We had seen Martin Luther King come to Watts in an effort to calm the people and we had seen his philosophy of nonviolence rejected. Black people had been taught nonviolence; it was deep in us. What good, however, was nonviolence when the police were determined to rule by force?
-- Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide [1]
THE FIRES OF the Watts Rebellion did far more than destroy; like flame in the kiln of a potter, the reddish-orange, hungry tongues of combustion are capable of creation.
As suggested earlier, the fires of Watts differed in significant ways from the many "riots" that had ravaged American cities for the better part of a century before. Those previous riots were often mass upheavals of whites attacking Black life or Black property. They therefore served the needs of white nationalism.
Watts was different in that it reflected Black urban anger at the white power structure and was a rebellion against a racist status quo. Eldridge Cleaver wrote in his first book, Soul on Ice, that before the revolts, young men in prison regarded Watts as a place of shame, or worse, an epithet. After the rebellion, Cleaver noticed a marked difference among "all the Blacks in Folsom [prison]." They were going around proclaiming, ''I'm from Watts, baby ... and proud of it." [2]
Watts took on a meaning to Black Americans that symbolized a kind of resistance that was anathema to the likes of Dr. King or his co-integrationists of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
The Black Panther Party came into existence, not to support or supplement the major civil rights organizations, but to supplant them.
The major civil rights groups were shocked and stymied by the outrage revealed by Watts. Those who would organize the Black Panther Party looked to Watts as inspiration and an ashy harbinger of things to come.
That is because, at its deepest levels, overtly and covertly, the Black Panther Party believed in revolution -- the deep, thoroughgoing transformation of society from the ground up. It did not believe that the country would, or ever could, embrace the claims of its Constitution.
Although it has rarely been observed in these ideological terms, the Black Panther Party was a Malcolmist party far more than it was a Marxist one. Though all Panthers owned and were required to study Mao's Red Book, and the Party claimed to adhere to the principles of Marxism-Leninism, few Panthers actually pored through turgid, laborious translations of key Marxist texts. These were not required reading, although some advanced cadre chose to do so.
But few Panthers had failed to read (or, if illiterate, failed to hear) the speeches of Malcolm X. For Huey and Bobby, the admiration and almost quiet reverence for Malcolm is abundantly clear:
We read also the works of the freedom fighters who had done so much for Black communities in the United States. Bobby had collected all of Malcolm X's speeches and ideas from papers like The Militant and Muhammad Speaks. These we studied carefully. Although Malcolm's program for the Organization of Afro-American Unity was never put into operation, he had made it clear that Blacks ought to arm. Malcolm's influence was ever-present. We continue to believe that the Black Panther Party exists in the spirit of Malcolm. Often it is difficult to say exactly how an action or a program has been determined or influenced in a spiritual way. Such intangibles are hard to describe, although they can be more significant than any precise influence. Therefore, the words on this page cannot convey the effect that Malcolm has had on the Black Panther Party although, as far as I am concerned, the Party is a living testament to his life work. I do not claim that the Party has done what Malcolm would have done. We do not say this; but Malcolm's spirit is in us. [3]
Malcolm was a hard-core Black nationalist, and the early BPP was a hard-core Black nationalist organization. But Malcolm also represented more; his extraordinary life demonstrated the power of growth, of development, of personal transformation, and, indeed, service to one's community. His personal voyage from criminal, from thief to militant minister had tremendous appeal to many Panthers. It especially resonated with those whose earlier careers took them through the State's penal institutions, and those who would be sentenced there for Party work.
Community Service
From the Party's earliest days, the organization took community service seriously. It was seen as a way to demonstrate to Black folks that the Party was serious about defending the Black community, even against the cops, the most hated and feared figures imposed upon the community. It is fitting that one of the Party's first programs was the Police-alert Patrols, where members trailed cop cars in the Black neighborhood, armed with guns, tape recorders, cameras, and law books. Newton knew that this program had very serious risks, given the nature of the police. These risks were outweighed by gaining the trust of the people of the Black community, who had been betrayed by virtually every previous political incarnation:
With weapons in our hands, we were no longer their subjects, but their equals.
