Women ran the BPP pretty much. I don't know how it got to be a male's party or thought of as being a male's party.
-- Frankye Malika Adams, Member, Black Panther Party
THE GREAT AFRICAN American educator and civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955), a major force in the Black women's club movement in the 1920s and 30s, called on women to "go to the front and take our rightful place; fight our battles and claim our victories."! Women tried to do this in the heyday of the Black Liberation movement, as well as during the Civil Rights movement, with various degrees of success. In these movements, women generally were relegated to subordinate roles and were virtually invisible within the hierarchy of the organizations, even though they provided the bulk of the membership and labor. This phenomenon in part led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) founder Ella Baker (1903-1986) to observe that "strong people don't need strong leaders" and to advocate the collectivist model of leadership over the prevailing messianic style of the period. In essence, Baker was arguing against civil rights organizations mirroring the Black church model -- a predominantly female membership with a predominantly male clergy -- and for the inclusion of women in the leadership of these organizations. Baker was also questioning the hierarchical nature of these groups' leadership.
The Black Liberation movement, typified by groups such as the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Junta of Militant Organizations (JOMO), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), the US organization, the Black Panther Party, and a multitude of local groups, by not drawing on the Black church as a base, did not inherit the structural defect Baker observed. That said, much of the movement was indeed deeply macho in orientation and treated women in many of these groups in a distinctly secondary and disrespectful fashion. This is seen in the popular saying attributed to Kwame Ture (ne Stokely Carmichael) that "the only position for a woman in the movement is prone."
It is with a focus on these macho and misogynist attitudes that much of the popular press has examined the role of Black women in the Black Panther Party. In The Shadow of the Panther, Hugh Pearson, who had no discernable background in the Black Liberation movement, and therefore no firsthand knowledge of what he wrote, damned the Black Panther Party's "routine" mistreatment of women as both wide-ranging and "flagrant." [2] Pearson relied on three BPP insiders, "those who would never forgive Huey for what he did to the party," and on "nonblacks who had been affiliated with Newton and the party," whom he found to be the "easiest" sources for him to interview. It is not surprising that he comes to flawed conclusions based upon these limited and biased sources. [3]
Historian and scholar Errol A. Henderson is quite critical of Pearson on this score. [4] Other scholars have deemed Pearson's work "flawed" and "biased journalis(m)." [5] Black studies professor Reginald Major was even more critical, calling it "stealth history," which "has a distinctive political objective, to dampen, discredit and demonize the revolutionary potential of African-Americans." [6] Kathleen Cleaver questions the whole enterprise surrounding the portrayal of women in the Black Panther Party:
Well, ask yourself, where did the image of the Black Panther Party that you have in your head come from? Did you read those articles planted by the FBI in the newspaper? .. How many photographs of women Panthers have you seen? Think about this: how many newspaper photographers were women? How many newspaper editors were women? How many newscasters were women? How many television producers were women? How many magazine, book, newspaper publishers? \Vho was making the decisions about what information gets circulated, and when that decision gets made, who do you think they decide to present? ... Could it be the images and stories of the Black Panthers that you've seen and heard were geared to something other than conveying what was actually going on? [7]
While it may be proper to be sharply critical of the Black Liberation movement generally, it is also proper to give credit where it is due. For the undeniable truth is that the Black Panther Party, for ideological reasons and for reasons of sheer survival, gave the women of the BPP far more opportunities to lead and to influence the organization than any of its contemporaries, in white or Black radical formations.
A comparison with contemporary society as a whole also reflects positively upon the BPP. Eldridge Cleaver wrote, "[W]e have to recognize our women as our equals ... revolutionary standards of principles demand that we go to great lengths to see that disciplinary action is taken on all levels against those who manifest male chauvinism behavior." [8] And:
I'm aware that it has been a problem in all organizations in Babylon to structure our struggle in such a way that our sisters, our women are liberated and made equal in our struggle ... I know that the Minister of Defense, Huey P. Newton has spoken out many times that the male chauvinism that is rampant in Babylon in general, is also rampant in our own ranks." [9]
And point seven of the BPP 8 Points of Attention in the Party's rules states, "Do not take liberties with women," [10] showing an awareness that sexual misconduct must be confronted within the Party. Kathleen Cleaver writes, "In 1970 the Black Panther Party took a formal position on the liberation of women. Did the U.S. Congress make any statement on the liberation of women? ... Did the Oakland police issue a position against gender discrimination?" [11]
This writer knows of no other instances of radical groups of the period, especially those projected as having a predominantly male membership, that had women in the leadership to the extent the Black Panther Party did. During its time, the BPP had women in leadership positions in the internal organization and the regional offices, and even as the leader of the total organization.
Afeni Shakur (known to millions of youth as the mother of the late rapper Tupac Shakur) was appointed to a position of responsibility in the Harlem branch that she felt she was ill-chosen for. She felt she was neither "brilliant" nor had the "leadership ability" to function properly as section leader. [12] It is an interesting psychological insight that people seldom perceive themselves as others do, but unless Shakur is projecting a false sense of self-effacement, it reflects a startling imbalance between what she and others perceived in her. Several committed Party members who worked alongside her were struck by her utter brilliance and her radiant sense of self as she went about her daily duties. Safiya A. Bukhari, who held various posts in the Party and later commanded units of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), met and interacted with a broad range of Panthers, from all across the country, some famous and others not as well-known. While she found them all to be impressive individuals, she was deeply struck by Afeni Shakur. She would later write of her "exposure to an elfin, dark skinned woman with a very short afro":
Afeni Shakur walked tall and proud among these people. She emitted an inner strength and assuredness that made me say to myself, This is a Black woman worthy of respect.
