Remembering George Jackson

Posted by Eljeer Hawkins on August 25, 2011

The United States imprisons 2.3 million women and men. This is the highest incarceration rate in the advanced capitalist world. Every day this system continues its deadly assault on working people…
by Eljeer Hawkins (Harlem, New York)

Remembering George Jackson: September 23, 1941 – August 21, 1971

George Jackson

On August 21, 1971, the black freedom and prisoners’ rights movement lost one of its “organic intellectuals,” to use a term made famous by 20th century Italian Marxist and political prisoner Antonio Gramsci. The revolutionary commitment that raged inside of George Jackson was born in the belly of American capitalism’s institution of social control, the prison system. He would be gunned down a month shy of his thirtieth birthday, by San Quentin prison guards during an alleged prison break.

Jackson’s Soledad Brother was published in the fall of 1970. His book Blood in My Eye was published posthumously in the fall of 1971. These two works stand as his political manifesto—an unbounded dedication to freedom for the most oppressed people in the world.

George Jackson stands alongside Malcolm X and countless others who became politically and socially aware of racism and capitalism’s underdevelopment of black America while locked down behind the walls of prison. In a few short years he developed into an activist and revolutionary theorist committed to revolutionary change.

I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels, and Mao when I entered prison and they redeemed me. For the first four years, I studied nothing but economics and military ideas. I met black guerrillas—George “Big Jake” Lewis, and James Carr, W.L. Nolen, Bill Christmas, Torry Gibson.…We attempted to transform the black criminal mentality into a black revolutionary mentality.
—Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

California Dreaming
Following the Great Depression of the 1930s and driven by the harsh realities of living in the Jim Crow South, the second Great Migration of African-Americans began. Donna Jean Murch, author of Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California, describes this transformation:

In 1940, 77 percent of the total black population lived in the South, with over 49 percent in rural areas; two out of five worked as farmers, sharecroppers or farm laborers. In the next ten years, over 1.6 million people migrated north and westward, to be followed by another 1.5 million in the subsequent decade.…By 1970, more than half of the African American population settled outside the South, with over 75 percent residing in cities. In less than a quarter century, “urban” became synonymous with “black.” (p.15)

During World War II, well-paying jobs in defense plants attracted many working people to industrial cities on the West Coast. Organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) from the trade union movement fought for jobs and resources for this expanding black working class. However, by the end of the war, the white working class and middle class began to flee urban centers like Oakland. Racism, discrimination in the trade unions, and deindustrialization after 1945 turned cities like Oakland into wastelands of social decay, economic depression, and political alienation.

The California Youth Authority
Capitalism needs and must have the prison to protect itself from the criminals it has created. It not only impoverishes the masses when they are at work, but it still further reduces them by not allowing millions to work at all. The capitalist’s profit has supreme consideration; the life of the workers is of little consequence.
—Eugene V. Debs, Walls & Bars: Prisons & Prison Life In The “Land Of The Free”

The arrival in California of African-Americans from the rural South was met with outright suspicion by the police authority and the state government. The generation of blacks born outside of the South, during and after World War II, tasted the bitter pill of Jim and Jane Crow, California style.

The California Youth Authority (CYA) became the prototype for social control of young people, particularly urban youth of color. CYA was founded in 1941; the Adult Authority followed in 1944. Professor Murch states:

The infusion of federal defense money and newfound prosperity enabled the state to build five medium-security adult facilities between 1944 and 1950…. In 1953, J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a special report to “all law enforcement officials,” warning about the dangerous effects of California’s baby boom: “The first wave in this flood tide of new citizens born between 1940 and 1950 has just this year reached the ‘teen age,’ the period in which some of them will inevitably incline toward juvenile delinquency and, later, a full-fledged criminal career.”(p.58)

Lester and Georgia Jackson moved George and the rest of their family from Chicago to California in 1956. George spent time at the CYA in Paso Robles for assault and burglary as a juvenile. Future Black Panther Party (BPP) leaders like Huey P. Newton and Emory Douglass would also serve time in the CYA system. George Jackson entered the California adult prison system at the tender age of eighteen in 1960, having been accused and convicted of armed robbery. He had stolen $70 from a gas station, and went into court with a record as a petty criminal and inadequate (public) counsel. After pleading guilty, George Jackson received the bizarre and cruel sentence of one year to life. He spent his first nine years in San Quentin State prison—seven of them in solitary confinement.

The Birth of a Revolutionary
In his first years in prison, Jackson was not considered a “model” prisoner. He seemed to have a total disregard for authority and fellow inmates. He spent significant time in solitary—or “the hole,” as prisoners called it. The prison letters he authored between 1964 and 1970 showcase a young man grappling with a society that stunted his growth in the context of the collective African-American struggle to overcome the evils of white supremacy and the vestiges of slavery. Especially in the candid letters to his parents, Georgia and Lester, he attempts to understand and explain the interplay of capitalism’s values and its effects on him and the Jackson family.

The letters give us a glimpse into the mind of the voracious reader that George Jackson was, and show the influence of such authors and revolutionaries as Che Guevara, Frantz Fanon, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Mao Zedong. Jackson was inspired by the powerful events of the Cuban revolution and the struggle of the people of Vietnam, as well as the anti-colonial rebellions going on all over the so-called Third World.

Jackson became one of the foremost prison intellectuals and activists of the time, organizing prisoners and later becoming a Field Marshal of the BPP. In 1966 he co-founded, with W.L. Nolen, the Black Guerrilla Family, which was rooted in the ideas of Marx and Mao. In 1969, Jackson and Nolen were transferred to Soledad Prison. In January 1970, a prison guard would gun down Nolen and two other black inmates during a riot. Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Cluchette were accused of killing prison guard O.G. Miller, who had shot and killed Nolen and two other inmates. If convicted of murdering Miller, Jackson and his comrades would face the death penalty. Their case, popularly known as the Soledad Brothers case, gained national and international news coverage and support.

The case exploded with the Marin County courtroom hostage-taking organized by Jonathan Jackson, George’s younger brother. Three prisoners—James McClain, William A. Christmas, and Ruchell Magee—were in court for a hearing when they took over the courtroom with Jonathan Jackson’s assistance. They took Judge Harold Haley, Deputy District Attorney Gary Thomas, and several others hostage at gunpoint. In an act of desperation and love, Jonathan Jackson demanded the release of the Soledad Brothers. Angela Davis, then a professor of philosophy at UCLA and the key organizer of the Soledad Brothers campaign, was also a member of the Communist Party USA and a “fellow traveler” of  the Black Panther Party. She was named as an accomplice to the crime because the guns used in the takeover were registered in her name.

Jonathan Jackson, McClain, and Christmas all died in a hail of bullets as the police sought to stop the getaway vehicle. Judge Haley would also die in the gunfire. Angela Davis became a fugitive. After her arrest, her case led to a landmark trial in which she campaigned against state-sponsored violence and the FBI’s notorious Counter Intelligence Program (a.k.a., COINTLEPRO). She was acquitted.

You Can Kill a Revolutionary, But You Can’t Kill Revolution
Prison guards, they cursed him
As they watched him from above
But they were frightened of his power
They were scared of his love.
Lord, Lord,
So they cut George Jackson down.
Lord, Lord,
They laid him in the ground…
—Bob Dylan, “George Jackson,” 1971

In 1971, the tension leading up to the Soledad Brothers’ trial for the alleged murder of prison guard O.G. Miller was interrupted by the sudden death of George Jackson. Prison authorities alleged that on August 21, Jackson attempted to break out of San Quentin using a 9mm handgun smuggled in by his lawyer and supposedly hidden in his Afro wig. A gunfight resulted in the death of Jackson, two other prisoners, and three prison guards. The Soledad Brothers would be acquitted of the murder of O.G. Miller years later.

A Critical Assessment: Blood in My Eye
Many people believe the Attica prison rebellion of September 1971 was partially inspired by the death of George Jackson the month before. His book, Blood in My Eye, was published posthumously in the fall of 1971. The book is Jackson’s political testament. It touches on themes of imperialism, internal colonialism, Marxist economics, labor history, political consciousness, state violence, and armed struggle.

Jackson examined Salvador Allende’s Chile with a critical eye: “There is simply no way to compare this society or its historical experience with that of a tiny colonial country like Chile: Allende is not seizing property; his government is ‘buying property.’ Until the Chilean ruling capitalist class is suppressed, the Chilean revolution is as meaningless as the Swedish experiment. Socialist governments which attempt to coexist with capitalist economics completely forget the economic motive of human social history.” (George Jackson, Blood in My Eye, p. 77-78.) What Jackson could not see from behind prison walls was the political development and power of the Chilean working class through factory and community committees taking the Allende electoral victory in 1970 as a starting point from which to construct a socialist society. The Chilean revolution was very meaningful to working people worldwide. That is why world capitalism went on the offensive to destroy it. That attack, plus political mistakes by Allende and his government, led to the revolutionary process eventually drowned in blood. The struggle culminated in Augusto Pinochet’s CIA-sponsored military coup on September 11, 1973.

The influence of Maoism was profound during times of Black Power and the New Left of the 1960s and ’70s. The BPP sold copies of Mao Zedong’s “Little Red Book” on college campuses as a fundraising tool to establish the party and purchase firearms. The Chinese revolution of 1949 that overthrew the capitalist nationalism of Chiang Kai-shek was viewed by many African American activists as a powerful moment for the anti-colonial struggle. The solidarity messages and visits from African American leaders such as W.E.B Dubois, Shirley Graham Dubois, Paul Robeson, Robert F. Williams, and Huey P. Newton would cement the links between Mao’s victorious Chinese revolution and the struggle of African Americans in the US.

On August 8, 1963, Mao expressed his solidarity with African Americans and the struggle for civil rights: “An American Negro leader now taking refuge in Cuba—Mr. Robert Williams, the former President of the Monroe, North Carolina, Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People—has twice asked me for a statement in support of the American Negroes’ struggle against racial discrimination. On behalf of the Chinese people, I wish to take this opportunity to express our resolute support for the American Negroes in their struggle against racial discrimination and for freedom and equal rights.”

Maoism’s appeal stemmed from a rejection of Stalinism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and third world solidarity with people of color. The BPP was not grounded in genuine Marxism, but their influence on revolutionaries of all country cannot be denied. The BPP commitment to freedom, self-determination, socialism, and the rejection of reformist politics has inspired youth and workers around the world.

The BPP circulated its pamphlet, “What We Want,” as well as the ten-point program for full employment; decent housing; free food, clothing, and medical care. All these ideas are socialist in character, but as independent Marxist and organizer James Boggs states: “…the Black Panther Party has resorted to social service programs, such as the Free Breakfast and Free Health programs. Instead of mobilizing the black community to compel the city, state, or federal government to provide such services under community control, the party has taken over the responsibility for their funding and administration.” (James Boggs, Racism and the Class Struggle: Further Pages from a Black Worker’s Notebook, 1970.) The BPP’s orientation of recruiting urban youth, the unemployed, working poor, and the prison population demonstrated the revolutionary potential of this layer of the black community. Their great weakness was the inability to make vital links with the black working class, trade union movement, and the militant white working class.

The Cuban revolution that put an end to the Batista dictatorship’s landlordism and gangster capitalism also heavily influenced the BPP. What the Chinese and Cuban revolutions had in common was the negation of the social power and democratic control of  society by the working class in the construction of socialism. There was greater emphasis placed on the needs of the peasant population and guerilla warfare. What the BPP, George Jackson, and the black radical left often ignored was the political character of Mao: “He was, by his own admission, a ‘Stalinist,’ and constructed not a democratic workers’ state along the lines of Russia in 1917–23, but a regime similar to that existing in Stalinist Russia. Landlordism and capitalism were gradually eliminated and the beginnings of a planned economy were put into place, although this was presided over by a one-party, totalitarian regime, with power in the hands of a privileged bureaucracy in the party, the state, the army and the economy.” (Peter Taaffe, www.socialistworld.net, 7/20/2005.)

Fascism
The historic function of fascism is to smash the working class,
destroy its organizations, and stifle political liberties when the
capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with
the help of democratic machinery.
—Leon Trotsky, Whither France?, 1934

George Jackson’s writings on fascism and class struggle demonstrate his deep understanding of history and Marxism. He carefully examines the rise of the counter-revolutionary phenomenon of fascism in Mussolini’s Italy in 1922 and Hitler’s Germany in 1933. He draws a parallel to the US government’s violent response to the militant and revolutionary character of the black freedom movement, the anti-war movement, the American Indian Movement, the Young Lords movement for Puerto Rican nationalism, and New Left activism generally. Activists in social struggle began to use the term fascist to describe the violent tactics of Hoover’s FBI and other US government agencies that sought the annihilation of these movements for freedom and economic justice.

It is crucial to understand the important differences between the events in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and ’30s, on the one hand, and those in the United States in the 1960s and ’70s, on the other. This history must be placed in the proper political context.

