, I was asked by Edward P. Morgan, Correspondent
for the American Broadcasting Companies, how black people feel
about the Black Panthers. I replied ( and the reply was broadcast on
the ABC-TV program "The Panthers " ) :
\Vhat the Panthers do more than anything else is they set a stand
ard, that young black people particularly want to measure up to . . . .
It's a standard of aggressiveness, of militancc, of just forcefulness, the
sort of standard we haven't had in the past. Our idols have been Dr.
King who, for all of his beauty as a man, was not an aggressive man,
but the Panthers, and I think Malcolm X, have set this new kind of
standard that a great many people want to adhere to.
Mr. Morgan then asked, "But figurative [ly] speaking, you're not
about to become a Panther?" I replied, "No, not today or tomorrow
at any rate. Maybe the day after."
The Black Panthers Speak should give the American people a clear
idea of why I answered as I did . So much has been written and
spoken about the Black Panthers in the press and over the radio and
TV that one might suppose that most people know what the organi
zation really stands for and seeks to achieve. But this is far from the
case. Only rarely does the press report what the Panthers are actually
saying and doing and how they view the problems of black people
in our society. The result is that most Americans have obtained their
impression of the Panthers from statements issued by those who
wish to see them eliminated as a factor in American life.
The language of the Panthers is often shocking to those accustomed
to the ordinary expressions of political figures, but we might as well
get accustomed to it, for it expresses the sentiments of a vast section
of oppressed Americans. The Panthers articulate what the people
in the ghettoes feel and, in so doing, enable all of us to gain insight
into deep-set anger of so many of our deprived citizens as well as their
determination to change these conditions.
Mr. Morgan observed back in April that throughout his talks with
black Americans, it became clear that "there is a great deal of truth
in what the Panthers have been saying." Now all of us have the op
portunity to learn what that is.
-J ULIAN BOND
xxi
I ntroduction
Introduction
xx iii
I In addition to being labeled "black racists," the Panthers have also been
accused of being an ti-Semitic. (See the document issued by the American Jewish
Committee, February, 1970, entitled "The Black Panther Party-the Anti
Semitic and Anti-Israel Componen t," and the article by Gerald Emanuel Stem
in the New York Times Magazine, March 8, 1970.) The Black Panthers, how
ever, insist tha t they are not anti-Semitic and "do not lump all Jews with slum
lords." But they do contend tha t they are anti-Zionist and view Israel as a
"puppet imperialist state." While one can certainly a rgue tha t this is a simplistic
view of a complex issue, it is difficult to see how being anti-Zionist and anti
Israel makes one ipso facto anti-Semitic. Certainly th e American Jewish Com
mittee is on weak ground when it asserts in its document: "While we do not
necessarily equate an ti-Israel or anti-Zionist sentiment with anti-Semitism, the
Panthers' expression of support for Al Fatah has been so strident and distorted
as to make it impossible to make the distinction." But thousands of Jewish
Americans who have rallied to the support of th e Black Pan thers do make that
distinction. Moreover, on January 13, 1970, at th e win ter leadership meeting of
th e Jewish Cultural Clubs and Societies, representing sixty-six New York organi
zations, the persecution of th e Panthers was protested. "We will do everything
in our power," the clubs' resolution sta ted, " to oppose those forces that are now
trying to use repression, terror and police brutality against the black people and
other minorities in our land, a repression tha t will soon be applied to Jews,
labor, students and others fighting for full freedom and equality for all peoples
if it is not halted by the united action of all Americans who cherish democracy."
And Rabbi Arth ur J. Lelyveld, head of the American Jewish Congress, declared
on December 16, 1969, in calling for the defense of Panther civil liberties, "No
consideration of which we can conceive would justify lawless activity on the part
of the police."
A criticism of a different nature, most sharply voiced by Harold Cruse, is tha t
f o r a l l i t s revolutionary rhetoric, t h e Black Panther Party works for essentially
reformist demands. Of course, those wh o voice such criticisms a re clearly unaware
of the essential unity between immediate demands and a long-term revolutionary
goal.
xx iv
the other comments on the Black Panthers cited above. The writer
ignored the easily ascertainable facts that though the Minutemen
were arrested with an arsenal that included $ 140,000 worth of arms,
including an anti-tank weapon and a bazooka, two of the Minute
men were released on their own recognizance pending trial, and
were ultimately given a suspended sentence of six months. Robert
Boliver De Pugh, national coordinator of the Rightist paramilitary
organization, was sentenced to four years in prison, to be followed
by five years' probation, for conspiracy and violation of the Federal
Firearms Act after a cache of machine guns was seized in rural
Missouri. Minutemen have been treated gently and never harassed by
arresting officials. Contrast this with the treatment meted out to the
New York Panthers, who were arrested and charged with "conspir
acy "-no actual act at all was charged-to bomb and destroy property
and lives all over the city. All twenty-one had bail immediately set
at one hundred thousand dollars for each alleged conspirator, and
were not even given a hearing on reduction of bail-a request for it
was denied-until three and a half months after their arrest.
In an address on March 4, 191 1 , delivered before the Republican
Club of New York City, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, the distinguished
black scholar, declared : "If the question before the court was simply
one of justice between individuals the task would be an easy one,
but a man enters court today to be tried and convicted according
to the class he belongs to . . . . The Negro never enters a court in
the South as a man, but always as a Negro. He knows that individual
virtues will not weigh in the court's decision. The natural result of
this is that the Negro has no faith in the courts. " On April 24,
1970, Kingman Brewster, president of Yale University, brought Dr.
Du Bois's observation up to date when he said that he was "skepti
cal of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial any
where in the United States. " And on July 6, 1 970, The New York
Times quoted the courageous black jurist, Judge George Crockett of
Detroit's Recorders Court, as saying that while "the public likes to
believe that the courts are crystallized in majestic neutrality, the truth
is that they are not. The legal system does not work for blacks now.
We have all the laws we need but we have too many police and
government officials who do not live by the laws we have. " Cer
tainly the experience of the Black Panthers in court bears out the
truth of these comments.
The fearsome picture painted of the Black Panthers by men who
have little understanding of their program and little desire to under
stand it is not shared by the black community. Three black members
of Local 1 1 99 ( Drug and Hospital Workers Union ) , interviewed by
the union's magazine in January, 1 970, as to their reaction to the
Black Panthers, expressed admiration for them. The report noted :
Introduction
xxv
When asked about the charges that the Panthers are a violent
group, the feelings of all three men were summed up in the comment
of one of them, Ed Mayo of Clara Maass Hospital in New Jersev:
"They're fighting for the same cause as we are in the union-to be
free and have human dignity. Some people don't see clearly what the
fight is about because they see only violence. But these people don't
see the disgusting things that are happening to us in this country.
Every organization has its own way of fighting these things."
Much of the support for the Black Panthers, The Wall Street
Journal pointed out, came from young people who were attracted
be
su rpri si n g t o t ho s e wh i t es wh o
xxvi
Introduction
xxvii
The "Black Panther" was originally the emblem of the Lowndes County
Freedom Party in Alabama, organized in 1965. The Panther, symbol of black
militancy, was hailed and copied a t other points across the nation .
.
8 Cultural nationalists see the white man as the oppressor, and make no dis
tinction between racist whites and nonracist whites. They also emphasize that a
black man cannot be the enemy of the black people. Apart from questioning the
validity of this thesis, Newton and Seale were irritated by the fact tha t the cul
tural nationalists mainly met and talked and did nothing concrete to end the
oppression in the black ghetto.
xxviii
I n t roduction
xx ix
other aspects, Oakland was a typical black ghetto. What this means
was graphically spelled out by the National Commission on the
Causes and Prevention of Violence, set up under the chairmanship
of Milton S. Eisenhower at the Center for the Study of Law and
Society in Berkeley, California, August 28, 1 968. In its report sub
mitted March 2 1 , 1 969, the Commission said :
. . . for the black citizen, the policeman has long since ceased to be
-if indeed he ever was-a neutral symbol of law and order. Studies
of the police emphasize that their attitudes and behavior towards
blacks differ vastly from those taken toward whites. Similar studies
show that blacks perceive the police as hostile, prejudiced, and cor
rupt. In the ghetto disorders of the past few years, blacks have often
been exposed to indiscriminate police assaults and, not infrequently,
to gratuitous brutality . . . . Many ghetto blacks see the police as an
occupying army . . . .
In view of these facts, the adoption of the idea of self-defense is
not surprising . . . .
The Commission might have added, first, that black Americans
had taken up guns and practiced self-defense in the struggle against
slavery, kidnappers of fugitive slaves, anti-Negro rioters, and lynchers,
and, secondly, that organized white and black workers had also armed
themselves and used guns in self-defense against armed vigilantes,
Pinkerton Detectives, militias, and police serving the interests of
antiunion employers .
"The readiness of police to use their weapons is a tenet of black
town life," W. H. Ferry has observed . "The cop's trigger-finger is the
gavel of justice in blacktown.' To meet this ever-pressing problem
facing the black people of Oakland, the Black Panther Party began
to operate as an armed association for community protection against
the police. ( Carrying rifles and other unconcealed weapons was then
legal in California. ) Newton, a meticulous student of every legal
aspect of the right of citizens to arm themselves, instructed all party
members in the basic constitutional rights governing arrests and
gun laws. He pointed to the second amendment of the Constitution
of the United States and read the words-"the right of the people
to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Newton went to great
lengths to stress two points about armed self-defense : first, they were
operating within the law as defined by gun regulations and the
constitutional right to bear arms; second, the arms were to serve a
political purpose and were not to be viewed in purely military terms.
The Party established a system of anned patrol cars, completely
legal, carrying both guns and lawbooks. The Panthers trailed police
cars through the slums of Oakland with guns and a lawbook, to halt
police brutality. Whenever black men or women were stopped by
the police, armed Panthers would be on the scene, making sure that
xxx
I n t rod uction
xxxi
black people, explains that the dropping of "for Self Defense " re
sulted from the understanding on the part of the Panther leaders
"that a broader political offensive was necessary to realize the self
defense they sought. It [ the BPP] took a political and organizational
leap forward that carried it beyond the positions occupied by any
of the other organizations of the black liberation movement. It began
to measure the strength of capitalism in the United States and to
analyze the position and weight of the forces aligned against the
blacks. " Patterson points out that the Panther leadership challenged
the "illusion that the black people, of historical necessity, had to go
it alone . . . and began to see that the unity of the oppressed
was something for which a desperate fight had to be made. " He also
observes that the Black Panther Party not only "repudiated the anti
white abstraction, " but rejected anti-Communism . "The Panthers, "
he notes, "are the first black-led organization to understand the
menace of anti-Communism and unqualifiedly to express opposition
to it. "
To this, one should add that the Black Panthers, while by no
means the first blacks in the United States to oppose the capitalist
system and espouse the cause of Socialism, were the first to do so
as a separate organization . Heretofore, blacks who favored a Socialist
solution for the evils of capitalist society-and there have been many
since the end of the Civil War-<lid so either through the Socialist
Party, the Socialist Labor Party, or the Communist Party. Here they
became members of parties made up mainly of whites. The Black
Panthers, though favoring Socialism and coalitions with other op
pressed groups, retain their separate identity as a revolutionary
movement.
While the Black Panthers were receiving attention for their self
defense activities, by 1 967 they were already deeply involved in a
wide variety of other work. The Party was protesting rent eviction,
informing welfare recipients of their legal rights, teaching classes in
Black History, and demanding and winning school traffic lights. The
installation of a street light at 5 5th and Market Streets is an im
portant event in the Party's early history. Several black children
had been killed coming home from school, and the community was
enraged at the indifference of the authorities. Newton and Seale told
Oakland's power structure that if the light was not installed, the Party
would come down with its guns and block traffic so the children
could cross in safety. The traffic light was installed.
At this time, the Panthers had about seventy-five members, and
were based primarily in the Bay Area. But the Party was attracting
statewide attention, and new recruits were joining every day. One
of them was Eldridge Cleaver, who had spent nine years .in priso
anc't:-was out on parole; he was writing for Ramparts, a radical, anh-
xxx i i
"We're the other half, the equal half," explained Artie Seale [Mrs .
Bobby Seale, who also became a member of the Party] . "At first,
when Bobby and Huey were just starting the organization, the women
hung back. They felt they belonged at home in their kitchens because
that had always been their role. But we began to find out that the
pigs don't care that we were women. So we had to change our way
of looking at ourselves."
111e Party's initial successes had already reverberated to the state
legislature in Sacramento, where California Assemblyman Don Mul
ford introduced a gun-control bill designed as an attack on the
Panthers. Huey Newton developed a plan to protest the state as
sembly's attempt to pass a bill infringing on the Panthers' right to
bear arms as guaranteed by the second amendment to the Consti
tution . Although it was decided that he should not go to Sacramento,
G The expression "pig," originally signifying the police and later extended to
all elements in the capi talist power structure, was first popularized by th e Black
Pan thers and later adopted by other radical groups, including many student pro
testers . I t is in teresting to note that the Panthers were not the fi rst to use the
concept of the "pig" to denote evil forces in American society . In The New Flag,
an anti-imperialist poem by Henry Blake Fuller, published in 1 899, American
imperialism is depicted as a "hog . " In the in troduction to his poem, Fuller pre
sen ted the following " Picture of th e Grea t Expansion Argumen t."
,.- ., ,,,,,-- ..
-.;\\)
\-- - "' <
In view of th e militant stand taken by th e Black Pan thers agai nst imperialism
as a worldwide system whose center is in the United States, it is worth noting that
leading black Americans, such as W. E . B. Du Bois, Kelly Miller, and Lewis H .
Douglass, son o f Frederick Douglass, were members o f the American An ti
Imperialist League, founded in 1 89 8 .
I n t roduction
xxx i i i
xxxiv
I n troduction
xxxv
and white, rallied to his defense. During the same period, the Peace
and Freedom Party emerged as a political force, first in California,
and then across the country. The PFP was a coalition mainly of
white left-liberals and radicals organized as a third-party electoral
alternative in opposition to the war in Vietnam and in support of
black liberation. The Panthers saw, in the emergence of the PFP and
its campaign machinery, a chance for a wider campaign in Newton's
defense. They indicated a willingness to join forces with the PFP,
but insisted that any "functional coalition" with whites could be
formed only on the basis of support for the demand to "Free Huey."
Because of fear of the liberal element that association with the
Panthers would antagonize potential "respectable" voters, the PFP
at first hesitated to join forces with the Black Panther Party. But
as the time approached for the PFP to file its ballot petitions at
the end of 1 967, a shortage of signatures brought the issue to the fore.
The radicals, who had favored the coalition from the beginning, won
out and the alliance was formed. The Panthers took the petitions
into the black community and put the PFP on the ballot. Huey
Newton, Bobby Seale and Kathleen Cleaver ran as candidates for
state offices on the PFP ticket, but on the basis of the Panther
ten-point program . Eldridge Cleaver was to be the California PFP's
presidential candidate, and later he won the national PFP nomina
tion. Even though his name was kept off several state ballots ( in
cluding California ) because of his youth, the official election tallies
gave him almost 200,000 votes. Moreover, his candidacy had enabled
him to bring the program of the Black Panthers and the significance
of the "Free Huey" campaign to thousands around the country,
esptcially to scores of college campuses.
The basis of the coalition with the PFP was that the Panthers
would set the PFP line on all issues related to the black community.
As Cleaver summed it up : "We approached the whole thing from
the point of view of international relations. We feel that our coali
tion is part of our foreign policy . . . . " Representatives of the "black
colony" and the "white mother country" had joined in an alliance
which respected the rights of black people to self-determination.
But a number of black radicals who were exponents of the
doctrine of Black Power and of the necessity for blacks to form
independent all-black political movements viewed the alliance with
whites with considerable dismay, and some even charged a betrayal.
The issue was complicated by the fact that precisely at this time,
the Panthers were in the process of forming a "merger" with SN CC,
which was formally announced at an Oakland "Free Huey" rally on
February 17, 1 968-Newton's birthday-and which was unus al not
only for the size of the gathering, but for the fact that it was
policed not by the police of Oakland but by the blacks themselv es
xxxvi
I n t roduction
xxx v i i
defense efforts and the PFP campaign, provided the Panthers with
an excellent opportunity not only to defend Newton but to expose
the racist character of the entire legal system .
The testimony during the trial-over four thousand pages-in
cludes urban sociology, black history and the Declaration of Inde
pendence. At one point early in the proceedings, Superior Court
Judge Monroe Friedman said, "I feel like I 've taken a course in
sociology the last few days." Viewing Newton as a "political prisoner"
and the trial as a "political trial," Charles R. Garry, his attorney,
made it a practice to enable those in the courtroom and thousands
on the outside to learn the racist nature of court procedure in the
United States : that black people are virtually excluded from jury
panels, often cannot afford bail or are rejected by bondsmen, tried
by juries not of their peers and under laws they did not participate
in making, and that they receive consistently heavier sentences . All
of this aside from the police harassment described so fully by the
Kerner Commission. In his address to the jury, Garry pleaded :
"White America, listen. The answer is not to put Huey Newton in
the gas chamber. The answer is to listen to him so that black brothers
and sisters can walk down the street with dignity."
In his own testimony Newton had denied having fired any shot.
He had been wounded almost immediately after the car was stopped;
he said that he had slumped to the ground unconscious, and that
"I don't know what happened ." He did not have a gun when he
left his car. Doctors testified at the trial that, indeed, Newton's
wound was compatible with his claim that he had been unconscious .
Garry asked that the jury be given instructions that unconscious
ness, if proved, constituted a complete defense to a charge of criminal
homicide. But Judge Friedman refused to give such instructions.
After deliberating for twenty-eight hours and fifty minutes, the j ury
handed down a contradictory verdict. It found Newton guilty of
"voluntary manslaughter" in the death of policeman John Frey, and
innocent of shooting patrolman Herbert Heanes . ( Garry had already
won an acquittal of the kidnapping charge. ) As Garry noted im
mediately after the verdict : "It makes no sense on legal or evi
dentiary grounds . . . . He either had a gun or he didn't." But he was
a Black Panther, and he had to be put away.
Newton was sentenced to two to fifteen years . On May 29, 1970,
the California Court of Appeals, in a fifty-one-page opinion, reversed
the conviction. It ruled that the trial judge had erred in not in
structing the jury that if it accepted Newton's contention that he
was unconscious at the time of the shooting, this would have con
stituted a complete defense and would have resulted in a verdict of
acquittal. The court also cited other errors it noted had occurred
during Newton's eight-week trial. Although Newton had already
xxx v i i i
Introduction
xxxix
xi
yet one hundred and seven years later black people still are not free.
Where is that freedom?" The statement documented the "unbroken
chain of abuse" committed against black people by the ruling class,
including the murder of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and
hundreds of ordinary black citizens. ( For the full text of the mani
festo, see page 267. )
In February, 1 969, Mayor of San Francisco Joseph Alioto told
a Presbyterian convention that the Black Panthers "encouraged vio
lence." Challenged from the audience by . the Director of the Com
mission on Religion and Race, the Mayor retorted : "Have you ever
read the ten commandments of the Black Panther Party? . . . Did
you like that section about robbing and raping?" The reference ( a
perfect example o f the "big lie" ) was actually t o the "8 Points of
Attention" which the Panthers print in every issue of their weekly
newspaper, and, as the reader will see if he turns to page 6, these
"commandments" actually encourage the opposite of what the
Mayor of San Francisco charged. But how many in the audience had
ever read The Black Panther and how many who listened to him
over the air or read the account in the next morning's newspaper
had ever seen the actual text of the "8 Points of Attention"? In his
interview with Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers, late in June, 1 969, Lee
Lockwood asked the Minister of Information for the Black Panther
Party : "But is it a Panther policy to tell somebody to take a gun
and hold up a store?" Cleaver replied : "If you listen, you will not
hear anyone saying that it is a Panther policy except those who are
saying it at the behest of the pigs and to help the pigs. So just
listen to what the Panthers are saying. . . . "
What the Black Panthers have been saying has been public in
formation since the first issue of its weekly paper was published on
April 2 5, 1 967, a year after the Party was organized in Oakland,
California. Each week thereafter The Black Panther made its ap
pearance, carrying the Ten-Point Program and Rules and Regulations
of the Party, editorials, speeches by leading Black Panthers, inter
views with a number of them, poetry, art, letters and dispatches
from various parts of the Third World . In addition, many of the
leading radical journals such as The Guardian, the Daily World, and
the People's World, and the less radical weekly, Village Voice, the
chief underground papers, among them The Movement, Rat, Nickel
Review, and Quicksilver, and student newspapers like The Rag of
the University of Texas, have featured articles about the program
and interviews with leaders of the Black Panthers .
In short, there has been no lack of information as to the program,
policies and objectives of the Black Panther Party. Unfortunately, it
has been easier to read distortions in the mass media than to obtain
I n t roduction
xii
I said,
Man, where have you been for all these years
Man, where were you when I sought you
Man, do you know me as I know you
Man, am I coming through
And, he spoke in a voice
That was centuries old.
And, he smiled in a way that was strange.
And, his full lips of night
Spoke about our people's plight
And a feeling familiarly came around.
REFRAIN :
1.
B LAC K PA N T H E R
PA RTY P LATFO R M
A N D P RO G RA M
R U L ES O F T H E
B LAC K PA N T H E R PA RTY
What We Wa nt
What We Bel ieve
1. 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.
2. We want full employment for our people.
We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing
to our black community, then the housing and the land should be
made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid,
can build and make decent housing for its people.
5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature
of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches
us our true history and our role in the present-day society.
We believe that all black people should be released from the many
jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial
trial.
9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in
court by a ;ury of their peer group or people from their black com
munities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.
We believe that the courts should follow the United States Con
stitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th
Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be
tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic,
social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial
background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury
from the black community from which the black defendant came.
We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no
understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black
community.
among men, deriving their ;ust powers from the consent of the
governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destruc
tive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish
it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such
principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence,
1)
2)
3)
4)
Speak politely.
Pay fairly for what you buy.
Return everything you borrow.
Pay for anything you damage.
S ) Do not hit or swear at people.
6 ) Do not damage property or crops of the poor, oppressed
masses.
7 ) Do not take liberties with women.
8 ) If we ever have to take captives do not ill-treat them.
3 Moln Rulo1 of Discipline
2.
B LAC K
PA N T H E'R
BL A CK
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3.
4.
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5.
a.
9.
on Ap r i l 18th a group or
conc e rn e d c i t 1 7. ens went to diacuaa
this p roposal With Sheriff Young
or Mart-Lnez .
Th<o c it i z ens
enume rated th<o reas or doubt in
the case or Denz i l Dowell and
request ed that the offi c e r who
admitted doing the shooting be
remo ved from duty p ending an
inve s t i gat ion .
The Sheriff
REFUSED to hear our request and
. we c on s i d e r hl. s act i on to be a
rac i s t di s regard for the reason
able request or )le.ck taxpayers
and c i t i z ns conc e rne d Wi th the
,;u r lf'.!. val or black peopl e .
!
I
ao they
LET US ORGANIZE
TO DEFEND O\JR::l ELVES
:::-
I
' --The
in
Pa.re
1n S 911t-be r , 1900 1
JYWWi
BRUTAL BEATINGS
WITHOUT
SOME
REAL ,
!!Q.!! !
NITTY GRITTY
POLITICAL ACTION
M E ET I N G
196i
AR M ED
BLACK BROTHERS
\ N R ICHMON D
COM M U N \TY
A P R IL 2 9
VERY800Y
1717 SECO N D
NOTM
ST RE E T
61CH M 0!:4D
AT 1= 30 P. M .
ro
era an
o
e
e wor
know that black p e op l e are not
tup i d fools who are unable to
recogni z e when someone is acting
in the be a t inte r e s t of Bl ack
People .
These Br o t h e r s have a
political pe r sp e c t i ve .
Moa t
important , 'they are down here on
the GRASS .ROOTS LEVEL where the
great maj ority of our people are .
The BLACK PANTHER FARTY FOR SELF
DEFENSE move s . The PARTY t ake s
act i on . Everybody else juat a lt
back and talk .
All Black Peop l e
know what needs to be done, but
At thia rally, the Brothe r s were
not all of them are will i ng to
uptight and knew exactly what
do i t . The Wh i t e man has
they were doing at all tim e s .
instilled fear into the very
They knew that they were acting
hearts of our peop l e .
We must
strictly wi thin the i r ri ghts .
ac t to remove this fear .
The
These Brothers h a ve become aware
only way to remo ve thi s fear is
of san e th ing that the white
to stand up and look the white
rac i1 t s have been trying to keep
man in h i s blue eyes .
Many Black
s ecret !ran Bl ack p eople all the
People are able nowadays to look
time : that a c i t iz en has the
the white man in the ey e s--but
right to protect himsel f .
They
the . line thi ns out when i t
were ready to insure that the
comes to look ing the white cops
rally went ahead as plann e d,
i n the eye .
But the white cop
without any int erferenc e from
i s the instrument s ent int o our
outlaw cop s who wanted to suppress c anmunity by the Power Structure
the meeting so that other Black
to keep Black Pe opl e qui et and
P e op l e d not , get the m e s s age .
under control .
So it ia no\
surp r i s ing that the ac t i on these
Black People must real i z e that
days centers around the conduct
the time is short and growing
o f thes e wh i t e cops who cane !ran
abo rter by the day .
Check i t
way ac ro s s town to pat ro l our
out .
People talk about "Powe r "
communi t i e s for 8 hou r s a day .
There is Whi t e Powe r, Black Power
But Black Peop l e have to l i ve in
Yellow Power , Green Powe r , etc .
these c ammun i t i e o 2J h ou r s a day .
but all Bl ac k People want out of
S o i t i s time that Black People
all these di ffer ent fonns of
s ta rt moving in a di r e ct i on that
Power ia BLACK POWER , Black
wi l l free our commun i t i e s !ran
People want and need the power
thi s !onn of outright b rutal
to s top the white rac i s t power
oppre s s i on .
The BLACK PANTHER
s t ructure !ran grinding the life
1'1.RTY FOR SELF DEFENSE has worked
out of the Black Race through
out a p rogra..-. that is c a re tul.ly
the dai ly operati on of thi s
desi gned to c op e with this s i tua
sys t em which i s d es i gne d to
t i on .
exploit and opp ress Black People .
BLACK MEN ! ! ! It s your duty to
you r wanen and c h i l dren , to your
moth ers and s i sters , t o investi
The beaut i fUl thi ll8 abOut the
Brothers who held the rally i s
gate the p ro gram of the PARTY.
ntere is no other way .
We have
that they are organ i z ed, di s c i p
tri ed e verything e l s e .
Thia i s
lined and poli tically aware of
the moment in h i s t o ry when Black
the ins and outs of the p roblems
Peop l e have no cho i c e but to
facing Black People throughout
move and mo ve rap i dly to gain
the Bay Area in parti cul ar . When
the i r freedom , just i c e , and all
the c op s ceme rolling up looking,
the other ingredi en,t s of ci vilizthe brothers spreaded out all
. ed l i vill8 that have b e en denied t
ac ros s the street wai till8 for
us .
Th i s is where it is at . Ch
some tool cop t o try and start
it out , Black Brothers and S i at e rJ
something . nte brothers were
Thi s 1 8 our Day l l l l ! .
organi .:ed .
:;: ::J:-
Y
e
nteae b rothers are the
goill8 .
c ream of Black Manhood .
Th ey are
there fo r the p rote c t i on . and
defense o f our Black Commun ity .
The Black Communi ty owes i t to
i
e
th
a r
e
: i ig
13
14
A Pig
A Pig is an ill-natured beast who has no respect for law and order,
a foul traducer who's usually found masquerading as a victim of
an unprovoked attack.