Out on patrol, we stopped whenever we saw the police questioning a brother or a sister. We would walk over with our weapons and observe them from a "safe" distance so that the police could not say we were interfering with the performance of their duty. We would ask the community members if they were being abused. Most of the time, when a policeman saw us coming, he slipped his book back into his pocket, got into his car and left in a hurry. The citizens who had been stopped were as amazed as the police at our sudden appearance. [4]
For Huey, the patrols were meant for the people, to give them a real, live demonstration of what the Party was about -- and also for the police, who were used to harassing and brutalizing Black citizens with impunity. While the weapons and the patrols were perfectly legal under California law, he knew that many of the Oakland police, who, like many of Oakland's Black community, were natives of southern states, would be livid because they no longer possessed a monopoly on violence.
''A law book, a tape recorder, and a gun" were all that were needed, Huey explained. "It would let those brutalizing racist bastards know that we mean business." [5] In accordance with Huey's study of the law, BPP patrollers agreed to accept arrests nonviolently -- to a limit. Newton and Seale promised to "do battle only at the point when a fool policeman drew his gun unjustly." [6]
[W]e had hit on something unique. By standing up to the police as equals, even holding them off, and yet remaining within the law, we had demonstrated Black pride to the community in a concrete way. Everywhere we went we caused traffic jams. People constantly stopped us to say how much they respected our courage. The idea of armed self-defense as a community policy was still new and a little intimidating to them; but it also made them think. More important, it created a feeling of solidarity. When we saw how Black citizens reacted to our movement, we were greatly encouraged. Despite the ever-present danger of retaliation, the risks were more than worth it. At that time, however, our activities were confined to a small area, and we wanted Black people throughout the country to know the Oakland story. [7]
The Police-alert Patrols were a hit with Black Oaklanders and undoubtedly led to increased membership in the Party. Yet this was just one program out of many that the organization established.
By 1968 the Seattle chapter had instituted its Free Breakfast for Children Program, where Panthers gathered food (often from supportive neighborhood merchants), assembled the necessary personnel, and cooked breakfasts for neighborhood kids. The average breakfast, though nothing fancy, filled the belly and was far more than most could find at home. It consisted of fried eggs, toast, a few slips of bacon, and grits. Oftentimes, community members would volunteer to help with these efforts. Due to its popularity in the community and strong support by the Party, demonstrated by an order issued by Chairman Seale, every chapter or branch had a breakfast program by 1969.
The Free Breakfast for Children Program was, by far, the most popular of all the Party programs. It also served as a unique opportunity for the secular BPP and the Black church to establish a working relationship since most breakfast programs were situated within neighborhood churches and staffed by Panther men and women. Father Earl Neil, a Black priest assigned to Oakland's St. Augustine Episcopal Church, was an early and vocal supporter of the Black Panther Party and made some interesting comparisons between the Party and the traditional church:
Black preachers have got to stop preaching about a kingdom in the hereafter which is a "land flowing with milk and honey" ... we must deal with concrete conditions and survival in this life! The Black Panther Party ... has merely put into operation the survival program that the Church should have been doing anyway. The efforts of the Black Panther Party are consistent with what God wants ... [8]
The Breakfast Programs had other less obvious yet equally beneficial effects. Getting up early to serve neighborhood kids and spending some time with them before they were bundled up for school gave many Panthers a real example of what we were working for -- our people's future. Most Panthers, fresh out of high school, didn't have children and thought of them, if at all, abstractly. The program, filled five days a week with smiling, sniffling young boys and girls, lifted our hearts at the beginning of the day, steeling us to hit the streets to sell The Black Panther or enabling us to go to other community programs with a bounce in our steps. One may not spend time around children and not be lightened by the experience.
As the Breakfast program succeeded so did the Party, and its popularity fueled our growth across the country. Along with the growth of the Party came an increase in the number of community programs undertaken by the Party. By 1971, the Party had embarked on ten distinctive community programs, described by Newton as survival programs. What did he mean by this term?
We called them survival programs pending revolution. They were designed to help the people survive until their consciousness is raised, which is only the first step in the revolution to produce a new America .... During a flood the raft is a life-saving device, but it is only a means of getting to higher ground. So, too, with survival programs, which are emergency services. In themselves they do not change social conditions, but they are life-saving vehicles until conditions change.
Among these programs were the Intercommunal News Service (1967); the Petition Drive for Community Control of Cops (1968); Liberation Schools, later called Intercommunal Youth Institutes, (1969); People's Free Medical Research Health Clinic (1969); Free Clothing Program (1970); Free Busing to Prisons Program (1970); Seniors Against Fearful Environment (SAFE) Program (1971); Sickle Cell Anemia Research Foundation (1971); and Free Housing Cooperative Program (1971).