Leon Trotsky was the co-leader of the Bolshevik-led Russian Revolution of 1917 and a great international revolutionary socialist. One of his theoretical contributions to Marxism and to the international workers movement was his program to combat the rise of fascism in Europe. He described the process he saw taking place in Europe in terms of fascists’ manipulation of the people, made desperate by poverty: “At the moment that the ‘normal’ police and military resources of the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium, the turn of the fascist regime arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralized Lumpenproletariat —all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy….After fascism is victorious, finance capital directly and immediately gathers into its hands, as in a vise of steel, all the organs and institutions of sovereignty…” (Leon Trotsky, What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat, 1932.)

The rise of fascism in Italy, Germany, and later in Spain was rooted in the deep economic crisis of European capitalism following World War I. The social power of the working class and development of socialist and communist ideas throughout Europe opposed this rise of fascism. Memories of the Russian Revolution were still fresh in the 1920s and ’30s. That example of the tremendous potential of revolutionary power was in the background as workers were taking over factories and whole industries, fermenting the revolutionary process in an effort to establish a socialist society. The failure of social democratic parties and Stalinism to lead the working class to take political, economic, and social power would help usher in the dark days and nights of fascism under Hitler and Mussolini. Equating the fascism of the ’30s and the ’40s with the American fascism of the revolutionary ’60s and ’70s was an overreach.

The US experienced a tremendous economic upswing after World War II. For many years after the war the US was the pre-eminent economic, political, and military superpower in the world. Through social struggle by the working class and trade union movement, transformative gains and benefits were achieved under US capitalism and bourgeois democracy. But not everyone benefited from fruits of the post-war upswing. The black working class had to contend with the apartheid system that existed in the South. There were even vestiges of Jim & Jane Crow in northern cities such as Chicago and New York. The civil rights movement began to break the back of racial and class oppression, and eventually led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The militant Black Power movement challenged the institutions of capitalism and state-sponsored violence. Black Power posed the question of self-determination for black Americans, and eventually led not just to a national perspective but to a broader view that included the ideas of anti-imperialism and internationalism.

The presidential election victory of Richard Nixon in 1968 introduced a law and order doctrine, gaining much support from the white working class and the middle classes, particularly in the South. The traditional divide-and-conquer was adapted for the times to become Nixon’s “southern strategy,” which eventually developed into a basic strategy of the Republican Party still in use right up to the present day. In the 1960s, this counter-revolutionary strategy was part of a clear and decisive response by big business to stomp out all dissent in the streets, on campus, and in penitentiaries all across the country. It dovetailed with imperialism’s blood-thirst to end the communist threat in southeast Asia.

The US ruling elite did not need to employ European-style fascism, with its reliance on street thugs and stormtroopers to terrorize the population. Instead, that elite focused on the US labor movement and targeted socialist and communist trade unionists, ultimately expelling almost all of them from the leadership ranks of most unions. A bureaucratic, conservative, and pro-imperialist leadership came to power in the labor movement. These new leaders kept the militancy of organized labor dormant, in the main.

The tactics were not so subtle in the attempts to crush the militant black freedom movement of the ’60s and ’70s. Black Power faced police state tactics and violence by the “armed bodies of men” that daily violated civil and human rights of militant black activists.

The recent Georgia state prisoners strike, the hunger strike by four prisoners held in Ohio State Penitentiary a supermax prison, and the Pelican Bay prisoners hunger strike are all in the spirit of George Jackson and all prisoners fighting for human dignity. The United States imprisons 2.3 million women and men. This is the highest incarceration rate in the advanced capitalist world. Every day this system continues its deadly assault on working people, the poor, youth, and people of color. Another George Jackson is being born every day. George Jackson lived, struggled, and died to create a better world for the most oppressed people. Only through the revolutionary commitment to democratic socialism can we find peace, freedom, and justice.

George Jackson: Black Revolutionary

 

By Walter Rodney, November 1971

To most readers in this continent, starved of authentic information by the imperialist news agencies, the name of George Jackson is either unfamiliar or just a name. The powers that be in the United States put forward the official version that George Jackson was a dangerous criminal kept in maximum security in Americas toughest jails and still capable of killing a guard at Soledad Prison. They say that he himself was killed attempting escape this year in August. Official versions given by the United States of everything from the Bay of Pigs in Cuba to the Bay of Tonkin in Vietnam have the common characteristic of standing truth on its head. George Jackson was jailed ostensibly for stealing 70 dollars. He was given a sentence of one year to life because he was black, and he was kept incarcerated for years under the most dehumanizing conditions because he discovered that blackness need not be a badge of servility but rather could be a banner for uncompromising revolutionary struggle. He was murdered because he was doing too much to pass this attitude on to fellow prisoners. George Jackson was political prisoner and a black freedom fighter. He died at the hands of the enemy.

Once it is made known that George Jackson was a black revolutionary in the white mans jails, at least one point is established, since we are familiar with the fact that a significant proportion of African nationalist leaders graduated from colonialist prisons, and right now the jails of South Africa hold captive some of the best of our brothers in that part of the continent. Furthermore, there is some considerable awareness that ever since the days of slavery the U.S.A. is nothing but a vast prison as far as African descendants are concerned. Within this prison, black life is cheap, so it should be no surprise that George Jackson was murdered by the San Quentin prison authorities who are responsible to Americas chief prison warder, Richard Nixon. What remains is to go beyond the generalities and to understand the most significant elements attaching to George Jacksons life and death.

When he was killed in August this year, George Jackson was twenty nine years of age and had spent the last fifteen [correction: 11 years] behind bars—seven of these in special isolation. As he himself put it, he was from the lumpen. He was not part of the regular producer force of workers and peasants. Being cut off from the system of production, lumpen elements in the past rarely understood the society which victimized them and were not to be counted upon to take organized revolutionary steps within capitalist society. Indeed, the very term lumpen proletariat was originally intended to convey the inferiority of this sector as compared with the authentic working class.

Yet George Jackson, like Malcolm X before him, educated himself painfully behind prison bars to the point where his clear vision of historical and contemporary reality and his ability to communicate his perspective frightened the U.S. power structure into physically liquidating him. Jacksons survival for so many years in vicious jails, his self-education, and his publication of Soledad Brother were tremendous personal achievements, and in addition they offer on interesting insight into the revolutionary potential of the black mass in the U.S.A., so many of whom have been reduced to the status of lumpen.

Under capitalism, the worker is exploited through the alienation of part of the product of his labour. For the African peasant, the exploitation is effected through manipulation of the price of the crops which he laboured to produce. Yet, work has always been rated higher than unemployment, for the obvious reason that survival depends upon the ability to obtain work. Thus, early in the history of industrialization, workers coined the slogan the right to work. Masses of black people in the U.S.A. are deprived of this basic right. At best they live in a limbo of uncertainty as casual workers, last to be hired and first to be fired. The line between the unemployed or criminals cannot be dismissed as white lumpen in capitalist Europe were usually dismissed.

The latter were considered as misfits and regular toilers served as the vanguard. The thirty-odd million black people in the U.S.A. are not misfits. They are the most oppressed and the most threatened as far as survival is concerned. The greatness of George Jackson is that he served as a dynamic spokesman for the most wretched among the oppressed, and he was in the vanguard of the most dangerous front of struggle.

Jail is hardly an arena in which one would imagine that guerrilla warfare would take place. Yet, it is on this most disadvantaged of terrains that blacks have displayed the guts to wage a war for dignity and freedom. In Soledad Brother, George Jackson movingly reveals the nature of this struggle as it has evolved over the last few years. Some of the more recent episodes in the struggle at San Quentin prison are worth recording. On February 27th this year, black and brown (Mexican) prisoners announced the formation of a Third World Coalition. This came in the wake of such organizations as a Black Panther Branch at San Quentin and the establishment of SATE (Self-Advancement Through Education). This level of mobilisation of the nonwhite prisoners was resented and feared by white guards and some racist white prisoners. The latter formed themselves into a self-declared Nazi group, and months of violent incidents followed. Needless to say, with white authority on the side of the Nazis, Afro and Mexican brothers had a very hard time. George Jackson is not the only casualty on the side of the blacks. But their unity was maintained, and a majority of white prisoners either refused to support the Nazis or denounced them. So, even within prison walls the first principle to be observed was unity in struggle. Once the most oppressed had taken the initiative, then they could win allies.

The struggle within the jails is having wider and wider repercussions every day. Firstly, it is creating true revolutionary cadres out of more and more lumpen. This is particularly true in the jails of California, but the movement is making its impact felt everywhere from Baltimore to Texas. Brothers inside are writing poetry, essays and letters which strip white capitalist America naked. Like the Soledad Brothers, they have come to learn that sociology books call us antisocial and brand us criminals, when actually the criminals are in the social register. The names of those who rule America are all in the social register.

Secondly, it is solidifying the black community in a remarkable way. Petty bourgeois blacks also feel threatened by the manic police, judges and prison officers. Black intellectuals who used to be completely alienated from any form of struggle except their personal hustle now recognize the need to ally with and take their bearings from the street forces of the black unemployed, ghetto dwellers and prison inmates.

Thirdly, the courage of black prisoners has elicited a response from white America. The small band of white revolutionaries has taken a positive stand. The Weathermen decried Jacksons murder by placing a few bombs in given places and the Communist Party supported the demand by the black prisoners and the Black Panther Party that the murder was to be investigated. On a more general note, white liberal America has been disturbed. The white liberals never like to be told that white capitalist society is too rotten to be reformed. Even the established capitalist press has come out with esposes of prison conditions, and the fascist massacres of black prisoners at Attica prison recently brought Senator Muskie out with a cry of enough.

Fourthly (and for our purposes most significantly) the efforts of black prisoners and blacks in America as a whole have had international repercussions. The framed charges brought against Black Panther leaders and against Angela Davis have been denounced in many parts of the world. Committees of defense and solidarity have been formed in places as far as Havana and Leipzig. OPAAL declared August 18th as the day of international solidarity with Afro-Americans; and significantly most of their propaganda for this purpose ended with a call to Free All Political Prisoners.

For more than a decade now, peoples liberation movements in Vietnam, Cuba, Southern Africa, etc., have held conversations with militants and progressives in the U.S.A. pointing to the duality and respective responsibilities of struggle within the imperialist camp. The revolution in the exploited colonies and neo-colonies has as its objective the expulsion of the imperialists: the revolution in the metropolis is to transform the capitalist relations of production in the countries of their origin. Since the U.S.A. is the overlord of world imperialism, it has been common to portray any progressive movement there as operating within the belly of the beast. Inside an isolation block in Soledad or San Quentin prisons, this was not merely a figurative expression. George Jackson knew well what it meant to seek for heightened socialist and humanist consciousness inside the belly of the white imperialist beast.

International solidarity grows out of struggle in different localities. This is the truth so profoundly and simply expressed by Che Guevara when he called for the creation of one, two, three – many Vietnams. It has long been recognized that the white working class in the U.S.A is historically incapable of participating (as a class) in anti-imperialist struggle. White racism and Americas leading role in world imperialism transformed organized labour in the U.S. into a reactionary force. Conversely, the black struggle is internationally significant because it unmasks the barbarous social relations of capitalism and places the enemy on the defensive on his own home ground. This is amply illustrated in the political process which involved the three Soledad Brothers—George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette—as well as Angela Davis and a host of other blacks now behind prison bars in the U.S.A.

NOTE: George Jackson also authored Blood In My Eye which was published posthumously, or after this article was written.

The SOLE PURPOSE of a Panther

The SOLE PURPOSE of a Panther is to be a
REVOLUTIONARY in the Black/Afrikan People’s
liberation struggle, and to mobilize the
masses towards self determination. A Panther
MUST be a vanguard example at ALL
TIMES. In order to accomplish this great
and divine mission, she/he must be:
1. Spiritually, culturally, and
politically conscious.
2. Respectful and courteous to all
people and demand the
same in return.
3. Militant – Always engaged in war
for the minds and hearts of black
people, while carrying one’s self
in an organized and orderly fashion.
4. Humble – Willing to release
any arrogant attitudes or
superior ideas of one’s self.
5. Disciplined – Willing to sacrifice
your lower or personal
desires for the greater good
of the mission.

Extinction of the Panther: A Study of the Black Panther Newspaper’s Reports of FBI Subversion

by John C. Watson
Graduate Student: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
School of Journalism and Mass Communication  CB# 3365
Howell Hall, Chapel Hill, N.C. 27599-3365
(919) 967-4142 
 
History Division - AEJMC Annual Convention Chicago, IL. 1997
 
 
 
 
 
Extinction of the Panther:
A Study of the Black Panther Newspaper's Reports of FBI Subversion
 
 
by John C. Watson
Graduate Student: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
School of Journalism and Mass Communication  CB# 3365
Howell Hall, Chapel Hill, N.C. 27599-3365
(919) 967-4142 E-MAIL
History Division - AEJMC Annual Convention Chicago, IL. 1997
 
 
Abstract
 
        This paper is a study of the Black Panther Party's weekly newspaper from 1968
until 1971 to assess how it reported the effects of the FBI's subversive actions
against the party. The study indicates that the newspaper's coverage was greatly
affected by the fact that its primary purpose was to serve as the public face of
the party and advance its goals.
 