-The Black Panther, May, 1967
Black Lawyers
Scottsboro boys and of Sacco and Vanzetti. The issue at stake was
Huey's life, and the best legal skills and resources were needed.
There was no basis to quibble about color. If the Minister of Defense
had suffered a heart attack, and the best heart specialist were needed
to save his life, I wonder if the same outcry would be raised, if
the doctor turned out to be white?
15
The point has been made that for Huey P . Newton t o go t o court
with a white lawyer weakens the argument for black liberation.
Seeing as how the entire legal system is white, the logic of this
complaint escapes me. However, to reply to it, as it has become
an issue in the Bay Area, I would say first that black lawyers do
far more to weaken the argument for black power than the Black
Panthers' using the assistance of white lawyers, and that what is on
trial before a white court is first of all, the Minister of Defense of
the Black Panther Party and secondly, the entire vanguard of the
radical black movement in this country. What is at stake is first of all,
Huey's life, and secondly, the right of black people to self-defense
against armed aggression on the part of the police as the military
arm of the racist power structure. What is necessary is for Huey to
be set free. This demands the most competent and powerful legal
resources available.
Charles R. Garry has a record of 24 capital cases, all of which
he has won . He has taken the extreme expense of some of his cases
out of his own pocket to defend a client he believed was innocent.
Attorney Garry has assured the Newton family and the Black Pan
ther Party that he will fight this case as far as it can be fought. His
determination and technical skill is not dependent upon the ability
of the Huey P. Newton Defense Fund to pay the entire cost of the
case, which will be quite a few thousand dollars. The resources of
the entire firm, Garry, Dreyfus, McTernan, and Brodsky, of which
one of the lawyers is black, are being dedicated to this case.
White power runs this country, white power is dispensed in its
courts, white power shot Huey Newton and put h im in jail, and
white power is trying to gas him. Huey P. Newton is a brilliant
spokesman of black power, a living embodiment of black power.
Whether his attorney is white or black, black power is on trial .
White resources at the disposal of black people, a white legal firm
defending the Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party is a
defense example of black power. Black skin is not-as our black
lawyers, politicians, doctors, teachers, and other professionals highly
attest in their mad scurry for white power, white values, white ac
ceptance, and white hostility to black power.
Being deeply committed to the struggle for black liberation, and
not feeling compromised by the use of white lawyers, I wonder
how many of these people who complain about the white attorney
are really concerned about the black movement, really concerned
about Huey's life, really concerned about the Black Panther Party,
really concerned about putting an end to the racist exploitation of
black people, really concerned about putting an ending to the wanton
murder of black people by the police, and if they are so concerned,
what are they doing to show it? Are these the same people who
16
Besides fighting the enemy, the Black Panther Party is doing prop
aganda among the masses of black peopleThe form of propaganda I'm about to refer to is called art, such
as painting, sketching, etc.Art a1 Revolution
llown Up
We, the Black Panther artists, draw deadly pictures of the enemy
-pictures that show him at his death door or dead-his bridges are
blown up in our pictures-his institutions destroyed-and in the
end he is lifelessW e try to create an atmosphere for the vast majority of black
people-who aren't readers but activists-through their observation
of our work, they feel they have the right to destroy the enemy.
To give you an example of where revolutionary art began-we
must focus on a particular people, our brothers, the Vietnamese. In
the beginning stages of their struggle against U.S. Imperialism-so
as to determine the destiny of their own community-they had no
modern technical equipment, such as, tanks, automatic weapons or
semi-automatic weapons, etc.
In these days of struggle for Black Liberation, here in Ameri<:a,
we have no modern technical equipment compared to that of our
1 1 191Dr*
18
19
On Violence
Let us make one thing crystal clear : We do not claim the right
to indiscriminate violence. We seek no bloodbath. We are not out
to kill up white people. On the contrary, it is the cops who claim
the right to indiscriminate violence and practice it everyday. It is
the cops who have been bathing black people in blood and who
seem bent on killing off black people. But black people, this day,
this time, say HALT IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY! YOU
SHALL MAKE NO MORE WAR ON UNARMED PEOPLE.
YOU WILL NOT KILL ANOTHER BLACK PERSON AND
WALK THE STREETS OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY TO
GLOAT ABOUT IT AND SNEER AT THE DEFENSELESS
RELATIVES OF YOUR VICTIMS. FROM NOW ON, WHEN
YOU MURDER A BLACK PERSON IN TH IS BABYLON OF
BABYLONS, YOU MAY AS WELL GIVE IT UP BECAUSE WE
WILL GET YOUR ASS AND GOD CAN'T HIDE YOU.
We call upon the people to rally to the support of Minister of
Defense, Huey P. Newton. We call upon black people and white
people who want to see the dawn of a new history in this land .
We call upon people who want to see an end to the flow of blood .
We call upon people who want to avoid a war in this land, who
want to put an end to the war that is now going on in this land .
We call upon people to take up the cry : HUEY MUST BE SET
FREE!
Minister of Information
Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense
-The Black Panther, March 23, 1968
20
the gun for self-defense is the only basis in America for a revolution
ary offensive against Imperialist state power.
-The Black Panther, April 2 5, 1 970
As Jose Marti, the Cuban revolutionary, said, "The best way of
telling is doing." This l4oes not mean arbitrary confrontations, ram
pages through the streets, knocking down old women; we can't be
anarchists and emotionalists, we have to be clear-headed and orga
nized. An example of this type of cool-headedness is the fact that
young students cut their hair and took the time to go into the
White middle-class communities to rally support for this trial and
for the cause of justice in the United States. Breaking windows,
snatching pocketbooks will never lay a foundation for the long,
hard struggle ahead. Politicizing and educating the various segments
of the young, the open-minded, and the concerned will.
-From Collective Statement by the Connecticut 9, Political
Prisoners, published in The Black Panther, May 2, 1970
The pen
is a weapon;
it can discharge
volleys of
meaning
hurled toward
the bull's eye
of truth;
it can deafen
the ear with
the roar of
a people's voice
clamoring for
justice.
It can kill
lies emitted
in ink from
oppressor's presses
making beasts
of holy men
justifying
their slaughters
Black people
righteous men,
throw away
those water pistols
what we need
are stoners to
riddle America's
bastions of
bigotry
which have
21
of our time;
they are the
last practitioners
of the judeo-christian
ethic-all others
have turned their
priesthoods into a mafia
protecting, not man
but status quo.
The pen
has always
been a white
weapon; it
must be wrested
from the oppressor's
hands by
black power.
Free Huey
Free American justice
It must blast
forth the fire
of black
consciousness,
creating new images
of our people,
by our people,
for our people;
the black panthers
are the holy men
Free Leroi
Free creativity & art
Free Rap
Free free speech
Free Bobby
Free love, respect and power
Free Eldridge
Free our souls on ice
Free black panthers.
Free humanism
Free black men
Free goodness & honor
Free Huey, now,
and Free us all.
-The Black Panther, May 1 8, 1968
by
Ca pt. Crutch
There are numerous adverse ideas within the Black Panther Party.
In the Black Liberation Army which greatly hinder the application of
the Party's correct ideology. But unless these ideas are thoroughly
corrected, the Black Liberation Army cannot possibly shoulder the
tasks assigned to it Black America's great revolutionary struggle. The
source of such incorrect ideas is that the party is composed largely
of ghetto street niggers, together with elements of petty bourgeois
22
23
24
men could overpower the one man and take his weapon. Some of
the unarmed men might die in the attempt, but death for a few
is often the price of liberty for all .
Money too requires people for power. If people would refuse to
accept the money of a country as payment for goods and services,
that country would have to depend on the labor of its people as its
only source of wealth and power. Such a situation can be compared
to traveling around America with a checkbook but no cash. If no
one accepts your check, all of the money that you might have in
your bank account would be useless.
The people are the ultimate source of power. Let's unite and give
more power to the Black Panthers, so that the Panthers will liberate
all the power for "the people."
-The Black Panther, October 26, 1968
25
for good.
Dig it. They left their mother country to worship their god . They
crossed the wicked seas with their hands cupped in prayer. They
wiped out your red brothers and took over the land, black man.
They brought you here to build their nation. Machines have now
taken over the work your black hands have done.
26
Ed itoria l Statement
Revolutionary Letter
#15
27
28
PARTY ) , we've been pushed into corners, into ghettos, you dig it?
And the only time that we come into contact with, I mean into vi
sual, physical contact, is either through the businessman, the avari
cious businessman, the insurance salesman, the milkman, or the
occupying forces of the pigs, you dig it? That we have not, even
though we haven't been educated, you dig it? ( Like we haven't had
no schoolin', because we didn't relate to that ) , but we was still, by
and large, kinda free. I mean like we were able to produce a Huey
Newton, a cat who could be free, who would say, "Well, motherfuck
the police." you dig it? "Parker's sister, too." Who could say, "The
racist dog policeman must withdraw immediately from the black
community, cease the wanton murder and brutality of black people,
or suffer the wrath of the armed people." He was free enough to
realize this, and free enough to express this. This is the genius of
Huey Newton, of being able to TAP this VAST RESERVOIR of
revolutionary potential. I mean, street niggers, you dig it? Niggers
who been BAD, niggers who weren't scared, because they ain't never
knew what to be scared was, because they been down in these ghettos,
and they knew to live they had to fight; and so they been able to do
that. But I mean to really TAP it, to really TAP IT, to ORGANIZE
it, and to direct it into an onslaught, a sortie against the power struc
ture, this is the genius of Huey Newton, this is what Huey Newton
did. Huey Newton was able to go down, and to take the nigger on
the street and relate to him, understand what was going on inside of
him, what he was thinking, and then implement that into an organ
ization, into a PROGRAM and a PLATFORM, you dig it? Into the
BLACK PANTHER PARTY-and then let it spread like wildfire
across this country.
This is the genius of Huey Newton, the engendering, the establish
ing of the first vanguard party in the liberation struggle in the West
ern hemisphere. Huey Newton and the genius of it.
-The Black Panther, March 3, 1969
by Eldridge Cleaver
29
Erica's Poem
by Erica Huggins
30
A new revolutionary warrior has been born into our midst. Our
new little brother's name is Antonio Maceo Cleaver. He is the son
of our Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver, and our Com
munications Secretary, Kathleen Cleaver.
He is named after the Black Cuban revolutionary, Antonio Maceo
( 1 848-1896 ) who played a vital role in the struggle of the Cuban
people for independence from Spain . He was one of the few leaders
in the struggle that refused to agree with the phony Armistice Pact
31
32
The Ch icago 8
by John Colem a n
Anyone who has closely been following the trial in Chicago now
must realize that Fascism is running rampant in courts where po
litical prisoners are being tried. I have been following the trial
33
closely and the proceedings of that kangaroo court under the direc
tion of "Judge Magoo" has hardened my stand behind the Black
Pa nth er Party and I am quite certain it has also won the vanguard
party increased support.
Chairman Bobby, has made evident by the treatment he has re
cei ved, to the whole of America what has been known by many
Black brothers who have come in contact with justice in a racist
society, a fair impartial trial is impossible. Chairman Bobby asks for
only what he is entitled to under the constitution, that being : the
right to cross examine witnesses, the right to represent himself or
have a lawyer of his own choice. All these have been denied, Judge
Hoffman is truly a "blatant racist", for he has denied them to
Bobby.
Judge Hoffman, merely Tricky Dick's "flunky", is trying to have
the trial labeled a mistrial, drop all charges and prevent the inevitable,
an appeal to the higher courts. They realize that if this so-called riot
conspiracy law was ever tested for constitutionality it would not
survive, it is an obvious denial of the free speech amendment.
The purpose of the trial as everyone knows, is to make it appear
that the violence of last year's demonstration was planned by the
eight now on trial, this is utterly ridiculous and completely un
founded . The denial of the eight, Bobby Seale in particular, the
right to cross examine witnesses is an obvious attempt to cover up
something. Whatever is trying to be hidden must be vital to the
court because they are denying those on trial their constitutional
rights.
A conspiracy does exist however, a governmental conspiracy of
suppression of political activists Black and White who are hell bent
on kicking the racists, the capitalists and others who would not grant
self-determination to people, out of places of power. The eyes of the
world are on this court thanks to Chairman Bobby's undaunted cry
for justice, credit must also be given to Judge Magoo, for his inability
to cope with Bobby's cry, he has shed much light on the suppressive
policy of Tricky Dick and his running dog flunkies. People are not
going for all the bulls-t America preaches, the inconsistencies are
becoming clearer and the people of the U.S. ( oppressed peoples )
are forming a proletarian intemationalistic force that will rise and
crush the pig power structure.
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE! !
34
Pigs-Pa nthers
by Candy
35
36
37
On Criticism of Cuba
38
pression in Babylon and they are alive, well and free today. It would
not be in the interest of Cuba or the world revolution to begin to
launch attacks at Cuba because they have not been able to eliminate
all forms of racism in the ten years since their revolution began.
TI1e cardinal rule of the Black Panther Party says, Have Faith in
the People, Have Faith in the Party. This principle is not to be ap
plied just in Babylon but around the world. On this basis and
relating to historical materialism we know that Cuba, the U .S. and
the world will be free of racism and the last shall be first and the
first shall be last.
ALL
Los Ten Million Van [We're making the ten million tons.]
-The Black Panther, December 27, 1969
3.
H U EY P. N EWTO N S P EA KS
40
In Defense of Se lf-Defense:
Executive Ma ndate Number One
41
doo m one step nearer. A people who have suffered so much for so
lo ng at the hands of a racist society, must draw the line somewhere .
We believe that the Black communities of America must rise up as
one man to halt the progression of a trend that leads inevitably to
their total destruction.
-The Black Panther, June 2, 1967
42
43
44
gated, it will be seen that the Communist Party was quiet on the sur
face so that they would be able to muster support from the masses.
There are many areas one can read about to learn the correct ap
proach, such as the revolution in Kenya, the Algerian Revolution,
Fanon's THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, the Russian Revo
lution, the works of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, and a host of others.
A revolutionary must realize that if he is sincere, death is immi
nent due to the fact that the things he is saying and doing are ex
tremely dangerous. Without this realization, it is impossible to
proceed as a revolutionary. The masses are constantly looking for a
guide, a Messiah, to liberate them from the hands of the oppressor.
The vanguard party must exemplify the characteristics of worthy
leadership. Millions and millions of oppressed people might not
know members of the vanguard party personally or directly, but they
will gain through an indirect acquaintance the proper strategy for
liberation via the mass media and the physical activities of the party.
It is of prime importance that the vanguard party develop a political
organ, such as a newspaper produced by the party, as well as employ
strategically revolutionary art and destruction of the oppressor's ma
chinery. For example, Watts. The economy and property of the
oppressor was destroyed to such an extent that no matter how the
oppressor tried to whitewash the activities of the black brothers,
the real nature and the real cause of the activity was communicated
to every black community. For further example, no matter how the
oppressor tries to distort and confuse the message of Brother Mal
colm X, Black people all over the country understand it perfectly
and welcome it.
The Black Panther Party for Self Defense teaches that in the final
analysis, the amount of guns and defense weapons, such as hand
grenades, bazookas, and other necessary equipment, will be supplied
by taking these weapons from the power structure, as exemplified by
the Viet Cong. Therefore, the greater the military preparation on the
part of the oppressor, the greater is the availability of weapons for
the black community. It is believed by some hypocrites that when
the people are taught by the vanguard group to prepare for resistance,
this only brings the man down on them with increasing violence and
brutality; but the fact of the matter is that when the man becomes
more oppressive, this only heightens the revolutionary fervor. The
people never make revolution . The oppressors by their brutal actions
cause the resistance by the people. The Vanguard Party only teaches
the correct methods of resistance. So, if things can get worse for
oppressed people, then they will feel no need for revolution or re
sistance. The complaint of the hypocrites that the Black Panther
Party for Self Defense is exposing the people to deeper suffering is
45
an incorrect observation . People have proved that they will not toler
ate any more oppression by the racist dog police through their
rebellions in the black communities across the country. The people
are looking now for guidance to extend and strengthen their resist
ance struggle.
-The Black Panther, May 18, 1968
46
Hu ey P. Newton Speaks
47
48
February 17th fortunately is also the Tet of the lunar new year. So
we're celebrating the lunar new year with our brothers in Viet Nam.
We're daily making the people more and more aware of the need for
unity among all revolutionary people and also that it's impossible for
us to overcome the treaicherous bureaucratic class without an or
ganized force.
The students at the many universities across the nation are chal
lenging the reactionary authority of the schools and are also point
ing out very vividly that it's impossible to have a free university, free
schools, or a free society, in a society that's ruled by a fascist military
industrial complex. The community is now seeing that our fight on
the campuses is more than just a fight for "freedom of speech" on
the campus, or Blacks gaining a knowledge of our heritage; it's also
showing the direct relationship between the reactionary government
and the agencies and institutions that are only an arm of these re
actionaries . Until we penetrate the community and make them aware,
and plant the seed of revolution, we will never have freedom at our
schools. The community now is being mobilized by the Black revolu
tionary forces and along with them are our white revolutionary
comrades.
It seems that the time has come for an escalation of our offensive.
Just as our brothers in Viet Nam had the Tet offensive last year, this
celebration today will only be a prelude or celebration to the offen
sive that we are going to wage in the not-too-far future. "In the near
future a colossal event will occur where the masses of the people will
rise up like a mighty storm and a hurricane, sweeping all evil gentry
and corrupt officials into their graves." Brother Mao put that quite
well, and we will follow the pattern and follow the thoughts of
Chairman Mao.
Today it should mark a new time for the TWO-REVOLUTION
AR Y force in the country : the alienated white group and the masses
of Blacks in the ghettos, who for years sought freedom and liberation
from a racist, reaction-system . After approximately three years now
that the Panthers have been organized, we have gained even closer
relationship with our Latin American brothers, our Chicano brothers
in the United States, and the Cuban people, and every other people
who are striving for freedom.
I would like to thank everyone very much for coming, and we
must remember. that we must never make excuses for such gather
ings as this. Today we'll use the excuse of my birthday; but the real
issue is the need to come together in unity and brotherhood.
Our Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver is with us in spirit,
and I'm very sure that this decadent fascist society wasn't worthy of
him and couldn't tolerate his presence because he acted as a guide
49
fla g for the people. So we must make a society that will welcome
people like our Minister of Information.
The Oakland Seven are now standing trial for resisting the fascist
system, and we would like to let them know and would like to rally
the community for support. They have a very able representative in
court with them, Charles Garry, who is very capable and truly a
revolutionary. Brother Eldridge Cleaver has said on more than one
occasion that he would go into any court in the world with an
attorney like Charles Garry. I would like to bear witness to that from
a personal experience. With a representative like Charles Garry we're
sure that we would have victory as long as the community supports
us. We have, with the support of the community and with the fine
attorney such as Charles Garry, we have nothing to fear.
A short time ago we suffered a very tragic experience in that two
of our very talented and gifted and dedicated brothers were assas
sinated in L.A. : Brother "Bunchy" and Brother Huggins . This was
only an escalation of the oppression against us. The assassins were
agents of the establishment, and they took the occasion to eliminate
the people's fighters, or fighters for the people. Knowing that the
people have no recourse, the institutions and the court institutions
give us no recourse because they're only representatives of the re
actionary system. The community will have to erect revolutionary
courts and also a community militia to protect the community and
see that the community gets justice. .
Brother Ruben has suffered many investigations, and now he's
under investigation. He's going to trial on or about four or five dif
ferent alleged crimes, and the crimes are SEEKING JUSTICE. The
society views any person who's striving after justice and freedom and
to end exploitation as a "criminal ." We know that if we are crim
inals, the criminals have received their ultimate revenge when Karl
Marx indicted the bourgeoisie of grand theft. We realize that it's
they who are criminals and it's they who will have to be brought to
justice. We will have to go on fighting in spite of the losses and in
spite of the hardships that we're bound to suffer, until the final
downfall of the reactionary power structure.
SO, POWER TO THE PEOPLE, BLACK POWER TO BLACK PEOPLE, AND
PANTHER POWER TO THE VANGUARD!
Huey P. Newton
Minister of Defense
Black Panther Party
-The B lack Panther, March 3, 1 969
50
Hu ey P. Newton Speaks
51
The Black Panther Party are the field blacks, we're hoping the
master dies if he gets sick. The Black bourgeoisie seem to be acting in
the role of the house Negro. They are pro-administra tion. They
wo uld like a few concessions made, but as far as the overall setup,
they have a little more material goods, a little more advan tage , a
few more privileges than the black have-nots; the lower .cl ss. And so
th ey identify 'with the power structure and they see their m terests as
th e power structure's interest. In fact, it's against their in terest.
52
54
55
iff's Department and the national guard was standing by. So we see
that they're all part of the security force to protect the status quo; to
make sure that the institutions carry out their goals. They're here to
protect the system.
As far as I'm concerned the only reasonable conclusion would be
to first realize the enemy, realize the plan, and then when something
happens in the black colony-when we're attacked and ambushed in
the black colony-then the white revolutionary students and intel
lectuals and all the other whites who support the colony should
respond by defending us, by attacking the enemy in their commu
nity. Every time that we're attacked in our community there should
be a reaction by the white revolutionaries; they should respond by
defending us, by attacking part of the security force. Part of that
security force that is determined to carry out the racist ends of the
American institutions.
As far as our party is concerned, the Black Panther Party is an all
black party, because we feel as Malcolm X felt that there can be no
black-white unity until there first is black unity. We have a problem in
the black colony that is particular to the colony, but we're willing to
accept aid from the mother country as long as the mother country
radicals realize that we have, as Eldridge Cleaver says in SOUL ON
ICE, a mind of our own. We've regained our mind that was taken
away from us and we will decide the political as well as the practical
stand that we'll take. We'll make the theory and we'll carry out the
practice. It's the duty of the white revolutionary to aid us in this.
So the role of the mother country radical, and he does have a role,
is to first choose his friend and his enemy and after doing this, which
it seems he's already done, then to not only articulate his desires to
regain his moral standard and align himself with humanity, but also to
put this into practice by attacking the protectors of the institutions.
MovEMENT : You have spoken a lot about dealing with the pro
tectors of the system, the armed forces. Would you like to elaborate
on why you place so much emphasis on this?
HuEY : The reasons that I feel very strongly about dealing with the
protectors of the system is simply because without this protection
from the army, the police and the military, the institutions could not
go on in their racism and exploitation . For instance, as the Viet
namese are driving the American imperialist troops out of Vietna !11 ,
it automatically stops the racist imperialist institutions of Amenca
from oppressing that particular country. The country cannot imple
ment its racist program without the guns. And the g ':ms a.re the
military and the police. If the military were disarmed m Vietnam
then the Vietnamese would be victorious.
We are in the same situation here in America . Whenever we attack
the system the first thing the administrators do is to send out their
56
57
I think that one of SNCC's great problems is that they were con
trolled by the traditional administrator: the omnipotent adminis
trator, the white person . He was the mind of SNCC. And so SNCC
regained its mind, but I believe that it lost its political perspective.
I think that this was a reaction rather than a response. The Black
Panther Party has NEVER been controlled by white people. The
Black Panther Party has always been a black group. We have always
had an integration of mind and body. We have never been con
trolled by whites and therefore we don't fear the white mot er
country radicals. Our alliance is one of organized black groups with
organized white groups . As soon as the organized white groups do not
do the things that would benefit us in our struggle for liberation, that
will be our departure point. So we don't suffer in the hangup of a
skin color. We don't hate white people; we hate the oppressor. And
if the oppressor happens to be white then we hate him. When e
stops oppressing us then we no longer hate him . And right now m
58
59
The white man cannot gain his manhood, cannot unite with the
body because the body is black. The body is symbolic of slavery and
strength . It's a biological thing as he views it. The slave is in a much
better situation because his not being a full man has always been
viewed psychologically. And it's always easier to make a psychologi
cal transition than a biological one. If he can only recapture his mind,
recapture his balls, then he will lose all fear and will be free to deter
mine his destiny. This is what .is happening at this time with the
rebellion of the world's oppressed people against the controller.
They are regaining their mind and they're saying that we have a mind
of our own. They're saying that we want freedom to determine the
destiny of our people, thereby uniting the mind with their bodies.
They are taking the mind back from the omnipoten t administrator,
the controller, the exploiter.
In America black people are also chanting that we have a mind of
our own . We must have freedom to determine our destiny. I t's
almost a spiritual thing, this unity, this harmony. This unity of the
mind and of the body, this unity of man within himself. Certain
slogans of Chairman Mao I think demonstrate this theory of uniting
the mind with the body within the man. An example is his call to
the intellectuals to go to the countryside. The peasants in the coun
tryside are all bodies; they're the workers . And he sent the intellec
tuals there because the dictatorship of the proletariat has no room
for the omnipotent administrator; there's no room for the exploiter.
So therefore he must go to the countryside to regain his body ; he
must work. He is really done a favor, because the people force him to
unite his mind with his body by putting them both to work. At the
same time the intellectual teaches the people political ideology, he
educates them, thus uniting the mind and the body in the peasant.
60
Their minds and bodies are united and they control their country. I
think this is a very good example of this unity and it is my idea of the
perfect man.
The Guerrllla
/ Ju ey P. Ne wton Speaks
61
62
63
64
65
66
that you can romanticize being underground. They say we're romantic
because we're trying to live revolutionary lives, and we are not taking
precautions. But we say that the only way we would go underground
is if we're driven underground. All real revolutionary movements are
driven underground. Take the revolution in Cuba . The agitation that
was going on while Fidel was in law school was very much above
ground. Even his existence in the hills was, so to speak, an above
the ground affair because he was letting it be known who was doing
the damage and why he was doing the damage. To catch him was a
different story. The only way we can educate the people is by setting
an example for them. We feel that this is very necessary.
This is a pre-revolutionary period and we feel it is very necessary
to educate the people while we can. So we're very open about this
education . We have been attacked and we will be attacked even more
in the future but we're not going to go underground until we get
ready to go underground because we have a mind of our own. We're
not going to let anyone force us to do anything. We're going to go
underground after we educate all of the black people and not before
that time. Then it won't really be necessary for us to go underground
because you can see black anywhere. We will just have the stuff to
protect ourselves and the strategy to offset the great power that the
strong-arm men of the establishment have and are planning to use
against us.
White Or9anlzln9
67
Message on the
Peace Movement
68
goods and the surplus would then be turned back into the country.
The military plants and the related defense plan ts, industrial plants
would be brought to a grinding halt.
And this is why you have some of the union representatives sup
porting the war effort. This is why the AFL-CIO supported the
invasion of the Dominican Republic. It forced out Juan Bosch for
the simple reason, they know that as long as war goes on, then
they can exploit the people through taxation and also exploit the
people through human lives, because we sent soldiers, you see
brothers, because they're expendable too; people are expendable.
So, this is to keep it going, to keep getting the contracts.
So what happens is that one of the favored arguments of the
capitalists is that America is not an imperialistic country because the
traditional ways and means of imperialists is to go into a developing
country and rape the country of its raw materials and refine them in
the colony, in the developing country or send them to the mother
country to be refined or refine them and sell them back at a high
price to the colonized people. And the argument is that "America
is not doing that. We don't need what's in Vietnam; we don't need
any equipment, and the raw materials out of Vietnam ." And this
is very true. This sort of puzzled me for a while; and I couldn't
really answer it, and so I just talked around it. But now I under
stand that something new has happened; that with the wedding
of science with industry, with the industrial plants, that America
has solved the basic problem of raw materials through synthetics
and through knowing how to use raw materials that are already here
and using them in a variety of ways, therefore keeping the plants
going. So, therefore this is the favored argument of the capitalis t :
"So, w e must b e there t o stop communism o r wars o f subversion,
you see, subversive wars." But what's overlooked is the fact that
the super-capitalists know we don't need to rape the country. I think
Cuba was the turn ing poin t where it was sort of the traditional
colonized country. And I'll inject this and that is that.