Other than my grandmother on [my] mother's side, to that point I had not met a woman that I could look up to .... At that time when I needed it most Afeni Shakur exemplified the strength and dignity amid chaos that I needed to see. [13]
Afeni, taught by teachers and others in the white power structure that she was not worthy of much, probably saw herself as they did. But to those around her, another Afeni was visible. Indeed, Bukhari notes that ''Afeni never knew she was having this effect on me." [14] Yet this writer can safely state that Bukhari was far from alone in her response.
Other Party members saw something in Afeni that she may not have seen in herself. She was promoted from the ranks despite her objections when two leading Panthers were busted on old bench warrants that predated their BPP membership. Afeni would later recount, " ... and every time I'd tell them that I shouldn't be in any position like that, they would just look at me and tell me there's nobody else to do it. That's how they justified it." [15] Jamal Joseph, who at sixteen was among the youngest members of the New York Panthers, would later list three women as some of his "most important teachers and best friends" and as people who taught him to oppose male chauvinism and value the wisdom of women: Assata Shakur, Janet Cyril (one of the founders of the Brooklyn branch), and Afeni Shakur. [16]
How did Afeni Shakur, as an angry, alienated, desperately poor girl from North Carolina, living in the cold, hellish Big Apple, get interested in the BPP? She heard someone she described as a "cute little nigger," who later turned out to be Bobby Seale, giving a roaring street corner soapbox speech at 125th Street and Seventh Avenue about something called the Black Panthers. [17] She was so moved that she searched out the address of the Harlem branch office, attended a Political Education class, and promptly joined. The way this young woman was treated was an important factor in why she joined:
When I first met Sekou (Odinga] and Lumumba (Shakur] it was the first time in my life that I ever met men who didn't abuse women. As simple as that. It had nothing to do with anything about political movements. It was just that never in my life had I met men who didn't abuse women, and who loved women because they were women and because they were people. [18]
This observation is a telling one, for if, as Pearson avers, the BPP abused women in a manner that was "flagrant," widespread, and "routine," then the impressions of a young, naive, beautiful woman, who entered at the Party's ground level in one of the largest BPP chapters in the nation, would have been far more negative.
Afeni would later be numbered among the famous Panther 21, leading Party members who were targeted by the State for removal, incarceration, and attempted neutralization via government frame-up. The Panther 21 were indicted on April 2, 1969, on a plethora of weapons, attempted bombing, conspiracy, and related charges. The Panther 21 received that name because of the twenty-one names on the original indictment. Three of the Panthers were never caught, two were severed from the case because of age, one for health reasons, and two were already being held in New Jersey for other charges. Two years after the initial arrest the thirteen remaining defendants were acquitted of all 156 counts. Despite their eventual acquittal the Party suffered, during a critical period, the loss of some of its best and brightest members' organizing efforts and social presence.
In Brooklyn, another Panther member, Frankye Malika Adams, challenged the preeminent idea that the Black Panther Party was a man's thing:
[W]omen ran the BPP pretty much. I don't know how it came to be a male's party or thought of as being a male's party. Because these things, when you really look at it in terms of society, these things are looked on as being women things, you know, feeding children, taking care of the sick, and uh, so. Yeah, we did that. We actually ran the BPP's programs. [19]
Adams's insights reveal a perspective that reflects what every Panther actually experienced daily, feeding thousands of Black schoolchildren across the nation, providing free medical services to the ghetto poor, in some cities offering free shoes and clothing to people, and the like. Armed conflict, despite its salience in press reports, was actually a rare occurrence.
Indeed, if a more balanced account of the Oakland office was written, it would significantly undermine Pearson's central thesis that the sexual abuse of Party women was "flagrant," wide-ranging, and "routine." [20] Furthermore, a systematic review of the treatment of women in Oakland would have, at the very least, examined the experience of the first woman to join the Party, Oakland native Tarika Lewis, as she lived, struggled, and worked as the only female in an otherwise all-male milieu.
As a woman, Lewis was not pampered and was subject to the same organizational regulations as her male comrades. In addition to regular attendance in PE classes, she trained in usage, cleaning, disassembly, and reassembly of small arms.
In her first year of service, the bright young recruit made rapid advancements in rank, and was appointed to teach Political Education classes. That said, she still faced macho posturing and resistance, which she handled with style. "When the guys came up to me and said 'I ain't gonna do what you tell me to do 'cause you a sister,' I invited 'em to come on out to the weapons range and I could outshoot 'em." [21] Such a Panther, woman or no, would earn the respect of her comrades because of her undeniable abilities and demonstrated performance.