Extinction of the Panther
 
Price Competition
Extinction of the Panther:
A Study of the Black Panther Newspaper's Reports of FBI Subversion
 
 
         J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, considered
the Black Panther Party "the greatest threat to the internal security of the
country " in 1968.[1] Hoover accordingly made sure that the Panthers were
subjected to the ministrations of an FBI program he formally launched in 1967 to
systematically undermine and destroy organizations involved in the Black
Liberation Movement.  The memo that launched the program identified it as:
"Counter Intelligence Program - Black Nationalist - Hate Groups."[2] It shall be
referred to here as Cointelpro.
        Cointelpro was designed to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise
neutralize the activities of black nationalists, hate-type groupings, their
leadership, spokesmen, membership and supporters."[3]  When the memo was
initially circulated, the Black Panther Party was not on the Cointelpro list of
targets which included the Nation of Islam, the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and the Congress of
Racial Equality. But five months before Hoover publicly announced his assessment
of the Black Panther Party as an internal enemy of the United States, it had
apparently become the agency's primary target and the number of FBI field
offices was nearly doubled to handle the threat Hoover believed black
nationalists represented.[4]
        This study analyzes the content of the Black Panther newspaper from 1968
through 1971to asses how it reported FBI operations against the party. Panther
Chief of Staff Bobby Hilliard wrote in the Nov. 22, 1969 edition of the
newspaper: "People who read our newspaper can stay tuned to what's happening
with regard to the Black Panther Party." However, this analysis of the
newspaper's content indicates Hilliard's statement  was not true with respect to
Cointelpro operations against the party. The newspaper did not report how its
leaders and rank and file members had been duped by the FBI into damaging the
party and its dissident movement. The newspaper's primary function was to
advance the goals of the party and it therefore had to present the Panthers as
strong, resolute and capable of leading a Marxist revolution in the United
States
        Everything in the Black Panther newspaper was published under the full control
of the Panther party and therefore presented only those aspects of its
operations that its leaders wanted exposed to a sympathetic or impressionable
public, its far-flung membership and those who were hostile to the party. The
newspaper presented the party and its leaders as often beleaguered, dedicated,
fearless and intelligent. It insisted throughout that any missteps or bad acts
were the fault of select individuals or the sinister interference by government
agents, law enforcement officers, reactionaries or counterrevolutionaries.
Self-criticism was rare and the party itself was never presented in a bad light.
The newspaper never revealed when the party or its favored members have been
duped by Cointelpro schemes or federal agents, nor does it fully disclose what
led party leaders to dramatic changes in attitude toward some of its members and
other organizations. As this paper attempts to show, these abrupt attitude
changes were often prompted by Cointelpro.
        There are sporadic informational lapses in the Panther newspaper's presentation
of party history that required this study to rely on books and other periodicals
for factual background necessary for a fuller understanding of some issues dealt
with by the newspaper. Outside sources were necessary to provide the framework
of Cointelpro operations and place them within the context of other covert
domestic operations conducted by American police and intelligence agencies
during the 1960s and 1970s. These sources indicate that the Black Panther Party
was not the sole target of covert disruptive schemes, and that the fact that it
was a black organization was not the operative issue that made it a target.
Researcher James Kirkpatrick Davis has detailed Cointelpro activities against
white organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, the predominantly white Students
for a Democratic Society and the Jewish Defense League to show that the nature
of the FBI disruption is similar in each instance.[5]  Athan Theoharis provides
a historical perspective by tracing domestic intelligence agency activities and
policies from 1936 through the mid 1970s.[6]  Much of the documentation of FBI
policies is painstakingly collected in the public documents series published by
the R.R. Bowker Company.[7]
        More opinionated  presentations of the Panthers-Cointelpro interaction are
provided by authors who either have been Panthers or who have extensively
interviewed ex-Panthers and have concluded that that the episodes have produced
clear heroes and villains. Researchers Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall
depicted the Panthers as victims of an illegal and unethical FBI operation to
undermine political activism.[8]  Author Hugh Pearson, however, was highly
critical of the Panthers and largely blames their personal foibles for
undermining the party.[9]  Panther co-founder Huey P. Newton was largely
self-serving in his account of Cointelpro and the Panthers, but his writings on
the subject provided a valuable insight into the relationships of some party
leaders.[10]
        This study begins with a brief history of Cointelpro before moving to an
introductory discussion of the Black Panther Party and a fuller discussion of
the four areas in which the party's newspaper reveals a progression toward the
goals sought by Cointelpro. The first area is the disruption and neutralization
of party members through a campaign of harassment waged by law enforcement
officers. The second discussion focuses on the widening of rifts between the
party, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and Stokely Carmichael.
The third area of discussion is the party's alienation from Ron M. Karenga and
his United Slaves organization. The final discussion focuses on the internal
purges and the split between the party's most prominent leaders, Huey P. Newton
and Eldridge Cleaver.
 
Cointelpro - the FBI's Counterintelligence Program
        Cointelpro was exposed to the American public for the first time shortly after
the Media, Pa., offices of the FBI were broken into on March 8, 1971.  More than
a thousand internal documents were stolen by a group of activists who identified
themselves as the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI. Three days later,
the commission began mailing selected copies of the documents to the Los Angeles
Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times and prominent individuals. The
mailings included a statement  from the commission and an explanation that the
documents had been stolen "so that the nature and extent of FBI surveillance
activities in this country could be studied in depth."[11]
        The stolen documents revealed Cointelpro initiatives to conduct surveillance
upon and create disruptions among and within the Communist Party U.S.A., white
hate groups, New Left groups such as Students for a Democratic Society and
others opposed to American involvement in the Vietnam War, and prominent black
nationalist groups such as the Black Panther Party. The dissemination led to
hundreds of reports and commentaries in newspapers and other media that prompted
congressional hearings in Washington to substantiate whether and to what extent
the FBI had engaged in domestic spying, not only to gain evidence for criminal
prosecutions, but to disrupt or destroy dissident domestic political
organizations.
        The documents revealed to the public that a variety of dangerous deceits and
personally intrusive tactics were used to undermine those targeted by Cointelpro
irrespective of the racial makeup of the group. Among the tactics used against
the Ku Klux Klan, for example, were the mailing of pink postcards to its members
informing them that despite the legendary secrecy of the Klan, people knew who
they were. Letters were sent to low-ranking Klansmen falsely claiming that
higher ranking Klansmen were embezzling dues money. In Louisiana, the FBI mailed
a letter to a second-tier Klansman thanking him for informing on other Klansmen.
Although the Klansman was not an informant, the FBI knew his superiors would see
the letter before he did, and as expected, the targeted member was removed from
duty and distrust was nurtured in the organization.[12] A detailed letter was
sent to the wife of a major Klan leader in Virginia to convince her that he was
committing adultery while on the road handling Klan business. The agent who
wrote the letter contrived to make the wife believe it was written by the wife
of another Klan member who did not want her own spouse tainted by the immoral
practice which could undermine the otherwise noble work of the Klan.[13]
        When Cointelpro was initially exposed, J. Edgar Hoover was the only person who
ever had been director of the FBI and was accordingly blamed for its wrongdoing.
He may not have created it, but at a minimum, in his role as director he
approved it and kept it functioning. Some historians have concluded that
Cointelpro was created in the 1960s, but there is documentation indicating that
Cointelpro-type operations were under way as early as the 1920s when black
activist Marcus Garvey was the target.[14]  The bullseye inevitably moved to the
Black Panther Party in the late 1960s because the party was the most flamboyant
and widely perceived as the most dangerous of the domestic movements of that
decade.[15]
 
The Black Panther Party
        The Black Panther Party for Self Defense blazed into the national consciousness
on May 2, 1967 when more than three dozen members, wearing the black leather
jackets and black berets that would become their trademark, walked into a
session of the California Legislature carrying rifles to protest a bill that
would revoke their right to openly carry such weapons. They were arrested, and
pictures and reports of their brazen and defiant act were flashed across the
United States and around the world.
        Party members had appeared in public armed in an earlier display as they
directed traffic at an intersection near the Santa Fe Elementary School in North
Oakland, Calif. Press coverage of the event was only local, but city officials
soon installed the traffic signal that area parents had vainly sought for years.
The party was formed in October 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale while
they were college students in Oakland. Its primary purpose was to monitor the
Oakland Police Department's treatment of blacks. Panthers would follow police
cars on patrols.  The party provided community services such as a children's'
breakfast program and a health care clinic, but the Panthers were more widely
seen as armed angry militants intent on confronting the police.
        One year after the party was founded, Newton was involved in a gunfight in
which an Oakland police officer was killed.[16] Newton was arrested and
imprisoned. Panther Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver was involved in a
police shootout less than a year later in which one Panther party member was
killed.[17] Cleaver was imprisoned and later fled to exile in Cuba and Algiers.
Throughout their absences, the Black Panther newspaper included their writings
and reflected what was happening to the party.
        The newspaper was a tabloid published weekly in San Francisco and Oakland,
California and distributed across the United States and internationally. In
1969, it had a circulation of 45,000. Party members were required to sell the
paper for 25 cents per copy as part of their regular duties. It was the public
face of the Black Panther Party and a major source of income. It did not carry
any paid advertisements during the period examined in this study, 1968 through
1971, but accepted a paid ad in mid 1972. It regularly carried display-size ads
touting party principles, rules and regulations as well as pleas for funding to
support its revolutionary struggle. Political cartoons, bold preachy headlines,
long and vehement commentary by party leaders, poetry and letters were the
paper's usual fare. Pigs were the symbolic demons used throughout the paper's
history. Law enforcement officers were always referred to as pigs in text and
they were depicted as pigs in the ubiquitous political cartoons that were a
staple graphic of the newspaper. Any person or institution the Panther party
considered an enemy of its movement was liable to be depicted as a pig.
                                                     Neutralization by
Harassment
        Between 1969 and 1971 there was rarely an issue of the newspaper published
without several reports of members being detained or arrested on a wide variety
of charges. Often the offense was nothing more serious than failing to have
proper registration for a motor vehicle or failure to carry a valid draft card.
Sometimes the offenses were more serious and can be traced to the fact that many
Panther recruits had histories of criminal activity before joining the party and
did not fully reform. The newspaper also carried frequent appeals for bail money
to free those arrested. FBI documents indicated that the pattern of arrests and
detentions was consistent with a tried and proven Cointelpro strategy.
        A directive from the FBI director to the Albany, N.Y., office indicated that
the 23 FBI field offices advised of the Cointelpro against black nationalists
were provided an example of a technique that had been used effectively. The
directive said:
                The Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) ... was active in Philadelphia,
                Pa. in the summer of 1967. The Philadelphia office alerted local police; who
                then put RAM leaders under close scrutiny. They were arrested on every
                        possible charge until they could no longer make bail. As a result, Ram
leaders
        spent most of the summer in jail and no violence traceable to RAM took
place.[18]
 