Another argument is that we need the positions, their strategic
military positions, which we know tha t the U.S. does not need any
strategic military positions because they already have enough equip
ment to defend this coun try from any point in the world if we
were attacked. So they could only be there to use this developing
country as depository for expendable goods. And in traditional im
perialism, people from the mother country usually go to the colony,
set up government there and the government heads and also the
leaders of the military.
And this is not so at this point, see. In Vietnam, people from
the mother country have not gone to the colonized country and
jockeyed for position, bUt it's all been turned back into America .
69
70
Huey P. Newton
Minister of Defense,
Black Panther Party
-The Black Panther, September 27, 1969
To the R.N.A.
71
72
consideration the fact that if Blacks at this very minute were able
to secede from the union, and say have five states, or six states, it
would be impossible to function in freedom side by side with a
capitalistic imperialistic country. We all know that mother Africa
is not free simply because of imperialism, because of Western dom
ination. And there's no indication that it would be any different
if we were to have a separate country, here in North America . As
a matter of fact, by all logic we would suffer imperialism and
colonialism even more so than the Third World is suffering it now.
They are geographically better located, thousands of miles away,
but yet they are not able to be free simply because of highly tech
nological developments, the highest technological developments that
the West has that makes the world so much smaller, one small
neighborhood.
So taking all these things into consideration, we conclude that
the only way that we're going to be free is to wipe out once and
for all the oppressive structure of America . We realize we can't do
this without a popular struggle, without many alliances and coali
tions, and this is the reason that we're moving in the direction that
we are to get as many alliances as possible of people that are equally
dissatisfied with the system. And also we're carrying on, or attempt
ing to carry on a political education campaign, so that the people
will be aware of the conditions and therefore perhaps they will be
able to take steps to controlling these conditions. We think this is
the most important thing at this time; is to be able to organize
in some fashion so that we'll have a formidable force to challenge
the structure of the American empire.
So we invite the Republic of New Africa to struggle with us,
because we know from people whom I've talked to, ( I've talked to
May Mallory, and other people familiar with the philosophy of the
Republic of New Africa ) they seem to be very aware that the whole
structure of America will have to be changed, in order for the people
of America to be free. And this is again with the full knowledge
and the full view of the end goal of the Republic of New Africa
to secede. In other words we're not really handling this question at
this time because we feel that for us that it is somewhat premature,
that I realize the physiological value of fighting for a territory. But
at this time the Black Panther Party feels that we don't want to be
in an enclave type situation where we would be more isolated than
we already are now. We're isolated in the ghetto areas, and we think
that this is a very good location as far as strategy is concerned,
as far as waging a strong battle against the established order. And
again I think that it would be perfectly justified if the Blacks
decided that they wanted to secede the union, but I think the
73
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75
encircle or hold down the idea of the people. And the people must
always carry forward the idea which is their dignity and their beauty.
The prison operates with the idea that when it has a person's
body it has his entire being-since the whole cannot be greater than
the sum of its parts . They put the body in a cell, and seem to get
some sense of relief and security from that fact. The idea of prison
victory then, is that when the person in jail begins to act, think,
and believe the way they wan t him to, then they have won the
battle and the person is then "rehabilitated" . But this cannot be
the case, because those who operate the prisons, have failed to
examine their own beliefs thoroughly, and they fail to understand
the types of people they attempt to control . Therefore, even when
the prison thinks it has won the victory, there is no victory.
.
There are two types of prisoners . The largest number are those
who accept the legitimacy . of the assumptions upon which the
society is based . They wish to acquire the same goals as everybody
else, money, power, greed, and conspicuous consumption . In order
to do so, however, they adopt techniques and methods which the
society has defined as illegitimate. When this is discovered such
people are put in jail. They may be called "illegitimate capitalists"
since their aim is to acquire everything this capitalistic society
defines as legitimate. The second type of prisoner, is the one who
rejects the legitimacy of the assumptions upon wh ich the society
is based . He argues that the people at the bottom of the society
are exploited for the profit and advantage of those at the top. Thus,
the oppressed exist, and will always be used to maintain the priv
ileged status of the exploiters . There is no sacredness, there is no
dignity in either exploiting or being exploited . Although this system
may make the society function at a high level of technological
efficiency, it is an illegitimate system, since it rests upon the suffer
ing of humans who are as worthy and as dignified as those who do
not suffer. Thus, the second type of prisoner says that the society is
corrupt and illegitimate and must be overthrown . This second type
of prisoner is the political prisoner. They do not accept the legiti
macy of the society and cannot participate in its corrupting ex
ploitation, whether they are in the prison or on the block.
The prison cannot gain a victory over either type of prisoner no
matter how hard it tries . The " Illegitimate capitalist" recognizes
that if he plays the game the prison wants him to play, he will
have his time reduced and be released to continue his activities .
Therefore, he is willing to go through the prison programs and . do
the things he is told . He is wil ing to say the t.hi p th . pnso
authorities want to hear. The pnson assumes he 1s rehab1ht ted
,
and ready for the society. The prisoner has really played the 1 .ms?n. s
game so that he can be released to resume pursuit of his cap1tahshc
76
Huey P. Newton
M inister of Defense
Black Panther Party
-The Black Panther, January 3, 1970
4.
B O B B Y S EA L E S P EA KS
78
79
of this sort is not limited to Black, Brown, and Red peoples, espe
cially nowadays when the masses of Americans take time to remem
ber fascist suppression by thousands of cops and National Guards
men at the Democratic Convention last November. Also, in the
last few years, on every major college campus, murderous, brutal
fascism in America made its appearance against \Vhite, Black, and
Brown students and other students who attempted to use their
basic "democratic rights" to change racist administrations and pro
test the war in Vietnam and brutality and poverty in the ghettos in
America .
Fascism in America has existed for so many more years before the
recent forms of repression came about. And every American ( and
Black people in particular ) CAN identify it for exactly what it is.
Racism plus capitalism breeds fascism when the avaricious business
men refuse to give control to the unemployed workers and theit
unions. And history has testified to this from the years of repression
and unemployment in the thirties to the present day, when the union
people will work and strike and peoples will demand right before
our eyes that they be allowed to work too. And brutal cops will
come about and tricky politicians will come about to trick and mis
lead the people, to oppress the people and repress their a ctions, to
take over the very factories where they have to produce goods and
wealth that they never receive back.
Fascism breeds when the lazy, tricking, demagogic politicians lie
and mislead people about the suffering that Black people are sub
jected to, that Brown peoples are subjected to, that any color peoples
or minority group peoples, or any poor \Vhite peoples a re sub
jected to. \Vhen the people move to demonstrate or protest and
these human rights workers and civil rights workers are murdered
and killed; when babies a re bombed in the church as back in 1963
in Birmingham, thousands of demonstrators are clubbed and bru
talized such as in Birmingham, Alabama back in 1963. This in itself
begins to prove the demagogic politicians for what they are-with
promises of ending poverty, with promises of a "Great Society",
the promises of "looking into the matter," etc., etc., etc.
Because of the basic Ten Point Platform and Program that was
put together that deals with the need for full employment for our
people, that spells it out; that deals with a need for decent housing,
fit for shelter of human beings; that deals with a decent education
that teaches us our history and our place in the world and in society;
that deals with the need to have fair trials by our peer groups or
people from our Black communities or the districts where we live
_
because of a program that talks about land, bread, housing, education,
clothing, justice, and peace; because of a program that talked about
a United Nations supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the
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81
You have been in jail since August. Could you gi.ve some details
on your treatment in jail since then.
The hole itself is a box five feet wide and seven feet long. You
have no bed, no bunk, no toilet. There is only a hole in the floor
where one could defecate, urinate and this often overflows . This
hole was ruled unconstitutional by state supreme court in 1966.
The ruling stated that a man's supposed to have at least a mattress
of some kind, full meals and a toilet. Recently there has been a
grand jury investigation of county jail conditions, but every time
a grand jury member comes around they take prisoners out of the
hole until he has left; then they'll put him back in.
What kind of reading are you allowed here?
Why were you charged in the Chicago 8 conspiracy case since your
connection with the other seven was tenuous and you spent only
some 1 2 hours in Chicago during the riot period?
82
The Black Panther party has been criticized for its rhetoric. What
is your reaction to this?
83
After they had effectively taken away the leadership they could then
move on the rank and file membership of the Party?
Exactly.
84
It's evident lately that there has been a tactical change on the part
of radicals with regard to the judicial system. Heretofore radicals,
both white and black would sit back and allow the court to proceed
in "orderly" fashion. Now radicals have decided to make their trials
into political forums to expose the political nature of the prosecu
tion and to publicize political ideas and life styles. Why has this
change happened?
We have all found that the process of the American judicial sys
tem, including trial procedure and jury makeup, presently viola tes
the constitutional righ t to a fair trial by a jury of one's peers. It
doesn't stop in the courtroom. Look at the ransom bails in the
N .Y. 21 case, which amount to forcible detention . They do have
bail-$ 1 00,000 each-but it can't be met. This is an outright vio
lation of constitutional rights . In my case in Chicago, I wasn't
allowed to even defend myself, whereas in Nazi Germany in 1 9 3 3,
a Bulgarian Communist [ Dimitroffj accused of setting the Reichstag
fire was allowed to. In L.A. recently, the Pan thers accused of at
tempted murder in the Watts shootout brough t rats to the court
room which they had caugh t in their jail cells . Even jail conditions
violate one's constitutional rights. In tha t same jail recently, one
of the deputies tried to beat a brother up and the brothers had
to defend themselves against the deputies, so one can see that the
unconstitutionality of the judicial system applies to all levels, in
cluding the penal . The people who bear the blunt end of this
system are now showing a willingness to stand up against it and
recent trials point this out. They are willing to define a racist judge
85
as a fascist and a pig-that's what the party means by pig, one who
violates a person's constitutional rights. In any case the judicial
branch of the government is the last area of appeal for a person
whose rights have been violated by unj ust laws and brutal enforce
ment, so when you get to a courtroom and find that the judge
himself is a fascist at this point one doesn't have much choice
but to expose his racism and fascism and stand up for his con
stitutional rights. All I did in Chicago was to exercise my legal righ t
to speak in my own behalf and I was given four years in jail as a
result. But I think the most serious injustice perpetrated by the
court system in America is the inability of a black man to get a
jury of his peers. In Huey Newton's trial there was one black on
the jury and he was over 40. This happened in a city which is over
50% black. Now Huey had been a student in college. Why couldn't
he have had some young people or students on that jury?
First of all, no Panther can break a gun law unless his life is
in danger and the party recognizes this. If he does so we will expel
or suspend him depending on the seriousness of his offen se. Panther
party training in the area of self-defense includes a stud y of gun
86
laws, safe use of weapons and there is a strict rule that no party
member can use a weapon except in the case of an attack on his
life-whether the attacker be a police officer or any other person.
I n the case of police harassment the party will merely print the
offending officer's picture in the newspaper so the officer can be
identified as an enemy of the people . . . no attempt on his life
will be made.
87
place" is only a short step away from saying "keep a nigger in his
place." As Eldridge said in his book, the white woman is a symbol
of freedom in this country. The white man took this chick and
stuck her up on a pedestal and called her the Statue of Liberty and
gave her a torch to hold. Well I say put a machine gun in her other
hand.
Much of the mass media has been playing up the circus aspect of
the trial in Chicago and has been treating Hoffman as an exceptional
case in a ;udicial system which is otherwise ;ust and honorable.
What do you think?
People like Hoffman are the rule especially with respect to minor
ity peoples. Murtagh, the judge in the New York Panther 21 case,
is a notorious racist. It's just now that people like Murtagh and
Hoffman are being exposed for what they are : fascist and racist.
Do you expect any changes in the structure or direction of the Black
88
89
years, as many of you Black brothers are well aware. I know you
dream about home. But when you come home, come home and
realize that you have a fight here, that we have the righ t to con trol
our destinies in our Black community; as the Chicano people have
a right to control their destin ies in their Chicano community or
areas and places where they live; as the American Indians have a
right to control their destiny; as the poor, oppressed white people
have a righ t to control their destiny ( many poor, oppressed white
people must realize that it's the ruling class ) . The Indian-Americans,
the Chicano-Americans, the La tino-Americans and Brown people,
and Black people in America are beginning to move more and more
in opposition to the oppressive conditions that the SAME avari
cious businessmen and demagogic, lying politicians create and main
tain-that exploitation. The workers of this country are beginning
to move more and more, day by day, step by step from a lower
to a higher level in opposing the ruling class circles, because they
( the ruling class circles ) are the ones who keep the racism going.
They are the ones who keep people hating each other because of
skin color, etc.
The Black Panther Pa rty, brothers, does not figh t racism with
racism. There are no wh ite people in the Black Panther Party but
we do have all iances with white radical student groups who have
stood up in protest against that war for your sake and for all the
C.I .'s sake. We wanted them back home. We wanted to bring them
back home as a means to end that war, demanding and protesting
that the C.I .'s come back home and the war end .
The Black brothers, Vietnam Black C .I .'s, must understand and
feel desire to oppose oppression right here at home domestically.
Oppose fascism. The cops occupy our community just like a foreign
troop occupies territory. Just like, you are a foreign troop there in
Vietnam, occupying territory at the directions of the fascist ruling
class and their military leaders who are also a part of the fascist
ruling class. Not at the will of the people of America are you there.
You're there because the imperialist U.S. aggressors ( and that's
exactly what they are ) have sent you there. And we'll be glad when
you come back, because here you must fight the pigs who occupy
our community. In every major city and metropolis throughout
America police forces have been doubled, tripled, and quadrupled
wherever Black people live; where the large populations of Chicano
people live; where the large popu ations of peo i;>le who are protest
ing and opposing war, are protestmg and opposmg the poverty and
the murder and brutality that's committed against Black people in
the Black community. Wherever the case, these police forces have
been tripled and quadrupled with machine gu s, AR- l 5s ( the same
kinds of guns you brothers got and are carrymg over there ) . 3 57
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munity like a foreign troop occupies territory. We're the same, but
we're just in two different places . We should be here fighting here
at home. They protest over here for the freedom of political prison
ers. You should all be closer at protesting over there for the freedom
of political prisoners in America .
Power to the people. Power to the people; that's what we say.
Power to all the people. And get rid of the power, take the power
away from the minority ruling class circles, the imperialists and
fascists here in America . The same thing they're doing over there to
the Vietnamese people, they're getting ready to upstep and do to
Black American people. The same thing; the same kind of weapons,
vicious weapons. They have tanks; they have nerve gas and every
thing else prepared . And it's time that we understand and realize this .
All the masses of the people and the G.I .'s and the people at home
are the ones who have to protest the war, are the ones who have
to protest the inj ustices right here at home.
So you brothers who are dreaming about coming back home, when
you get back home, you're going to see that same oppression . They're
going to promise you a job; but you're going to be out of a job. In
some cases they're going to try to give some of you dishonorable
discharges for one reason or another and tell you that you can't get
a job when you get back. But all you have to do is tell him it
wasn't no jobs here when you left. And that's why you got off into
that thing anyway. You went into the service for the same reason
I went into it at one time over 10 years ago, some fourteen years,
now; 'cause it wasn't no jobs, it wasn't nothing to do, and you
didn't have an y money in your pocket and you was frustrated with
your surroundings and basically your environment. That's the reason
most of you brothers went in there. It was a way to get a chance
to do something. And you feel you'd go in the Army and some
guy'd sell you some insidious notion about being a man, and all
that kind of crap. And you were already a man. You're a human
being. That's the first basis for being a man; it's being a human
being, and not going out trying to prove how many colored peoples
you can kill in a foreign land . That's not being a man; that's being
a fascist. And that's what the fascist power structure does.
So to ALL Black American G .l .'s, it's very important that you
understand the need to come home; the need to relate to the
struggle here; the need for the people and us to get mobilized and
to amass together to free the political prisoners; the need to fight
for community control of police where the people will have control,
not of the same police, but fire those in now and set up community
con trol operations. 111e Breakfast for Children Programs. Under
stand that the demagogic politicians are lying. They're lying on the
Party. They've attacked the Party; they've attacked our offices. And
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Bring It Home
Ed itor's Note: On November 5 , 1 969, over half a m i l l ion Amer
ica n s gathered i n Wash i n gton, D.C., to d e m a n d i m medi ate tota l
withdrawa l from Vietn a m . They marched, sang songs, a nd l i ste ned
to speeches by Coretta King, Dr. Benja m i n Spock, Dave De l l i nger,
a n d others. One speech was read to the a u d ience beca u se the m a n
w h o w a s t o deliver i t w a s i n j a i l . Sea le w a s o n e of e i g h t defenda nts
in the C h icago Conspi racy tri a l , a nd he sent the fol lowi n g message
from prison.
94
must be understood that they're not waging that war for those
peoples' right to self determination, that they're waging that war
for some inequality and unj ustness against those people. And it's
evident that it is being waged for this reason on their part because
of the fact that there is no equality and there's no justice at home
for people right here in America, like Black people in particular
who've suffered under racism and brutality and m\uder for 400 years
right here in America. It's evident and it's clear that if there is
genocide in a country as in Germany during World War II, then
anything that ruling class fascist government docs outside is also
unj ust and is also aggression and is also out to deny and murder
and kill people.
What we have to understand is that right here at home in America
we have to oppose imperialism, also. That you can't just fight im
perialism, the acts of imperialism abroad, without understanding and
recognizing community imperialism abroad, without recognizing
community imperialism here of Black people, Brown people, Red
people and even to the point of protesting students and radicals
and progressive peoples here, in America.
Domestic imperialism at home is in fact fascism. But what in
essence is it? I think Black people if we go over the concrete ex
periences that we've had in America and what's going on now against
us we can understand exactly what it is-to be corralled in wretched
ghettoes in America and look up one day and see numerous police
men occupying our community, and brutalizing us, killing brother
Linthcombe, murdering young Bobby Hutton . 'Ine fact that much
brutality goes on to the extent that all the fascist press and all the
demagogic politicians say it and the only thing that the courts put
out is that it's supposedly "justifiable homicide" on the part of
policemen who occupy our community.
The police state that exists here in America right now is in fact
fascism right before our eyes. There are numerous examples of the
police state activities. Only last week, I hear and understand, that
a young Black brother was allegedly or supposedly cashing a so-called
fictitious check in a bank here in San Francisco and was walking out
of the bank amongst a crowd of people and this police guard runs
out of the bank and he's only walking and the brother is shot dead
in the mid-section of his back. He's dead and killed. Black brothers
and Black people who have experienced and know these fascist
tactics and know of too many cases and too many situations where
young brothers and Black people have been gunned down and mur
dered by these cops, and it's becoming more and more out of hand.
It's becoming out of hand because in every major city, in every
major metropolis where Black people live, police forces have been
doubled, tripled, and quadrupled.
95
Also, the racist courts of America are j ustifying the police brutality
and murder of Black people and any people. The democratic con
vention as EVERYBODY knows, as everybody saw on the T.V.
an d read in the papers was nothing more than pigs, cops running
rampant, brutalizing, m urdering and bashing skulls . And many Black
people looked on and said, " Look at those White people getting
beaten", because we knew we had been beaten and brutalized for
many years and still are.
They dragged me into this case . They put me as one of the
defendants there, and they literally, overtly, fascisticly, piggishly, and
racistly denied me my basic constitutional rights . Charles R. Garry ,
the most bea utiful lawyer in the world, a revolutionary lawyer, was
here at home going through an operation. He's a beautiful brother.
He's 60 years old and had to have an operation for his health and
couldn't come to the court. Dr. Goodlett explained it to the court
a month before the court even convened that Charles would be
risking his life, and I made motion after motion, request after re
quest, and argued those requests and those motions on my behalf
in my attempts to defend myself there and was literally denied,
( literally denied ) my constitutional rights to be able to defend
myself, after it was clear that my lawyer wouldn't be able to be there
to assist me. For a man to stand up and demand his constitutional
rights and in tum the court looks at him and denies him that is
to say he's not intelligent enough to see what's going on. But in fact
we Black people, we people, all people, American people, know that
to deny people their constitutional rights, their right to defend
themselves, their right to council, or any constitutional right is
nothing more than to justify the brutal tactics, murderous fascist
tactics of the police running rampant in the communities of America,
and in particular the Black communities of America .
To the Peace Forces, the progressive forces in America, the pro
testors, those who know the war in Vietnam is unj ust, those who
are going to the streets and demonstrating, those who think they're
really, really doing something-what they're doing in trying to end
the war in Vietnam, is not meaningful at all, yet. It's not meaningful
at all and will not become meaningful at all if you really want to
stop the war in Viet nam, until you take ome action here in Am r
.
ica against the fascist brutal forces agamst Black people here m
America . The very fact that the North Vietnamese government has
announced that they are willing to release prisoners of war, for the
release and dropping of all charges and trumped-up charge.s against
the Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton, and myself, this should
be demanded also. This is directly relating to the very fact that we
have to end police brutality and murder of Black people right here
at home. Because the Black Pan ther Party itself has moved in this
96
direction from its very inception to get rid of those fascist forces
that corral us.
This is the kind of action that has to be taken on the part of the
Peace Forces in America and the progressive forces in America . And
until they begin to do that they will not begin at all to stop im
perialism ; they will not begin at all to stop domestic imperialism
right here at home. YOU MUST MOVE AGAINST DOMESTIC
IMPERIALISM, GROWING RAMPANT FASCISM-RIGHT
HERE IN AMERICA BEFORE YOU CAN END THE WAR IN
VIETNAM OR ALL FORMS OF AGGRESSIVE WARS LIKE
THAT AGAINST OTHER PEOPLES AB ROAD. The very fact
that Black, Brown, Red and other peoples in America and poor peo
ple, even poor White people, are corralled in wretched ghettos, espe
cially those people of color and Black people whose communities are
occupied in the fashion they are and murdered . No, we can't continue
to allow ourselves to be duped with the notion that we're doing some
thing good until we learn to smash imperialism right here at home.
Because to smash imperialism right here at home is to smash im
perialism abroad. Smashing imperialism means taking action, de
manding that those prisoners of war be allowed to come home.
When you say "Bring the Cl's home", bring the Cl's home. And
we can bring the prisoners of war home by demanding that the U .S.
government release political prisoners here in America . Beginning
with Huey and me, right now in America we will set a precedence
of opposing fascism, abroad and at home. If that is what the Viet
namese people want, to release the political prisoners and people
here in America, then I say that the progressive forces have to take
some action in that direction; and they will be relating directly
to smashing imperialism at home and recognizing that this has to
be done.
People move. Black brothers and sisters, American people, it's
time that we moved against fascism at home because to smash
fascism at home is to smash fascism forever abroad.
5.
E L D R I D G E C L EAV E R S P EA KS
F RO M EX I L E
On November 24, 1 968, three days before the sentence that would
have returned him to prison was to go into effect, Eldridge Cleaver,
Minister of Information for the Black Panther Party, former
candidate for the Presidency of the United States on the Peace
and Freedom ticket, and author of the best-selling Soul on Ice,
disappeared. Today he lives in exile in Algiers. But he continues to
speak out on fundamental issues confronting the people of his native
land through articles, interviews, and messages. Here are his views
on a number of important questions.
98
I'd like to send a very special word to sister Erica Huggins, the wife
of our slain, murdered Deputy Minister of Information, John Hug
gins, who was murdered along with our Deputy Minister of Defense,
Brother Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter. He's Bunchy to me.
And now, the pigs have compounded this by taking this woman,
this black woman, this sister, after inflicting this horrible pain upon
her by murdering the father of her newborn child. Taking her away
from her child and placing her behind bars [ in Connecticut] on some
trumped-up charges .
I know Erica, and I know that she's a very strong sister. But I
know that she is now being subjected to a form of torture that is
horrible. I know that she is strong and that she will endure and sister
Erica, be strong sister.
We must not rest until this sister is liberated, and if she is not out
at this moment, then she should be out just as rapidly as it is possible
for us to get her out. And an example to all of us, let it be a lesson and
an example to all of the sisters, particularly to all of the brothers,
that we must understand that our women are suffering strongly and
enthusiastically as we are participating in the struggle. And I'm aware
that it has been a problem in all organizations in Babylon to structure
our struggle in such a way that our sisters, our women are liberated
and made equal in our struggle and in regard to sister Erica, I know
that the Minister of Defense, Huey P. Newton has spoken out many
times that the male chauvinism that is rampant in Babylon in
general, is also rampant in our own ranks.
The incarceration and the suffering of Sister Erica should be a
stinging rebuke to all manifestations of male chauvinism within our
ranks. That we must purge our ranks and our hearts, and our minds,
and our understanding of any chauvinism, chauvinistic behavior
of disrespectful behavior toward women. That we must too recognize
that a woman can be just as revolutionary as a man and that she has
equal stature, that, along with men, and that we cannot prejudice her
in any manner, that we cannot relegate her to an inferior position.
That we have to recognize our women as our equals and that rev
olutionary standards of principles demand that we go to great
99
1 00
The most critical tests facing Johnson are the war in Vietnam and
the Negro revolution at home. The fact that the brains in the
Pentagon see fit to send 16 per cent black troops to Vietnam is one
indication that there is a structural relationship between these two
arenas of conflict. And the in itial outrageous refusal of the Georgia
Legislature to seat representative elect Julian Bond, because he de
nounced the aggressive U.S. role in Vietnam, shows too, the very
intimate relationship between the way human beings are being treated
in Vietnam and the treatment they are receiving here in the United
States.
We live today in a system that is in the last stages of the pro
tracted process of breaking up on a worldwide basis. The rulers per
ceive the greatest threat to be the national liberation movements
around the world, particularly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America . In
order for them to wage wars of suppression against these national
liberation movements abroad, they must have peace and stability and
unanimity of purpose at home. But at home there is a Trojan
Horse, a Black Trojan Horse that has become aware of itself and is
now struggling to get on its feet. It too, demands liberation .
What is the purpose of the attention that the rulers are now
focusing on the Trojan Horse? Is it out of a newfound love for the
horse, or is it because the rulers need the horse to be quiet, to be still,
and not cause the rulers, already with their backs to the wall, any
trouble or embarrassment while they force the war in Vietnam?
Indeed, the rulers have need of the horse's power on the fields of
battle. What the black man in America must keep constantly in mind
is that the doctrine of white supremacy, which is a part of the
ideology of the world system the power structure is trying to pre
serve, lets the black man in for the greatest portion of the suffering
and hate which white supremacy has dished out to the non-white
people of the world for hundreds of years. The white-supremacy
oriented white man feels less compunction about massacring "niggers"
than he does about massacring any other race of people on the earth.
This historically indisputable fact, taken with the present persistent
efforts of the United States to woo the Soviet Union into an alliance
against China, spells DANGER to all the peoples of the world who
have been victims of white supremacy. If this sweethcarting proves
successful, if the United States is finally able to make a match with
IOI
Russia, o r i f the U.S. can continue t o frighten the Soviet Union into
reneging on its commitments to international socialist solidarity
(a bout which the Soviets are always trumpeting, while still allowing
the imperialist aggressors to daily bomb the Democratic Republic
of North Vietnam ) , and if the U.S. is able to unleash its anxious
fury and armed might against the raging non-white giant of China,
which is the real target of U.S. strategy the world over-if the U.S.
is successful in these areas, then it will be the black man's turn
again to face the lyncher and burner of the world : and face him alone.
Black Americans are too easily deceived by a few smiles and
friendly gestures, by the passing of a few liberal-sounding laws which
are left on the books to rot unenforced, and by the mushy speech
making of a Prsident who is a past master of talking out of the
thousand sides of his mouth. Such poetry does not guarantee the
safe future of the black people in America . The black people must
have a guarantee, they must be certain, they must be sure beyond all
doubt that the reign of terror is ended and not just suspended, and
that the future of their people is secure. And the only way they can
ensure this is to gain organizational unity and communication with
their brothers and allies around the world, on an international basis.