Other examples, gleaned from the public record, were equally accessible to the principled researcher, and their omission from Pearson's work denotes either an intentional denial of the positive role women played in the Party or a willful ignorance. Moreover, according to BPP Chairman Seale, a year after the BPP's founding, women comprised almost 60 percent of the membership. [22]
This is not to suggest, by any means, that sexism was not a serious problem in the Party, nor that it did not hamper Party growth, development, and maturation. What is clear, however, is that sexism did not exist in a vacuum. As a prominent feature of the dominant social order, how could it not exist in a social, political formation that was drawn from that order, albeit from that order's subaltern strata?
For men who, often for the first time in their lives, exercised extraordinary power over others, sexism became a tool of sexual dominance over subordinates, as one young Panther, Regina Jennings, recounted:
All I wanted was to be a soldier. I did not want to be romantically linked with any of my comrades, and even though I gave my entire life to the Party -- my time, my energy, my will, my clothes, and my skills, yet my captain wanted more. My captain wanted me .... I lacked maturity and the skill necessary to challenge authoritarian men, so I searched for ways to circumvent the sexism of my captain. I was determined not to leave the Party because I felt there was no other place in America where I could fully be my Black revolutionary self. ... After a year of transforming myself into a young woman who cared deeply for my people and becoming a fixture within Oakland and enjoying all of its rights and privileges, I found that my captain searched for greater ways to push me out of the Party .... There were women who came through the Party and would immediately leave because of the vulgar male behavior. There were women in the Party like me who tried to hold on because we understood the power, the significance, and the need for our organization. Black men, who had been too long without some form of power, lacked the background to understand and rework their double standard toward the female cadre. Perhaps, if the Party had external observers -- community elders who respected our platform -- much unfair practices against women may not have occurred. [23]
Jennings's example is all the more tragic when one examines the remarkable origins of her membership. Imagine the idealism and determination of a sixteen-year-old, jumping on a plane from her native Philadelphia, flying to California, and marching into the Oakland office of the Black Panther Party announcing an intention to join the controversial organization. When asked why she wanted to join, the teenager answered with youthful brio: "I wanna kill all the White people; that's why." [24]
It took a mature Panther to see the jewel beneath the drug-addicted wild child before him. This Officer of the Day took down Jenning's particulars, suggested she return in a few days (sober), and accepted her for membership. When she returned still under the influence, they took her in, cured her of her addiction, and filled her drug-free void "with a pure and noble love for my people." [25]
Even given her experience with her dense and dishonorable captain, Jennings reminds us that this was not the norm within the Party, for "all men in the Party were not sexist. In fact, many fought with me against the foolishness of our captain. These men were also ostracized by the leadership." [26] Jennings's experience teaches us that while sexism certainly existed in the Party and poisoned some interactions between male and female comrades, it was most often a feature of imbalanced power relations between the higher and lower ranks.
Indeed, the rise and fall of former Party chief Elaine Brown, and an account of her life on the "throne," is a riveting tale of gender politics, power dynamics, color consciousness, and sexual dominance exhibited by her when she was, as Huey's lover, given the top post upon his exile. [27]
Brown demonstrated, upon her elevation, that the abuse of power was not solely a male prerogative. She brooked no questioning of her role and relished the opportunity to "discipline" a member of the Los Angeles underground who had beaten her up several years earlier. Brown ordered him to Oakland, ostensibly for a "meeting," disarmed him, and proceeded to ruthlessly teach him who was boss:
"Right now, I'm going to give you an opportunity to apologize, and to acknowledge the leadership of this party."
"You mean, to say I'm sorry I kicked your ass," he interrupted.
"I'm through, Larry," I said, getting up from my chair, scraping it along the floor with my foot as I rose.
Big Bob reached over, lifted Steve from the couch, and slammed his solid body to the floor .... Four men were upon him now .... Steve struggled for survival under the many feet stomping him .... Their punishment became unmerciful .... Blood was everywhere. Steve's face disappeared. [28]
Was this a kind of "reverse sexism" (to borrow a phrase)? Hardly. For sexism is the systematic, as opposed to the incidental, devaluation of a person because of one's sex. Was this an abuse of one's power and rank for personal purposes? Of that there can be little doubt.
Brown's account also reveals the dual nature of sexism and the ability it gave women to use their sexuality to gain influence, access, rank, and power. Brown was prepared to use this tool when necessary. Sexism also fed into what might be called "light-skin privilege," or the ability for lighter-complected women in the Party to acquire the attention of men in the Party hierarchy that sisters of darker hues, with superior work ethics, could not.
Former Black Panther Safiya A. Bukhari had a sterling career, not only in the Party, but in the Party's military successor, the BLA. While criticizing men who brought "their sexist attitudes into the organization," she also is critical of those women who "utiliz(ed] their femininity as a way to achieve rank and stature within the Party." [29]
Bukhari did not enter the Party as a wild-eyed youth. She came from an upward-bound family of ten children, and was a bourgeois- oriented Black college student. Her sorority chose to begin a study of poverty among children in Harlem. Safiya approached the project with skepticism, for she did not really believe such conditions existed in America. Raised by parents who were "strict," "religious" folks (she doesn't describe her parents as conservative, but they clearly were), her first response to the sorority project is breathtaking, especially when one considers her later political development:
Personally, I'd never even thought of people in the United States being disadvantaged, but only too lazy to work and "make it." ...