 
Separation of the Panthers from Stokely Carmichael
 
        A second Cointelpro goal was the disruption of the Black Panther Party's
relationships with other black nationalist groups and leaders. This goal may
have been achieved with the abrupt turnaround in the Panthers' relationship with
Stokely Carmichael, who rose to prominence as a leader of the Student
Non-violent Coordinating Committee and who is credited with popularizing the
term, "Black Power." The Panther leadership displayed respect and affection for
Carmichael in their newspaper during 1966 and 1967. The regard was so great that
Newton drafted Carmichael and made him the first and only prime minister of the
Black Panther Party.[19]
        When black columnist Julius Lester attacked Carmichael in print, the Black
Panther published an open letter defending him and praising SNCC. The letter
said in part, "Before the Black Panther Party came along, SNCC and other black
militant organizations were doing valuable work organizing the black
community."[20]  The letter went on to praise Stokely for advancing the
movement. "Stokely took the first vital step when he told whites, 'Your job is
to eliminate racism where it exists - in the white community.' "
        When a rift developed between Carmichael and the Washington D.C. branch of
SNCC, the Black Panther newspaper vehemently defended him and attacked his
detractor: "A reactionary dog has been turned loose in Washington, D.C. His name
is Lester McKinney, head of D.C.'s SNCC office ... Lester is
counter-revolutionary in that he opposes our beloved Prime Minister, Stokely
Carmichael."[21]
        By mid-1969, however, the pages of the Black Panther clearly showed that
Carmichael was no longer beloved. Since being drafted, he had been regularly
listed in the newspaper as prime minister. That listing disappeared in the June
14, 1969 edition. The May 31, 1969 edition included a possible explanation in a
column written by Black Panther Minister of Education Raymond "Masai" Hewitt,
who accused Carmichael of deviating from the party line and revealed that an
investigation of Carmichael was being conducted. Carmichael resigned from the
party and left for Africa.
        Despite Carmichael's departure, he continued to be reviled in the pages of the
Black Panther for more than a year. Eldridge Cleaver seemed particularly
incensed with Carmichael and published two major pieces attacking him. The first
ran under the headline: "Open letter to Stokely Carmichael." Cleaver opened by
saying, "Your letter of resignation as Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party
came, I think, about one year too late."[22]
        Cleaver ominously implied there was a suspicious similarity between
Carmichael's criticism of the party when he announced his resignation and the
allegations law enforcement officers and informants had been making to the U.S.
Senate's (McClellan Committee) Permanent Subcommittee on Subversive Groups. In
his second major written attack on Carmichael, Cleaver was more direct in his
accusations. He said Carmichael was a longtime friend of George Sams, a former
Panther whom the party newspaper accused of being a government informant and who
testified as a prosecution witness in the murder trial of Black Panther
co-founder Bobby Seale. "It was none other than Stokely Carmichael who sent that
running dog, George Sams, from Detroit to San Francisco in February 1968, and
vouched for him, and personally sponsored him into the Black Panther Party,"
Cleaver wrote.[23]
        It may be impossible to pinpoint the exact cause of this abject reversal of
attitude toward Carmichael, but the influence of Cointelpro can not be
discounted. The directives J.Edgar Hoover sent to each FBI field office
specifically instructed agents to: "1. Prevent the coalition of militant black
nationalist groups ... 2. Prevent the rise of a 'messiah' who could unify, and
electrify, the black militant movement ... Carmichael has the necessary charisma
to be a real threat in this way."[24]
        More telling is a July 10, 1968, FBI memo that said:
                "It is suggested that consideration be given to convey the impression
that            CARMICHAEL is a CIA informant.
                One method of accomplishing the above would be to have a carbon copy
        of informant report reportedly written by CARMICHAEL to the CIA carefully
        deposited in the automobile of a close Black Nationalist friend. The report
        should be so placed that it will be readily seen.
                 It is hoped that when the informant report is read it will help
promote                 distrust between CARMICHAEL and the Black Community. It is suggested
that            carbon of report be used to indicate that CARMICHAEL turned original copy
into    CIA and kept carbon copy for himself.
                 It is also suggested that we inform a certain percentage of reliable
criminal                and racial informants that 'we heard from reliable sources that
CARMICHAEL is   a CIA agent.' It is hoped that these informants would spread the
rumor in                        various large Negroe (sic) communities across the land.[25]
 
        This practice was frequently cited in FBI memos as a successful tactic and was
called "snitch jacketing," or creating a "bad jacket."
 
Separation of the Panthers from the Cultural Nationalists
        The Black Panther newspaper never demonstrated any overt affection for Ron M.
Karenga or United Slaves, the black cultural nationalist group he led in
Southern California. But the two organizations shared goals such as uplifting
the black community and restraining the police. They even conducted community
patrols together at one point.[26]  Although the Marxist-Leninist philosophy of
the Panthers differed from the race-based tenets of US and the Cultural
Nationalist Movement in general, the animosity and outright warfare that
developed between the two was inconsistent with the goals and principles they
held in common.
        In the fall of 1968, when relations between the Panthers and US were considered
to be at a low point, the pages of the Black Panther still did not carry any
overtly hostile items about US, Karenga or cultural nationalism. The worst was
an item published in December under the byline of "Boston Fred Nolan" that
criticized cultural nationalism without mentioning Karenga or US. An indicative
excerpt from the piece said, "Lately there has been a landslide of 'Black
Cultural Nationalism,' ... Too much emphasis is being placed on I'm Black and
proud, instead of 'I'm Black Revolutionary, going to set all Black people free.'
"[27]
        Agents of the FBI, apparently relying on other sources of information instead
of the sentiments expressed in the newspaper to gauge the relationship between
the Panthers and US, sent a memo from the Los Angeles field office to J. Edgar
Hoover to report that informants had claimed the Panthers had arranged for
someone to murder Karenga.[28]  That memo advised: "Los Angeles is presently
analyzing the situation to determine if further disruption can be caused between
these two antagonists." Slightly more than five weeks later, the FBI reported
that its informants had uncovered a US plot to kill Eldridge Cleaver.[29]  The
Los Angeles office of the FBI subsequently sent a memo to Washington indicating
that it was preparing a letter to the Panthers that would appear to be written
by a US member who would claim that he is aware of the plot against Karenga and
threatens an ambush of Panther leaders in Los Angeles. The memo says in part:
"It is hoped this counterintelligence measure will result in a 'US' and BPP
(Black Panther Party) vendetta."[30]
        The Jan. 25, 1969, front page of the Black Panther newspaper bore the blaring
headline: "Panthers Assassinated by US Organization." Panther Deputy Minister of
Defense Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter and Deputy Minister of Information John
Jerome Huggins had been fatally shot Jan. 17 while attending a meeting at UCLA
which was also attended by members of US. Three US members were charged with the
killings.
        A page 2 story beneath the label headline, "Political Assassins," was packaged
with a photograph of Karenga flanked by four members of US.[31]  A crudely drawn
arrow points to Karenga's shaved head. The photo caption said: "Ron (Karenga)
Everett and Four Henchmen." The accompanying news story provided a detailed
account of the shooting and identified US members as the culprits and claimed
they are "known to receive protection from the L.A. Pig Department." From this
point, members of US and other cultural nationalist groups were regularly
referred to as "pork chop nationalists" when they are mentioned in the Black
Panther.  It is another example of the pig metaphor being used to demonize.
        The Panthers' continuing hostility to Karenga was indicated by the next edition
of their newspaper which carried a large cartoon on the front page depicting
Karenga (with shaved head and sunglasses) on his knees and crying while a black
man and woman hold pistols to his head.[32] Above the drawing was the headline:
"Panthers Demand Justice." The entire Feb. 2, 1969 edition of the paper seemed
to be dedicated to attacking and belittling Karenga, US and the Black Cultural
Nationalist Movement.
        A half-page article by Linda Harrison was typical. It bore the headline, "On
Cultural Nationalism" and  was accompanied by a demonic line drawing of Karenga.
The article was 30 inches of eloquent vitriol.[33]  She condensed the cultural
nationalist philosophy into "James Brown's words - I'm Black and I'm Proud." She
criticized those who believe "that there is a dignity inherent in wearing
naturals; that a buba (traditional African apparel)  makes a slave a man." She
sharply asserted: "A man who lives under slavery... rarely regains his dignity
by rejecting the clothiers of his enslaver." Her penultimate paragraph asked
rhetorically, how can a cultural nationalist "deny the political realities of
his own life in America by dressing up in a (brightly colored) maternity smock
(a buba)?"
        Later in the same edition, the Panther minister of information begins a full
page of criticism with the statement, "We must destroy all cultural nationalism
because it is reactionary and has become a tool of Richard Milhous Nixon." The
type wraps around a cartoonish depiction of Karenga  as Humpty Dumpty, an
obvious jab at his rotund physique. In this edition, for the first and only
time, an article from the Wall Street Journal is reprinted. A Black Panther
cartoonist  added a drawing of Karenga dressed in African garb accepting a huge
bag of money from a pig dressed in a suit. A dialogue balloon above Karenga's
head had him saying, "Just trying to be Black." The Wall Street Journal reprint
was mildly critical of Karenga but balanced and included the fact that Karenga
had met with California Gov. Ronald Reagan. The Panther headline said, "Wall
Street Journal Exposes Karenga."
        Throughout 1969, the Black Panther rarely published without an attack on
Karenga, US or cultural nationalism. A May 12, 1969 story carried the headline
"Karenga - King of the Bloodsuckers," above a rambling history of his political
life. An Aug. 9, 1969 story, "Karenga's Stooges in Court," reported on the start
of the trial of the three US members accused of killing two Panthers at UCLA. It
included the observation, "Ron Karenga has been hiding out. That bald headed,
dope shooting, homosexual's ass belongs to the people!"
        As vehement and deadly as this feud with US was, and as divisive as the
conflicts with Carmichael and the cultural nationalists proved to be, the
Panther newspaper reflected a more severe debilitation of the party when
conflicts developed within the party. Ahead were the internal purges and the
crippling division of the party's most visible figures. Cointelpro almost
certainly played a role in both.
 
Internal Purges
        The Black Panther Party was among the most widely publicized radical groups in
the United States during the late 1960s and its membership grew accordingly. At
its peak, it had 2,000 members. The Panthers' notoriety motivated federal law
enforcement agencies to infiltrate the party and the steady influx of recruits
allowed them to do so quite effectively. By 1969 the number of FBI operatives
reporting on the activities of black activists was listed at 4,000 and the
Panthers alone were being monitored by 64 informants.[34] The Black Panther
newspaper frequently reflected the parent organization's fear of infiltration
and the certainty that some party members were federal agents, informers or
misguided people who had joined the organization for reasons other than the
party's avowed goal of furthering a Marxist revolution in the United States. In
an effort to get rid of them, the newspapers first edition of 1969 carried an
editorial announcing the leadership's awareness of the problem and a course of
action:
        The Black Panther Party ... comes forth to DENOUNCE those PROVOCATEUR AGENTS,
KOOKS and AVARICIOUS FOOLS who found their way into the membership. These are
not members of the Black Panther party. And the Black Panther Party wholly
denounces their acts... Those who violate these rules ( three rules of
discipline and 18 points of attention) are denounced as
counterrevolutionaries."[35]
 