They must have this power. There is no other way. Anything else
is a sellout of the future of their people. The world of today was
fashioned yesterday. What is involved here, what is being decided
right now, is the shape of power in the world tomorrow.
The American racial problem can no longer be spoken of or solved
in isolation . The relationship between the genocide in Vietnam and
the smiles of the white man toward black Americans is a direct
relationship. Once the white man solves his problem in the East
he will then turn his fury again on the black people of America,
his longtime punching bag. The black people have been tricked
again and again, sold out at every turn by misleaders. After the Civil
War, America went through a period similar to the one we are now in.
The Negro problem received a full hearing. Everybody knew that the
black man had been denied justice. No one doubted that it was time
for changes and that the black man should be made a first class
citizen. But Reconstruction ended. Blacks who had been elevated to
high positions were brusquely kicked out into the streets and herded
along with the masses of blacks into the ghettos and black belts. The
lyncher and the burner received virtual license to murder blacks at
will. White Americans found a new level on which to cool the blacks
out. And with the help of such tools as Booker T. Washington, the
doctrine of segregation was clamped firmly onto the backs of the
blacks. It has taken a hundred years to struggle up from that level of
cool-out to the miserable position that black Americans find them-
1 02
I 03
necessity. The only lasting salvation for the black American is to do all
he can to see to it that the African, Asian, and Latin American
na tions are free and independent.
In this regard, black Americans have a big role to play. They are
a Black Trojan Horse within white America and they number in
excess of 2 3,000,000 strong. That is a lot of strength . But it is a
lot of weakness if it is disorganized, and the overriding need is for
unity and organization. Unity is on all black lips. Today we stand on
the verge of ,sweeping 'change in this wretched landscape of a thou
sand little fragmented and ineffectual groups and organizations un
able to work together for the common cause. The need for one
organization that will give one voice to the black man's common
interest is felt in every bone and fiber of black America .
Yesterday, after firmly repudiating racism and breaking his ties with
the Black Muslim organization, the late Malcolm X launched a cam
paign to transform the American black man's struggle from the nar
row plea for "civil rights" to the universal demand for human rights,
with the ultimate aim of bringing the United States government to
task before the United Nations . This, and the idea of the Organization
of Afro-American Unity, was Malcolm's dying legacy to his people. It
did not fall on barren ground. Already, black American leaders have
met with the ambassadors of Black Africa at a luncheon at UN
headquarters. The meaning of this momentous event is lost on no
one. The fact that it was the issue of Julian Bond, his denunciation
of U.S. aggression in Vietnam, and the action of racist elements in the
Georgia legislature which brought clearer recognition by black men
that their interests are also threatened by the U.S. war of suppression
in Vietnam . This dovetailing of causes and issues is destined to
bring to fruition the other dream which Malcolm's assassination
prevented him from realizing, the Organization of Afro-American
Unity, or perhaps a similar organization under a different name.
Black Americans now realize that they must organize for the power
to change the foreign and domestic policies of the U.S. government.
They must let their voice be heard on these issues. They must let
the world know where they stand.
It is no accident that the U.S. government is sending all those
black troops to Vietnam. Some people think that Vietnam is to kill
off the cream of black youth . But it has another important result.
By turning her black troops into the butchers of the Viet
namese people, America is spreading hate against the black race
throughout Asia . Even black Africans find it hard not to hate black
Americans for being so stupid as to allow themselves, to be used to
slaughter another people who are fighting to be free. Black
Americans are considered to be the world's biggest fools to go to
another country to fight for something they don't have for themselves .
1 04
It bothers white racists that people around the world love black
Americans but find it impossible to give a similar warm affection
to white Americans. The white racist knows that he is the Ugly
American and he wants the black American to be Ugly, too, in the
eyes of the world : misery loves company! When the people around
the world cry "Yankee, Go Home!" they mean the white man, not
the black man who is a recently freed slave. The white man is
deliberately trying to make the people of the world turn against black
Americans, because he knows that the day is coming when black
Americans will need the help and support of their brothers, friends
and natural allies around the world. If through stupidity or by
following hand-picked leaders who are the servile agents of the power
structure, black America ns allow this strategy to succeed against
them, then when the time comes and they need this help and sup
port from around the world, it will not be there. All of the inter
national love, respect, and goodwill that black Americans now have
around the world will have dried up. They themselves will have
buried it in the mud of the rice paddies of Vietnam.
-The Black Panther, March 2 3, 1 969
1 05
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1 07
1 08
for black people." An undying love for black people that denies the
humanity of other people is doomed . It was an undying love of
white people for each other which led them to deny the humanity of
colored people and which has stripped white people of humanity
itself. It would seem to me that an undying love for our people
would, at the very least, lead you to a strategy that would aid our
struggle for liberation instead of leading you into a coalition of pur
pose with the McClellan Committee in its attempt to destroy the
Black Panther Party.
Well, so long, Stokely, and take care. And beware of some white
folks and of some black folks, because I assure you that some of both
of them have teeth that will bite. Remember what Brother Mal
colm said in his Autobiography : "We had the best organization that
the black man has ever had in the United States-and niggers ruined
it!" POWER TO THE PEOPLE.
E LDRIDGE C LEAVER, Minister of Information, Black Panther Party.
July, 1969.
1 09
1 10
I had been the one who was trying to salvage the situation and
give him a chance to apologize to the Party, and everyone else was
perfectly willing to let him go and not go to the expense. So when
he took the position he took, we called him up and just told him we
were not going to try to arrange that other thing that we were talking
about, and that we would accept his resignation as he wrote it and
deal with it as he put it forth . And that's the last we've heard of him.
QUESTION : His two most important issues in this letter were first,
calling the Party dogmatic, and second, condemning the alliances
with white radical movements .
ELDRIDGE : I think these two are very related because when he re
fers to dogmatism, what he is actually referring to is the fact that
we are a Marxist-Leninist Party, and implicit in Marxist-Leninism
is proletarian internationalism, and solidarity with all people who are
struggling and this, of course, includes white people. So that since
his main object is non-alliance with whites, and turning one's back
on whites and having no policy towards them at all, just to ignore
them, he has to come down heavy on both those points in order to
maintain his position. And we consider this position to be racist.
We recognize that we cannot function in this way, particularly
these days when na tionally and internationally they're using ne
gritude as a way to create divisions amongst people, and the domestic
counterpart of this internalional approach is the use of black capi
talism, black consciousness. We call it cultural nationalism in the
United States, and it's been made very clear how they finance certain
cultural nationalist organizations. They have already exposed them
selves as being tools of the power structure by their activities. So
that another definition is required to make distinctions between
friends and enemies when they are coming in all colors. And we feel
that the only safe guides to action are the revolutionary principles of
Marxism-Leninism, that they arc relevant at this point for that
reason and we choose to work on that basis and let the rest of that
go because black people have already gained their consciousness, they
have a sense of their identity, which was lost in the United States.
At the time that this was happening, it was very progressive, it was a
very good thing tha t was coming about. But after people had
assimilated that and were reminded of who they were and every
th ing, to maintain that position and not to go any further becomes
reactionary.
This is wha t has happened to Stokely and a lot of other people,
a lot of other people get hung up culturally in that sense, but Stokely
has gotten hung up politically in that sense. There's a false distinc
tion people make between culture and politics, and then after
making this false distinction, he con fuses culture with politics again.
So that it's like an error compounded with an error, and we can't
deal with that.
1 11
1 12
entity, then you can't relate to those beyond you, and by the same
token if you can relate to those beyond you, and not be able to relate
to those near you, then there's still a problem. I'm talking about this
full blown nationalist approach to the problem that completely
obscures class contradictions and class problems and unites people
over class lines and fitting the whole nation out for problems later
on. Because on that basis, the bourgeoisie, which is always better
educated at this stage, is able to move into the apparatus of the
government because people with skills are required, and when they
move in they also get the power, and because things arc organized
on a nationalist base, there's nothing there to counteract them
usurping the power, organizing coups and turning the tide back. I
think people are moving away from that, particularly young people,
young students who are in these countries, most of them are very
conscious and most of them are turning to Marxism-Leninism.
QUESTION : The main issue in the split of the American SOS was
the relation to the black movement. \Vhat do you think of the split,
what do you think is the task of the white mother country radicals
in this special situation now?
ELDRIDGE : I think the people who were disrupting SOS were the
people who had this faulty analysis of the situation, they were still
functioning on the basis of an analysis of what we call the Old Left.
111ey are not recognizing the ethnic struggles that are going on in the
United States which often obscure the past struggle. The people
in SOS who we work with have related to the analysis we have made
and they see that it is functional because in the United States you
have Mexican-Americans, Puerto-Ricans, Indians, Eskimos, Chinese
Americans, black Americans, white Americans and many other
ethnic groups. These ethnic groups have been divided from each
other and they are in such a posture at this time that there's no point
in trying to make the mistakes that have been made in the past by
trying to pull them all into one homogeneous organization without
taking all these peculiarities into consideration . We say that's putting
the cart before the horse. What we have to do is take the people as
they are right now, pull them together into organizational machinery,
and then create other machinery that they can be pulled into once
they get that consciousness. This is done through a process of
coalition, and it docs function, and it's functioning right now, and
developing, and we're able to deal with much more of the problems
then we were when we were trying to pull poor people into one
group and con tinue depleting a lot of our energies by a lot of in
fighting over that. These people who are in PL and who are very
dogmatic, and who did not want to recognize what was happening in
the other communities and start to impose their own ideological
perspective upon the people, did get rebuffed, I consider them split-
1 13
ting from SDS as a fitting rebuff, to the situation they were trying to
perpetuate.
QUESTION : After spending so much time in the Third World, have
you changed your views on American policy, can you say anything
about experiences you have had since you left the United States?
ELDRIDGE : I've been more confirmed in the position and attitude
that the Black Panther Party had. I recognize now that some of the
things we were doing and trying to do are even more important
than we realized they were, particularly in the directions we struck
out in, in trying to get around the obstacles that were created by
Stokely Carmichael and SNCC, but which we feel were historically
necessary-with black power. We took a different course in the
United States, and we did it out of necessity. After coming into
contact with other people who are revolutionaries but are not black,
you see how important it is in order to work with them. I've been
appalled to a greater extent than I ever dreamed that I could have
been by the visible results of colon ialism and imperialism . We in the
United States who are oppressed, in comparison to what I've seen
around the world, it seems as though we are oppressed between
slices of silk, because there's nothing comparable to the poverty I've
seen around the world, there's nothing comparable in the United
States, even in the most oppressed areas.
I recognize that the Un ited States government is the number one
enemy of mankind and very much involved in perpetuating all
these things which I have seen, through their international organiza
tions such as NATO, SEATO and through the United Nations . They
are able to perpetuate the stagnation of people and to corrupt their
attempts to industrialize their countries . This, I think, has had a
great influence on me, also a lot of pure revolutionary fervor that I
have encountered amongst people has served to stimulate more dedi
cation within myself.
QUESTION : Don't you think it's very important that the liberation
fronts in the Third World work very closely with the Black Pan
ther Party?
ELDRIDGE : Not only with the Black Pan ther Party, but with all
revolutionary forces within the United States . Certainly, I think it
has been demonstrated here at this festival in Algiers, which has
been held under the auspices of the OAU ( Organization of African
Unity ) but also of the whole government of Algeria, the fact that
they had the courage to invite us, the fact that they had the
courage to invite myself, considering the situation that existed, I
think this has gone a long way toward strengthening solidarity.
It had a very strong impact on the United States, I'm sure, and
I think that the important thing about this is that in the past there
have been individuals, black People from the United States who have
1 14
'l h e B l a c k P a n t h e r s Speak
l lS
Scandinavian brothers and sisters, and this particular cat at one time
when we were trying to mobilize people from the community to go
out to the courthouse and join in a demonstration at the court for
Huey Newton when he went to trial, he refused to get into the
sound truck because the sound truck was being driven by a white
guy.
It was necessary for this guy to drive the sound truck because he
had the license and the permit and it just had to be that way. But
he refused to get into the sound truck, and now he is the one who
made the statement I referred to. That indicates to me that things
have changed and that a lot of things that we were trying to do while
I was there have become accepted . That's just one, there are other
things, but that's one of the most difficult.
There is a lot of development. The Party is stronger and much
larger. I think that the great mushrooming and developing of the
Party ideologically is one of the most important things that has
happened. We always did rela te to Marxism-Leninism, but there was
a great difficulty in maintaining Party discipline. It wasn't functional,
it wasn 't really clear how you could apply democratic centralism in
that situation, with the cats we had to deal with.
One thing that's important, a lot of people don't understand why
a lot of people were purged from the Party. During the time when
Huey Newton was going to trial, we dropped a lot of our programs
because of the necessity of mobilizing as many people as possible.
We virtually closed the membership, we did not make any public
announcement, and we started just pulling people in. We knew who
the Panthers were, but in order to maximize the number of people
we pulled in, we did not argue with people if they put on a black
leather jacket or black berets, or said that they were Panthers. They
just walked in and said they support Huey Newton and they wanted
to join our organization . We didn't have time to conduct our
political education classes on th is, which is a very important
process in our recruitment, that the brothers maintain. After the
trial of Huey Newton was over and the verdict was in, it was a ques
tion of going back to our other activities that we had been involved
in. At that time, a lot of people who came into the organization in
that campaign, to free Huey, they proved to be very undisciplined,
and non-functional, and they created a lot of problems for the Party
and they were not amenable to political education classes. So .we
just came down hard.
I wasn't there at the time, I was aware of it, I knew what was
happening and why it was happening, and a lot of these people were
defined as not being members of the Party. And those who wanted
to become members of the Party were required to go through po
litical education classes. So that a lot of people who were purged have
1 16
been admitted back into the Party, but a lot of them were purged
for a cause and it will be a long time-if ever-before they will be
readmitted .
QuESTION : \Vhat do you plan for yourself for the future : What
kind of political work do you want to do?
ELDRIDGE : I think there's a lot I can do making contacts for the
Party on the international situation, I have a book that I want to
finish, but really, I must return to the United States, that's what
I want to do. That's really what I'm working on, getting that ready.
QUESTION : Now that the NLF has almost won the Vietnam war
and entered this new stage of fighting imperialism, does this change
anything?
ELDRIDGE : I think it will be very positive, if you think back you
will remember that the whole approach of U.S. imperialism at the
time was that the liberation forces in Vietnam had to be defeated,
or else other people will get the idea that they can fight for their
freedom too. And I think that this has proven that a tenacious fight
in the end will be victorious . This is now happening. The United
States will, I think, force people to fight just as hard for their
liberation; on the whole I think this will strengthen the determina
tion of people to fight on to victory.
QUESTION : Do you think that the persecution of the Black Panther
Party now in the United States demands that you create a new kind
of tactic to deal with that?
ELDRIDGE : Those things they've been doing have been frame-ups,
and a lot of people think we arc not serious when we say that, but
what they do and what they have been doing is sending in a few
provacateurs who will indulge people in conversations about blowing
up bridges, or blowing up supermarkets. And on the basis of a few
frivolous words that have been passed, they blow it up into a full
scale conspiracy and arrest all these people and put ransom on
them as opposed to bail, drain our finances; they know what they're
doing and this is the technique they use in the United States to keep
the Party on the defensive.
I made the decision that I was not going to submit to this type
of chicanery and go to jail when it's very clear that they are manip
ulating the situation. And I think this is something we are all going
to have to get into, because we cannot come up with $200,000 bail .
When you think of 2 1 people in New York, 16 people in Chicago, it
adds up to a king's ransom, and we don't have that kind of money,
we have no process for getting that kind of money, so I think the
people who are dedicated to functioning in a revolutionary manner
will start adopting the attitude that they will not be arrested . And
they ought to be ready at all times to defend themselves, so that
when the man comes down on them and tries to arrest them,
1 17
these cats are going to start dealing with it right on the spot, because
that's more desirable than laying up in a penitentiary rotting away.
QUESTION : And is the United Front Against Fascism part of this
tactic to create solidarity?
ELDRIDGE : It's a very important move in tha t regard, but there's
another front that I think needs to be created, and this is something
that I have been working on and which I intend to continue working
on, and it's something we've been calling the North American Lib
eration Front. I think it's very timely, because many people see
the situation that we are confronted with as one in which politics
have been transformed into war, and there's no point in kidding our
selves anymore; what we have to do is fight. We have the terrain
there to fight. Many people think that armed struggle carried out in
the mountains in Cuba or in Vietnam is one thing, and that it could
not happen in the United States. But the United States has more
mountains than all of these other areas, it has the advantage of
mountainous areas, and a highly organized situation, and it has rural
areas. It's so large that the government forces would be forced to
spread out very thinly, at the same time that dissatisfaction in the
ranks of the United States Army is at an all-time peak. The stockades
and military prisons are overflowing with people who have deserted
and don't want to fight in Vietnam. And I think that the contradic
tions that have arisen within the ranks of the United States Army
will continue to increase, more so when they are finally turned against
the American people.
-The Black Panther, October 1 1 , 1 969
1 18
1 19
upon the aggressor for each act o f aggression . This attempt t o mur
der Chairman Bobby Seale coldbloodedly in the Electric Chair is
an open provocation and the ultimate aggression against Black peo
ple. It is a calculated step taken by fascist pigs in the unfolding of
their vicious blueprint of genocide against Black people. We, Black
people, if we are forced to go it alone, must be prepared to unleash
the ultimate pol itical consequence upon this racist nation . The
ultimate political consequence wh ich Black people have in their
power to unleash is RACE WAR. Indeed, we have been and at this
very moment are the victims of a systematic racist repression . The
Black Panther Party, as everyone knows, has taken a leading role in
trying to avoid precisely th is disastrous RACE WAR which the
fascist oppressors have been working day and night to bring about.
But we cannot and will not contin ue this policy to the point of racial
suicide. We will not sacrifice Chairman Bobby Seale on the altar of
interracial harmony if White people continue to sit back and allow
this ghastly plot to go forwa rd. So if the so-called freedom loving
White people of America do not stand up now, while there are still
a few moments of time left, and put an end to the persecution of
Chairman Bobby Seale, then Black people will have to go it alone
and step forward alone. This will mean the end of our dreams for the
Class War which America needs and the beginning of the Race
War which America cannot endure. This is the political consequence
which America faces because of this unspeakably evil attempt to
murder Chairman Bobby Seale in the Electric Cha ir.
Eldridge Cleaver
Minister of Information
Black Panther Party
-Manifesto issued April, 1970, by the Black Panther Party
6.
DAV I D H I L L I A R D S P EA KS
1 22
1 23
1 24
The first thing that struck my mind was the composition of the
lea flets . I couldn't even get past the first line, I didn't know what the
word tenure meant. So I had to go in my little briefcase and try and
figure out what the problem was on the campus . So after learning the
definition of tenure, I got a little enlightened on what the problem
is that the teachers are having here on the campus.
I think the one thing we have to hold clear in our minds is that the
campus only occupies the teachers and the students 7 or 8 hours a
day; and after that they're back into the community. So that it's
impossible to talk about waging any type of struggle, if the commu
nity is not a part of that struggle. So if we have problems, we have to
bring the community into the campus . We have to stop isolating
ourselves from the commun ity. Because the very people on the
campus live in the community. And they come from the community;
so therefore, the universities are also a part of the community. So
we have to relate to Eldridge's article, "Education and Revolution."
He outlined it very clear how we have to move, what we have to
do. He's made it clear that the Board of Regents, the Board of
Trustees, the Administrators whoever the people are in power, that
they are designated as enemies . Because these people are members of
military regimes, they're politicians, they're very powerful people out
side of the community.
When I look a round on San Francisco State College campus for the
revolutiona ries last year that so gallantly, so bravely, and courageously
stood up for what they demanded in their Black studies program; it's
not the same. It seems that they've taken a defeatist attitude . Well,
I'm saying thaf perhaps out of the teachers we can make some
revolutionaries on this campus . And we can put Hayakawa where he
belongs,7 and we can show the tactical squad that we're not terror
ized by their violence. We're powerful beca use we out number them .
And that there's nothing that they can do to stop our emancipation,
there's nothing they can do to stop you from regaining your hu
manity. That's what our struggle is about, it's about revolution . I t's
not just about teachers holding their jobs. It's about teachers edu
cating, and telling the truth on a very oppressive and corrupt system .
The leader of the Korean people Kim II Sung, has said that, "reac
tionary ideas of the imperialist, are the main tools used to produce
ideological degeneration in people and make them politically de
formed ." So that it's the duty of the teachers to teach revolution :
1 25
it's the duty of the teachers to join the revolution. Because they' re
not teachers if they're not teaching something relevant to the com
munity. And we don' t make any distinction between members of the
A.F.T.,8 White people and the Black students on our campuses. We
don't make any distinctions between the White students on our
campuses and the B .S.U. As a matter of fact, we want to expand
the B .S.U., so that we can usurp all the revolutionary individuals; all
the organiza tions; and put together a more formidable force, so that
we can withstand the repression that's being meted out against us.
That's the only way that we're going to make the American
revolution.
The Black Panther Party is not going to support any B.S.U. policy
that asks for an autonomous Black studies program that excludes
other individuals . Because we recognize that our repression is being
meted out by a very vicious government. A government that doesn't
make any distinctions between revolutionaries. And as Eldridge has
said, the only reason that the Black Panther Party is suffering the
brunt of repression with such a magnitude is because our resistance
requires that kind of repression, and that the same repression will be
meted out to you, if you take the same position.
So we're not going to be duped into aligning ourselves with
cowards, with renegades from the revolution . We're here to make
the revolution, we're aware that we're revolutionaries; and we want
you to be revolutionaries . And that you must be revolutionaries
if you want peace in this country. You must be revolutionaries if
you want to maintain the so-called democracy that you so often
speak about, if you want to have freedom of speech . Because the
only people that enjoy freedom of speech seems to be deaf mutes,
those that have nothing to say, those who are afraid to say anything.
So recognizing that, the teachers have to get into the community;
they have to wage campaigns . They have to organize, and they have to
bring those people from the community on the campuses; whether
the pigs like that or not. Because the pigs don't own these institu
tions . These institutions are here for the people, and it's the people
that are going to put these pigs in their rightful places. They need
to be institutionalized, they need to be in prison, they need to be
done away with . And that's the kind of language that you have to
get used to using. You have to get used to speaking in that idiom,
because that's the language of revolutionaries.
You have to keep a very watchful eye on the people that stand up
and use super revolutionary slogans; but you can always catch them
in various devious places . Watch these people. Judge these people
by their actions and not by their words. Because the whole r7voluhon
has been infiltrated; it's been infiltrated culturally, and . 1t '. s b.een
infiltrated ideologically. So we have to be able to make d1stmchons
1 26
between people who are really dedicated to our cause and people who
are just opportunistically getting on the band wagon because it's a
popular trend. These are the things you have to think about. We're
either going to be revolutionaries or we're going to be the children
of fascists .
We know how to judge our friends from our enemies . We're not
confused . We're not so confused that we cannot poin t out on the one
hand the left capitulationist, and on the right the modern revi
sionist, they're very easily distinguishable. These are the people that
advocate revolution from the high tower top and when the repres
sion comes down you can't find them . We know who these people
are so I don't have to call their names.
But I think that it would be proper to put an organiza tion together
on this campus that represents White people, that represents the
oppressed Latin American people, that represents the Black People,
that represents the Red man, tha t represents all the oppressed peo
ple in this country. Until we do that, then the oppressor will be
victorious . The oppressor will gain all the victories, and we'll just
be stagnant, arguing and deba ting about jobs . There's not going to be
any jobs, there's not going to be any employment, there's not going
to be any peace un til there's peace for everybody. We're going to have
to work in a concerned effort to get that, ( applause ) . We have to
work with the people, we have to work with students, students with
teachers . And when we set up committees to voice our grievances,
let the students have the power. Let the students make the deci
sions, and not fall victims to a committee of tin pot bourgeois
thinking individuals. Our power lies in the masses. Our power lies
in the oppressed people that's out there, that's making conditions
comfortable enough for the teachers to be able to have these uni
versities, so that they can espouse revolutionary ideas.
So when we have our Central Committees, let our Cen tral Com
mittees be an organ governed by the will of not only the Black
students on this campus, but for the Latin Americans, and all other
oppressed peoples, and all other progressive people on this campus.
Let's have an organization that we call the Afro-American, Asian,
Latin Alliance. Motherfuck the B .S.U., because the B .S.U. is too nar
row. We recognize nationalism, because we know that our struggle is
one of national salvation . But this doesn't hinder our struggle, to make
alliances with other people that's moving in a common direction, but
rather it strengthens our struggle. Because it gives us more energy,
it gives us a more powerful force to move and to withstand the
repression that's being meted out against us. And when we have
racists on our campuses, that advocate those kind of splits, th en
let's isolate those people by setting up a tricontinental organ ization
on the campuses . Let's designate these people as being enemies, be
cause they're ultra-nationalists, because they're racists . And they
1 27
David Hilliard
Chief of Staff
Black Panther Party
-The Black Panther, December 27, 1 969
128
There's too many American flags out here, and our Minister of
Information, Eldridge Cleaver, says that the American flag and the
American eagle are the true symbols of fascism. ALL POWER TO
THE PEOPLE. Black power to Black people, Brown power to
Brown people, Red power to Red people, and Yellow power to Ho
Chi Minh, and Comrade Kim II Sung the courageous leader of the
40,000,000 Korean people.
The Black Panther Party takes the position that we want all Black
men exempt from military service and that we believe that Black
people should not be forced to fight in the military to defend a racist
government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other
people of color in the world, who like Black people are vicitims of US
imperialism on an international level, and fascism domestically. So
recognizing that, recognizing fascism, recognizing the occupation of
all the pigs in the Black community, then it becomes evident that
there's a war at home, there's a war of genocide being waged against
Black people right here in America.
So then, we would like to ask the American people do they want
peace in Vietnam. Well, do you? ( audience ) "Yes." Do you want
peace in the Black communities? (audience ) "Yes." Well you god
damned sure can't get it with no guitars, you sure can't get it
demonstrating. The only way that you're going to get peace in Viet
nam is to withdraw the oppressive forces from the Black communities
right here in Babylon . So that we have a suggestion for that, we have
a proposal, we have a message for that. We have a petition that
we're circulating on a national level to control the pigs in the Black
community; and we know that those pigs are not going to move of
their own volition. We know that those pigs are not going to stop
murdering Black people in the Black community. We also recognize
that White people are oppressed in the White community so that our
petition is applicable in their community.
But we have to make some very clear distinctions in terms of
minor danger and major danger. We say that the major danger is
right here in America because the Black community is occupied
territory and the pigs of the power structure are killing Black people
with the same lack of compunction, the same outrage and hatred that
1 29
they killed the courageous people of Vietnam. So that we're not going
to let you get around that. We're not going to let you talk about
waging a struggle in support of people 1 0,000 miles from here, when
you have problems right here in fascist America . We recognize that
a whole lot of people get uptight and they think that the Black
Panther Party is just making up shit, that they're distorting history
when we say that this country is fascist. But I think just a little
reexamination of your history will show to you that the American
people, that the history of this country promulgates and it sets a
precedence for any facism that has ever taken place on the stage of
world history.