A few of us were sent to Harlem to investigate the situation. We talked to people on the street, in the welfare centers, from door to door, and watched them work and play, loiter on the corners and in the bars. What we came away with was a story of humiliation, degradation, deprivation and waste that started in infancy and lasted until death ... in too many cases, at an early age. [30]
Even after seeing these conditions, she looked at them with a kind of professional detachment: "I didn't see this as affecting me personally, only as a sorority project ... sort of as a tourist who takes pity on the less fortunate." [31]
She heard of the Black Panther Free Breakfast for Children program and found it a valuable and viable program to address the widespread poverty and hunger among the very young. So she and some of her sorority sisters promptly offered their services to help the program. This support still took the form of charity rather than political support.
I couldn't get into the politics of the Black Panther Party, but I could volunteer to feed some hungry children; you see, children deserve a good start and you have to feed them for them to live to learn. It's hard to think of reading and arithmetic when your stomach's growling. [32]
This essential conservatism, this deeply apolitical stance, would have been right at home in the women's club movement of an earlier era when Black women of means and learning launched social uplift-type programs for their poorer, less educated sisters. And this would probably have been the limit of the involvement of this up-and-coming sorority sister with the Black Panthers, had not the State intervened.
Their intervention, though petty and minor, shocked her. As she volunteered for the free breakfast program, she was dismayed to see attendance begin to diminish and couldn't understand why. When the trend continued, she went out into the community and talked to parents and learned that many of them were told by police that the people at the breakfast program were "feeding them poisoned food":
It's one thing to hear about underhanded things the police do -- you can ignore it then -- but it's totally different to experience it for yourself -- you either lie to yourself or face it. I chose to face it and find out why the police felt it was so important to keep Black children from being fed that they told lies. I went back to the Black Panther Party and started attending some of their Community Political Education classes. [33]
The crude attempt by the State to cripple a vital self-help community program only served to attract Bukhari to the ideology and politics of an organization that she had hitherto been studiously avoiding. But she still was not a Panther. She was just an angry Black woman who was intrigued when she learned how the cops would lie to destroy something that was doing such obvious good.
She wondered, "Why?"
Personal Engagement
It is said that small incidents can have profound repercussions. Consider what next happened to Bukhari. Her proud, independent, analytical nature would not allow her to fully embrace the Black Panthers, yet she had begun to listen to their message. Shortly after her unsettling experience with the cops regarding the breakfast program, she and a friend were walking down 42nd Street in Midtown when they noticed a crowd gathering. Rushing to see what was happening, they came upon a dispute between two cops and a Panther with a bundle of newspapers under his arm. As she stopped to listen, she learned that the cops were telling the young man that he couldn't sell the papers on the corner, while the Panther was insisting that he could. The sober, conservative sorority sister chimed in instinctively, informing the cops that the guy had a constitutional right to disseminate political literature anywhere. Instead of responding to the young lady's legal argument, the cops demanded identification and, moments later, arrested her, her friend, and the Panther selling papers.
While en route to the station, Bukhari could only believe that this was a minor misunderstanding that would be cleared up once the police listened to reason. When her girlfriend started to speak about her illegal arrest, and as the car began to pull away from the milling crowd, the cop threatened to stick his nightstick up in her unless she shut her mouth. Then he proceeded to give an unsolicited speech to a captive audience about what was wrong with Black people.
At the Fourteenth Precinct, they were separated, stripped, and searched. She distinctly remembered a male cop telling the female cop doing the searching to wash her hands to make sure she didn't catch something. Bukhari was livid. She was also determined:
That night, I went to see my mother, explained to her about the bust and about a decision I'd made. Momma and Daddy were in the kitchen when I got there -- Daddy sitting at the table and Momma cooking. I remember telling them about the bust and them saying nothing. Then I told them about how the police had acted and them still saying nothing. Then I told them that I couldn't sit still and allow the police to get away with that. I had to stand up for my rights as a human being. I remember my mother saying, " ... if you think it's right, then do it." I went back to Harlem and joined the Black Panther Party. [34]
The Party gained a hard-working, tough-minded, intelligent, and committed young woman as comrade because of petty lies and attempts at harassment by the police. After all was said and done, Bukhari ended up organizing hundreds, if not thousands of others, and being appointed section leader for parts of Harlem. She would go on to establish a liberation school, and later, after the Party was ripped apart by division, she would command an armed unit of the Black Liberation Army. Police repression and threats did more than push her to join the Black Panther Party; they brought out the commitment and determination of a revolutionary.
She spent a long and brutal stint in prison, at one time facing forty years, and the death penalty, for work done while in the BLA underground. As a woman who joined a predominantly male-membered group, who rose in leadership in both the Ministry of Information of the Party and the BLA, her insights into the problem of sexism should prove invaluable.