In later years, the Party would initiate other programs including Free Shoe Programs, Free Ambulance Services, Free Food Programs, and Home Maintenance Programs.
While clearly every branch of the Party didn't offer all of these programs, most did operate the basics: a free breakfast program, a clinic, and a free clothing program. The bigger chapters, such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, tended to provide the widest range of community services, while smaller branches tended to concentrate on the most popular programs.
While these programs were definitely political, they were conceived of as instruments to promote the political development and radicalization of the people, Newton understood that they had practical applications as well: serving human needs. As one who grew up in the ghetto, Newton understood the very real poverty and subsistence issues affecting many in the community:
The masses of Black people have always been deeply entrenched and involved in the basic necessities of life. They have not had time to abstract their situation. Abstractions come only with leisure. The people have not had the luxury of leisure. Therefore, the people have been very aware of the true definition of politics: politics are merely the desire of individuals and groups to satisfy first, their basic needs -- food, shelter and clothing, and security for themselves and their loved ones. [10]
In Kansas City, Missouri, the Black Panther Party opened its Free Community Clinic and named it for the slain Bobby Hutton, the Party's first martyr, killed by Oakland cops as he surrendered with Eldridge Cleaver on April 6, 1968. BPP affiliates in Brooklyn, Harlem, Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Seattle, Chicago, and Rockford, Illinois, followed suit. Members of the Health Ministries received rudimentary health care and first aid training in order to staff the clinics, but professional help was necessary also. In many cities, community-minded physicians were found who opened up their offices in our clinics, donating time and services to the most depressed communities. Dr. Tolbert Small, for example, contributed his time and efforts to the Oakland clinic. [11] In Philadelphia, a kind, thoughtful, and gentle man named Dr. Vaslavek staffed the clinic.
For most Panthers, our lives in the Party were dedicated to community service. That meant long, sustained work to keep our community programs running, but it also meant battling the State when it came at us with paramilitary attacks, unjust arrests, and, perhaps most often, legal battles in which the State attempted to utilize its judiciary machinery to destroy or disrupt Party organizing efforts.
Sometimes, however, community service meant trying to push the revolutionary struggle further, to create beachheads of focused communal resistance, to create a climate conducive to change. One of those attempts was the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention.
An Attempt at Freedom in Philadelphia
In the American myth of nation-building, Philadelphia looms large as the birthplace, or cradle, of liberty. The icons of the Liberty Bell, the Constitution, and various places of residence of prominent American revolutionary figures provide a lucrative tourism industry and also serve as a touchstone for many Americans when they think of American colonial history.
When leading Party members began organizing and agitating for the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention (RPCC) to be held in Philadelphia, it was, in a sense, a very real, conscious attempt to subvert the history of the colonials, by creating a new historical icon: A constitution in which all ignored segments of the American polity could be heard, and be represented. A way of developing a revolutionary superstructure that would be the groundwork of a new society.
It was not envisioned as a BPP project, per se, but as an effort of people from various movements on the so-called left, who would meet and contribute to the building of this infrastructure, to help bring both a constitution and a resistant entity into existence. Contacts were made to the various student groups, the socialist organizations, women's groups, Native groups, and gay and lesbian groups to come together to contribute to this framework. The Party wanted to initiate a process to draft "a constitution that serves the people, not the ruling class." [12]
The convention was set for September 1970, but initial approval from Temple University to host it was rescinded after Philadelphia's police pressured them. Finally, a tall, slim-faced, bespectacled priest whose diocese covered North Philadelphia would agree to the convention and allow his manorial buildings to be used for the event.
I met with Rev. Paul Washington, and he could not have been more gracious, nor more supportive. He calmly explained that his buildings had been used by the Black Power Conference back in 1966, when radicals and nationalists from throughout the country had gathered to hash out movement objectives. He didn't see how this could be much different.
Not content with forcing a scramble for a new venue, the police, as armed agents of the ruling class, went out of their way to sabotage the event by raiding three local Panther offices less than a week before the convention was to begin. This was classic Frank Rizzo. But the bombastic Philadelphia police commissioner, an acolyte of the sinister J. Edgar Hoover, had badly miscalculated. His troops raided local offices and busted top-level and rank-and-file Panthers all around the city, blaming them for the shooting of a cop several nights before. Within hours, not only were all of them out of jail, but the arrests, done in traditional Rizzo overkill with cops stripping people, only served to fire up people and make them more, not less, supportive of the Party.