Adolf Hitler was a fascist. The man was an animal. The man was
a monster. He was a jingoist, a warmongerer. But Adolf Hitler did not
create fascism. Adolf Hitler did not create the Black Legion.10
Black people were enslaved and killed in the millions before Hitler
even came on the scene. The Red man was exterminated in this
country and Hitler don't take responsibility for that. So that this
country has a blood stained history. This country is a country that was
built on war, it was built on the ruins it was built on the sweat and
blood of its Black people. So that the history of the Black Panther
Party, the ideology of the Black Panther Party is nothing more than
the historical experiences of Black people in this country translated by
way of Marxism-Leninism. Because we recognize that Marxism
Leninism is not a philosophy for Russians, it is not a philosophy for
Chinese but it's a philosophy for any people that's moving against
an oppressive power structure such as the capitalistic fascist system
of the American society. And we have adopted that. And that we're
putting it into practice because it is proven beyond a doubt that it's
truly in the service of the proletariat.
We would just like to ask the American people, we would like to
ask all the mothers in the audience, all the wives who have husbands
that are prisoners of war, that have been lost in action, do you want
your sons home? Do you want your sons home? (audience ) "Yes ."
Well we have a proposal for that. Our Minister of Information,
Eldridge Cleaver is in Algeria . He spent two months in Korea, at the
Pyongyang Journalist Conference, and there he spoke with members
of the National Liberation Front of Vietnam. So that we propose to
the mothers whose sons are political prisoners of war or wives whose
husbands are lost in action. That they submit to the Black Panther
Party their name, rank and serial number and we will turn this over
to the Minister of Information of the Black Panther Party, and we
will begin to negotiate for freedom for Huey P. Newton and Bobby
Seale, because they're political prisoners of US fascism . That's the
way that we want to help people. So that if you can relate to that
then we can relate to the American people. I f you can't relate to
1 30
freedom for our Chairman Bobby Seale and our Minister of Defense
Huey P. Newton then we say that we can't relate to the American
people.
We say down with the American fascist society. Later for Richard
Milhous Nixon, . the motherfucker. Later for all the pigs of the
power structure. Later for all the people out here that don't want to
hear me curse because that's all that I know how to do. That's all
that I'm going to do. I'm not going to ever stop cursing, not only
are we going to curse, we're going to put into practice some of the
shit that we talk about. Because Richard Nixon is an evil man. This
is the motherfucker that unleashed the counter-insurgent teams upon
the BPP. This is the man that's responsible for all the attacks on
the Black Panther Party nationally. This is the man that sends
his vicious murderous dogs out into the Black community and in
vade upon our Black Panther Party Breakfast Programs. Destroy
food that we have for hungry kids and expect us to accept shit like
that idly. Fuck that motherfucking man. We will kill Richard
Nixon. We will kill any motherfucker that stands in the way of our
freedom. We ain't here for no goddamned peace, because we know
that we can't have no peace because this country was built on war.
And if you want peace you got to fight for it.
ALL PO\VER TO THE PEOPLE
REPORTERS:
George Herma n, CBS News
Berna rd Nossiter, Wash i ngton Post
Ike Pappas, CBS News
MR. HERMAN : Mr. Hilliard, the clashes between the Black Panther
leaders and the police are now the subject of at least three investi
gations, one by the Justice Department, one by a group of Black
Congressmen, and one by a group headed by former Supreme
Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and former Attorney General Ramsey
Clark. What do you hope for from any or all of these investigations?
Mr. HILLIARD : We hope that these investigations will serve as a
convincing indictment against the oppressive United States govern-
131
ment and its killer police. The Black Panther Party has all along said
that the police were the main forces of oppression in our commu
nities and also we have made a trip to New York City to the UN last
year to apply for NGO status. So it has become very clear that the
government is working in cohorts with the local agencies, the police,
in a brutal attempt to try to liquidate the Black Panther Party. So
out of that investigation we hope to bring the truth to the American
people so that we can have peace in our communities.
MR. HERMAN : Mr. Hilliard, all three of these investigations are
being conducted by people either in or very close to the establish
ment, the Justice Department, former officials of the federal govern
ment, present members of Congress. Do you really think that one of
these investigations will find what you claim, oppression by the
government against the Black Panthers?
MR. HILLIARD : I think that already the Black Congressmen, headed
by Congressman Diggs, have shown concern for their own national
salvation. Of course, we do not have faith in the Justice Depart
ment, because the Justice Department is the symbol of injustice as
far as its Black subjects are concerned. We refer to Goldberg as a
fox that watches over the chickens. So we do not expect any
equality. We do not expect justice from the other individuals.
But we do have faith in our own people and the very fact that they
have come forth to try to bring out the criminal indictments against
the police and the other agencies of the United States government
shows, if nothing else, that there is solidarity with the Black people.
So we see that as being victorious.
MR. NossITER : Mr. Hilliard, you speak of criminal activities of
police. But don't the Panthers stock and collect guns themselves?
Isn't this an invitation to the police to take action?
MR. HILLIARD : First of all, the Panthers do not stock guns. We
are very aware of the gun laws . We advocate each individual having
a shotgun in their homes, as spelled out under the Constitution of
the United Sta tes . It is not our purpose to assemble large caches of
weapons . If we have weapons, we would distribute the weapons in the
community for self-defense, but we do not have armories . And, even
if we did, we would expect the same treatment under the law that is
given to members of the Ku Klux Klan, people like the Thorensons
or the Birchites.
MR. PAPPAS : Mr. Hilliard, the Justice Department denies what
you say, that there is an organized attempt to destroy the Black
Panthers. But, if what you say is true, how successful has it been, has
this campaign been against you?
MR. HILLIARD : I don't think that we can say it was successful.
What it has done is it brought to the attention of the American po
ple the atrociousness of the American government in terms of its
1 32
subjects, people moving for their freedom. The very fact that they
attack us so openly shows that they are very brutal people, that they
are a barbarous, criminal element within society. But, as far as their
successfulness is concerned, they are not successful. They can never
exterminate the Black Panther Party because the Black Panther Party
is not just a party for itself but, rather, it is a party for the people, and
its ideasMR. PAPPAS : Well, most of your leadership has been either jailed
or is in exile, or some of them are dead. There is a leadership gap,
obviously, in your organization. It seems to me that if there is a
campaign against you, it has been successful to a certain point.
MR. HILLIARD : Most people would like to think that, especially
the enemy, but we're satisfied that they can never exterminate the
Black Panther Party. In order to do that, they would have to commit
genocide because what we are working for is already spelled out
within the constitution of the United States. We are asking for the
basic necessities for human life so, therefore, it would be impossible
for them to exterminate or really have a successful extermination
campaign against our Party. Our Party is manifested in the people.
MR. HERMAN : Mr. Hilliard, you say that what you are after is mani
fested in the constitution and yet you personally have said that you
advocate the very direct forceful overthrow of the government. You
are under indictment, as I understand it, for advocating the assas
sination of President Nixon. That doesn't sound to me like it is all
within the constitution.
MR. HILLIARD : What is within the constitution is our right to free
speech.
MR. HERMAN : Yes .
MR. HILLIARD : And as far as my threatening the president, this is a
violation of my First Amendment right. I did not threaten the life
of the president. In the context of a speech that I made, I stated
very emphatically that we would kill anyone that stands in the way
of our freedom and, of course, the newsmen and the news media is
another instrument by which the government dupes and hypnotizes
the people. So the very fact that the newsmen themselves are
ideological lackeys for the system, they have mouthwashed the
criminal elements in the society and they have made the victims
look like the criminals and the criminal look like the victim. I never
said we would assassinate the president.
MR. HERMAN : Do you feel that Richard Nixon is standing in the
way of your freedom?
MR. HILLIARD : I think that anybody that picks up guns against
the oppressed people or anybody that endorses programs that main
tain the oppressive structure as it is, is in the way of our freedom.
MR. HERMAN : Is that Richard Nixon?
1 33
:'-merican
1 34
135
Constitution, where you say that : " . . . when a long train of abuses
and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design
to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their
duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for
their future security.'' Now this is from the Declaration of
Independence.
MR. HERMAN : Are you saying that time has now come?
MR. HILLIARD : And if it is good for the American people, then
we say it is good for the oppressed people of the world.
MR. HERMAN : Are you saying that the time has come when the
masses of people have been pushed to the wall, when they cannot
any longer redress their grievances through the legal political ma
chinery of this country.
MR. HILLIARD : We are not the decision-makers, the masses are.
If the masses think it is time to overthrow this system, then there is
nothing you or the President or anyone else can do.
We have about thirty chapters throughout the United States.
MR. HERMAN : That would be what, 5,000 or 1 0,000 people?
MR. HILLIARD : It may be. It may be more than that.
MR. HERMAN : Do you have the feeling that this small group 5,000
or 1 0,000, really represent the masses of the Black people?
MR. HILLIARD : I am saying that the ideas spelled out in our ten
point program and platform represent the basic desires and needs
of the people.
MR. HERMAN : How do you know?
MR. HILLIARD : Because these are ideas taken from the masses.
These are not just a bunch of abstract ideas that fell from the sky and
ended up on our paper. This is a survey, what we asked for, things
that were promised to us over 400 years ago.
MR. HERMAN : But aren't some of these things that you have down
on the paper in your demands and so forth, aren't some of them para
phrases of Mao Tse-tung and Che Guevara, rather than the Black
masses?
MR. HILLIARD : There is nothing here that paraphrases per se Mao
Tse-tung or Che Guevara, but the ideas, the desires asked for, the
aspirations in our program are the same that all of the oppressed peo
ple in the world ask for, and that is freedom of self-determination.
The ultimacy is national salvation .
MR. NossITER : Mr. Hilliard, is your back really to the wall? Here
you are on national television. Here are all kinds of moderate Black
groups that have come to take up your cause, at least on the legal
side. Doesn't this indicate that perhaps the society is much more
responsive and much more open to legitimate demands than your
rhetoric sometimes suggests?
MR. HILLIARD : I don't think that television is the big payoff. We
1 36
could ask for a lot of other things. More so than television, I would
rather be in our communities feeding hungry children, setting up,
trying to erect institutions that would educate the people, the chil
dren in our communities so that they would not have to wage war
in your name, or his, or this man's.
MR. PAPPAS : Mr. Hilliard, there are twenty million Black people
in this country and, if you say you have maybe five thousand or even
ten thousand members, that still is not twenty million. How are you
going to get them, the rest of the Black people, over to your side? We
understand that you are having difficulty getting people to join with
you in your philosophy.
MR. HILLIARD : Well, first of all, I never quoted you any figure. I
told you that we had about thirty chapters. But our program is the
method for our organizing people. We are organizing them around
our ten-point program, a program that spells out the basic desires and
needs of all people. And the very fact that the Black Panther Party
is a party that relates to internationalism as the key to eradicating
racism in this country shows that we are much stronger than even
you imagine.
-The Black Panther, January 1 0, 1970
7.
F R E D H A M PTO N S P EA KS
1 38
We got to talk first of all about the main man. The main man in
the Black Panther Party, the main man in the struggle today-in
the United States, in Chicago, in Cuba and anywhere else-the main
man in the liberation struggle is our Minister of Defense, and yours
too, Huey P. Newton. He's the main man because the head of the
imperialist octopus lies right in this country and whoever is deal ing
with the head of the octopus in this country is the main man. He's
in jail now. We must tell the world that Huey P. Newton was tried
by the pigs and they found him guilty. He was tried by the peo
ple, who found him not guilty, and we say let him go, let him free,
because we find him not guilty. This is our relentless demand . We
will not let up one day, we will not give up the struggle to liberate
our Minister of Defense, Huey P. Newton and we will continue to
exert pressure on the power structure and constantly bombard them
with the people's demand that Huey P. Newton be set free.
I t was Huey P. Newton who taught us how the people learn . You
learn by participation. When Huey P. Newton started out what did
he do? He got a gun and he got Bobby and Bobby got a gun. They had
a problem in the community because people was being run over
kids were being run over-at a certain intersection .11 What did the
people do? The people went down to the government to redress
their grievances and the government told them to go to hell : "We
are not going to put no stoplights down there UNTIL WE SEE
FIT." What did Huey P. Newton do? Did he go out and tell the
people about the laws and write letters and try to propagandize 'em
all the time? NO! Some of that's good, but the masses of the people
don't read-that's what I heard Huey say-they learn through ob
servation and participation . Did he just say this? NO! So what did
he do? He got him a shotgun, he got Bobby and he got him a ham
mer and went down to the corner. He gave Bobby the shotgun
and told him if any pig motherfuckers come by blow his mother
1 39
fuckin brains out. What did he do? He went to the comer and nailed
up a stop sign. No more accidents, no more trouble. And then
he went back-another situation like that. What'd the people do?
They looked at it, they observed; they didn't get a chance to partici
pate in it. Next time what'd they do? Same kind of problem came up.
The PEOPLE got THEIR shotguns, got THEIR nine milimeters, got
THEIR hammers. How'd they learn? They learned by observation
and participation. They learned one thing. When there is a fire you
gather round the fire. Huey got a shotgun and everybody gathered
round him and Bobby. They saw what was going on and they had a
chance to participate in it. As the vanguard leader he taught the
people about the power structure; he led the people down the
correct road of revolution . What are we doing?
lreakfa1t for Chlldren
1 40
Subvenlves
Some people talk a lot about communism, but the people can't
understand and progress to the stage of communism right away or
because of abstract arguments. They say you got to crawl before
you can walk. And the Black Panther Party, as the vanguard party,
thought that the Breakfast for Children Program was the best t!'!ch
nique of crawling that any vanguard party could follow. And we got
a whole lot of folks that's going to be walking. And then a whole lot
of folks that's gonna be runn ing. And when you got that, what you
got? You got a whole lot of PIGS that's gonna be running. That's
what our program's about.
The Black Panther Party is about the complete revolution . We not
gonna go out there and half do a thing. And you can let the pigs know
it. 111ey come here and hide-they so uncomfortable they sitting on
a taperecorder, they got their gun in their hair-they got to hide all
this shit and they come here and do all th is weird action. All they
got to do is come up to 2 3 50 West Madison any day of the week and
anybody up there'll let them know, let the motherfucker know : Yes,
we subversive. Yes, we subversive with the bullshit we are con fronted
with today. Just as subversive as anybody can be subversive. And we
think them motherfuckers is the criminals. 111ey the ones always
hiding. We the ones up in fron t. We're out in the open, these
motherfuckers should start wearing uniforms. They want to know if
the Panthers are goin' underground-these motherfuckers IS under
ground. You can't find 'em . People calls the pigs but nobody knows
where they at. They're out chasing us. 1 11ey hiding-can't nobody
even see 'em .
When people got a problem they come to the Black Panther
Party for help and that's good . Because, like Mao says, we are sup
posed to be ridden by the people and Huey says we're going
to be ridden down the path of social revolution and that's for the
people. The people ought to know that the Black Panther Party
is one thousand percent for the People. They write a lot of articles,
you know, niggers']] run up to you in a minute-when I say niggers
I mean white niggers and black niggers alike-niggers']] run up to
you and talk that shit about, Man, I read in the Tribune today.
Well you say, Man, fuck it right there. If you didn't read it in the
B LACK PANTHER paper, in the MOVEMENT-then you ain't
read shit.
Mickey White
141
dollars bail . Some of you who listen to the radio might have heard
about brothers in the state chapter, our field secretary of Defense
Captain, brother Nathaniel Junior and Brother Merrill Harvey being
laid up on some phoney gun charge. We don't say the Panthers
don't want guns, but we already got guns and we don't have to go
and try and steal or connive to buy any guns from anybody. What
they are trying to do is to squash out the Black Panther Party
they're trying to squash out the leadership. Trying to squash out
Bobby Rush, the Deputy Minister of Defense. Trying to squash out
Chaka and Che, the Deputy Minister of Education.
Mickey White was in that bullshit with Nathaniel Junior and
Merrill Harvey. Last week when they went to court even the judge
in court said, you all gonna get a fair trial whether you deserve it
or not. These are the types of actions we are confronted with . Mickey
White is in solitary confinement and doesn't get to come out of his
cell for anything at any time. And he might be in that cell for the
rest of his life. His bond is $1 00,000. That's $1 0,000 cash .
Mickey White is a proven revolutionary. He's not nobody we
THINK is going to be a revolutionary. He's not nobody we trying
to make a revolutionary. He's a proven revolutionary. All of you
have to understand that Mickey White is a Panther in ideology,
he's a Panther in word and he's a Panther in deed . He's a Panther that
understands it's a class struggle-not a race question. You have to
understand the pressures the Black Panther Party goes through saying
this. You can see the pressures the Black Panther Party goes through
by making a coalition with whites.
When the Black Panther Party stood up and said we not going to
fight racism with racism US said "NO, we can't do that because it's
a race question and if you make it a class question then the revolution
might come sooner. We in US ain't prepared for no revolution
because we think that power grows from the sleeve of a
Dashiki." They are armed with rhetoric and rhetoric alone. And we
found that when you're armed with rhetoric and rhetoric alone a lot
of times you get yourself hurt. Eldridge Cleaver told them, even
though you say you fight fire with fire best, we think you fight fire
with water. You can do either one, but we choose to fight with water.
He said, we're not going to fight racism with racism, we're going to
fight racism with solidarity. Even though you think you ought to
fight capitalism with black capitalism, we're going to fight capitalism
with socialism .
We got a whole lot of people being busted and you don't even
know about all these people. There's one here you definitely have to
know about and that's our Deputy Minister of Defense-Bobby Rush .
Our Deputy Minister Bobby Rush was busted on some b llshit with a
gun thing. He's got three gun charges. He's been convicted of one
with a six month lead. He's out on appeal now. I know a lot of you
1 42
people say, well goddamn, you got a Mickey White defense fund,
an Eldridge Cleaver defense fund, a Merrill Harvey defense fund, a
Nathaniel Junior defense fund, a Huey Newton defense fund, a
Fred Hampton, Jule, Che, and Chaka defense fund-and I just can't
keep up with all these defense funds . But since we are the vanguard
party we try to do things right, so we got one defense fund so you
don't get mixed up on what name to send it to. We'll decide who it
goes to . You can just send it to Political Defense Fund, 2350 West
Madison. If you want to send something to Breakfast for Children,
you can send it to 2 3 50 West Madison also, and you can earmark
that money to go to the Breakfast for Children program.
We got Mickey on our mind tonight-and everybody knows we
got Huey P. Newton on our mind tonight. We got every political
prisoner in jail on our mind tonight. Eldridge Cleaver-all of these
people either dead, or in exile or in jail. A lot of people under
standing this will lose real faith in the vanguard by not under
standing what we're talking about.
A lot of these people will go up to you in a minute and say, "Why
all these people being taken, why haven't they shot it out with
some pigs." Well, what do we say? If you kill a few, you get a little
satisfaction . But when you can kill them ALL you get complete
satisfaction . That's why we haven't moved. We have to organize the
people. We have to educate the people. We have to arm the people.
We have to teach them about revolutionary political power. And when
they understand all that we won't be killing no few and getting no
little satisfaction, we'll be killing 'em all and getting complete
satisfaction.
Go with the People
1 43
A lot of people think the revolution is bullshit, but it's not. A lot
of us think that when you get in the revolution you can talk your way
out of things, but that's not true. Ask Bobby Hutton, ask Huey
Newton, ask Eldridge Cleaver, Mickey White and Dennis Mora. Ask
these people whether it's a game. If you get yourself involved
in a revolutionary struggle then you've got to be serious. You got to
know what you're doing. You got to already have practiced some
type of theory. That's the reason we ask people to follow the leader
ship of the vanguard party. Because we all theorizing and we all
practicing. We make mistakes, but we're always correcting them and
we're always getting better.
We used to run around yellin 'bout Panther Power-the Panthers
run it. We admit we made mistakes. Our ten point program is in the
midst of being changed right now, because we used the word
"white" when we should have used the word "capitalist" . We're the
first to admit our mistakes . We no longer say Panther Power because
we don't believe the Panthers should have all the power. We are not
for the dictatorship of the Panthers. We are not for the dictatorship
of Black people. We are for the dictatorship of the people.
The difference between the people and the vanguard is very im
portant. You got to understand that the people follow the vanguard.
You got to understand that the Black Panther Party IS the van
guard. If you are about going to the people you got to understand
that the vanguard leads the people. After the social revolution, the
vanguard party, through our educational programs-and that pro
gram is overwhelming-the people are educated to the point that
they can run things themselves. That's what you call educating the
people, organizing the people, arming the people and bringing them
revolutionary political power. That means people's power. That means
the people's revolution. And if you're not about being involved in a
people's revolution then you got to do something. You got to sup
port the people's revolution.
Complete Satisfaction
The Black Panther Party is the vanguard party. You better get on
the Black Panther Party. If you can't get on, goddamit you better
get behind. If you can't get behind goddamit, you better get behind
somebody else so you'll at least be able to follow indirectly, mother
fucker. We ain't asking you to go out and ask no pig to leave us
alone. We know that the pigs fuck with us cause they know we're
doing something.
Cause a lot of dudes walk around and write articles about it. I
know some revolutionary groups say these niggers are runnin around
saying these things-the PL 1 2 motherfuckers talking that . bull
shit, couldn't even find things to criticize. They was so far m he
ground. What was they doing? Organizing groundhogs, educatmg
1 44
PEOPLE
a.
B LAC K PA N T H E R WO M E N
S P EA K
1 45
1 46
1 47
MLK Kiiied
148
1 49
1 50
Jall or Murder
During all these assassination plots, LBJ has been President and
benefactor. LBJ is a President notorious to unbelievable propor
tions for his outright corruption and high-level gangsterism . The
pattern of assassination falls at his doorstep, on the front door of
the White House. True, political power grows out of the barrel of a
gun . The only question is whose politics : Huey P. Newton's or
LB J's? Power to the pigs or power to the people? Martin Luther
King and Eldridge Cleaver both stood for power to the people. One
was a min ister of the church, the other a minister of the Black
Panther Party. 'I 'he Black Panther Party will prevail .
-The B lack Panther, May 1 8, 1 968
151
1 52
1 53
1 54
The Strugg le Is
World Strugg le
by Con n i e Matthews
Speech delivered a t the V ietnam Mora torium demonstration,
San J ose State College, October 1 5 , 1 969
T11 E BLAO:
hJfTftD
!IA'"1RDAT, 1JJf. 11 , I M I
IMPERIALIST
PLANS . . .
1 56
1 57
rest of it and you have got to get hip to the fact that you cannot
allow this thing to continue. You have got to get hip to the fact
that what the Black Panther Party wants is to take the wealth from
out of the hands of the few, and it is only controlled by about
2 50 people who run the world. This seems absurd, but there are
only about 2 50 to 300 big capitalists in this country. They are the
ones who put who they want in power, they are the ones who
control and rule the world and say what should be done in this
country and for that matter the world. Now the future rests with
you people who are here today.
You can see what has been going on in Chicago and I can tell
you that the so-called mother country radicals have been a disap
pointment. I was in Court there and they don't take this thing
seriously. They do not understand that the trial in Chicago, the
outcome, will set the precedence in the United States as to whether
the people have any freedom or not. They seem to think th is is
all a big joke, with Abbie Hoffman doing somersaults in Court and
all that kind of buUs--t. Now, I am saying you have had what is
known as group freedom and you are trying to find individual free
dom. We are all one people, this is all one country, in fact in the
whole world we are all one people, so until everyone has known
what group freedom is you are not going to be able to exist in
your h ippie and yippie societies with individual freedom. And I am
saying that over the last six months Nixon has launched a massive
repression against the Black Panther Party that is unheard of. When
I have spoken in other countries, like France, Germany or even
England, people find it hard to believe that Americans, people
like you can sit here and watch this sort of thing happening and
you do nothing about it. Chairman Bobby Seale, at the beginning
of his trial in Chicago was sick, and he wasn't allowed to have a
doctor, he has no lawyer, he has no rights he is unable to defend
himself, because Charles Garry, h is lawyer, is lying on his back in
the hospital righ t here in California, and because he is a Black
man it doesn't matter. He shouldn't have anyone to defend him.
I am now saying to you here, that I do not think you are trying
hard enough, I don't think you understand fully what's goin g on .
I think you need to get out of your bag and your safe complacency
in these colleges. I think you need to go and work in those com
munities, but before you go into the communities and propagate
the wrong ideology, arm yourselves with the right ideology, und er
stand what the struggle is about. It is the oppressed ag inst the
oppressor. You middle-class people, because I do not beh eve tha t
any. of you here are capitalists, there are only about 300 , Y?U are
definitely in a vacuum and you are going to have to take sides at
some stage or other and make sure that you take the right side ,
1 58
because if you don 't you are not going to have any place to go,
because the people must win .
The Vietnamese are a good example of the people being victorious.
Because with all of America's technology and her greatness she has
been unable to defeat the Vietnamese. Every man, woman and
child has resisted . You want to see what is going on in Vietnam.
All the men have had to go to the front and you should see how
those women and children safeguard their villages . It is probably
very difficult for you in the middle of all this to see it clearly, but
th is is why you have the greatest responsibility. The people who
understand what is wrong, because it has to come from within as
well as from outside.
We have a petition for community control of police, and those of
you who are not familiar with it, get yourself familiar with it, be
cause this is one of the ways in which we are trying to get the power
back into the hands of the people. Here on your colleges you have
these demonstrations and you go about saying that you don't want
this and you don't want that, and you want this and you want that,
and then you sit down and you say you have won . You haven't won
anything because you must realize that the people who control the
colleges are the same people who were put there because they have
power in the communities. So your job is in the communities. The
two things are tied up together. Don't try to put them in com
partments. I think the time has come for all you young people here
in the United States to take a look at yourselves. Look inside first.
Try and grasp what the Black Panther Party is trying to do, try and
understand how many lives we have lost, because we are trying to
educate you. We are the Vanguard because of 400 years, of sweat,
blood toil and tears. But we are not going to start the revolution,
it's when you people arc educated fully that this thing is going to
have to happen, and I am trying to say that if you sit by in this
complacency you know wha t will happen?-This so-called United
States of America was built up at the expense of genocide of 50
million Indians and you people have romanticized it and called it
"Cowboys and Indians." 111ink about that s--t. Six million Jews
were murdered and people sat by and didn't believe it was happening.
You sit by now and understand that this is happening righ t here,
and that the power is in your hands, because you are the people so
th is country belongs to you, so you are the ones who are going to
have to stop it and you are going to have to stop it not just by
concentrating on one aspect but all facets of what's going on . What
I am trying to say is, educate yourselves, in turn educate your people,
the people in the communities. Whenever you go out you talk about
it. You talk about the whole thing, the reason why they divided us
1 59
21 case i n
$ 1 00,000 ba i l .
6, 1 970,
Pa nther
on
1 969,
1 60
161
We Will Win:
Letter from Prison by Afen i Shakur
Afe n i S h a k u r is o n e o f t h e Pa nther 2 1 i n N e w York accused of
conspi racy. The letter was wri tten w h i l e she was imprisoned in the
Women's House of Detenti on in l i e u of $ 1 00,000 bai l .
1 62
l h e B l a c k P a n t h e r s Speak
that you are blood-thirsty, pitiless and inhuman. We have seen you
justify the most inhuman crimes-the worst of which was the de
struction of men's hearts and minds. We know of your greed. We
know that 1 0,000 army bases does not make this a "free world" except
free for your exploitation and imperialism . How many civilizations
have you destroyed?
In this country we know that we are not 2nd class citizens-we
know that we are not citizens at all. We know that the 1 3th, 1 4th
and 1 5th amendments did not liberate us-that they only legalized
slavery and expanded the Dred Scott decision to include the In
dians, Spanish speaking and poor whites. We know that things have
not gotten any better-but only progressively worse. We know that
this is the rich man's courts, laws, and j ustice. It is his skies, and air
we can only look at it and breathe it if he says so. We know that
wealth is not the fruit of labor but the result of organized protected
robbery. But you teach the poor workers to be honest. We know that
the Almighty dolla r which everyone is taught to revere is only
guaranteed by slavery and exploitation. We know that we live in a
world inhuman in its poverty. We know that we are a colony, living
under community imperialism. The U.S. that we see is not one of
freedom, beauty, and wisdom, but of fear, terror, and hate. This is a
nation of your laws, run by your police, and based on protecting your
economic strength. The poor are politically, economically and legally
non-existent that is why in jail, 80% of the inmates are non-wh ite
and all are poor. Yet even your sociologists and criminologists admit
that 80% of these are innocent.