Bukhari would be the last to be an apologist for the organization. In an article written in response to the well-publicized New York Times op-ed piece co-authored by former Panther chief Elaine Brown and acclaimed novelist Alice Walker, Bukhari strived to put the issue of sexism within the BPP into its proper, and historical, context. Bukhari, in her "On the Question of Sexism Within the Black Panther Party," [35] recounts a people's history of severely damaged, and intentionally sabotaged, familial relations. Under a system of chattel slavery and the unrelenting violence used to enforce it, she argues, Black men and Black women were compelled to construct relationships that could be severed at whim and over which little appreciable control could be exercised. Men could find favor if they impregnated women (thereby increasing the slave stock), and, similarly, women were favored if they delivered such stock (thus increasing white wealth). These socially and psychologically deformed, and deforming, practices, which took place in North America for well over two centuries, continue to live in the Black psyche long after the legal cessation of formal slavery and even after the century of legal apartheid that followed. It follows in Black consciousness even today, as she explains:
The error everyone seems to be making, supporters and detractors of the Black Panther Party alike, is separating the Party from its time and roots and looking at it in a vacuum. Quite clearly, the Black Panther Party came out of the Black community and its experiences. The membership of the Black Panther Party was recruited from the ghettoes of the inner cities. The Party itself was founded ... by two Black men who came straight out of the ghetto and met on the campus of Merritt College ....
Which brings us back to 1966 and the founding of the Black Panther Party. Nothing had changed in terms of the quality of life in the Black community and racism in this country. We were still slaves in every way except we were no longer bound and shackled. We still didn't have a culture. Our Africanism and sense of identity were gone and had been replaced by western civilization. We were busy trying to be like the rest of the people in America. We had taken on the persona of sexist America, but with a Black hue. It was into this that the Black Panther Party was founded, declaring that we were revolutionaries and a revolutionary had no gender. [36]
Bukhari does not claim that some Black women were not wrongly treated, in either the community or the organization. That was a given, in light of the historical processes that led to the Party's development. That the Party intentionally concentrated on those elements of the community considered to be lumpen also ensured that the least enlightened on gender issues would be widely recruited into the organization. Yet, she argues, much of the popular media would never give the Black Panther Party the credit it rightly deserves for the trailblazing it performed:
The simple fact that the Black Panther Party had the courage to address the question in the rust place was a monumental step forward. In a time when the other nationalist organizations were defining the role of women as barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen, women in the Black Panther Party were working right alongside men, being assigned sections to organize just like the men, and receiving the same training as the men. Further, the decision as to what a person did within the ranks of the Black Panther Party was determined not by gender, but by ability. [37]
Bukhari's memory of the service of other women reads like a roster of pride in their accomplishments, though it is not without criticism:
In its brief seven year history (1966-1973)38 women had been involved on every level in the Black Panther Party. There were women like Audrea Jones, who founded the Boston chapter of the Black Panther Party, women like Brenda Hyson, who was the OD (Officer of the Day) in the Brooklyn office of the Black Panther Party, women like Peaches, who fought side-by-side with Geronimo Pratt in the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party, Kathleen Cleaver, who was on the Central Committee, and Sister Rivera who was one of the motivators behind the office in Mt. Vernon, NY. By the same token, there were problems with men who brought their sexist attitudes into the organization. Some of the men refused to take direction (orders) from women. Even though we had a framework established to deal with that, because of liberalism and cowardice, as well as fear, a lot of times the framework was not utilized.
The other side of the coin was women who sought to circumvent the principled method of work by utilizing their femininity as a way to achieve rank and stature within the Party. They also utilized their sexuality to get out of work and certain responsibilities. This unprincipled behavior within the Party (just as on the streets) undermined the work of other sisters who struggled to deal in a principled manner. Thus, there were three evils that had to be struggled with, male chauvinism, female passivity and ultra femininity (the "I'm only a female" syndrome). [39]
Finally, Bukhari was critical of those who, from their positions of relative and temporal safety, deign to criticize the Party for failure to live up to its theoretical construct of ideals whilst involved in a bitter and brutal life and death struggle:
It is easy to decry the sexism of the leadership of the Black Panther Party from afar, without having struggled along with them .... While the Party was dealing with the issue of politically educating its ranks it was also feeding hungry children, establishing liberation schools, organizing tenants, welfare mothers, and establishing free health clinics. Simultaneously, the Black Panther Party was under attack from the local, state and federal government. Offices of the Black Panther Party from California to Louisiana, from Texas to Michigan, all across the country were under physical attack and Panthers were being killed and imprisoned. We were not theorizing about struggle, we were in constant struggle on all levels. [40]
At least one scholar who looked at the Party's history on the question of women came away with a similar conclusion. Indeed, Nikhil Pal Singh wrote of the Party's 1970 call in support of both women's liberation and gay liberation, as an "astonishing leap, given the period." [41]
The Hard life of Panther Women
Some women had, relatively speaking, privileged lives in the Party, primarily due to their or their mate being in the upper ranks of the Party. Such privileges often took the form of exposure to opportunity, such as for travel or nicer living accommodations.