        The newspaper heavily documented the pervasiveness of the purge as required by
the party's Rule 17 which said: " All leadership personnel who expel a member
must submit this information to the Editor of the Newspaper so that it will be
published in the paper and will be known by all chapters and branches."
Unfortunately for researchers trying to detect a cause-and-effect tie between
Cointelpro operations and the Panther purges, the newspaper did not always
provide specific information about what caused any individual member to be
suspected of behavior that warranted expulsion.
        The Jan. 4, 1969 editorial marked the beginning of a protracted period of
internal purging of rank and file members as well as prominent party leaders.
The editorial indicated the purge was designed to cast out those who violated
the rules, principles and revolutionary tactics of the party. This was usually
the explanation given in the paper when Panthers were expelled for specific
improper behavior. Researchers also have suggested that the same explanation was
used when Panthers  were expelled when suspected of being informants. It fact,
this was the initial explanation published in the May 31, 1969 edition of the
newspaper to justify the expulsion of Stokely Carmichael. The editorial also
said some members were being expelled for common criminal activity such as using
a Panther newspaper delivery truck to stage an $80,000 holdup. Violations of
party rules, principles and tactics were also cited as causes for expulsion when
factional wars within the party were the more likely causes.
        Three weeks after the initial editorial on purging, the effort to clean house
appeared to have intensified as three large items in the Jan.25, 1969 edition of
the paper bore the headlines: "Tightening Up," "Panther Purge" and "Combating
the Enemy Within Our Ranks."[36] The first headline was followed by a Frank
Jones byline and a story reporting that party Chairman Bobby Seale had announced
a "program of internal purging" and that the party was "refusing to accept new
members during the purge and is increasing the intensity of the political
education classes."
        Jones' article indicated that the party was becoming more strict and would
discipline malefactors. "The purge is not a weakening process, but a preparatory
one," Jones wrote. "We are preparing much as a boxer who is overweight must do."
        The second article included the admonition: "We must not leave any stones
unturned in ferreting the enemy out of our midst, while at the same time we must
not allow the presence of agents to paralyze our progressive activity."[37]
        Seale further explained the rationale for the purges in a long interview
published in the Black Panther newspaper two months later as a reprint from the
underground newspaper The Movement..[38]  He said the purge was instituted
primarily to stop factional strife within the party. It was during this period,
as this paper will later show, that Cointelpro operatives were taking actions
designed to foster factionalism to divide and neutralize the Panthers.
        For nearly three years, the newspaper carried news stories, editorials and
commentaries indicating the purge was still under way. Often, the names,
photographs and last known whereabouts of the expelled Panthers were published
with a listing of their crimes against the party and the revolutionary movement.
Many of those purged earned the punishment for unapproved criminal behavior that
may have been a part of their lives before they became Panthers. Still others,
such as Carmichael, were ousted after suspicions were planted and nurtured by
Cointelpro and acted upon by the Panther leadership.
        Through 1971, the Panther newspaper was peppered with reports charting the
progress of the purge. An April 1969 article, for instance, claimed that
informant "Barron Howard had been rapping to the F.B.I. for 15 weeks" about
Panther security and weapons at the Indiana chapter offices.[39]  Howard was
questioned and exposed a second informant, according to the article which
concluded with the statement, "The Black Panther Party will not be wiped out by
the Full-Blown Idiots (FBI) of pig Hoover's gestapo. As quickly as they plant
informers, so shall we root them out."[40]
        Some of those who were expelled became openly hostile to the Panthers and
testified against the party at Senate hearings convened to determine how
subversive the party was. Among them was Larry Powell who had been expelled
under suspicion of being an FBI informant and robbing a tavern, according to the
July 19, 1969 edition of the Black Panther newspaper which also said he had been
paid to testify before the "Permanent Senate Investigating Sub-Committee." It
appears, however, that Powell had not been placed among the Panthers by the FBI.
But the agency nonetheless sent internal memos among its field offices
indicating that the dissension indicated by the expulsion could be used to their
advantage.[41]
        At times the expulsions and exposures became ludicrous as in an item sent from
Algiers by Panther Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver and published in the
Panther newspaper. It resembled a display ad or wanted poster and announced:
"The below indicated persons have all been expelled from the Black Panther Party
because of activity and consistent behavior that can not be tolerated."[42]
Photographs of the six outcasts accompanied the item. The sixth was identified
as Tanya Kathleen Akili, a girl who appeared to be no more than two years
old.[43]
        These purges sometimes may have ousted true informers, but they also created
hostilities and furthered the Cointelpro goal of undermining and splintering the
party. William O'Neal, a high-ranking security officer of the Chicago chapter of
the Black Panther Party was quoted several times in the Panther newspaper as he
explained how he uncovered informant Derek Phemster. O'Neal explained that
Phemster was taken into custody and questioned, but did not confess to being an
informant until "we then went into a more intense stage of questioning. We then
used methods which proved very effective."[44]  Under questioning by O'Neal,
Phemster reportedly admitted being an FBI informant. This admission is
particularly curious in light of an article The New York Times published in 1974
in which O'Neal admitted that he was actually the informer.[45]
        O'Neal also has been implicated in the police raid that killed Panther
Vice-Chairman Fred Hampton on Dec. 4, 1969 in Chicago.[46] A Cointelpro document
sent from the Chicago office of the FBI to J. Edgar Hoover a week after Hampton
was killed noted that an informant provided essential information for the raid
that could not have been provided by anyone else.[47] The Chicago office
requested a special payment for the informant.
        Those identified by the Panthers as informants, rightly or wrongly, sometimes
wound up dead instead of or after being expelled from the party. Panthers were
usually charged in connection with the killings. Most prominent among such cases
was the torture killing of Alex Rackley in New Haven, Connecticut after he was
accused of being an informant. Party Chairman Bobby Seale was charged with
playing a role in the slaying and spent more than two years in prison before the
charges were dismissed. As indicted earlier in this discussion, arranging for
the imprisonment of activists on spurious charges was a frequent Cointelpro
tactic. Researchers Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall have claimed that Panther
security officer George Sams identified Rackley as an informant, but they claim
Sams was the informant for the FBI and the police.[48]  Huey P. Newton also
expressed suspicions about Sams years later.[49]  However, there are no public
FBI documents identifying Sams as an operative and Sams was ultimately convicted
of killing Rackley. This latter development may be evidence that Sams was a
criminal and not an FBI operative, or it may explain why the FBI has not claimed
him as one of its own.
Separating Newton and Cleaver
        As 1970 began, the Black Panther newspaper depicted the party as strengthened
and ennobled by its systematic purging, but the organization was arguably
weakened by that process. Three months into the year the FBI initiated a program
to split the party by driving a wedge between its two most influential leaders,
Huey P. Newton  and Eldridge Cleaver.[50] This might not have seemed necessary
at the time given that Newton was imprisoned and Cleaver was exiled in Algiers.
But both men regularly had long rambling articles published in the party
newspaper and their photographs were displayed religiously within its pages.
Newton's picture was part of the paper's masthead. Although Chief of Staff David
Hilliard  handled the daily operations from party headquarters in Oakland,
Newton and Cleaver were the intellectual and spiritual backbone of the party .
The FBI recognized how vital Newton and Cleaver were to the party  and
apparently sought to fell them by magnifying and expanding the atmosphere of
suspicion and distrust that created and maintained the party purges. The massive
distance between Newton and Cleaver seemed to make the task of turning them
against each other easier because they communicated primarily by letters and not
face-to-face. The FBI's mission was also facilitated by Newton's emotional
state, which several researchers have described as unstable during this
period.[51] An indicator of Newton's frame of mind was his apparent insistence
from 1970 onward that the Black Panther newspaper refer to him as supreme
commander or supreme servant of the people in addition to his formal title of
minister of defense.
        J. Edgar Hoover knew of Newton's emotional fragility, but as one FBI memorandum
indicated, this was not a reason to ease the pressure on Newton, but to increase
it. The Jan. 28, 1971 memo from Hoover to the FBI field offices in Boston, Los
Angeles, New York and San Francisco said in part, "Newton has recently exhibited
paranoid-like reactions to anyone who questions his orders, policies, actions or
otherwise displeases him." The memo concluded, "Newton may be on the brink of
mental collapse and we must intensify our counterintelligence."
        When Newton was released from the Alameda County Jail on Aug. 5, 1970, there
were 10,000 supporters outside to greet him.[52] Among the throng were
emissaries Eldridge Cleaver had sent to gauge his relationship with Newton.[53]
Cleaver apparently had been sent a number of Cointelpro letters that caused him
to distrust Newton. This can be inferred from an FBI memo discussing this phase
of the effort to divide the party leaders. Its relevant portions said: "To
create friction between Black Panther Party (BPP) leader Eldridge Cleaver in
Algiers and BPP Headquarters, a spurious letter concerning an internal dispute
was sent to Cleaver, who accepted it as genuine."[54]
        One of the people Cleaver sent to Newton's camp was Connie Matthews, who became
Newton's secretary.[55] The FBI later sent Cleaver a letter designed to appear
as if it had been written by Matthews. It claimed the Panther party in
California was in disarray and suggested: "One of two steps must be taken soon
and both are drastic. We must either get rid of the supreme commander or get rid
of the disloyal members."[56]
        Newton apparently saw a copy of the letter purportedly written by Matthews or
otherwise became convinced that she was a threat to him because shortly
afterward Matthews was denounced in the Black Panther newspaper as an enemy of
the people and expelled from the party.[57] The Feb. 13, 1971 denunciation by
the Party's Central Committee claimed Matthews had disappeared with her husband,
suspended Panther Michael Cetewayo Tabor, eight days earlier during a speaking
engagement with Newton at New Haven College in Connecticut. The newspaper said
the disappearance "jeopardized the lives of the Minister of Defense and Supreme
Commander of the Black Panther party, Huey P. Newton and Chief of Staff David
Hilliard."[58]
        The perception that Newton and Hilliard had been placed in jeopardy stemmed
from the Panthers' prior experience when other members suspected of disloyalty
disappeared. The article cited one such instance: "Remember the case of George
Sams, his disappearance and the immediate wide-scale raids on Black Panther
Party offices."[59]
        Matthews was further excoriated for insensitivity, individualism, alcoholism
and lack of discipline. The article sniped at her for marrying Tabor, a man much
younger than herself, and implied there was something wrong with her because she
is a Jamaican who was raised in Europe. The article claimed she had been sent to
work with Cleaver in Algiers, but that he "found it impossible to deal with her
individualism and lack of discipline" and he transferred her to the Panther's
central headquarters in Oakland where Newton was based.[60]  This latter
allegation indicates either that the California Panther faction did not know
Matthews was a Cleaver emissary and not a reject, or that it chose not to reveal
its knowledge in the newspaper. Matthews eventually resurfaced in Algiers with
Cleaver.
        A few weeks after Matthews was publicly branded an enemy, the FBI sent a letter
to Cleaver and disguised it as a letter from Elbert Howard, a member of Newton's
Central Committee and editor of the Black Panther newspaper. The letter
criticized Newton for living in a luxury penthouse at party expense since
leaving prison. It claimed Newton lied to Cleaver and that unflattering things
were being said in California about the exiled minister of information. Perhaps
the most damaging part of the letter was the final two sentences which warned:
"You should think a great deal before sending Kathleen. If I could talk to you I
could tell you why I don't think you should."[61]
        Those two sentences referred to the scheduled appearance of Kathleen Cleaver,
the wife of Eldridge Cleaver and Panther communications secretary, at a March 5,
1971 rally in California to build support for Chairman Bobby Seale and Ericka
Huggins who were facing trial on homicide charges in Connecticut. By not
explaining why Kathleen Cleaver should not attend the rally, the letter left
Eldridge Cleaver to imagine what risks she might face in the company of Newton,
who was now probably considered untrustworthy. Kathleen Cleaver did not show up.
        One day after the rally, the Black Panther newspaper published a supplement to
its regular edition with a banner headline on the cover that said: "Free
Kathleen Cleaver." The gist of the accompanying stories was that Kathleen
Cleaver missed the rally because she was being held prisoner by her husband who
was violating party principles. The main story was written by Elaine Brown,
deputy minister of information.
        It included the following allegations: Kathleen once found Eldridge in a hotel
room with another woman and he beat her for disturbing them (the article was
accompanied by a photograph bearing the descriptive caption: "Kathleen Cleaver
with eye blackened by Eldridge Cleaver."); Eldridge insisted that Kathleen's
primary loyalty was to him instead of the party; Eldridge refused to submit for
publication articles written by Kathleen and sometimes lied and told her he had
submitted them, but the Panther newspaper editors refused to print them;
Eldridge sent Kathleen to Korea so he could pursue an illicit affair with an
18-year-old woman in Algiers; Eldridge had killed a man whom Kathleen had come
to love.[62]
        Brown's story concluded with a poignant and clever statement about Kathleen:
"We know her to be imprisoned there in Algeria, held against her will. Even
though, if Kathleen is allowed to speak for herself, she will probably support
the ravings of her personal, mad oppressor, we know that to speak otherwise at
this time would be a death warrant for her. So we will understand."[63]
        By not blaming Kathleen Cleaver for missing the rally, the newspaper portrayed
the dispute as one between the party and Eldridge Cleaver instead of a dispute
between the California faction and the international faction. That tact also
left the door open for Kathleen Cleaver to defect to California at any time,
even if she initially publicly sided with her husband. it also undermined the
credibility of any statements she might make against the party or in support of
Eldridge Cleaver. There was no way for readers of the Panther newspaper to know
for certain if the allegations were true, but it was generally known within the
party hierarchy that Kathleen Cleaver was sometimes beaten.
        To bolster the assertion that Kathleen Cleaver did not voluntarily miss the
rally for Seale and Huggins, the newspaper supplement included a reprint of a
letter purportedly written by Kathleen Cleaver on Oct. 24, 1970 to comfort and
reassure the imprisoned Huggins.[64]  "We share the same aspirations and
struggles," the letter said. Beside the text was a photograph of Kathleen
Cleaver with her toddler son Maceo, and inserted within the block of type was a
photograph of Ericka and her baby daughter Mai. The letter text that wrapped
around the picture of baby and mother had Kathleen saying, "I always think of
the pain you feel at being torn asunder from Mai."
        Readers may have been left with the impression that Kathleen Cleaver was
committed to the Panthers and Huey Newton because another portion of the letter
said, "The picture of you (Ericka) standing in front of the New Haven courthouse
with clenched fist raised shouting 'Free Huey,' gives me new courage to persist
and perform even more powerfully every time I see it and think of you now. I
love you, Ericka, as all revolutionary sisters and brothers must, and we cannot
allow you to endure this torture much longer."[65]
        The same edition of the newspaper carried a full page of rhetorical questions
in uppercase headline-size type that had the apparent goal of labeling Cleaver
as an enemy because of statements he made in other media.
        IS ELDRIDGE CLEAVER ATTEMPTING TO DIVIDE THE BLACK PANTHER
        PARTY ??? HE DENOUNCES CHIEF OF STAFF DAVID HILLIARD AND
        MINISTER OF DEFENSE HUEY P. NEWTON. IS ELDRIDGE CLEAVER                         ATTEMPTING TO DIVIDE
THE COMMUNITY ??? HE DENOUNCES ANGELA           DAVIS. IS ELDRIDGE CLEAVER ATTEMPTING TO
DIVIDE THE SOCIALIST            WORLD ??? HE DENOUNCES CUBA."[66]
 