We see that inhuman treatment but are told that we do not. We
see men beaten to death in jail but are told that they died of "natural
causes" but we are liars. Just as we arc always presumed guilty. We
heard the judge tell us that "The law didn't apply to us," but it isn't
in the record-and of course we lie. We arc born criminals and liars.
We know we are innocent but we are liars. The people know we arc
innocent but they don't count. 111e prisoners know we arc innocent
but they too are liars. The guards and even the captains of the guards
know we are innocent but they can't testify. They will lose their jobs.
We can prove we are innocent. But we wonder docs it really matter.
We can prove it in detail and we will, but j ust in general the charges
against us in this indictment are ridiculous and arc contradictory to
our basic beliefs. We have never been asked as a people whether we
wanted to be governed by your God, your laws, your justice, your
customs, your speech, dress, and ethics. We do not. We have no
respect for them . We have no respect for your laws, taxes, your
gratitude, sincerity, honor and dignity-you have no respect for them
yourself. You don't respect us-thus we don't respect YOU.
We admit that we do not want you to "elevate" us to be workers
1 63
who are only free enough to sec our labors to you. We will not be
your killers any longer-nor will we be "elevated" to become your
accomplices. You will not reform nor improve upon this system-we
feel that it cannot be reformed and we do not want it improved-we
demand that it be changed . We realize that you have filled the army,
the jails, and the dope seller lists with our young people-we demand
their release. We realize that you cannot give us the right to any
thing-either we have it or we do not. That we must be independent
we must stop being dependent-and now. We cannot do it by moder
ation-that is a contradiction and an impossibility-you do not stop
a child from starving by moderation-you do not stop murder by
moderation . We realize that freedom is a duty and it is our duty to
get this freedom for our people and to yield to no one in obtaining
it. We will be beggars no longer. You brought the nigger into exis
tence and now, finally, we are destroying him .
We know that your economic system is a chain around our necks
and we are breaking all of your chains . We will identify with the
needs of our people-the oppressed . You do not want us to rule you
and we do not want you to rule us. We will rule ourselves, make our
own progress, our own mistakes, our own friends, and our own
enemies. We will judge our own . We will mend enmities that you
have created and make enemies of your friends. We will live. We
will have a humanistic, disciplined mutual cooperation as our goal.
The question becomes-does the state rule the people or do the
people rule the state? You are the state and we say "All Power to the
People" and the people will have the power. But you will try to stop
us . You will oppress us until we stop you and we will stop you. His
tory shows that wars against oppression are always successful . And
there will be a war-a true revolutionary war-a bloody war. No one
not you nor us nor anyone in this country can stop it from occurring
now. And we will win . We admit all of this . But, and this is impor
tant, the charges you have against us we are innocent of. You see for
one thing we study Malcolm X-and he said : "I believe in anything
that is necessary to correct unjust conditions . . . I believe in it as
long as it's intelligently directed and designed to get results. But I
don't believe in getting involved in any kind of political action or
other kind of action without sitting down and analyzing the possibil
ity of success or failure." What success could we have achieved, what
results could we have obtained that would correspond with our goal?
You have accused us of conspiring to murder innocent people l;>Y the
use of terrorism. We feel that in itself is an insult to our intelligence
and our seriousness. The technique of terrorism is always the . same
bombs-usually against soldiers and always against our enemies. The
people who shop in those stores are not our enemies. Why would
we want to hurt or kill or burn them? All of the workers and most
1 64
by
Mrs. Ba rker del ivered this speech at the memorial rally held De
cem ber 6, 1 969, 201 So. Ashland in honor of Fred H a m pton and
Mark Cla rk. She i s the mother of Pa nther Ann Ca m pbel l .
I have but one thing that I would like to ask of the Black mothers
and fathers in this coun try and all over the world. You have given
much to your sons and daughters. You have overcome insurmount
able forces of evil against you. You have paid the supreme price. You
have given to the world the best. Stand behind it. Do not be
ashamed. I have but one child . I gave her to the cause. She works for
you, because she knows where Vietnam really is. She said to me one
day, she said "Mother, they are not oppressing us in Vietnam, they
are not killing the soul brothers in Vietnam, they are not shooting
th rough doors and killing Black women in Vietnam, they're doing it
here!" Yes, mothers and fathers, I would like to say to you that you
have listened to the television, the radio, and you have read the news
papers, but you have not walked out of your doors to the Breakfast
Centers to see what your hildren are trying to do. Don't listen-walk
and find out for yourselves . And when you see the tremendous forces
that are working against the beautiful work your children are trying
to do, I think you will be very glad to stand up and be counted .
Remember this : prayer is good. If Fred could be murdered while he
slept, remember what can happen to you while you're on your knees.
I pledge allegiance to my parents and I hope that you will under-
1 65
9.
CO M M U N I TY ACT I V I T I ES
"Breakfast for Children pulls people out of the system and organ
izes them into an alternative. Black children who go to school hungry
each morning have been organized into their poverty, and the Panther
program liberates them, frees them from .that aspect of their
poverty. This is liberation in practice. . . . If we can understand Break
fast for Children, can we not also understand Lunch for Children,
and Dinner for Children, and Clothing for Children, and Education
for Children, and Medical Care for Children? And if we can under
stand that, why can't we understand not only a People's Park, but
People's Housing, and People's Transportation, and People's Industry
and People's Banks? And why can't we understand a People's Gov
ernment?': So wrote Eldridge Cleaver from exile in an article enti
tled "On Meeting the Needs of the People," published in The
Black Panther of August 1 6, 1 969. In this section, the reader will
find examples of community activities conducted by the Black Pan
ther Party : the Free Breakfast for School Children program, Libera
tion schools and other programs.
1 67
1 68
1 69
shall inform you on the achievements of the Breakfasts, and the ways
that you can assist. Hunger is one of the means of oppression and it
must be halted .
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
111e Free Breakfast for Children is just one of the programs being
carried out by the Black Panther Party that can be attributed to
Huey P. Newton. Huey P. Newton, organizer and Minister of De
fense of the Black Panther Party says that the Party must go forth to
meet the basic desires and needs of the people. Huey says the mem
bers of the Party are oxen to be ridden by the people.
How is the Party ridden by the people? Panthers working the
breakfast program get out of bed at approximately 6 : 00 a.m. every
school day. 111ey set tables, clean facilities, cook and prepare the
food, they direct traffic to see that the children cross the streets
safely. After a day's breakfast has been completed, the Panthers at
tend to the constant task of procuring food from the merchants who
do business in the community, to see that the program is constantly
supplied with the necessary food . Why a Breakfast for Children Pro
gram? The answers to this question need be answered for only those
who belong to the upper or so-called middle class. The majority of
Black, Mexican-American, Orientals and poor Whites know from
their American experience that it is impossible to obtain and sustain
any education when one has to attend school hungry.
Huey P. Newton knew that these conditions existed and that the
American school system has not seen fit to alleviate them. Validity
has been added to Huey's knowledge by the fact that the Free
Breakfast program has spread like wild fire across the United States
wherever Black Panther Chapters and Branches exist.
Tbe Free Breakfast for Children program is a socialistic program,
designed to serve the people. All institutions in a society should _be
designed to serve the masses, not just a "chosen few" . In Amenca
this program is revolutionary. In capitalist America any program that
is absolutely free is considered bad business. The Black Panther Party
is a vanguard organization and a vanguard organization educates by
1 70
Liberation Schools
171
Children come through the doors ready to eat, learn and play.
They know that when they come in, their breakfast is being pre
pared, because the Black Panther Party knows the import ance of
having breakfast in the morning. It wakes them up and gives them
strength to exert their energy.
Being an assistant teacher, I have an opportunity to ? e a ?1 ongst
the children and start a conversation, and stim ulate their mms to
seeing clearly the state of repression that we are livin g in. ':"hat is S?
fascinating for the teachers and parents is to see how qmckly their
1 72
minds work, and are able to elaborate and go into detail. We know
that our children are brilliant, all you have to do is show them and
guide them in the right direction . Most of the ch.ildren raise their
hands without even being asked, to speak of the ten point platform
and program, what is happening in their community, pigs, and Pan
thers. They are given posters and can tell you all of the names, such
as; Huey, Bobby, Eldridge, and others. And when you speak of
Eldridge they say, "he's free, he's eating watermelon and the pigs
can't touch him."
TI1ey are eager to learn and exchange ideas, because the curriculum
is based on true experiences of revolutionaries and everyday people
who the children can relate to. One Mother of five told me that her
children made satisfactory grades in school, but when she saw the
work they were doing in the Liberation School, such as; choosing
articles and writing about them or giving an oral report about an
event that happened in the world, she smiled with pride; she said,
"their work shows that they can relate to what is happening to them
and other poor people in the world." Some of the children who can't
even write, try because they understand that we are there to help
each other. We have a basic topic each day :
Monday is Revolutionary History Day
Tuesday is Revolutionary Culture Day
Wednesday is Current Events Day
Thursday is Movie Day
Friday is Field Trip Day
( The topics can be changed around for the benefit of the people
working in a Liberation School )
This is basic, but we have a Curriculum Coordinator who arranges
a curriculum each week. We also take the children outside for exer
cises. They all raise their hands to lead in the exercises. You watch
them strong and full of vigor. lney march to songs that tell of the
pigs running amuck, and Panthers fighting for the people.
We have children in the Liberation School ranging from 2-1 3. The
older ones are becoming more and more helpful to their younger
brothers and sisters. At the age of 10-1 3 children have seen and ex
perienced things for themselves, where as, they understand the need
for their younger brothers and sisters to fully understand why there
is a need for a Liberation School . We call ourselves the Big Family
along with the rest of our class brothers and sisters all over the world .
We want the children to especially understand the class struggle, be
cause people of all colors are being exploited by the same pigs all
over the world. Most of the Liberation Schools are in areas where
poor people of all colors live who are being exploited and oppressed,
because of this it is easier for them to relate to the class struggle
when they see people of different races who are just as poor as they.
1 73
Our young children are becoming more and more disciplined each
day, simply because they can relate to what is being taught. One four
year old, Sonya, told her fellow student who is three that he was too
big to be crymg, and don't you want to hear about Huey P. Newton
and Bobby Seale. "She'', got the three year old to stop crying. We
know that the children are going to rebel against their teachers and
older people, but we know that the most important thing is to get the
children to work with each other, because there's not going to be a
Black Panther Party around all the time to set things straight. They're
going to have to depend and relate to each other. We have small
fights and arguments, but when they do occur we sit down and dis
cuss the matter and come to a conclusion, a unity of will, because we
know that if we don't solve the problem then and there, the children
will be holding grudges against each other.
In the past the colleges, and recently high school students have
been voicing their demands and opinions. These children will teach
their other brothers and sisters, and even the elementary schools will
be expressing their disgust of the situation they are in. They are the
ones that will carry on the struggle, and we are happy to say that in
the next couple of weeks, Liberation Schools will be springing up all
over the Nation, just like the Breakfast for School Children .
ALL POWER TO THE YOUTH
Lincoln
Webster Sheffield
1 74
1 75
"Next, we had several more young people who came in for routin e
examinations, and then a mother brought in a four-month old baby
who had a bad cold. The baby was examined by the pediatricia n, and
a throat culture was taken. This baby had been going to the well
baby clinic operated by the Board of Health, but had not yet re
ceived any of the normal shots . After the examination and discussion
with the mother, an appointment was made for the baby to return
for continued treatment and the shots."
Among others who came in that evening, Mrs. Woods said, was a
young woman who had contracted venereal disease, several other
children, and a woma n suffering from a "cold" for three months.
"All these people were treated free, no questions asked about
'ability to pay' or anything. On hand to take care of all these people
were a pediatrician, a general practitioner, two interns, and two
nurses."
The center does not stop at treating medical problems . A member
of the Black Panther Party is on hand at all times to serve as a
"people's advocate." He interviews each patient.
"111e people's advocate makes the center more able to deal with
the entire range of people's problems," Mrs. Woods said. "After
being examined, the patient and his or her parents if a minor discuss
any other problems they may have with the representative of the
Panthers . 1be people's advocate will try to find out if the patient has
any difficulties at home, such as paying the rent, find ing clothes for
the family, food, or whether they may be having trouble studying, or
in school-almost any kind of problem is relevant.
"Whenever possible, the Panthers will help with the problem, no
matter what it is. For example, we discovered that many of the school
children, aside from problems like going without breakfast, faced
serious strain from the difficulty of finding a place to study or play,
safe from the hazards of the street. So we opened up the center to
them during the afternoon, before the regular hours, where they
can play quietly, or study, paint or do whatever they wish ."
Most diseases the center has treated, frequently discovered by
the canvass teams and previously unknown to the patient, are
bronchial ailments, heart disease, diabetes, apparent mental retarda
tion, and high blood pressure.
The success of the Spurgeon "Jake" Winters People's Medical Care
Center has inspired similar efforts by other organizations, particularly
those in the "rainbow coalition" with the Panthers. Both the Young
Lords and the Young Patriots have opened centers, although they
are not yet operating on as full a schedule as the Panthers.
-Daily World, May 1 6, 1 970
1 76
1 77
I n Memory of
Dr. Marti n Luther King
1 78
The United States spends over 40 billion dollars per year in Viet
nam. At least that amount should immediately be redirected to
meet the needs of America's oppressed communities. Ghetto hous
ing must be rebuilt and turned over to the occupants. Adequate
jobs and services must be provided to all ghetto residents, and these
must be turned over to the cooperative control of the ghetto resi
dents. White racism is a reactionary response to the just demands
of Black people. Ultimately, white racism will not be eliminated
until those demands are adequately met.
Control of the Institutions of the. Black Comm unity
Must le Turned Over to That Community
Not only control over jobs and housing, but also control over the
schools and courts of the Black community must be turned over to
that community. Only the residents of a community have a true
understanding of its needs and desires. As long as white society
dominates the institutions of the ghetto, racial tensions will continue
to exist. No people is free unless it can determine its own destiny.
We believe that those who mourn the death of Dr. Martin Luther
King, but do nothing to eliminate the white racism and oppression
that has characterized America for the past three hundred years are
merely mocking him and the Black community. We will judge men
not by their words, but by their deeds, not by their sentiments, but
by their programs. America must stop mourning Dr. King and must
begin satisfying the needs and desires of its Black community.
BLACK PANTHER PARTY
PEACE
&
FREEDOM
LOS ANGELES
MOVEMENT
COUNTY
1 79
1 80
IN OOR SmooGLE FCll NATIONAL Lill lllATIClf , we are now in the phase ot ccmmm1ty libera
tion, to tree our black ccmmmit ies tran the 1mper1aliet1c ccntrol exereised. aver them
by the rac ist explo:itillg cliques within white caamunities , to f'ree our people , locked
up as they are 1n Urban DungeCllS , tran the 1Jnperialiem of the white suburbs .
ams IS A Smu:JGLE agaiD&t Calllty
luDi
Imperialiem. Q.1r black ccmmm1t1es are colcn
ized and controlled fran Ol.lts1de , and it is this control that has to be 81D8Bhed,
broken , shatter, by ltbatever means neces s ary .
TBE POLI !I!I CS :m am CQ.t!lJNITIES are ccmtrolled 1'ran outside , the econanics ot our
caammit ies are caatr oled
l
tran Ol.lts1de , and we Ol\ll'S MB are controlled by the rac i s t
police who cane into our ccmmm1t 1es 1'rCID Ol.ltside alld occupy them, patrolling , terrar1zillg , and brutalizil:Jg our people like a foreign 9ZDrif 1n a conque:red lalld .
THE BIACK PAN'IHER PARTY IS THE REVOW'l'IONARY CRlANIZA'l'ION S'mlXIGLIKl TO F!!EE am
PEOPIE FRa.! OPPRESBI <l'l, BY POLUICAL AND PHYllICAL MEANS.
WE HAVE TO GET CllGANIZED ,
AND WE HAVE TO DEFEND amsELVES .
- - - JOm TBE JIIAC K PAN'IHER PARTY - - -
B L AC K
PA N T H E R
1808A Fu l t on Street ,
Bro ok l yn
PARTY
181
Ch1caGo.
5. The
--- ------
CALL-
mw.EY
845 0103
...
0104-
FRANCISCO - 922.-009 5
RICHMOND - 2 3 7 - 6 3 0 .5
1 0.
B LAC K PA N T H E R S I N CO U RT
1 84
Bobby Sea le
Jm>eE
1 85
vs.
J udge Hoffma n
HOFFMAN :
1 87
shirt that was identified by Officer Tobin and Carcerano as the boy
THE CouRT : Is that Government's Exhibit 14?
MR. SCHULTZ : That's the one . . . . We are going to move to offer
that exhibit in evidence at this time . . . .
THE CouRT : Show it to counsel.
MR. SEALE : That's not a black power sign . Somebody correct the
Court on that. It's not the black power sign. It's the power to the
people sign.
THE CouRT : Mr. Marshal, will you stop the talking, please.
MR. SEALE : Yes, but that is still wrong, Judge Hoffman . It's not a
black power sign . It's a power to the people sign, and he is deliberately
distorting that and that's a racist technique.
MR. SCHULTZ : If the Court please, this man has repeatedly called
me a racistMR. SEALE : Yes, you are. You are, Dick Schultz.
MR. SCHULTZ : And called Mr. Foran a racistTHE CouRT : Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I will ask you to
leave the Court. Mr. Marshal, remove the ladies and gentlemen of
the jury :
( The following proceedings were had in open court, out of the
presence and hearing of the jury : )
THE CouRT : Mr. Seale and Mr. Kunstler, your lawyer, I must ad
monish you that such outbursts are considered by the Court to be
contemptuous, contumacious, and will be dealt with appropriately in
the future.
MR. KuNSTLER : Your Honor, the defendant was trying to defend
himself, and I have already indicated myTHE CouRT : The defendant was not defending himself.
MR. SEALE : I was, too, defending myself. Any time anybody gives
me the wrong symbol in this courtroom is deliberately
THE CouRT : He is not addressing me with authority
MR. SEALE : -distorting, and put it on the record.
THE CouRT : Instruct that man to keep quiet.
MR. SEALE : I want to defend myself and ask him if he isn't lying,
and he is going to put that lying crap on the record. No, siree-1 am
not going to sit here and get that on the record. I am going to at least
let it be known-request that you understand that this man is
erroneously representing symbols directly related to the party of
which I am chairman .
Item No. 8 :
A t the opening o f the morning session o n October 27, 1969, the
following occurred in open court :
.
THE CouRT : Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, good mornmg.
MR. SEALE : Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the ju ry. As I
said before, I hope you don't blame me for anything.
188
THE CouRT : Mr. Marshal, will you tell that man to sit down.
THE MARSHAL : Take a seat, Mr. Seale.
MR. SEALE : I knowTHE CouRT : Mr. Marshal, I think Mr. Seale is saying someth ing
there.
MR. SEALE : I know I am saying something. You know I am getting
ready to speak out in behalf of my constitutional rights again, don't
you?
THE CouRT : I will ask you to sit down, sir.
THE MARSHAL : Sit down .
MR. SEALE : You also know I am speaking out for the right to de
fend myself again, don't you, because I have that right as a de
fendant, don't I?
THE CouRT : I will have to ask you to sit down sir.
MR. SEALE : You know what I am going to say, don't you?
THE CouRT : No, I don't.
MR. SEALE : Well, I said it before.
THE CouRT : I don't know what you are going to say and you have a
very competent lawyer of record here.
MR. SEALE : He is not my lawyer and you know I fired him before
tha t jury was even picked and put together.
THE CouRT : Will you ask him to sit down, Mr. Marshal?
THE MARSHAL : Sit down, Mr. Seale.
MR. SEALE : What about my constitutional right to defend myself
and have my lawyer?
THE CouRT : Your constitutional rightsMR. SEALE : You are denying them . You have been denying them.
Every other word you say is denied, denied, denied, denied, and you
begin to oink in the faces of the masses of the people of this coun
try. That is what you begin to represent, the corruptness of this
rotten government, or four h undred years.
THE MARSHAL : Mr. Seale, will you sit down.
MR. SEALE : Why don't you knock me in the mouth? Try that.
THE MARSHAL : Sit down.
THE CouRT : Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I regret that I will
have to excuse you.
MR. SEALE : [To the jury] I hope you don't blame me for anything
and those false lying notes and letters that were sent that said the
Black Panther Party threatened that jury, it's a lie and you know it's
a lie, and the government did it to taint the j ury against me.
( The following proceedings were had in open court, out of the
presence and hearing of the jury : )
MR. SEALE : You got that? This racist and fascist administrative
government with its superman notions and comic book politics.
We're h ip to the fact that Superman never saved no black people.
You got that?
1 89
MR. KuNSTLER : I might say, your Honor, you know that I have
tried to withdraw from this and you know that Mr. SealeTHE CouRT : I don't know what you tried to do. I know your ap
pearance is of record, and I know I have your assurance orally of
record that you represent this man.
MR. KuNSTLER : You have a withdrawal of that assurance, your
Honor. You knew that on September 30th, you knew that Mr.
Seale had discharged me.
THE CouRT : You represent him and the record shows it.
MR. KuNSTLER : Your Honor, you ca n't go on those semantics . This
man wants to defend himself.
THE CouRT : This isn't semantics. I am not fooled by all of this
business.
MR. SEALE : I still demand the right to defend myself. You are not
fooled? After you have walked over people's constitutional rights?
THE MARSHAL : Sit down, Mr. Seale.
MR. SEALE : After you done walked over people's constitutional
rights, the Sixth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, and the
phoniness and the corruptness of this very trial, for people to have
a right to speak out, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and
et cetera. You have did everything you could with those jive lying
witnesses up there presented by these pig agents of the Government
to lie and say and condone some rotten racists, fascist crap by racist
cops and pigs that beat people's heads-and I demand my con
stitutional rights-demand-demandCall in the jury.
THE CouRT : Will the Marshal bring in the jury, please.
Item No. 9 :
During the direct examination o f the witness William Frapolly on
October 27, 1 969, the following occurred :
MR. SEALE : I object to that because my lawyer is not here. I have
been denied my right to defend myself in this courtroom . I object to
this man's testimony against me because I have not been allowed my
constitutional rights.
THE CouRT : I repeat to you, sir, you have a lawyer. Your lawyer is
Mr. Kunstler, who represented to the Court that he represents you.
MR. SEALE : He does not represent me.
THE CouRT : And he has filed an appearance.
Ladies and gentlemen, I will excuse you.
( The following proceedings were had in open court, within the
presence and hearing of the jury : )
MR. KuNSTLER : May I say I have withdrawn or attempted to
withdraw.
MR. SEALE : The defense filed a motion before the jury ever heard
any evidence, and I object to that testimony.
1 90
191
MR. SEALE : You know what? I have no counsel here. I fired that
lawyer before that jury heard anything and you know it. That jurv
hasn't heard all of the motions you denied behind the scenes . How
you tricked that juror out of that stand there by threatening her with
that jive letter that you know darned well I didn't send, which is a
lie. And they blame me every time they are being kept from their
loved ones and their homes. They blame me every time they come
in the room. And I never sent those letters, you know it.
THE CouRT : Please continue with the direct examination .
On October 28, 1 969-this is Item No. 1 0-on October 28, 1 969,
during the afternoon session, while the witness William Frapolly was
testifying on cross-examination, the following occurred in open court :
THE CouRT : Mr. Weinglass, do you want to cross-examine this
witness?
MR. SEALE : I would like to request to cross-examine the witness.
THE CouRT : You have a lawyer here.
MR. SEALE : That man is not my lawyer. The man made state
ments against me. Furthermore, he violated Title 1 892 of the United
States. Well, you are still violating it.17
THE MARSHAL : Sit down, Mr. Seale.
MR. SEALE : You violated the Code. You violated the United
States laws against my rights.
THE CouRT : Mr. Marshal, will you ask Mr. Seale to sit down in his
chair?
MR. SEALE : You are violating Title 42, United States Criminal
Code. You are violating it because it states that a black man cannot
be discriminated against in his legal defense.
THE CouRT : Will you sit down, Mr. Seale?
MR. SEALE : It is an old reconstruction law and you won't recognize it. So I would like to cross-examine the witness.
THE CouRT : Will you sit down, sir?
MR. SEALE : I still want to cross-examine the witness.
THE CouRT : You may not.
A MARSHAL : May I remove the jury, please?
THE CouRT : Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you may be
excused.
After the jury was excused, the defendant Seale continued to re
fuse to obey the order of the Court to remain silent. Thereupon the
following occurred in open court :
THE CouRT : Let the record show that the defendantMR. SEALE : Let the record show you viola ted that and a black man
cannot be discriminated against in relation to his legal defense and
that is exactly what you have done. You know you have. Let the
record show that.
THE CouRT : 'I11e record shows exactly to the contrary.
1 92
MR. SEALE : The record shows that you are violating, that you
violated my constitutional rights. I want to cross-examine the
witness. I want to cross-examine the witness .
THE CouRT : Bring in the jury, Mr. Marshal, and we will let them
go for this evening.
I admonish you, sir, that you have a lot of contemptuous conduct
against you.
l\fa. SEALE : I admonish you. You are in contempt of people's con
stitutional rights. You are in contempt of the constitutional
rights of the mass of the people of the United States. You are the
one in contempt of people's constitutional rights. I am not in con
tempt of nothing. You are the one who is in contempt. The people
of America need to admonish you and the whole Nixon admin
istration .
Let m e cross-examine the witness. You won't even let m e read
you wouldn't even let me read my statement this morning, my
motion this morning, concerning the fact that I wan ted a copy of the
transcript for my own legal defense.
THE CouRT : Bring in the jury.
Is he getting the jury?
THE CLERK : Yes, your Honor.
THE CouRT : Tell him to just bring them before the box.
MR. SEALE : I want to cross-examine the witness.
MR. HAYDEN : Let the record show the judge was laughing. [ Mr.
Hayden is a defendant. ]
MR. SEALE : Yes, he is laughing.
THE CouRT : \Vho made that remark?
MR. FoRAN : The defendant Hayden, your Honor, made the
remark.
MR. SEALE : And me.
THE CouRT : Let the record show tha tMR. SEALE : I still want to cross-examine the witness to defend
myself.
The jury was then returned to the courtroom to be excused for
the day, during which time, the defendant Seale continued to speak.
Thereafter, the following occurred in open court :
THE CouRT : You may sit down .
I must admonish the defendant and his counselMR. SEALE : Counsel ain't got nothing to do with it. I'm my own
counsel.
THE CouRT : You are not doing very well for yourself.
MR. SEALE : Yes, that's because you violated my constitutional
rights, Judge Hoffman. That's because you violated them overtly,
deliberately, in a very racist manner. Somebody ought to point out
the law to you. You don't want to investigate it to see whether the
1 93
people get their constitutional rights. 68,000 black men died in the
Civil War for that right. That right was made during the Recon
struction period . They fought in that war and 68,000 of them died.
That law was made for me to have my constitutional rights.
THE CouRT : Do you want to listen to me for a moment?
Ma. SEALE : Why should I continue to listen to you unless you are
going to give me my constitutional rights? Let me defend myself.
THE CouRT : I am warning you, sir, that the lawMa. SEALE : Instead of warning, why don't you warn me I have got
a right to defend myself, huh?
THE COURT : I am warning you that the Court has the right to gag
you. I don't want to do that. Under the law you may be gagged and
chained to your chair.