Barbara Easley Cox, for example, the wife of revered Field Marshall D.C., was considerably more privileged than the average sister in the organization, a fact she freely conceded in recent correspondence. [42] It did not hurt matters that she also came from the original West Coast core of the BPP. Although she hailed from Philadelphia, Cox worked and lived in San Francisco, Oakland, New York, and for a time in Algiers, Pyongyang (North Korea), Frankfurt, and Paris. In recent years, she has lived in Amsterdam. She speaks of her years after the Party as a continuance of a journey started then. She writes, "I received and got a lot of respect, [that] I am not certain I always deserved. [H]owever, I earned it over the last 35 years and will not let anyone diminish our/my value as a part of history." She doesn't rest on her historical experiences, adding, "[W]e are still here [--] black and strong ... if I can help one young person to forge forward, keep the faith, give strength to or clear up his/her direction, I live to do the job, anywhere time or place." [43]
Cox was privileged to experience so much of the world and to live, perhaps, in greater luxury than her Panther sisters. It is necessary here, however, to qualify the term privileged. For, as the experiences of Afeni Shakur and Ericka Huggins show, Panther women and those associated with the Party were also privileged to the full force of State repression. The State was fully willing, if it could, to send such women to prison for the rest of their lives. As Eldridge wrote about Ericka Huggins, "So they didn't put her in a powder puffed cell. They did not make life easy for her. But the pigs recognized a revolutionary woman to be just as much a threat as a revolutionary man." [44]
Most Panther women were not extended such privileges as Cox and other women in the Party's upper ranks enjoyed and made choices that reflected that absence. Naima Major's struggle is more representative of the life of a Black Panther woman.
A precocious teenager, Major left home at seventeen (she uses the word "fled" to describe her exodus). It was 1968, and the bright youngster, a National Negro Scholar, had recently graduated from high school. But she wasn't really interested in college, which seemed to bore her. Her story is so compelling, that I will not paraphrase it, but allow her to present what is, after all, her story:
[I fled] to San Francisco/Oakland looking for the BPP office and ended up at the campaign office of Eldridge Cleaver. I was 17, had no family there, knew no one except my roommate, a Spelman College dropout, also on the run from petit bourgeois mediocrity.
I went to a Free Huey Rally at the federal building in SF, and met many brave Panthers. Went on a mission with Kathleen Cleaver in Hunter's Point because my beloved was one of her self-appointed guards. Captured body and soul by the rally and the love and energy of black people. My favorite retort to almost anything soon became, "And how does that free the people?" I was dogmatic and insufferable, but could dance you down at a house party!
Found the Panther before I found the office. Married the handsome, temperamental revolutionary because he showed up at my door with a swaddling baby named BJ, Baby Jesus, because we weren't sure who the father was. BJ's mother of the immaculate conception was on her way to Corona State Prison for Women, and my beloved, one of her lovers, was trying to care for the baby. Need I say more? What's not to love? I devoted the next 5-6 years of my life to him and the party, two of them visiting Soledad Prison where my beloved was held on a sentence of 6 months to life. He was 19. Imagine that. I was pregnant. My beloved was released after 22 months by a mass civil action initiated by Huey P. Newton from behind prison walls and Senator Mervyn Dymally to get scores of young Panthers in California released from wrongful convictions and these draconian sentences for minor or first time offenses. We lost BJ in 1969 right before my beloved was sentenced. I never saw him again. We saw his mother after she was released, she was 16 when she entered, 21 when she was released. You can see her and BJ in Pirkle Jones' collection of photographs ... BJ's mother died, mysteriously, some say, in Los Angeles a few years later. BJ is grown up somewhere in San Francisco; he doesn't know us. I pray he doesn't hate us.
Despite these heartbreaking setbacks, Major soldiered on, as did thousands of young women like her. She did political work, and studied revolutionaries, like all other· Panthers. She fought her way through, with grit and will:
Devoted to the black revolution and the ten point program, I commenced with baby in sling to doing the hard community work required of all Panthers, organizing poor women like myself, planning and supporting free schools, writing letters for people who couldn't write, demanding decent housing for people who were afraid of the landlord, helping get the newspaper out, health cadres, food cadres, you name it. Did some dangerous work too, and studied Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Fanon, Mao like a religious zealot, mostly with the brothers. Fought with them over Bakunin and Stalin. Just because I was the only woman in my group, husband gone, baby at the breast, nobody cut me any slack, but nobody molested me either. I had to learn what the brothers learned. Learned well. Fought well. Knew then and still know how to choose my battles. I know I saved some lives. Indeed my own. I wanted to live for the revolution, not die for it. The people became personal instead of theoretical.
My beloved came home just in time for hell on earth. The so-called split tore the Fillmore and West Oakland communities apart and almost destroyed my whole family, which included a nursing baby and a toddler at that time. Never mind that. We persevered against all odds and with uncommon sense, supported the International Chapter in Algeria and wherever with money and supplies. Does anyone remember a shoot to kill order against all SF Panthers and left adventurists? I Do. Terrible times.
Poor as we were and living under siege sending baby clothes and money overseas! Wrote propaganda, a number of things .... Forced underground in New York City, east coast Panthers and Muslims took care of me and my family -- we didn't get out much but we never missed a meal. Fled NYC back to California, joined the Nation of Islam because they offered us shelter when no one else could or would. As a Muslim woman, I was forced out of the NOI by fundamentalism -- which I recognized even then -- plus greed, economic exploitation, stupidity and COINTELPRO-type activities. [45]
Major experienced many things, but a privileged life wasn't one of them. She went back to school, educated their children, and keeps her inner life shining with poetry, literature, and film studies. She describes herself as "the proud mother of three free black people" and is the grandmother of four. She is a founding member of the Keep Ya' Head Up foundation, a supportive collective of ex-Panther women.