        Ultimately, Newton expelled Cleaver and Cleaver expelled Newton and the various
chapters of the Panther party took sides.[67] The Panther newspaper duly
reported those aligning themselves with Newton while insisting that the party
was not divided.
        The San Quentin branch of the party weighed in with a front page declaration
against Cleaver that said in part: "We stand with the Supreme Servant, Minister
Huey P. Newton ... You are an outcast ... Death is the only solution to the
problem you pose ... The grapevine has your name on it, along with the rest of
your clan."[68]
        Five other major Panther officials, Emory Douglas, Masai Hewitt, Elbert "Big
Man" Howard, Bob Rush and Doug Miranda unequivocally lined up behind Newton in a
quarter-page homage that said in part: "We stand rock firm behind the Black
panther party, our beloved and courageous Central Committee and our leader,
Minister of Defense and Supreme Servant of the People, Huey P. Newton."[69]
        From his jail cell in Connecticut, party Chairman Bobby Seale had the newspaper
publish a long statement that ran beneath the headline, "I am the chairman of
only one party."[70] He said the party had not been split, but that "Eldridge
Cleaver has personally defected his own self from the party."
        For several months afterward, the newspaper reported killings of Panthers, but
unlike outside news sources and subsequent histories, the paper did not indicate
the likelihood that the deaths were a result of the the factional war between
"Newtonians" and "Cleaverites." The slayings were generally blamed on pigs, or
the readers were left to draw their own conclusions.
        When Newton finally publicly addressed the Cleaver issue in the party
newspaper, his rebuke was atypically mild in comparison to those of other party
leaders and the greater portion of the four-page statement was critical of
Newton himself and the party. He continued to maintain that the party was not
divided and that Cleaver had left the party. He cleverly admitted that the party
had wavered from its devotion to the needs of black people because of Cleaver's
influence, but with his departure, the party would rededicate itself to its
original aim of serving the black masses.
        Newton's statement was published in an April supplement to the main newspaper.
The Black Panther's  front page teaser for the supplement bore a headline more
appropriate for an academic paper than a revolutionary tabloid: "On the
defection of Eldridge Cleaver from the Black Panther Party and the defection of
the Black Panther Party from the black community."[71]
        "We had a contradiction with our former Minister of Information," Newton wrote
gently. He said Cleaver was fixated on the violence associated with the Panthers
and the party allowed itself to place too much emphasis on violence without
first building a strong relationship with the masses who would ultimately have
to bear the brunt of the revolution. The only truly vicious swipe Newton took at
Cleaver was in one paragraph:
        Sometimes there are those who express personal problems in political terms,
        and if they are eloquent, then these personal problems can sound very
political.
        We charge Eldridge Cleaver with this. Much of it is probably beyond his
control,
        because it is so personal."[72]
 
        A few weeks before Newton published his take on Cleaver, the FBI had apparently
concluded that the wedge between the Panther's two major leaders was permanently
affixed. This was indicated in a memo that said in part," Since the differences
between Newton and Cleaver now appear to be irreconcilable, no further
counter-intelligence activity in this regard will be undertaken at this
time."[73]
Conclusion
        The Black Panther Party newspaper reflected how the FBI's counterintelligence
programs were destroying the party's cohesion and in some cases causing its
members to be killed. It never did so overtly, apparently choosing instead  to
conceal its vulnerability to such tactics.  At worst, the paper depicted the
party as beleaguered by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, but the
party was always presented as strong, defiant and dedicated to revolutionary
struggle. It was less of a newspaper, in conventional terms, than the public
face of the party. It showed only what it wanted shown to its members,
sympathizers, the impressionable public and its enemies. In  a similar vein, it
did not disclose the self-destructive tendencies and practices of its membership
and leaders. These tendencies and practices alone may have been sufficient
weaken the party, but when subjected to the proddings of the FBI they were
virtually certain to bring the party down.
 
[1]  The New York Times, Sept. 8, 1968.
 
[2]  FBI Memorandum from Director to all field offices, August 25, 1967.
 
[3]  Ibid.
 
[4]  FBI Memorandum from C. Sullivan to G.C. Moore, February 29, 1968, expanding
Cointelpro field offices from 23 to 41.
 
[5]  James Kirkpatrick Davis, Spying on America, The FBI's Domestic
Counterintelligence Program, (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1992).
 
[6]  Athan Theoharis, Spying on Americans, Political Surveillance from Hoover to
the Huston Plan, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978).
 
[7]  Tyrus G. Fain, comp., The Intelligence Community, History, Organization,
and Issues, (New York: R.R. Bowker Company. 1977).
 
[8]  Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, The Cointelpro Papers, Documents from
the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States, (Boston: South End
Press, 1990).
 
[9]   Hugh Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther, Huey Newton and the Price of
Black Power in America, (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1994).
 
[10]  Huey P. Newton, "War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in
America" (Ph.D. diss., University of California - Santa Cruz, 1980).
 
[11]  Davis, Spying on America, 7.
 
[12]  FBI Memorandum, Headquarters to Field Offices, September 21, 1966.
 
[13]  FBI Memorandum, Richmond Field Office to Headquarters, June 26, 1966.
 
[14]  See generally, Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, The Cointelpro Papers,
Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States,
(Boston: South End Press, 1990).
 
[15]  Ibid.
 
[16]  Police Officer John F. Fuey was killed in the Oct. 27, 1967 confrontation
and Huey Newton was shot four times.
 
[17]  April 11, 1968.
 
[18]  FBI Airtel to SAC Albany from Director, FBI, March 4, 1968.
 
[19]  See generally, Black Panther, 16 March, 1968.
 
[20]  Black Panther, 4 January,1969, p.3.
 
[21]  Black Panther, 14 September, 1968, p. 10.
 
[22]  Black Panther, 16 August, 1969, p. 5.
 
[23]  Black Panther, 31 May, 1970, p. 20.
 
[24]  FBI Airtel to SAC Albany from Director, FBI, March 4, 1968.
 
[25]  Churchill and  Vander Hall, Cointelpro Papers,  128.
 
[26]  See generally, Davis, Spying on America .
 
[27]  The Black Panther,  7 December, 1968, p.15.
 
[28]  FBI Memorandum from SAC Los Angeles to Director, FBI, November 29, 1968.
 
[29]  FBI Memorandum, from George C. Moore to W.C. Sullivan, November, 5, 1968.
 
[30]  FBI Memorandum, from SAC Los Angeles to Director, FBI, November, 29, 1968.
 
[31]  The Black Panther, 25 January, 1969, p.2.
 
[32]  Black Panther,  2 February, 1969, p. 1.
 
[33]  Ibid.
 
[34]  Davis, Spying on America, 102; Hugh Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther,
Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America, (Reading, Mass.:
Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1994), 181.
 
[35]  Black Panther, 4 January, 1969, p.6.
 
[36]  Black Panther, 25 January, 1969, p. 17.
 
[37]  Ibid.
 
[38]  Black Panther, 3 March, 1969, p.10.
 
[39]  Black Panther, 20 April, 1969, p. 8.
 
[40]  Ibid.
 
[41]  FBI Memorandum, From: San Francisco, To: Director, FBI, April 23, 1969.
 
[42]  Black Panther, 21 March, 1970, p. 18.
 
[43]  The child apparently was the daughter of two adults, James and Gwen Akili,
who were also pictured in the item and  expelled.
 
[44]  Black Panther, 17 February, 1969, p. 9.
 
[45]  John Kifner, "Panther Chief of Security was Paid FBI Informer," The New
York Times, 13 February, 1974, p. 18.
 
[46]  Davis, Spying on America, 97-127.
 
[47]  Airtel to Director, FBI From: SAC Chicago, Dec. 11, 1969.
 
[48]  Churchill and Vander Wall, Cointelpro Papers.
 
[49]  Huey P. Newton, "War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in
America" (Ph.D. diss., University of California - Santa Cruz, 1980.)
 
[50]  Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Cointelpro Papers, 148.
 
[51]  Newton himself refers to his emotional problems in his dissertation, "War
Against the Panthers," and Hugh Pearson repeatedly refers to Newton's sometimes
psychotic behavior in his book, The Shadow of the Panther.
 
[52]  Hugh Pearson, Shadow of the Panther, 222.
 
[53]  Ibid, 229.
 
[54]  FBI Memorandum, From: G.C. Moore, To: W.C. Sullivan, May 14, 1970.
 
[55]  Matthews' mission is confirmed by Newton in his dissertation "The War
Against  the Panthers," and by Hugh Pearson in his book, The Shadow of the
Panther.
 
[56]  FBI Memorandum , From: San Francisco Field Office to Hqtrs, Jan. 18, 1971.
 
[57]  Black Panther,  13 February, 1971,  p. 12.
 
[58]  Ibid.
 
[59]  Ibid.
 
[60]  Ibid, p.13.
 
[61]  FBI Memorandum From: Hqtrs, To: San Francisco Field Office, Feb. 24, 1971.
 
[62]  Black Panther, 6 March, 1971, Supplement B.
 
[63]  Ibid.
 
[64]  Kathleen Cleaver, "Letter From Kathleen Cleaver to Ericka Huggins,"  Black
Panther, 6 March, 1971, Supplement D.
 
[65]  Ibid.
 
[66]  Black Panther, 6 March, 1971, Supplement D.
 
[67]  See generally, Hugh Pearson, Shadow of the Panther, and  Huey P. Newton,
"War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America" (Ph.D. diss.,
University of California - Santa Cruz, 1980.
 
[68]  Black Panther, 20 March, 1971, p. 1.
 
[69]  Ibid, p. 12.
 
[70]  Black Panther, 3 April, 1971, p. 2.
 
[71]  Black Panther, 17 April, 1971, p. 1.
 
[72]  Ibid, Supplement.
 
[73]  FBI Memorandum From: Hqtrs, To: San Francisco, March 25, 1971.

The New Afrikan Black Panther Party – An Introduction

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

My name is Shaka Zulu. I am the Chairman of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party (NABPP), a revolutionary nationalist vanguard Party in the tradition of the original Black Panther Party. Our ideology is called Pantherism, illuminated by Marxist-Leninist- Maoism (MLM). Pantherism is the theory and practice of socialist revolution for all oppressed people across the world. Pantherism holds that in order to defeat our oppressors we must build base areas of social, cultural and political power in our own oppressed communities.

We see our Party as the 21st century embodiment of the original Black Panther Party (BPP). We have set up our Party Organization in a way that absorbs ALL who can help in the development of NABPP as a cutting edge proletarian vanguard Party. We are inviting you to put your talent and energy in a revolutionary vanguard Party. The many Panther formations that have sprung up across the country, while a good thing because it means that people are doing things to advance the national liberation struggle, cannot liberate the masses from the junk of bourgeois culture until we form a fighting party, an advance detachment of proletarian consciousness and activism.

We think that it is absolutely important for all of us to be united and together as Panthers, as one huge revolutionary family cemented with Panther Love. Panther Love is revolutionary love, liberating love, world changing love. We believe that Panther Love as a viable means of unity will enable us to better advance our strategy of “Turn the Iron Houses of Oppression into Schools of Liberation, and the Oppressed Communities into Base Areas of Cultural, Social and Political Revolution.”

We have to be together to collectively deal the avarice vampire monopoly capitalist a final death blow. While we fight and divide at the bottom, the monopoly capitalist are cooperating locally and globally to maintain capitalist imperialism oppression and domination over places like Afrika, Central Asia, Latin Amerika, the Middle East, and the various oppressed nations in empireland. We cannot defeat them by being scattered and loose. We need a powerful force such as democratic centralism. Our struggle is not a race struggle, but a class struggle, an international struggle against capitalist imperialist structures which perpetuate the economic exploitation of resources, lands, markets, wage-workers, and the environment.

The Maoist Movement is international–which means that if we intend on sowing seeds of world socialist revolution–we should be proud to raise the Red flag from a position of unity.

In the Party’s newspaper Right On! #1, we stated that “Understand¬ing the role that the party must play is also understanding the role others must play and how these roles fit together to serve the highest interests of humanity. The Party cannot be all things. Its special purpose is to represent the future in the movement of the present and illuminate the path forward. It is a Black revolutionary nationalist party that recognizes that class struggle and socialist revolution is the path forward.”

The solution to all of our problems come down to revolution, socialist revolution and the correct practice of Pantherism, which is the 21st century ideology of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party-PC (NABPP). So while the monopoly capitalist class oppressors remain united, our ranks exude the death of division and petty squabbles over who hold the principle political line. It comes down to really understanding the tricks the ruling class historically, consistently use to keep us divided.

Comrade Tom Big Warrior stated so eloquently in his forward to “Black Youth and the Criminalization of a Generation” that the oppressors have a strategy that unite neo-liberals and neo-conservatives all over the world. And in order to defeat them, we must develop our strategy–of building base areas of cultural, social, and political revolution–of going amongst the people and organizing and mobilizing them to take on the historic mission of making revolution.

Comrades! We have a marvelous role to play, an historic task to complete, a great opportunity to turn our single fingers into a fist of revolutionary unity by getting together under the leadership of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party (NABPP). We need you! We invite all sincere, honest, loyal Comrades to struggle with us to free New Afrikan people and all oppressed people across the world. Pantherism is the key here.

We leave you with these words from Comrade Huey: “But to achieve such freedom, we must all start at the bottom. We must fight as brothers [sisters], each in our own community or ghetto, but against the common enemy that deprives’ us of our identity, that is, that exploits us economically, politically, culturally. We are then both nationalist and internationalist. We fight for our freedom in our own terrain, but in alliance with everyone who fights: our enemy, not just because we need each other tactically but because we are brothers [sisters].”

All Power to the People!

10-Point Program and Platform of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party (NABPP)

1. We want Freedom! We want power to determine the destiny of Our Black and oppressed Community.

We believe that Black and oppressed people will not be free until We are able to determine Our destiny in our community ourselves, by fully controlling all the institutions which exist in our community.