Ma. SEALE : Gagged? I am being railroaded already. I am being
railroaded already.
THE CouRT : The Court has that right and 1Ma. SEALE : The Court has no right whatsoever. The Court has no
right to stop me from speaking out in behalf of my constitutional
rights because it is denying me the constitutional rights to speak out
in behalf of myself and my legal defense.
THE COURT : The Court will be in recess until tomorrow morn
ing at ten o'clock.
THE MARSHAL : Everyone will please rise.
Ma. SEALE : I am not rising. I am not rising until he recognizes my
constitutional rights. Why should I rise for him? He is not
recognizingTHE CouRT : Mr. Marshal
Ma. SEALE : I am not rising.
Item No. 1 2, on October 29, 1 969, during the morning session when
the cross-examination of the witness Frapolly was completed, the
following occurred in open court :
THE CouRT : Is there any redirect examination?
Ma. SEALE : Before the redirect, I would like to request again
demand, that I be able to cross-examine the witness . My lawyer is
not here. I think I have a right to defend myself in this courtroom .
THE CouRT : Take the j u ry out, and they may g o t o lunch with the
usual order.
Ma. SEALE : You have George Wash ington and Benjamin Franklin
sitting in a picture behind you, and they were slave owners.18 That's
what they were. They owned slaves. You are acting in the same
manner, denying me my constitutional rights being able to cross
examine this witness .
THE COURT : Gentlemen, we will recess until two o'clo ck.
.
Accordingly, it is therefore ordered that pursuant to the au ho.nty
vested in this Court by Rule 42 ( a ) of the Federal Rules o f Cnmm al
1 94
1 95
1 96
If a black man stands up and speaks, if a black man asks for his
rights, if a black man demands his rights, if a black man requests
his rights, what do you do? You're talking about punishing. If a
black man gets up and speaks in behalf of the worldTHE CouRT : Are you addressing me, sir?
MR. SEALE : I'm talking. You can see I'm talking.
THE CouRT : That's right, but if you address me, you'll have to
stand .
MR. SEALE : Stand? Stand now. Now let's see, first you said that I
couldn't stand . I got my suit. It's going to a higher court, possibly
the highest court in America.
Long ago in this nation certain basic decisions were made about
Black people, but not consulting them . Even before the Consti tu
tion was ever put on paper with its beautiful words and glowing
rhetoric of man's equality and philosophical rights, human consid
eration had long given way before white economic necessity. Black
people were to legally be defined and classified as non-human, be
low a horse-but definitely not a man .
Color became the crucial variable, and the foundation of the
system of Black slavery. While chattel slavery is no longer upheld
by the supreme law of the land, the habit and practice in thought
and speech of looking at Black people from the chattel plain still
persist. After much refinement, sophistication and development, it
has remained to become embedded in the national character, making
itself clear in organized society, its institutions, and the attitudes
of the dominant white culture to this very day.
1 97
But why need we feel this way in the first place? J?oe not Y? ur
Constitution guarantee man's freedom, his human d1gmt_y against
state encroachment? Or does the innate fear of the rebellious slave
in the heart of the slave-master continue to this day to negate all
1 98
1 99
200
\Voe to the Black man who is out very late in a white neighborhood;
the police ( white ) suspect him immediately of being up to some
foul deed, even into the ghetto, the white policeman brings this
mentality. )
Although slavery had been abolished in certain states, the Black
people who lived in those states were subjected to degrading laws
which belied their so-called free status, and even worse, they were
subject to kidnapping and being sold into slavery. 'n1is so-called
free Black man was anything but free under the "American system
of justice."
Throughout this horrid epoch, a few slaves managed to escape,
then more slaves. The slaveholders demanded that the runaway
slave laws be enforced . They pleaded to the United States Supreme
Court, and that "august" body, the most powerful judiciary body
in the land, the ultimate interpreters of the Constitution, answered
their plea by passing the "fugitive slave law" in 1 8 50.19 Now for
the run-away slave escaping to the North was not enough, for the
Northern cities were overrun with slave-catchers.
Dred Scott
20 1
and humane treatment when the 1 3th, 1 4th and 1 5th Amendments
were enacted .
But terror, violence, intimidation and murder still haunted us;
the Ku Klux Klan did "their thing."
In 1 875 Congress enacted the first sign ificant civil rights law.
I t theoretically gave Black people the right to equal accommodations,
facilities and access to public transportation and places of public
amusement. But as Blacks well know and whites deny, there is a
world of difference in America between theory and practice. For
although the 1 3th, 1 4th and 1 5th Amendments and the civil rights
act of 1 875 "gave" Black people so-called freedom, the right of
citizenship and the right to vote, the enforcement of those laws
was an entirely different thing. The extent of enforcement was
totally dependent upon the degree to which it was advantageous
to the Republican Party and the Northern industrialist.
By 1 876 it was decided tha t Black people had served their purpose
and, therefore, even the pretense of Black equality was no longer
necessary.
The Supreme Court in 1 883 embodied that attitude in law by
declaring that the civil rights act of 1 875 was unconstitutional . In
other decisions it displayed its remarkable and ingenious talent for
interpreting the law according to the needs and interests of the
domina nt white ruling class. It nullified the 1 4th and 1 5th Amend
ments by declaring that they were Federal restrictions only on the
powers of the states or their agents, not on the powers of individuals
within those states. Thus it was still illegal for any states to violate
or abridge the rights of Black people; but if on the other hand,
private citizens or a group of them ( such as the Ku Klux Klan ) ,
within any state actively prevented Black people from exercising
their rights, then the crime came under the jurisdiction of the state
in which the crime, or crimes, took place.
The court also ruled that if a state law did not appear on its
surface discrimina tory against Black people, then the federal courts
had no right to investiga te. But this was not enough . It was neces
sary to go even further, and they did.
In 1 896 the Supreme Court in J>lessy vs. Ferg uso11, 163 U . S. 5 37,
upheld a Louisiana law requiring segregated railroad facilities. As
long as equality of accommodations existed, the court held segrega
tion did not constitute discrimination, and Black people were not
deprived of equal protection of the law under the 1 4th Amendment.
American justice!
Segregation automatically meant discrimination . Black people were
forced to use in public buil ings, freight elevators and toilet f cilities
reserved for janitors. On trams all Black people, even those with first
. the baggage car.
class tickets, were forced to scat themselves m
Employment discrimination and wage discrimination, "inferior"
202
schools for Black children. All of these inhuman crimes were made
legal by the highest court in the land. Typical American justice, for
Black people.
The 2 0t h Century
203
111
Lie
204
Mr. Murtagh-your record speaks for itself. You are known in the
ghetto as a "Hanging Judge." ( How many Black and white poor
men did you convict without their even having counsel just in 1 969
alone, in your clever slick way? ) Frank Hogan and his aides are
well known in the Ghetto-very well known in the Ghetto-known
for what they are-racist and unethical . ( We have knowledge of cases,
since our incarceration of Assistant District Attorneys, or D.A.'s men
posing as legal aides to get conviction ) . But in our case you and
Mr. Hogan have gotten together and have outdone yourselves in
denying us all, everyone of our "alleged" state, federal and human
rights. The record clearly shows this, when not clouded with the
mist of racism.
A) Let us clear up one basic misconception . You constantly refer
to this case as a "criminal" trial, while all of the time we know,
you know, Frank Hogan knows, the people know, the other prisoners
and even the guards know that this is not a criminal trial . Everyone
knows that this is a political trial, for if we were not members of
the Black Panther Party, a lot of things would never have been done
to us in the first place.
205
This unethical behavior gave, aided, and abetted further pre j udici l
pre-trial publicity, in direct contradiction to your law as .outlined m
the 1 4th Amendment of your Constitution of the United States.
Due to this behavior alone, we are positive that . we co ld not get
a fair trial anywhere in this countrY . . . . We still said nothmg.
D ) When our attorneys learned of our arrest, they attempted to
207
208
209
remained silent. You substantiated Mr. Marks' "the law does not
apply" to us . . . . Yet, we remained silent.
Lee Berry
210
21 1
the past year incite us, the injustice in these hearings incite us,
racism incites us, fascism incites us, in short-when we reflect back
over history, its continuation up until today, you and your courts
incite us.
But we will not leave it there for you and others, to distort, as
some are inclined to do. There will be left no room for your courts
and media to distort and misinterpret our actions. We wish for a
speedy and F AJ.R trial, a just trial. But-we must have our "alleged"
Constitutional rights. This court is in contempt of our Constitutional
rights and have been for almost a year. We must have our rights
first. The wrongs inflicted must be redressed . Bygones are not by
gones. Later for that. 3 5 1 years are enough . We must clean the
slate. We do not believe in your Appeal Courts ( we've had ex
perience with 300 years of appeals generally, and 3 5 judges si)ecifi
cally ) . So we must begin with a mutual understanding anew. When
we have our constitutional guarantees redressed, we will give the
court the respect it claims to deserve-precisely the respect it
deserves .
Contempt of the People
In light of all that has been said, in view of the collusion of the
federal, state, and city courts, the New York City Department of
Correction, the city police, and District Attorney's office, we feel
that we, as members of the Black Panther Party, cannot receive a
fair and impartial trial without certain pre-conditions conforming
to our alleged constitutional rights. So we state the following : we
feel that the courts should follow their own federal Constitution,
and when they have failed to do so, and continue to ignore their
mistakes, but persist dogmatically to add insult to injury, those
courts are in contempt of the people. One need not be black to
relate to that, but it is often those who never experience such
actions on the part of the courts, who believe they, the courts, can
never be wrong.
So, in keeping with that, and the social reality in which that
principle must relate, we further state :
I ) That we have a constitutional right to reasonable bail, and a
few would, if they were white, be released in their own custody.
We demand that, and the courts' consistent denial of that right,
in effect is in contempt of its own Constitution .
2 ) We demand a jury of our peers, or people from our own
community, as defined by the Constitution .
3 ) We say that because the Grand Jury system in New York
City systematically excludes poor Black people, it can !l ot be repre
sentative of a cross-section of the community from wluch we come .
So in effect, it is unconstitutional , and nothin g more than a method
212
v.
Huey P. Newton
213
214
his past, his juvenile record was even brought in, which is sup
posed to be sacred, and the only juvenile difficulty he got into was
when he was sixteen years of age when he was transferred to another
school, in Berkeley where they were all strangers and seven people
beat him up the day before. And this youngster sought some way
of defending himself. Everyone of you would have done the same
thing.
111is is the background, this is the hate that Mr. Jensen said
that man had engendered within himself. Huey Newton was on
probation from 1 964 and he thought until the 27th day of October,
1 967, and during that entire time his probation was never revoked
for anything that happened because the probation department recog
nized the struggle that black people have to go through, and some
of the encounters with the police, and the conduct of the police,
weren't sufficient to revoke his probation .
One time Huey said that the probation officer called him in and
he said you have the right to have a weapon that is exposed, a
shotgun or a rifle and that admonition he carried through . You
heard the probation officer Melvin Torly testify and say "I may
have told him that his probation expired on the 27th instead of
the 28th, I may have made that mistake and I may have told him
that."
Is it any wonder a man who is walking around with the law book
and was attending law school shortly prior to this event so that
he could be an officer of the court, so that he can make his con
tribution as a lawyer to the profession, to the people who need
him; is it any wonder that when his probation was finished, he
thought, on the 27th, that he would be celebrating?
Huey Newton doesn't ask very much for himself. Huey Newton,
in my opinion, is a selfless man. I am sure that that came out in
his testimony. A man who is not interested in himself as a person;
he is a devoted man; he is a rare man. Mr. Jensen tried to make
this man a liar. He says he talks about love and he preaches
violence or words to that effect. He may not have said it in those
words. I am reminded of the Book of Matthew, Chapter 10, Verse
34: "Think not that I come to send peace on earth . I came not to
send peace but the sword."
I am sure that most of you have never heard that version of
Christ. This was talking to the twelve disciples shortly before his
arrest. He was telling them that he was going to be arrested . You
have heard Christ say time and time again, "Turn your swords into
plowshares ." [Then ] He was talking to the multitude. [ But when ]
he was talking to the twelve disciples on the day of his arrest,
[when ] he was subsequently crucified by the people in power at that
time, he told them to sell and buy their swords. This is again found
215
i n Luke 22 : 36: "Then h e said unto them, 'But now, h e that hath
a purse, let h im take it, and likewise his script : and he that hath no
sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.' "
What is Huey Newton saying, what is Christ saying? Christ
wasn't saying get out the sword and destroy people. He was saying
that the twelve disciples in order to be able to carry out their
mandate and their responsibilities would also at a time have to
resort to the sword for self-defense.
Huey Newton is saying to the black community and the black
ghetto there has got to be times when you will have to defend
yourself by political means and any other means for your life, for
your survival .
You know we fought a great war against Fascism which had as its
cradle the destruction of the freedom of the human being. We
fought a great war because one nation practiced genocide on six
million Jews. You saw evidence of that.
We know through history that there is and there have been
massacres of people. The Armenians have gone through several
massacres. Other nations have gone through genocide in more ways
than one, but history tells me that the black people of the world
have had genocide in excess of fifty million of them . Fifty million
black people throughout this world since history has been able to
document, have been destroyed, eliminated . The black community
today, the black ghetto, is fighting for the right of survivalship. 'fbe
white community is sitting smug and saying, "Let's have more police,
let's have more guns, let's arm ourselves against the blacks." They
are saying that time and time again .
That is not the answer. If you think that is the answer we are
all destroyed . If you think that Mayor Daley has the answer we
are all destroyed . If you think that this nation with all of its power
and all of its strength can eliminate violence on the street with
more violence they have got another though t coming.
My client and his party are not for destruction; they want to
build . They want a better America for black people. lbey want the
police out of their neighborhoods . 1l1ey wanted them out of their
streets. Everyone of you here possibly know one policeman in your
neighborhood . I know several people in police departments. I think
they are wonderful people. I live in Daly City, I have a beautiful
relationship with them. Those police live in my neighborhood
within three or four blocks. I know where one of them lives . I can
call on him if I need him, but in the black ghetto no police officer
lives in that ghetto. Why don 't they live in that ghetto? Becaus a
_
gom g
man that is making eight or nine or ten thousand dollars isn't
to live in the kind of hovel that the ghetto has.
.
Has anybody thought of uplifting that ghetto so that 1t doesn t
,
216
exist in the manner that it has? l11ese are the things that Huey
Newton and the Black Panthers and other people seek; they are
not the only ones. Professor Black initiated and gave it to you,
'TCB', taking care of business, and taking care of the wants and
desires and needs of a community that has been forgotten, a com
munity that we don't even understand. We don't even have their
language. Mr. Jensen doesn't understand their language. It took me
a long time to understand their language. I spent ten months on
this case and I have been in this case since November l st. I had
to start leaming. I thought I knew something about Negro America
because some of my intimate friends are Negro professionals who
have been accepted partially in our great white society. I thought
I knew them and we exchanged visits back and forth and we were
buddies. It wasn't a week or two weeks after I got into this case
and I came to the conclusion that I knew absolutely nothing about
black America .
I was ignorant-as ignorant as any white could be and I am a
person that thought I was infonned . I have had to educate myself.
I have had to read everything that I could get hold of. I read one
book by a man by the name of Frantz Fanon called "Wretched of
the Earth," a book called "Listen, \Vhite Man, Listen ." I have
gone down the list, the Kerner Report came out and most of you
when I voir dired you hadn't even heard of it. Some of you had
heard about it in a lip-service sort of a way.
The Kerner Report lays down the hypothesis and the problems
of black America today. White American, listen, white American,
listen . l11e answer is not to put Huey Newton in the gas chamber,
it is not the answer to put Huey Newton and his organization
into jail. The answer is not that. The answer is not more police.
The answer is wipe out the ghetto, the conditions of the ghetto
so that black brothers and sisters can live with dignity, so that they
can walk down the street with dignity.
I cut out a piece that I worked out and I would like to call
to your attention.
Take a look at the extent to which the slaughter of Negroes has
been killed in our language, in our vocabulary. White denotes charity,
simplicity and candor, innocent truth, and hope, while black is sin,
synonymous with sinful, inhuman, fiendish, devilish, infernal, mon
strous, atrocious, horrible, nefarious, treacherous, venal .
A white lie is one made with the best of intentions while a
black one is deliberate, harmful and inexcusable. We wish to elimi
nate a person from favorable consideration, we blackball or black
list him. We are able to whitewash anything except a black mark,
not even magic can overcome the preface black. We consider the
black guys as a badge of shame while at the same time we reward
217
the normal badge o f combat with the Purple Heart, but the white
flag takes a back seat to the Black Death, and everyone is familiar
with the connotation of black man, black heart, black deed, black
outlook, black sheep and Black Maria .
These are the things that white America, white racist America
has been doing. Four years ago just a simple thing of passing a law
so that the owner of a property could not discriminate against any
person because of race, color or creed . Sixty-six percent of the white
Californians voted against such a law. I think that we white people
ought to start bowing our heads and start thinking, start thinking
on Huey Newton, a Black Panther. Malcolm X, Dr. Du Bois, a great
historian of the world-I had to read ten or twelve of his books
so that I could understand. I could understand the language when
Huey Newton is talking. When Huey Newton is presenting himself
I can feel a vibration of his thoughts so that 1 could at least try
to transmit to you, practical white jurors . . . .
This case is a diabolical attempt to put an innocent man into jail
or into the gas chamber and my government should not be a party
to that kind of a scheme. I want to remind you again of Alice in
Wonderland. When I sit down I am finished . I wish I could say
that it has been a pleasure trying this case. I can't. It is like saying
I enjoyed a broken neck, or a broken heart. With my 30 years in
the practice of law, turbulent practice of the law in many areas, I
find that the need for this type of a trial makes me sick inside.
It makes me sick inside that America that I have grown to love,
to be a part of, today is the kind of an America that I don't
understand and I hate.
I hate the violence that is created because of the lack of common
language, understanding. I see the northern and western part of the
United States creating ghettos where ghettos did not exist before,
segregate and divide people, great and beautiful friends being ham
strung to the stake.
-Charles R . Garry, Minimizing Racism in fury Trials,
Berkeley, California, 1970, pp. 1 99-204
11.
A L L I A N C ES A N D COA L I T I O N S
Early in its history the Black Panther Party, disregarding the criticism
of the Cultural Nationalists in the black community, moved to
achieve an alliance and coalition with all people and organizations
who were prepared to move against the power structure. In 1 968
the Party established a coalition with the Peace and Freedom Party
in California in the campaign to free Huey Newton and in the
election of that year. The Party also established alliances with a
number of groups which were influenced by the Black Panthers and
modeled their program and activities in their own communities on
the Black Panther Party. Among them were the Young Lords, a
Puerto Rican gang which had become a political movement; the
Brown Berets, a group of young Chicanos ( Mexican-Americans ) ; the
Young Patriots, a group of young whites who aimed to organize poor
whites; and the Red Guards, a group of Chinese-Americans who
organized to battle oppression in the Chinese-American communities
under the slogan of "Yellow Power." The Black Panther Party also
worked closely with Black Student Unions which were influenced by
the ideology and program of the Black Panthers, and cooperated with
black workers who were establishing black caucuses in a number of
labor unions to combat racism in the labor movement and end the
second-class status of many black members of trade unions.
In this section are a number of examples of the coalition ac
tivities of the Black Panther Party, as well as the programs and
activities of some of the organizations and groups influenced by the
Black Panthers.
On June 1 8, 1 970, at a press conference at the Overseas Press
Club, Ossie Davis, spokesman for the Committee to Petition the
United Nations, announced a plan to submit another petition to
the UN to end U.S. genocide against black, yellow, red and brown
Americans. A minimum of one million signatures will be sought for
the petition. Members of the committee which drafted the petition
included Huey Newton; Black Congresswoman Shirley Chish lm;
the black scholar Dr. Nathan Wright; Roger Littlehorn of the I ndians
of All Tribes, the group which is occupying Alcatraz Island off San
.
Francisco; Dick Gregory, one of the co-chairmen of the conumttee;
and Carl Blakley of the Saulteaux tribe. The first signatures on he
_
petitjon were by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, nd the petition
with their signatures is the final document in this section.
219
220
Peoplel
O r g a n l :1 a t l o n 1 I
PartlHI
Workenl
Group1I
YlpplHI
Stude nt1I
Pol itical
P e a 1 a n t- f a r m e n l
l l a ck Peop le,
Poor P e o p l el
M e x i c a n - A m e r i c a n s, P u e rt o l l c a n 1,
C h i n
etc,
United Front
Against Fascism
a e v e h t l l n ry C e n f e r e n c e
FOR :
lnforwat1on
P A ICllM
I n Amerlc.
Oklnd, C l l f e r n l
OONTACT :
BLACK PANTHER PARTY
3106 Shattuck Avl!nue
20Z6 Seven th Avl!nue
New Yo rk , H . Y ,
Berke ! , Ca1 1 forn1a
Phone:
86411951
Phone : 045-0104
HATtOOL C<MllTTEE TO COlllAT FASCI SM
c/o 58 \les t 25th Stree t
Hew Yo rte, Hew York
Phone: 675-2520 or 242-9225
c1 .... .
Th
Pewer el P l n n c e CpltI
223
What objections can the opponents of the united front have and
how do they voice their objections?
Some say : "To the Communists the slogan of the united front
is merely a maneuver." But if it is a maneuver, we reply, why don't
you expose the "Communist maneuver" by your honest participation
in a united front? We declare frankly : "We want unity of action
by the working class, so that the proletariat may grow strong in its
struggle against the bourgeoisie, in order that while defending today
its current interests against attacking capital, against fascism, the
proletariat may be in a position tomorrow to create the preliminary
conditions for its final emancipation."
"The Communists attack us," say others. But listen, we have
repeatedly declared : We shall not attack anyone, neiher persons nor
organizations nor parties that stand for the united front of the
working class against the class enemy. But at the same time it is
our duty, in the interests of the proletariat and its cause, to criticize
those persons, those organizations, those parties which impede unity
of action by the workers.
"We cannot form a united front with the Communists, since they
have a different program," says a third group. But you yourselves
say that your program differs from the program of the bourgeois
parties, and yet this did not and does not prevent you from entering
into coalitions with these parties.
"The bourgeois-democratic parties are better allies against fascism
than the Communists," say the opponents of the united front and
the advocates of coalition with the bourgeoisie. But what does
Germany's experience teach? Did not the Social-Democrats form a
block with those "better" allies? And what were the results?
"If we establish a united front with the Communists, the petty
bourgeoisie will take fright at the 'Red danger' and will desert to
the fascists," we hear it said quite frequently. But does the united
front represent a threat to the peasants, the petty traders, the arti
sans, the toiling intellectuals, No, the united front is a threat to the
big bourgeoisie, the financial magnates, the Junkers and other ex
ploiters, whose regime brings complete ruin to all these strata.
"Social-Democracy is for democracy, the Communists re for
dictatorship; therefore we cannot form a united front with the
Communists," say some of the Social-Democratic lead ers. But are
224
225
ment as the bourgeoisie? They were, too. Did the participa tion of
the Social-Democratic Parties in the bourgeois coalition govern ments
in these countries prevent fascism from attacking the pro letariat?
It did not. Consequently it is as clear as daylight that participa tion
of Social-Democratic ministers in bourgeois government is not a
barrier to fascism.
f'The Communists act like dictators, they want to prescribe and
dictate everything to us." No. We prescribe nothing and dictate
nothing. We only make proposals concerning which we are con
vinced that if realized they will meet the interests of the toiling
people.I This is not only the right but the duty of all those acting
in the name of the workers. You are afraid of the "dictatorship"
of the Communists? Let us jointly discuss them and choose, to
gether with all the workers, those proposals which arc most useful
to the cause of the working class.
Thus all these arguments against the united front will not bear
the slightest criticism . They are rather the flimsy excuses of the re
actionary leaders of Social Democracy, who prefer their united front
with the bourgeoisie to the united front of the proletariat.
No. These excuses will not hold water. The international pro
letariat has known all the bitterness of tribulation caused by the split
in the working class, and becomes more and more convinced that
the united front, that the proletariat's unity of action on a national
and international scale are both necessary and perfectly possi h)e.
-The Black Panther, July 1 7, 1 969
226
termination for the black colony-a demand which arises from the
most oppressed elements within the black community-is anti-im
perial ist and anticapitalist insofar as it challenges the power of the
ruling class. Furthermore the black liberation movement consciously
identifies with and expresses solidarity with the liberation struggles
of other oppressed peoples.
Within the black liberation movement the vanguard force is the
Black Panther party. Their development of an essentially correct
program for the black community and their ability to organize
blacks around this program have brought them to this leadership.
An especially important part of the Panther program is the Black
People's Army-a military force to be used not only in the defense
of the black community but also for its liberation . Given the military
occupation of the black community, it is especially true that "with
out a people's army the people have nothing." A second important
part of their program is their efforts to organize black workers. 111ey
are increasingly moving into the factories and shops, e.g., DRUM,20
Panther caucuses, Black Labor Federations, etc. It is important for
us to understand that the black worker is not only a "subject" in an
oppressed colony fighting for its liberation but that he is also a
member of the working class. Thus the black worker, as a result
of this dual oppression, will play the vanguard role not only in the
black liberation movement but also in uniting and leading the whole
working class in its fight against oppression and exploitation .
The fundamental reason for the success of the Black Panther party
is that it has a correct analysis of American society. They see clearly
the colonial status of blacks and the dual oppression from which
they suffer : national oppression as a people and class exploitation
as a superexploited part of the working class. 111e demand for self
determination becomes the most basic demand of the oppressed
colony. And nationalism becomes a necessary and effective means for
organizing the black community and forging unity against the
oppressor.
We must be very clear about the nature of nationalism. If the
principal contradiction in the world today is that of the oppressed
nations against imperial ism, then support for these revolutionary
national movements becomes the most important criterion for
dividing revolutionaries from counterrevolutionaries ( and revision
ists ) . To say that "in the name of nationalism, the bourgeoisie
of all nations do their reactionary and dirty work" is to obscure
the reality that in the name of national liberation the workers and
peasants of all oppressed nations will struggle against and defeat
imperialism . To say that "all nationalism is reactionary" is objectively
to ally with imperialism in opposition to the struggles of the op
pressed nations.
227
Natlonall1m
228
We see clearly the need to join with the Black Panther party
and other revolutionary black groups in the fight against national
chauvinism and white supremacy. The development of the Panthers
as a disciplined and militant group fighting for black liberation has
had a tremendous impact on the white radical movement. No longer
can we refuse to deal with the chauvinism and white supremacy
which exists both in the larger society and in our movement. Toler
ation of any vestige of white supremacy in the schools, shops and
communities must be seen as nothing less than "scabbing" on the
black liberation movement and on possibilities for unity of the
working class.
SOS declares :-its support for the Black Panther party and their
essentially correct program for the liberation of the black colony;
its commitment to defend the Black Panther party and the black
colony against the vicious attacks of the racist pig power structure;
-its commitment to join with the Black Panther party and other
black revolutionary groups in the fight against white national chau
vinism and white supremacy;-its total commitment to the fight for
liberation in the colony and revolution in the mother country.
Implementation
A lliances a n d Coalitions
229
230
brothers the next day, and then when they didn't have anybody
else to kill, they'd kill each other-that's what they were about at
the time. Then in 1 967 Cha Cha Jiminez, who was the president
of the Y.L.O. at that time, reorganized the whole organization. It
became political and changed its name from the Young Lords to
the Young Lords Organization. They took over a church which they
still have right now. They started community programs to help
people in the streets and they just related to serving the people
which was their motto at the time.
RoLAND : Was it just the motivation of one cat that brought about
the change or was it a lot of different cats?