Despite it all -- the loss, the pain, the betrayals, and the political reversals, she continues to aspire to the revolutionary, humanistic ideal, saying, simply, "I want to be like Che." She works today in the nonprofit sector.
Although her name may be little known by those who have read the popular literature produced around the Black Panther Party, her story is actually closer to the norm of a woman's life in the Party. Hard work. Hard study. Jailed lovers. Survival. Striving. Times of promise. Times of terror. Resistance to male chauvinism.
And hope.
It is telling that Major, although decades have passed since she was a member of the BPP, is still an organizer, who works collectively to assist those who lived similar lives.
Rosemari Mealy had no intention of joining the Black Panther Party. In the late 1960s she lived in a predominantly Quaker commune in West Philadelphia, and was quite busy living her life and working on antiwar, draft resistance, and Black economic justice issues.
She had worked as a community activist with the Civil Rights movement, as an actress in the Black Arts movement, and was one of the few woman members of the Black Economic Development Conference (BEDC), a group led by activist Muhamad Kenyatta that petitioned wealthy white churches for economic reparations to the Black community. Although she studied Marxist writers, she was also a mother of a young child and the dangerous life of a Black Panther was not attractive to her. Indeed, "the last thing" on her mind was to join the BPP.
Then, in December 1969, the phone rang. Young Fred Hampton, in Chicago, was murdered in his bed by state and federal police.
Captain Reggie had often called on her for help getting leaflets printed, and she had struggled with members of the commune to help the Party in this effort. Some of the radical Quakers found the Party's determination to defend itself with arms in stark contrast with their commitment to nonviolence.
This time Reggie called, not for help in printing leaflets, but to find out if any members of the commune were traveling to Chicago, and if several Panthers could join them to represent the chapter in Fred's honor.
While some members of the commune had misgivings, several agreed, and made the long trip to Chicago. Rosemari left Philadelphia a member of a mostly white commune; she returned a member of the Black Panther Party.
For members of the Party the visit to the Windy city was traumatic, though it deepened our determination for we knew that any of us could be slain like Fred.
For Rosemari:
Fred Hampton's murder by the Chicago police propelled my political activism to the next stage ... That experience in retrospect would always have the most profound of all impacts in my life. In the Party, I used all my contacts ... to build networks and support between a sector of Philadelphia society who had so often denounced the actions and tactics of the Party. Since my life was so engaged by the collective experiences of prior movements and living arrangements, I sort of took my place naturally alongside those of different age, class, and similar, as well as not-so-similar, life experiences. I sold papers, organized against police killings of Black youth, and wrote articles for the newspaper about what was happening in Philadelphia. [46]
As an experienced organizer, the Party found her skills valuable and shortly thereafter, she was transferred to New Haven to help with the case of Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins.
When Huey visited the chapter, as the Lieutenant of Information, Rosemari was selected to speak to him and deliver some of the chapter's most pressing complaints to the one man who could unilaterally solve them.
The Huey she met wasn't the Huey she expected, and when she voiced the chapter's complaints he responded by expelling her from the Party. The next issue of The Black Panther would announce her expulsion and denounce her as an "enemy of the People," along with the New York 21 and those assigned to the International Section in Algiers.
She left the city, and, to ensure her survival, went underground.
She survived to see her son reach manhood. She went on to marry, write several books, earn a law degree, and work as a radio journalist.
The Party may no longer exist, yet much of the spirit, the essence of collective resistance, of community service, of perseverance, continues in the lives of people like Major, Jennings, Mealy, and others who aspired to change the realities into which they and their people were born.
They were, without question, the very best of the Black Panther Party.
Memories
When I read or hear critics employ their projections against the BPP on charges of sexism I can barely conceal a chuckle, for my memories of women in the Party were of able, determined, and powerful revolutionaries who fought with and for their brothers like lionesses.
Women in the Party in which I spent several years of my youth were not dainty, shrinking violets. They were, of course, of various backgrounds and, as is common in Black America, of every which hue.
They were also tough women.
We lived in spartan, virtually bare "Panther pads, " where we fell onto mattresses at the end of a long day's work.
Whether I was in Philadelphia, the Bronx, or in Berkeley, California, I was under the authority of a female Panther who ran a tight and efficient operation.
Although no woman helped found the Philadelphia branch and none held office, the national office sent a woman invested with the rank of Deputy Field Marshal. which meant she had immense power in the city.
Her name was Sister Love.
She spoke with that common black Californi-ese that had deep roots in the US South. She looked into every nook and cranny of the branch and occasionally cracked her whip by ordering the branch leadership to correct some defect or close some loophole in office security. As an outsider, and as a woman, she evoked mixed emotions in us. On the one hand, there was clear resentment at her presence and, yes, her power; on the other, there was a profound respect, for, we reasoned, if she was sent by "the Coast," by friends and comrades of our beloved Minister of Defense, Huey P. Newton, then she had to be most extraordinary.