2. We want full employment for Our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every person employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the american businessman will not give full employment, then the technology and the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

3. We want an end to the robbery by the CAPITALIST of Our Black and oppressed Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now We are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised over 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to Our many communities. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people; therefore, We feel that this is a modest demand that We make.

4. We want decent housing fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the landlord will not give decent housing to Our Black and oppressed community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that the people in our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for the people.

5. We want decent 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 present-day society.

We believe in an educational system that will give to Our people a knowledge of self. If a person does not have knowledge of themselves and their position in society and the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.

6. We want completely free health care for all Black and oppressed people

We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventive medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give all black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide ourselves with proper medical attention and care.

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people, other people of color, all oppressed people inside the united states.

We believe that the racist and fascist government of the united states uses its domestic enforcement agencies to carry out its program of oppression against Black people, other oppressed people and poor people inside the united states. We believe it is our right, therefore, to defend ourselves against such armed forces and that all black and oppressed people should be armed for self-defense of our homes and communities against these fascist police forces.

8. We want an immediate end to all wars of aggression.

We believe that the various conflicts which exist around the world stem directly from the aggressive desire of the united states ruling circle and government to force its domination upon the oppressed people of the world. We believe that if the united states government or its lackeys do not cease these aggressive wars it is the right of the people to defend themselves by any means necessary against their aggressors.

9. We want freedom for all black and oppressed people now held in u.s. federal, state, county, city, and military prisons and jails. We want trials by a jury of peers for all persons charged with so-called crimes under the laws of this county.

We believe that the many Black and poor oppressed people now held in united states prisons and jails have not received fair and impartial trials under a racist and facist judiciary system and should be free from incarceration. We believe in the ultimate elimination of all wretched, inhuman penal institutions, because the masses of men and womyn imprisoned inside the united states or by the united states military are victims of oppressive conditions which are the real cause of their imprisonment.

We believe that when persons are brought to trial they must be guaranteed, by the united states, juries of their peers, attorneys of their choice and freedom from imprisonment while awaiting trial.

10. We demand bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people’s community control of modern technology.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind require that they should declare the cause which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive 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, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are most disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, that to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpation, 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.

All members and potential members must study and memorize Our Ten Point Program and Platform.

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Shaka Zulu 661323B
NSP
PO Box 2300
168 Frontage Rd.
Newark, NJ 07114

NABPP
PO BOX 4362
Allentown, PA 18105

Lumpen – Free Bobby Now – Seize The Time

Lumpen – Free Bobby Now – Seize The Time

Music from The Black Panther Movement about co-founder Bobby Seales. – from the riots in Chicago part of the Chicago Eight; Bobby Seale had a seperate trial making the infamous Chicago Seven

Remembering the Real Dragon- An Interview with George Jackson May 16 and June 29, 1971

Interview by Karen Wald and published in Cages of Steel: The Politics Of Imprisonment In The United States
(Edited by Ward Churchill and J.J. Vander Wall)

Karen Wald: George, could you comment on your conception of revolution?

George Jackson: The principle contradiction between the oppressor and oppressed can be reduced to the fact that the only way the oppressor can maintain his position is by fostering, nurturing, building contempt for the oppressed. That thing gets out of hand after a while. It leads to excesses that we see and the excesses are growing within the totalitarian state here. The excesses breed resistance; resistance is growing. The thing grows in a spiral. It can only end one way. The excesses lead to resistance, resistance leads to brutality, the brutality leads to more resistance, and finally the question will be resolved with either the uneconomic destruction of the oppressed, or the end of oppression. These are the workings of revolution. It grows in spirals, confrontations, and I mean on all levels. The institutions of society have buttressed the establishment, so I mean all levels have to be assaulted.

Wald: How does the prison liberation movement fit into this? Is its importance over-exaggerated or contrived?

Jackson: We don’t have to contrive any…. Look, the particular thing I’m involved in right now, the prison movement was started by Huey P. Newton and the black panther party. Huey and the rest of the comrades around the country. We’re working with Ericka [Huggins] and Bobby [Seale, chairman of the BPP; at the time they were co-defendants in a murder trial in New Haven, Connecticut, on charges which were subsequently dismissed], the prison movement in general, the movement to prove the to the establishment that the concentration camp technique won’t work on us. We don’t have to contrive any importance to our particular movement. It’s a very real, very-very real issue and I’m of the opinion that, right along with the student movement, right along with the old. Familiar workers’ movement, the prison movement is central to the process of revolution as a whole.

Wald: Many of the cadres of the revolutionary forces on the outside have been captured and imprisoned. Are you saying that even though they’re in prison, these cadres can still function in a meaningful way for the revolution?

Jackson: Well, we’re all familiar with the function of the prison as an institution serving the needs of the totalitarian state. We’ve got to destroy that function; the function has to be no longer viable, in the end. It’s one of the strongest institutions supporting the totalitarian state. We have to destroy its effectiveness, and that’s what the prison movement is all about. What I’m saying is that they put us in these concentration campshere the same as they put people in tiger cages or “strategic hamlets” in Vietnam. The idea is to isolate, eliminate, liquidate the dynamic sections of the overall movement, the protagonists of the movement. What we’ve got to do is prove this won’t work. We’ve got to organize our resistance once we’re inside, give them no peace, turn the prison into just another front of the struggle, tear it down from the inside. Understand?

Wald: But can such a battle be won?

Jackson: A good deal of this has to do with our ability to communicate to the people on the street. The nature of the function of the prison within the police state has to be continuously explained, elucidated to the people on the street because we can’t fight alone in here. Oh Yeah, we can fight, but if we’re isolated, if the state is successful in accomplishing that, the results are usually not constructive in terms of proving our point. We fight and we die, but that’s not the point, although it may be admirable from some sort of purely moral point of view. The point is, however, in the face of what we confront, to fight and win. That’s the real objective: not just to make statements, no matter how noble, but to destroy the system that oppresses us. By any means available to us. And to do this, we must be connected, in contact and communication with those in the struggle on the outside. We must be mutually supporting because we’re all in this together. It’s one struggle at base.

Wald: Is the form of struggle you’re talking about here different from those with which we may be more familiar with, those which are occurring in the third world, for example?

Jackson: Not Really. Of course, all struggles are different, depending upon the whole range of particular factors involved. But many of them have fundamental commonalities which are more important than the differences. We are talking about a guerrilla war in this country. The guerrilla, the new type of warrior who’s developed out of conflicts in the third world countries, doesn’t fight for glory necessarily. The guerrilla fights to win. The guerrilla fights the same kind of fight we do, what’s sometimes called a “poor man’s war.” It’s not a form of war fought with high tech weaponry, or state-of-the-art gadgets. It’s fought with whatever can be had-captured weapons when they can be had, but often antiquated firearms, homemade ordnance, knives, bows and arrows, even slingshots-but mostly through the sheer will of the guerrilla to fight and win, no matter what. Huey [P. Newton] says “the power of the people will overcome the power of the man’s technology,” and we’ve seen this proven true time after time in recent history.
You know, guerrilla war is not simply a matter of tactics and technique. It’s not just questions of hit-and-run or terrorism. It’s a matter of proving to the established order that it simply can’t sustain itself, that there is no possible way for them to win by utilizing the means of force available to them. We have to prove that wars are won by human beings, and not by mechanical devices. We’ve got to show that in the end they can’t resist us. And we will! We’re going to do it. There’s never going to ever be a moment’s peace for anyone associated with the establishment any place where I’m at, or where any of my comrades are at. But we’re going to need coordination, we’re going to need help. And right now, that help should come in the form of education. It’s critical to teach the people out there how important it is to destroy the function of the prison within the society. That, and to show them in concrete terms that the war is on – right now! – and that in that sense we really aren’t any different than the Vietnamese, or the Cubans, or the Algerians, or any of the other revolutionary peoples of the world.

Wald: In an interview with some imprisoned tupamaros, urban guerrillas in Uraguay, the question was raised about the decimation of the ranks of tupamaros; comrades killed or imprisoned by the state. Those interviewed assured me that there were far more people joining the ranks than were being lost to state repression, and that the movement was continuing to grow. Do you feel the same confidence about the black panther party, about the revolutionary movement as a whole in this country?

Jackson: We’re structured in such a way as to allow us to exist and continue to resist despite the losses we’ve absorbed. It was set up that way. We know the enemy operates under the concept of “kill the head and the body will die.” They target those they see as key leaders. We know this, and we’ve set up safeguards to prevent the strategy from working against us. I know I could be killed tomorrow, but the struggle would continue, there would be two hundred or three hundred to take my place. As Fred Hampton put it, “You can kill the revolutionary, but you can’t kill the revolution.” Hampton, as you know, was head of the party in Chicago, and was murdered in his sleep by the police in chicago, along with Mark Clark, the party leader from Peoria, Illinois. Their loss is tremendous, but the struggle goes on. Right?
It’s not just a military thing. It’s also an educational thing. The two go hand-in-hand. And it’s also a cyclical thing. Right now, we are in a peak cycle. There’s tremendous energy out there, directed against the state. It’s not all focused, but it’s there, and it’s building. Maybe this will be sufficient to accomplish what we must accomplish over the fairly short run. We’ll see, and we can certainly hope that this is the case. But perhaps not. We must be prepared to wage a long struggle. If this is the case then we’ll probably see a different cycle, one in which the revolutionary energy of the people seems to have dispersed, run out of steam. But – and this is important- such cycles are deceptive. Things appear to be at low ebb, but actually what’s happening is a period of regroupment, a period in which we step back and learn from the mistakes made during the preceding cycle. We educate ourselves from our experience, and we educate those around us. And all the while, we develop and perfect our core organization. Then the next time a peak cycle comes around, we are far readier then we were the last time. It’s a combination of military and education, always. Ultimately, we will win. You see?

Wald: Do you see signs of progress on the inside, in prison?

Jackson: Yes, I do. Progress is certainly been made in terms of raising the consciousness of at least some sectors of the prison population. In part, that’s due to the limited victories we’ve achieved over the past few years. They’re token victories perhaps, but things we can and must take advantage of. For example, we’ve struggled hard around the idea of being able to communicate directly with people on the outside. At this point, any person on the street can correspond with any individual inside prison. My suggestion is, now that we have the channels for education secured, at least temporarily, is that people on the outside should begin to bombard the prisons with newspapers, books, journals, clippings, anything of educational value, to help politicize the comrades who are not yet relating. And we, of course, must reciprocate by consistently sending out information concerning what’s really going on in here. Incidentally, interviews like this go a long way in that direction. There should be much more of this sort of thing.

Wald: You disclosed a few months ago that you had been for some time a member of the Black Panther Party. Certainly, the work of the party in this state and elsewhere, the work to free political prisoners, and of course the party’s work within the black community have been factors which influenced your decision. But has the internationalism of the Black Party been one of the key aspects which attracted you to it? And, if this is so, is internationalism meaningful for people in prison, and is it therefore one reason why they’d relate to the party?

Jackson: Well, let’s take it a step at a time. Huey came to the joint about a year ago because he’d heard stories about the little thing we had going on already. He talked with us, and checked it out, and he decided to absorb us. Afterwards, he sent me a message and told me that. He just told me that I was part of the Party now, and that our little group was part of the Party as well. And he told me that my present job is to build, or help build, the prison movement. Just like that. Like I said, the objective of our movement is to prove the state can’t seal us off in a concentration camp so I accepted. What else could I do? It was the correct thing. Now, as to your second point, the people inside the joint, the convict class, have related to the ideology of the party 100%. And we’ve moved from… well, not we, I’ve always been an internationalist. And a materialist. I guess I was a materialist before I was born. I’m presently studying Swahili so that I will be able to converse with the comrades in Africa on their own terms, without having to rely on a colonial language. And I’ve been working on Spanish, which is of course a colonial language, but which is spoken by millions upon millions of comrades in latin America and elsewhere. I plan to study Chinese after that, and possibly Arabic. When I complete this task, I will be able to speak to something like seventy-five percent of the world’s people in their own tongue or something akin to their own tongue. I think that’s important.
The other brothers here are picking up on it. And there are some, especially those who are already politicized before they came inside, who are on top of it. But like I said, it’s of utmost importance that people outside bombard this place with material which will help prisoners understand the importance of internationalism to their struggle. It’s coming, but it’s still got a way to go before the educational process is complete. Ignorance is a terrible thing and being cut off from the flow of the movement is really detrimental. We must correct the situation as a first priority.

Wald: Can you receive mail and publications from other countries?

Jackson: Mail can be received from anywhere on the globe. I get stuff right now from Germany and England and France as a result of the book being published in these countries. And a few copies of Tricontinental [a Cuban revolutionary journal] have gotten in. They’ve helped broaden the scope, and explained a few things to comrades that they didn’t understand. This is something that really upsets the goons. In years past, every time a black prisoner would achieve and intellectual breakthrough and begin to relate our situation to the situation of the Cubans, say, or the Vietnamese or the Chinese-or anywhere else in the Third World-well these prisoners would be quickly assassinated. Now that’s become a little harder to do. So, I believe the people on the street should just start to flood the prisons with things like Tricontinental.