RAFAEL : A lot of various cats had a lot of different experiences
together and they finally woke up. 111ey said, 'we're out here killing
each other and we ain't even dealing with the system that's really
messing us up.' So they got it together and organized around that
main base, that is, they stopped killing each other. That was around
the time when the Black Stone Rangers became political and others
started getting it together.
In January, 1 969, the Y.L.O. started in N.Y. There was an organ i
zation in N.Y. named after Pedro Albizu Campos ( he was a nation
alist-socialist revolutionary who started the first armed revolutionary
struggle in Puerto Rico, twenty years ago ) . They were a group of
college students and a lot of them had been going back and forth
from Chicago digging what the Y.L.O. was doing and decided to
start a chapter in N.Y. At that time they went out into the streets
and started rapping with "street brothers," because that's where it's
at. They got the support of a lot of dope fiends, hustlers, pimps
and everything else, and these street brothers started a period of
transformation, of transition. That was when the Y.L.O. got orga
nized in N.Y. We then had to think of something to let the people
know that the Y.L . O. was there, not only there, but there to serve
the people of East ( Spanish ) Harlem . And so the thing that we
thought of, and this is where our creativity came in, was the GAR
BAGE OFFENSIVE. We were out in the streets for three Sundays
sweeping the streets. We would take the garbage and put it in to
garbage cans, cover up the lids and wait for the garbage men to
come, but the garbage men never came. The people saw this and
they said, "what's happening." On the third Sunday the people got
out into the streets and we put the garbage in the avenues . We
piled it up and overturned cars that were abandoned on the streets
as well as baby cribs and everything else we could find, and we
blocked-off the traffic. You know how it is in 90 degree weather when
all those businessmen want to go home, they were' mighty upset.
We did this two Sundays in a row and on the third Sunday they
were going to lay for us. There were repercussions all along, like
23 1
the pigs did vamp on people and people were throwing bottles
and stuff. On the third week we took care of business on a Friday.
lbe pigs came down with guns in their hands, ready to shoot any
body and so we would put the garbage in the streets, then we'd leave
and when they came we had taken off our berets, and we'd be
standing on the corner asking "what's happening." That was our first
offensive.
ROLAND : What are the conditions in East Harlem and how do
they compare to the conditions with the rest of Harlem?
RAFAEL : The conditions are the same. The rats are so big that
they pay rent, the cockroaches are hump-backed because they don't
have room to move around. The buildings are completely messed
up. Our children are dying from all types of diseases . One of the
biggest problems is lead poisoning. Inside the apartments of Harlem,
they painted them with cheap lead paint until a year ago when it
was outlawed . Our children tended to take the peelings off of the
walls and eat them, this caused lead poisoning which would kill
them or cause them permanent brain damage. We went out in the
streets and started doing something about that. This was our second
offensive.
We went from door to door checking the children's urine and we
organized a great deal around that. I'm the Chief Medical Cadre
for the Y.L.O. and we've got doctors, nurses and medical students
who would go into the streets and from door to door serving the
people.
The oppression is there, the people see it but they don't know
what to do about it, so that's why the Y.L.O. is there. We have
people in East Harlem who live fourteen to a room and who have
been denied public housing. The buildings in Harlem are from the
1 9th century and they should have been torn down a long time ago,
but they're still there.
ROLAND : Is your base primarily among the East Harlem lumpen
proletariat?
RAFAEL : Yes! The people who live in East Harlem are from the
lumpenproletariat. But we do have a small group of Puerto Rican
people who have "made it" up the so-called "ladder" and who are
supposedly assimilated into the system, but they really aren't. Our
people must remember that they are Puerto Ricans no matter what
and that they should be out in the streets doing their stuff for their
Puerto Rican people.
ROLAND : Is the Y.L.O. primarily a Puerto Rican organization?
RAFAEL : Yes, it's predominantly Puerto Rican, but we also have
Black brothers, Asiatic brothers and some Chicanos. We refuse
White people admittance into the Y.L.O. for the purpose that .we
are out there to serve the community, the Puerto Rican community.
232
233
234
PEOPLE
235
236
237
people. They are paid by the system to lead our people down blin d
alleys, just like the thousands of poverty pimps who keep our
communities peaceful for business, or the street workers who keep
gangs divided and blowing each other away. We want a society where
the people socialistically control their labor.
VENCEREMOS!
8. WE OPPOSE THE AM ERI KKKAN MILITARY.
We demand immediate withdrawal of u.s. military forces and
bases from Puerto Rico, Vietnam, and all oppressed communities
inside and outside the u.s. No Puerto Rican should serve in the
u.s. army against his Brothers and Sisters, for the only true am1y
of oppressed people is the people's army to fight all rulers.
U.S. OUT OF VIETNAM, FREE PUERTO RICO!
9. WE WANT FREEDOM FOR ALL POLITICAL PRIS
ONERS.
We want all Puerto Ricans freed because they have been tried by
the racist courts of the colonizers, and not by their own people and
peers. We want all freedom fighters released from jail.
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS!
IO. WE WANT EQUALITY FOR WOMEN. MACHISMO
MUST BE REVOLUTIONARY . . . NOT OPPRESSIVE.
Under capitalism, our women have been oppressed by both the
society and our own men . The doctrine of machismo has been used
by our men to take out their frustrations against their wives, sisters,
mothers, and children. Our men must support their women in their
fight for economic and social equality, and must recognize that our
women are equals in every way within the revolutionary ranks.
FORWARD, SISTERS, IN THE STRUGGLE!
1 1 . WE FIGHT ANTI-COMMUNISM WITH INTERNA
TIONAL UNITY.
Anyone who resists injustice is called a communist by "the man"
and condemned. Our people are brainwashed by television, radio,
newspapers, schools, and books to oppose people in other countries
fighting for their freedom . No longer will our people believe attacks
and slanders, because they have learned who the real enemy is and
who their real friends are. We will defend our Brothers and Sisters
around the world who fight for justice against the rich rulers of
this country.
VIVA CHE!
1 2. WE BELIEVE ARMED SELF-DEFENSE AND ARMED
STRUGGLE ARE THE ONLY MEANS TO LIBERATION.
We are opposed to violence-the violence of hungry children,
illiterate adults, diseased old people, and the violence of poverty and
profit. We have asked, petitioned, gone to courts, demonstrated
peacefully, and voted for politicians full of empty promises. But we
238
still ain't free. The time has come to defend the lives of our people
against repression and for revolutionary war against the businessman,
politician, and police. When a government oppresses our people, we
have the right to abolish it and create a new one.
BO RI CUA IS AWAKE ! ALL PIGS BEWARE!
1 3. WE WANT A SOCIALIST SOCI ETY.
We want liberation, clothing, free food, education, health care,
transportation, utilities, and employment for all. We want a society
where the needs of our people come first, and where we give
solidarity and aid to the peoples of the world, not oppression and
racism .
HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE ! 22
-Palante, Latin Revolutionary News Service
239
24 1
242
243
POWER
TO
THE
PEOPLE---OR
ELSE
PATRIOT PARTY
NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS
1742 Second Ave.
New York
-The Black Panther, February 1 7, 1970
244
At one school, one girl had gotten left behind and didn ' t know
how to catch up, so she called her mother, who came and picked
her up to drive her to the demonstration. There were many Chicanos
among the marchers, but also many black and white allies. They
marched with raised fists down to a local Safeway. Seeing few police
men on the streets they rushed into the Safeway, threw all the grapes
on the floor and stomped all over them. The action went off
smoothly and the march continued.
The march passed another high school, gaining strength, and then
headed for another Safeway. When the march was a few blocks
away from the store, pigs moved in and started busting Chicano
students. Many students were busted on so-called truancy raps.
Others managed to get away, and made it to the Safeway, where
they found that the manager had locked the store. For a time pigs
continued cruising, busting any brown youth they could, including
one Chicano who was riding in a car with a city official observing
the arrests.
Later, at the police station the pigs hassled Chicano parents who
came to get their children. That only made the parents more angry.
The parents organized and succeeded in having all the charges
dropped, and in getting all students who were suspended from school
back in.
In organizing the action in Richmond, reliance was placed on
the masses of students. Students, not non-students, wrote the leaf
lets, determined the nature of the demonstration. Being familiar
with other students and the schools, they had to take the leading
role. Not all aspects of the demonstration were perfect, but there
would have been no action except for the leading role of many
students.
And the leading role played by women. Brown women, at several
key points in the demonstration pushed ahead and acted as the
vanguard . At one school, several hundred students were milling
around in the schoolyard undecided about whether to walk out a
gate flanked by deans and teachers taking names. It was the women
who broke the indecision, who walked defiantly through, and the
245
rest soon followed. When there was a brief argument and tussle at
the door of the Safeway that was entered, it was the women who
knocked the manager aside and led the rest of the students to the
grapes .
The idea that this was part of a planned nationwide action helped
bring the reality of a brown liberation movement home to many
students. By tying in Safeway, the boycott, and the meeting of the
imperialists, the enemy was well defined. By making Safeway, as a
local arm of imperialism, the target, there was support from large
numbers of black and white kids. This unity was a big step in
schools that last spring were the scene of heavy racial fighting.
Students grasped the situation, and began learning how to move
in a disciplined way against the enemy. And they're on the move.
-The Movement, November, 1969
Getting Together
246
A LL
We want an education for our people that exposes the true nature
of this decadent American Society. We want an education that
teaches us our true history and role in the present day society.
247
of our school.
248
249
250
guard position, only find out about it when they realize that
they're wearing out the steps in the jails and the courts. The jail
house doors are getting rusty from slamming and opening and
slamming and opening. There won't be any alternative for the
workers except to become a strong militant revolutionary political
force. The students cannot free the workers, the workers cannot
free the students. Black folks cannot free White folks, White folks
cannot free Black folks. The Black Panther Party has a very clear
understanding of these concepts. And we say that for all the workers
the first point of demarcation which seems to have been forgotten
in this country, is that there has to be a correct recognition that
the primary struggle is the class struggle. Once this line of demarca
tion has been departed from the workers usually become turned on
each other, or they become in many cases the champions of reform .
With the type of unions that we've had in this country, it's been
understandable why this weird phenomenon has come about. An
other thing that we would like to make clear in the very beginning, is
that we do recognize the need for a degree of self-determination,
of self-rule for militant Black workers. This is not in any way to
endorse racism. The Party has a very clear line on that point. But
there is a need among Blacks, who are the most oppressed and
exploited people within the con fines of this Babylon they call
America to have self-rule, this is not independent rule, independent
of others, located geographically together, but self-rule. And there's
also an equal need for these Blacks to work in very close working
coalition and close communication with their class brothers, regard
less of color, regardless of whether you're for or against intermarriage,
whether you want to live in Beverly Hills or Watts or Oakland or
Washington, D.C., it doesn't make any difference. The need is for
a constant maintenance of a correct class line. And there's some
unions that profess this in lip-service and then they take it as far
as their local community, say Los Angeles, or the San Francisco area.
Then these same unions that claim to be workers unions, forget
one of the basic Marxist-Leninist principles, which Lenin put down,
is that the interest of the local proletariat should be subordinate
to the interest of the world proletariat. That's the advent of unionism
there, they start selling out their working class brothers all around
the world, even on the other side of the city. The Black Panther
Party is against this kind of separatism, opportunism, individualism,
this very subjective approach to a problem that is in reality a world
wide problem . The workers that catch a collective hell and try to
deal with it in an individual manner, we see them as suicidal, non
sensical, and very backwards politically. So when we talk about
self-rule this does not negate the need for a very close working coali
tion with class brothers, because the main problem in the United
25 1
States is not the race contradictions but the class contradictions. It's
made that way by the royal fucking that the working class gets in
this country. This is not the exclusive right of any ethnic group in
this country. But racism does exist to such a high level in this
country, that the people have to deal first on a level that goes from
step by step, taking it from a lower to a higher level. There's no need
of going into whether or not we think it has to always be like this.
No we don't, we hope it doesn't. That the day when the workers
will all belong to one working class association, when that day
comes we'll all be much happier. But until then that's the way it
has to be.
Another point of clarification is the role of the white radical
workers. The white radical workers are the ones best suited to fight
racism, ignorance and the political backwardness that exists in the
whole community. We definitely cannot expect any working brothers
from the Panther Caucuses or DRUM or other Black revolutionary
groups to go among the white workers when racism is still so
rampant. It would be like myself and these four brothers here
going down to clean up the white folks in Mobile, Alabama . Not
only would it probably be sheer suicide, it would be lunacy, it would
be an apolitical move, but there is a role. We find that many times
the white mother-country radicals among the workers would like to
come into the Black community and do their thing or come in
among the Black workers and do their thing. The sentiments are
beautiful, but it's not very practical at all. For one thing to assume
that the Black workers don 't have enough brains to take care of
themselves, is really a racist fallacy, the manifestation of a real racist
attitude. For another the purpose of the working class as a whole
can best be served by each going into his own community, because
this mosaic that's passed off as a melting pot, this ethnic mosaic
is a mixed-up mess . Racism is institutionalized to a degree that it
has never been institutionalized in the history of mankind, I mean
it's bounced off telestar and shot around the world. They pipe it
under the ocean in cables, it's in the comic books, it's in Sunday
papers, it's in television and radio. So it's rampan t idealism to try
to ignore this. But it's very foolhardy and politically backwards to
ignore the fact that the primary struggle is the class struggle, this
goes for Blacks and Whites alike. Now we can start with that basic
degree of understanding and we can probably accomplish something.
Another thing that has to be understood is that if we get away
from unionism, then the working class group, the group that pro
fesses to be for the worker is going to have to have a very concrete
and practical pla tform and program. And I would say tat the Black
Panther Party's I O-point Pla tform and Program exe ?1 phfies th type
of program that a revolutionary group needs. We re not gomg to
252
confine ourselves just to the factory and divorce the factory from
the community, that's a metaphysical approach, and that's not our
theory. I think we'll have a question and answer period later on, so
I won't try to take up too much of your time. lbank you.
-The Black Panther, May 4, 1969
253
ers. We don't support a union that turns its back on its membership,
just because the membership is politically ignorant. If the leadership
of a union sees the membership is ignorant politically, and it is
educating the membership, and struggling together with it, we
support it.
MovEMENT : Have you supported any unions in this area?
Josi : Not any specific union . There have been workers from many
local unions that we have stood in solidarity with .
The fourth point of the program is that the Caucus will support
or select members seeking political office in the union after we've
run a background survey of his history, union activities, sincerity,
then we will support him if he will work in the interest of the
workers.
MovEMENT : Does the Caucus itself run candidates?
WILBERT : Should members and central committee people run
for office? Members ask us why we haven't, when we've raised so
many questions about how fucked up things are. We say that our
main purpose is to raise the consciousness of the workers, and then
they'll vote for men among themselves who are not opportunists,
and who understand the necessity for strong unions. If the member
ship wanted us to represent them, and a particular situation arose
where we felt this would serve their needs then we would . The
whole union leadership is up for election in May and this is what
the caucus is about right now, raising the political consciousness of
the members so that when people come campaigning for different
positions, they will be able to judge whether they'll serve them
or not.
Josi : One way we can do that is specify exactly what our black
president now is doing that's not in the workers' interests. That
way they'll understand clearly that when he says, "I'm doing this
for you", he's not.
DucHo : The fifth point of the program is that we reject all
rumors or hearsay that are not given the official word of the Caucus.
We had to make this point because of all the rumors being spread
about us and what we stood for among the drivers. That's another
reason why we came out with the paper.
Josi : The sixth point is that the caucus does not recognize the
union as being above constructive criticism. Criticism is to be ad
ministered in an educational manner, not to destroy, but to build
and strengthen. Through criticism we expose the union leadership
and educate.
The seventh point is that it is not the intention of the Bl ck
Caucus to disrupt the workings of the grievance procedures. which
,
this union with honor has achieved in the past. Every gneva
i:i ce
that comes forth from the membership to the extent that the umon
254
has dealt with it and the members were satisfied, we say right on
to that. The objective of the Black Caucus is to unite the workers
for the purpose of bringing about positive and concrete changes in
the laws, rules, conditions, and their application. When laws, rules
and policies do not serve the workers, we attack them.
MOVEMENT : Are there black caucuses in other transport unions?
What about link ups with other black caucuses?
WILBERT : Right now we have a working coalition with the Black
Panther Caucus of the U.A.W. in Fremont, California. Other than
that we have no bonafide coalitions at this time. We are working
with people in several different locals, and we ate constantly making
contact with people who are having problems within their local
unions and are trying to come up with strategy and tactics to handle
the problems .
In New York City there's a revolutionary element in the Transit
workers union who are trying to start an independent union because
of the shit that's coming down between the TWU and the Transit
Authority. We keep in touch with them, although at this time we
don't intend to split the union out here or start an independent
union . . . but, we're revolutionaries and we'll do what's necessary.
MovEMENT : What's the relationship to the Black Panther Party?
WILBERT : I myself am a member of the Black Panther Party, and
these other brothers here on the Central Committee are very dedi
cated brothers and practice the Party ideology, the ten-point plat
form and program of the Party. That's what our relationship is with
the Party, we feel we are one, and if that shakes anybody, well right
on. Our objective is to show people by practice what our politics
are, and they are the politics of the rank and file exercising their
right to change the system, the politics of revolution in this country,
and the politics of oppressed people all over the world gaining
liberation from this imperialist pig that we here in Babylon are
strategically close to.
-The Movement, November, 1969
255
Huey P. Newton
Bobby Seale
A P P E N D I X ES
I . TH E P E RS ECUTION OF TH E
BLACK PANTH E R PA RTY
of
In July, 1 969, the Black Panther Party told the American people
and, indeed, the entire world, that all who opposed fascism must
unite against it and its encroachment first on the lives of the Black
militants and the Black people as a whole and then on the lives
of White radicals. Unfortunately, many people did not pay much
attention to this appeal and warning. In fact, few Americans took
it seriously, regarding it as mere rhetoric.
Since July, 1 969, events have borne out the validity of the warn
ings of the Black Panther Party.
In December, 1969, the records of the Panthers who had been
murdered and harassed since its early years were compiled. Un
fortunately, the Party did not begin to keep records at its inception
of the men and women who were harassed and killed, and the
demand for such statistics was so great that they had to be compiled
hastily. Nevertheless, even the incomplete records tell a story of
systematic arrest and harassment of men and women in Los Angeles
county alone for a period of almost two years. A man or woman
or a group of men and women would be charged with murder, be
held in jail for five or ten days, or twenty days, and all at once,
the charges against them would be dropped. The familiar buzz-saw
would .be "attempted murder" or "resisting arrest."
The pattern in Los Angeles is the same pattern that has emerged
throughout the United States wherever the Black Panther Party has
set up chapters and commenced operation.
In a period of two years-December, 1 967 to December, 1 969the Black Panther Party expended in bail-bond premiums alone
just the premiums, that is, money that would never be returned
a sum in excess of $200 000! How many breakfasts or lunches for
hungry children how m ch medical attention sorely needed in the
ghetto commun ities would that $200,000 have furnished?
257
258
Appendixes
259
260
decide the fate of men and women ." For that he was gagged, chained
like a wild animal. And when public opinion began to turn
against that judge, what did he do? He declared a mistrial on
Bobby Seale. He took advantag of his cloak and his oath of office
and his responsibility to humanity. In vindictiveness, in anger, he
sentenced Bobby Seale to four years in a federal penitentiary.
The judge could not do this legally. But this clever little judge
worked out a little scheme. He knew that the United States Su
preme Court had held that anyone who is imprisoned more than
six months is entitled to a jury foal. This little man knew that.
So he took 1 6 different charges, and sentenced Bobby to 3 months
each which added up to 48 months . He was confident he would get
away with that, and he will unless the people arise.
Whenever a Panther speaks in public, agents of the police de
partment, the FBI, the CIA and other similar organizations are
present taking notes on what is said, and then they proceed to take
sentences out of context. Here is a concrete example. In December,
1969 I asked the court to permit David Hilliard to travel the length
and breadth of the United States. All hell broke loose. The repre
sentative of the government objected strenuously. He said : "To
permit Mr. Hilliard to be out of the district of North California
would enable him to foment strife and continue to threaten the
life of the President of the United States." The judge then asked
why Mr. Hilliard had to be treated any differently than any other
defendant. The two experts from the Attorney General's staff in
Washington who were brought here to San Francisco finally had
to admit that there would be no reason to treat Mr. Hilliard differ
ently. I was asked to prepare an order, and one was prepared along
the lines that the judge had indicated . We came to the court at
one o'clock. Mr. Hilliard was not present, because all that was to
be submitted was the order to be signed.
It was finally signed by the judge at 5 : 30 in the afternoon. But
not before we had to face more harassment. In the afternoon in
came two fat cats with an affidavit to be submitted to the judge.
I said, "May I see the affidavit?" One of the cats said, "No." I
said, "I'd like to see it." The judge said, "Give Mr. Garry a copy
of the affidavit." The affidavit said that in a speech at the Glide
Memorial Church on Sunday night, December 1 4, 1 969, David
Hilliard had said again, "We will kill the President." This was signed
by an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Those who had heard David Hilliard at the Glide Memorial
Church know that the statement made by that FBI agent was a lie.
All Hilliard did was to explain the language which he used in his
speech on the 1 5th day of November, 1 969, and the history of
rhetoric in relationship to the dialectics of American history in
Appendixes
26 1
connection with the oppression of the men and women in the Black
ghetto.
\Vhen the judge would not consider the affidavit, the government
demanded that the copy that had been shown me be taken from me.
I had to give it back to them because I wanted the judge to sign
the order for travel. But the record shows how statements of Pan
thers are continually being distorted as part of the deliberate cam
paign to exterminate the Party.
The telephone lines of the Black Panther Party and of anyone
who regularly converses with that organization are constantly being
tapped . The authorities know, before the members know, what the
Black Panther Party is going to do next.
Let us look briefly at the case of Bobby Seale in Connecticut.
There was a man named Rackley who was a Black Panther and who
was murdered. We have every reason to believe, and intend to prove,
when the time comes, that Rackley was murdered by police agents.
Bobby Seale went to New Haven, Connecticut on the 19th day of
May, 1 969, at the request of Yale University, to speak. He received
an honorarium for his expenses and speech. He left New Haven in
the early morning, around five A.M., of the 20th. Rackley was mur
dered on the 2 1st day of May. No one mentioned Bobby Seale
until the 2 1st day of August, 1 969.
The papers submitted in Sacramento for the extradition of Bobby
Seale to Connecticut carried the following statement by the in
telligence officer : "Bobby Seale arrived in New Haven, spoke at
Yale University, we picked him up there, and he went to the BPP
headquarters at midnight." They also followed him to another place
and until he left New Haven at five o'clock on the morning of
May 20th . When, I ask, would he have had time to commit a
murder, or to plan a murder, or to get involved in any way either
directly or indirectly-especially with a man he did not even know
and had not even heard of before? And yet today Bobby Seale is
facing the death penalty.
The story of the Connecticut Panthers illustrates how constitu
tional rights fly out of the window when the Black Panther Party
becomes involved. On the basis of information they claimed to have
received from an informant whom they refused to identify, the
police burst into the New Haven headquarters of the Black Panther
Party, and arrested the people found inside. The_y were all take?
to the police station, where they were denied the nght to have heir
attorneys present. All eight people arrested _were thus extensive ly
questioned in violation of their constitutio nal nghts . .
The arrests were made without warrants . A heav ily armed squad
of police broke down doors at party headqu arters, entered bedro_m s
where women and children were sleeping, ransacked the office, seizing
262
Appendixes
263
"The record of police actions across the country against the Black
Panther Party forms a prima facie case for the conclusion that law
enforcement officials are waging a drive against the black militant
organization resulting in serious civil liberties violations," the Ameri
can Civil Liberties Union said today.
"First Amendment and due process guarantees have been breached
in numerous instances," the ACLU reported in disclosing a spot
check survey of ACLU affiliate offices in 9 major metropolitan
centers .
The national survey, prompted by the recent Chicago and Los
Angeles police raids on Black Panther officials, suggests that a pattern
of harassment exists and describes the nature of the civil liberties
violations involved. ACLU affiliates, in individual cases, have de
fended the rights of Black Panther groups when civil liberties issues
have arisen.
"Quite aside from the killing of Panthers and police which we
abhor, ACLU affiliates have reported that the style of law enforce
ment applied to Black Panthers has amounted to provocative and
even punitive harassment, defying the constitutional rights of Pan
thers to make political speeches or distribute political literature.
"In San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and New
York, police have made repeated arrests of Panthers for distributing
papers without a permit, harassment, interfering with an officer,
loitering and disorderly conduct-stemming from incidents where
police have challenged Panthers as they attempted to distribute
their newspaper or other political materials. Seldom have these
charges held up in court, often they have been dropped by the
prosecutor prior to trial, and in one New York case the arresting
officer acknowledged that he had no evidence but had been in
structed to 'get on the books' the arrest of a particular .Panth r who
was already on the books of an adjoining count y. We view this style
of law enforcemen t as applied with prejudice to . the .Pan the.rs, as
inflamma tory, and very susceptibl e to escal ation mto viol ent
confrontations.
.
by
"ACL U affiliates in New York and Indiana report infiltra tion ers
Panth
be
to
t
ug
government inform ants into black groups th
for the purpose of entrapmen t. The evide nce md1 cates that govern-
264
Appen dixes
265
At its May 23 meeting, the New York group of the Society for
Philosophy and Public Affairs adopted the following resolution con
cerning the Trial of the New York Panther 2 1 :
The treatment of the New York Panther 2 1 by courts of the State
of New York represents what we regard as a judicial outrage. The
evidence brought against the defendants seems far from conclusive;
yet the defendants have been placed under excessive bond that they
have no chance of meeting, and that is far greater than the bond
imposed on other defendants in New York charged with similar
crimes and confronted with greater evidence against them . Eleven
of the defendants have spent the past year in jail. In jail they have
been the victims of gross brutality. In courtrooms they and their
lawyers have been constantly harassed and have. be n denied ele
mentary rights necessary for the conduct of a fair ! nal. .
We believe the defendants in this case must 1mmed1ately be
granted bail that they can afford to pay. Also -.y e lieve that
Justice Murtagh, who is conducting the pre-trial hearmgs m the case,
has shown himself to be prejudiced against the defendants and
266
Appendixes
267
I I . CA LL FO R
CO N ST I T U T I O N A L
CON V E N T I O N ,
S E PT E M B E R 7, 1 9 70,
PH I LA D E LP H I A, PA.
Message to America
Delivered o n the 1 07th A n n iversary of
the Ema ncipation P rocla mation a t Wa s h i ngton, D.C.
Capitol of Babylon, World Racism, a n d I m peria l i sm
J u ne 1 9, 1 970 by The B l ack Pa nther Pa rty
268
Appendixes
269
The Constitution of the U.S.A. does not and never has protected
our people or guaranteed to us those lofty ideals enshrined within it.
When the Constitution was first adopted we were held as slaves.
We were held in slavery under the Constitution. We have suffered
every form of indignity and imposition under the Constitution, from
economic exploitation, political subjugation, to physical extermination.
We need no further evidence that there is something wrong with
the Constitution of the United States of America . We have had our
Human Rights denied and violated perpetually under this Con
stitution-for hundreds of years. As a people, we have received neither
the Equal Protection of the Laws nor Due Process of Law. Where
Human Rights are being daily violated there is denial of Due Process
of Law and there is no Equal Protection of the Law. The Con
stitution of the United States does not guarantee and protect our
Economic Rights, or our Political Rights, nor our Social Rights. It
does not even guarantee and protect our most basic Human Right,
the right to LIVE!
Implementing Point No. 1 0 of the Block Panther
Party Platform and Program
270
Appendixes
27 1
N otes
a Revolution.
Notes
273
274