In the Bronx, Sister Bernice ran the office of the East Coast Ministry of Information with all the tenderness of a drill sergeant. She could be mercurial. At one moment she could be whispering encouragement to you as you worked on a project, but in the next she would bark out, "drop down and give me twenty!" and stand there, her dark bespectacled face an impassive mask of obsidian, as she counted out the pushups: "1, 2, ...17, 17-1/2 -- give me a real pushup, nigga -- 18, 19, 20." The office was a beehive of Panther productivity, and she, Sister Bernice, was the undisputed queen.
At the Party's national headquarters in northern California, a phalanx if women ran the Party offices, answering phones, paying bills, and generally taking care if the business of a large, national organization. When I arrived, I was stunned by the normality if it, the everydayness if it. This, the national office of the notorious Black Panther Party, with its offices, phones, typewriters, and related paraphernalia, could have been the offices of the Chamber of Commerce. It was a business office, peopled with competent, efficient, and attractive young women. With perhaps one difference: some of these women wore pistols.
There was an additional difference: almost all if the women were light-complected. The men, by contrast, were generally brown to dark brown to jet black, like Mojo.
On the second floor were the offices, layout area, and composition machinery for the Party's acclaimed weekly journal, The Black Panther. I was assigned to assist the editor, Judi Douglas, and do anything necessary to help the paper. My boss was a gentle woman, with a soft, southern accent, who patiently helped the young Panther from Philadelphia write pieces worthy of the paper. She was a selfless and dedicated teacher.
On both coasts, in cities if different rhythms and pace, one found confident, capable, proud, and inspiring women, who commanded respect, camaraderie, intense loyalty, and sisterly love.
We knew from experience that they would be treated as viciously as we if they fell into the hands if the enemy, and we loved them all the more for their courage and their sacrifice. We knew, and could recite, the names of our sisters who were political prisoners of the pigs, and their names were like a mantra of resistance: Ericka Huggins, Angela Davis, Afeni Shakur, Joan Bird. ...
As for sex, women chose their partners as freely as the men, and many could and did say no.
One night, Sheila came into my room and asked, matter-of-factly, "Do you wanna do it?" As I looked at this girl, her copper-colored Afro like a soft halo circling her pretty face, her eyes like green jade, standing in the doorway with panties on, I almost stuttered. But deeper than my desire was a burning guilt, for earlier in the day, our deputy chief of staff June Hilliard, had dressed down a brother for going to a whorehouse:
"Mojo, don't you know it's a breach of security for you to relate to a woman outside the party?"
"But, June -- I know, brother, but -- but --"
"But, what, Mojo?"
'Won't nobody give me none, " he admitted, shyly.
"Mojo -- either work wit' yo rap, or work with yo hand, bro' -- What can I tell ya, man? But, you just cain't be relating to sistas in no who'house --that's a security risk, brother."
''Yes, sir, June. I hear you, man."
Mojo gave an empty laugh and walked away, his head down in a wreath of sadness.
I thought of Mojo as Sheila stood there, inviting me to her garden of celestial delights, and I think a groan escaped from my lips.
'Well, do you want to relate to me?"
"Oh, I do -- but, that thing with Mojo --"
'What about Mojo?"
'Well, the brother hadda go to whorehouse, 'cuz none of the sistas would relate to him -- and that's fucked up!"
"And that's my problem?"
"Naw, but --"
"'But, 'shit! This is my pussy! I give it, or don't, when I want to, hear me?"
"I hear you, sista --"
"Now, tell me -- Do you want this pussy, or not?"
I wanted it. I wanted it so bad I could taste it. But it would have tasted like a betrayal to my brother, Mojo. I was, first and foremost, a Black Panther. A true revolutionary would choose loyalty over desire. "Not," I answered.
"Fuck you, then," she raged, her green eyes shooting darts at the fool who would turn down her sublime offering. She made a neat pivot and turned and a luscious ass undulated out of my room and into the darkness of history.
"I am a revolutionary!"
"I want for my brotha, what I want for myself."
"I am a Black Panther!"
I repeated these mottoes to myself, over and over.
Under the motto, almost in counterpoint, came another message:
"Mumia -- You let that -- get away? Youza stoo-pid muthafucka, boy!"
I rolled over on my side, the floor feeling firm and unforgiving through the thin, worn sleeping bag, which did little to camouflage the California night's cool, and soon plunged into slumber, dreaming about Sheila. [47]
To be a Panther meant something extraordinary in 1970, and one felt immensely honored to know, work with, and love these tough, committed women. These were, as Elaine Brown would later recount, "hard" women who were seen as "soldiers, comrades -- not pretty little things." [48] They were, to use Eldridge Cleaver's words, our "other half," who fought as "strongly and enthusiastically as we [did] ... in the struggle": [49]
Because the liberation of women is one of the most important issues facing the world today .... [T]he .... demand for liberation of women in Babylon is the issue that is going to explode, and if we're not careful it's going to destroy our ranks, destroy our organization, because women want to be liberated just as all oppressed people want to be liberated. [50]
In the ranks and offices of the Black Panther Party, women were far more than mere appendages of male ego and power, they were valued and respected comrades who demonstrated daily the truth of the adage, "a revolutionary has no gender."