Wald: Despite a few peaceful victories in Latin America, such as that of Salvador Allende in Chile, many people still believe that armed struggle is the only way most Latin American countries are going to be free. Also, there’ve been some recent victories in the courts for members of the Black Panther Party, Los Siete de la Raza [seven Chicano activists from San Franciscocharged with murder in 1969; they were acquitted], and so on. Do you believe the victories in Chile and in the courts…

Jackson: They were appeasement. Allende… the thing that happened with Allende… look, it was not a “peaceful revolution.” That’s deception. Allende is a good man, but what’s going on in chile is just a reflection of the national aspirations of the ruling class. You will never find a peaceful revolution. Nobody surrenders their power without resistance. And until the upper class in Chile is crushed, Allende could at any time be defeated. No revolution can be consolidated under the conditions that prevail in chile. Blood will flow down there. Either Allende will shed it in liquidating the ruling class, or the ruling class will shed his whenever it decides the time is right. Either way, there’s no peaceful revolution.¹
Much the same can be said for the court cases you’re talking about. They’re an illusion. Every once in a while the establishment cuts loose of a case-usually one which was so outrageous to begin with that they couldn’t possibly win it without exposing their whole system of injustice anyway-and then they trot around babbling about “proof that the system works,” how just and fair it is. They never mention the fact that the people who were supposed to have received the justice of the system have often already spent months and months in lockup, and have been forced to spend thousands of thousands of dollars, keeping themselves from spending years and years in prison, before being found innocent. All this to defend themselves against charges for which there was no basis to begin with, and the state knew there was no basis. Some system. You get your punishment before your trial in this country if you happen to be black or brown or political. But they use these things to say the system works-which I guess it does, from their perspective-and to build their credibility for the cases that really count, when they really want to railroad someone into a prison cell. The solution isn’t to learn how to play the system for occasional “victories” of this order, although I’ll admit these sometimes have a tactical advantage. Winning comes only in destroying the system itself. We should never be confused on this point.

Wald: but the alternatives sometimes bear dire consequences. This raises the difficult question of the death of your brother, Jonathon, and whether his life may to a certain extent have been wasted.

Jackson: Well, that’s obviously a tough question for me because, emotionally, I very much wish my little brother was alive and well. But as to whether I think Jonathan’s life may have been wasted? No, I don’t. I think the only mistake he made was thinking that all of the 200 pigs who were there would have, you know, some sort of concern for the life of the judge. Of course, they chose to kill the judge, and to risk killing the D.A. and the jurors, in order to get at Jonathan and the others. It may have been a technical error. But I doubt it, because I know Jonathan was very conversant with military ideas, and I’m sure it occurred to him that there was a possibility that at least one pig would shoot, and that if one shot, they’ all shoot, and it’d be a massacre. Judge or no judge. It was all a gigantic bluff, you know? Jonathan took a calculated risk. Some people say that makes him a fool. I say his was the sort of courage that cause men of his age to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in somewhat different settings. The difference is that Jonathan understood very clearly who his real enemy was; the guy who gets the congressional medal usually doesn’t. Now, who’s the fool?
Personally, I bear his loss very badly. It’s a great burden upon my soul. But I think it’s imperative – we owe it to him – never to forget why he did what he did. And that was to stand as a symbol in front of the people – in front of me – and say in effect that we have both the capacity and the obligation to stand up, regardless of the consequences. He was saying that if we all stand up, our collective power will destroy the forces that oppose us. Jonathan lived by these principles, he was true to them, he died by them. This is the most honorable thing imaginable. He achieved a certain deserved immortality insofar as he truly had the courage to die on his feet rather than live one moment on his knees. He stood as an example, a beacon to all of us, and I am in awe of him, even though he was my younger brother.

Wald: The news today said that Tom Hayden² declared in front of the National Student Association Congress that there will be more actions like the one Jonathon attempted. Do you agree?

Jackson: I’ve been thinking a lot about the situation. I’m not saying that these particular tactics-even when successfully executed-constitute the only valid revolutionary form at this time. Obviously, they don’t. There must also be mass organizing activities, including large-scale nonviolent demonstrations, education of the least developed social sectors, and so on. These things are essential. The revolution must proceed at all levels. But this is precisely what makes the tactics necessary, and far too many self-proclaimed revolutionaries have missed the point on this score. Such tactics as Jonathon employed represent a whole level – an entire dimension — of struggle which has almost always been missing from the so-called American scene. And while it is true that armed struggle in-and-of-itself can never achieve revolution, neither can the various other forms of activity. The covert, armed, guerrilla dimension of the movement fits hand-in-glove with the overt dimension; the two dimensions can and must be seen as inseparable aspects of the same phenomenon; neither dimension can succeed without the other.
Viewing things objectively, we can readily determine that the overt dimension of the movement is relatively well-developed at this time. Over the past dozen years, we’ve seen the creation of a vast mass movement in opposition to the establishment in this country. I won’t go into this in any depth because I’m sure that everyone already knows what I’m talking about. It should be enough to observe that within the past two years, the movement has repeatedly shown itself able to put as many as a million people in the streets at any one time to express their opposition to the imperialist war in Indochina [this seems to be a reference to the November 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, staged in Washington, D.C.]. The covert dimension of the movement is, by comparison, very much retarded at the present time. In part, this may be due to the very nature of the activity at issue: guerrillas always begin in terms of very small numbers of people. But, more to the point, I think the situation is due to there having been a strong resistance to the whole idea of armed struggle on the part of much of the movement’s supposed leadership-particularly the white leadership-up to this point. I hear them arguing-contrary to history, logic, just plain common sense, and everything else -that armed struggle is unnecessary, even “counterproductive.” I hear them arguing in the most stupidly misleading fashion imaginable that the overt dimension of the movement can bring off revolution on its own. This is the sheerest nonsense, and “leaders” who engage in such a babble should be discarded without hesitation.
We may advance a simple rule: the likelihood of significant social change in the United States may be gauged by the extent to which the covert, armed, guerrilla aspect of the struggle is developed and consolidated. If the counterrevolutionaries and fools who parade themselves as leaders while resisting the development of the movement’s armed capacity are overcome-and the struggle is therefore able to proceed in a proper direction-I think we will see a revolutionary change in this country rather shortly. If, on the other hand, this leadership is able to successfully do what amounts to the work of the state- that is to say, to convince most people to shy away from armed struggle, and to isolate those who do undertake to act as guerrillas from the mass of support which should rightly be theirs – then the revolution will be forestalled. We will have a situation here much the same as that in Chile, where the establishment allows a certain quantity of apparent social gains to be achieved, but stands ready to strip these “gains” away whenever it’s convenient. You can mark my words on this: unless a real revolution is attained, all that’s been gained during the struggles of the past decade will be lost during the next ten years. It might not even take that long.³
At the present time, I see a number of very hopeful signs – very positive indications- that a true revolutionary force is emerging. Most notably, of course, the direction taken by the Black Panther Party is correct. But there are many other examples I could name. Even in the white community, we have seen the development, or at least the beginnings of the development, of what is necessary with the establishment of the Weatherman organization. We clearly have a long way to go, but it’s happening, and that’s what’s important at the moment. The very fact that Tom Hayden, who is of course a white radical himself, was willing to make the statement he made, and before the audience to which he made it, indicates the truth of this. So, yes, I tend to agree with him and hope we are both correct. Clear enough?

Wald: Yes. Do you see a relationship between what happened at the Marin County Civic Center, between what Jonathan and the other brothers did, and the kinds of things that happen in the Third world, say, in Latin America?

Jackson: Well, of course. Jonathan was a student … he was a military-minded brother. He was a student of Che Guevarra (sic) and Ho, and Giap and Mao, and many others. Tupamaros, Carlos Marighella. He paid close attention to other established guerrillas, other established revolutionary societies, revolutionary cultures around the world. He was very conscious of what was going on in South America and, well, let’s just say that about ninety-nine percent of our conversation was centered on military things. I knew him well. He understood.

Wald: I was going to ask if the Cuban revolutionaries had a significance for you and Jonathan in any concrete ways.

Jackson: Hmmmm … I don’t think it did for Jonathan. But it did for me, because I was in prison. I was just starting my time on this beat right here when Castro, Che and the rest carried the revolution there to a successful conclusion. And the alarm that spread throughout the nation, especially, you know, within the establishment and the police… well, let’s just say that as a newly-made prisoner I enjoyed that a lot. Someone else’s liberation at the establishment’s expense, it was a vicarious boost at a time when I most needed it. And I’ve always felt very tenderly toward the Cuban revolution as a result.

Wald: Then you weren’t an anti-communist when you came into prison?

Jackson: Oh, I’ve never been an anti-communist. I suppose you could say I didn’t have much understanding of communism when I came in, and so I wasn’t pro-communist in any meaningful way. But I was never “anti.”

Wald: But didn’t you initially find it terrible that Cuba had “gone communist”?

Jackson: No-no-no! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m trying to get across that I’ve alays been fundamentally anti-authoritarian. Communism came later. And when the Cuban revolution happened, the very fact that it upset the authorities here so bad made me favor it right off and made me want to investigate it much further. The idea was that if they don’t like it, it must be good. You see? And that’s what led me to seriously study socialism. I owe much of my own consciousness to the Cuban revolution. But that’s me. It doesn’t necessarily pertain to Jonathan. Okay?

Wald: Did the fact that such a tiny country so close to Florida pulled off a successful revolution give you a sense that, “If they can do it, we can do it”?

Jackson: Yes, both then and now. It caused me to consider the myth of invincibility. You know, the idea of U.S. military invincibility was just completely destroyed by the Cuban revolution. The U.S. supported Batista with rockets and planes, everything was needed, and he still lost. He was destroyed by guerrilla warfare, the same thing that’s taking place in Vietnam right now. And the U.S. is losing again. The Viet Cong, I mean they take these gadgets – the best things the best military minds in the western world can produce – they take them and the ball them up and throw them right back in the face of these imperialist fools. Cuba and now Vietnam; these things catch my attention. I try to learn the lessons from other peoples’ successes. Now, in that sense I’m sure the Cuban revolution had significance for Jonathan, too.

Wald: I see our time is almost up. Do you have any last remarks you’d like to make?

Jackson: Yes, I’d like to say POWER TO THE PEOPLE! And I’d like to say that by that I mean all power, not just the token sort of power the establishment is prepared to give us for its own purposes. I’d like to say that the only way we’re ever going to have change is to have the real power necessary to bring the changes we want into being. I’d like to say that the establishment is never going to be persuaded into giving us real power, it’s never going to be tricked into, it’s never going to feel guilty and change its ways. The only way we’re ever going get the power we need to change things is by taking it, over the open, brutal, physical opposition of the establishment. I’d like to say we must use, as Malcolm X put it, any means necessary to take power. I’d like to say that we really have no alternatives in the matter, and that it’s ridiculous or worse to think that we do. That’s what I’d like to say.

Notes

1. Editor’s note: True to Jackson’s prediction, the Chilean military – in combination with the CIA, Kissinger’s State Department, and transnational corporations (notably ITT and anaconda)- brought down the Allende government in September of 1973. More than 30,000 progressives and Allende himself were killed during the coup and the following three years. Many thousands more were driven into permanent exile. The Chilean people have been saddled with the neo-fascist regime of Colonel Augusto Pinochet ever since. Although demonstration elections did take place in 1989, Pinochet still remains in charge of the military. [back]

2. Editor’s note: This was the period before he totally sold out.[back]

3. Editor’s note: Actually, it was a bit longer; the Reagan administration of the 80s was required to validate Jackson’s prediction.[back]

Black Panthers Speak about Criminal Injustice

Black Panthers Speak about Criminal Injustice

This newsreel footage features interviews with Huey P. Newton (from Alameda County Jail), Eldridge Cleaver, and Bobby Seale. The footage also includes scenes from a Black panther rally at Hutton Memorial Park demanding the release of Mr. Newton. In this film, Huey Newton discusses the police brutality that so many Black people experience and calls for equal treatment for blacks within the criminal legal system. Bobby Seale outlines the 10 point of the Black Panther Party Program which are: 1) Freedom; 2) Full Employment; 3) Decent Housing; 4) End of Robbery of Black Communities by Whites; 5) Education, 6) Exemption of Blacks from Military Service; 7) End police brutality and murder of blacks; 8) All Blacks to be released from jail and prison; 9) Fair Trials; 10) Land, Bread, Housing, & Education.

“Books Taken from George Jackson’s Cell”

Books Taken from George Jackson’s Cellhttp://www.scribd.com/embeds/74717270/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list&access_key=key-1vkw0cio6wmenj7t5354(function() { var scribd = document.createElement(“script”); scribd.type = “text/javascript”; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = “http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();