On September 4, 1970, the convention went off without a hitch, with at least six thousand participants (far more than in 1787!) from all across the country. As Rev. Washington recalled:
On September 4, registration for the convention began at the Church of the Advocate. Everyone who lined up to register was frisked by members of the Black Panthers -- a strange experience for some, who had never before been searched for weapons on their way into a church building. The search did have the effect of establishing who was responsible for law and order at this event -- the Panthers, not the police. The weekend was not only peaceful, but extraordinarily so. The streets of North Philadelphia seemed for once to belong to the people of North Philadelphia. It was Huey Newton's and not Frank Rizzo's time to be center stage. [13]
It was, truth be told, a remarkable time to be a Panther, for the outpouring from the dozens of communities who attended and supported the convention seemed to suggest that the hour of revolutionary unity and promise had come. Willie thousands attended these plenary (or planning) sessions at the church, and the various meetings held elsewhere on planning and policy in furtherance of the new Constitution, thousands of other well-wishers gathered outside, on the streets, Black, white, Latin@, [14] some merely gawkers, but most overtly supportive.
While various workshops hammered out the language and platform planks, the high point would be the appearance of Huey P. Newton, the revered Minister of Defense, newly freed from prison after the May 1970 reversal of his manslaughter conviction. While most Panthers would never admit it, many of us were nervous. The ever-present threat of cops attacking or even the underlying threat of being in Rizzo's Philly wasn't the source of the nervousness.
The source was Huey.
While many of us had never met him and certainly had never sat down and talked with him, all of us had seen the grainy, black-and-white films produced by Newsreel, a radical youth film collective. We were singularly surprised to actually hear the voice of the Minister of Defense -- high, nasal, twangy with a twist of California-country.
Huey, whom we all would have died for in a heartbeat, was not a good public speaker. If you loved him, or revered his courage and sacrifice, it didn't matter. But this was not a Black Panther convention; it was peopled by folks from across the country, from all walks of life.
The time came for Huey to take the platform; a phalanx of Panthers swooped to the stage, in protective position up front. Huey, short, muscular, his Afro picked to perfection, wearing a resplendent soft black leather jacket, strolled to the lectern, and a swell of applause hit the room, a vast auditorium that the Party had successfully negotiated from Temple. There was great applause, ovations, huzzahs, and hosannas ... and then Huey spoke:
Friends and comrades throughout the United States and throughout the world, we gather here in peace and friendship to claim our inalienable rights, to claim the rights bestowed us by an unbroken train of abuses and usurpations, and to perform the duty which is thus required of us. Our sufferance has been long and patient, our prudence has stayed this final hour, but our human dignity and strength require that we still the voice of prudence with the cries of our sufferance. Thus we gather in the spirit of revolutionary love and friendship for all oppressed people of the world, regardless of their race or of the race and doctrine of their oppressors.
The United States of America was born at a time when the nation covered relatively little land, a narrow strip of political divisions of the Eastern seaboard. The United States of America was born at a time when the population was small and fairly homogenous both racially and culturally. Thus, the people called Americans were a different people in a different place. Furthermore, they had a different economic system ....
The sacredness of man and of the human spirit require that human dignity and integrity ought to be always respected by every other man. We will settle for nothing less, for at this point in history anything less is but a living death. We will be free, and we are here to ordain a new constitution, which will ensure our freedom by enshrining the dignity of the human spirit. [15]
There was applause, sometimes spirited applause, but it was applause for the presence of Huey P. Newton, not his ideas. Huey was not fooled by the subtle difference:
As I talked, it seemed to me that the people were not really listening, or even interested in what I had to say.
Almost every sentence was greeted by loud applause, but the audience was more concerned with phrasemongering than with ideological development. I am not a good public speaker -- I tend to lecture and teach in a rather dull fashion -- but the people were not responding to my ideas, only to my image, and although I was very excited by all the energy and enthusiasm I saw there, I was also disturbed by the lack of serious analytical thought. [16]
Huey, unfortunately, wasn't the only one "disturbed."
Captain Reggie was perhaps a bit more laconic, but his observation was apt. Huey, he reasoned, "just lost people." [17]
Huey, brilliant, brave, and bold as he was, didn't understand that politics is often "phrasemongering" and that those who can successfully master that skill can also successfully mobilize powerful social forces.
He did not.
He could not ... and a powerful moment was lost.
David Hilliard and many other Party members from the period remember the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention as an abject failure. The RPCC, for all intents and purposes, dissolved, and a secondary, working session, planned for Washington several months later, never really took off. They also look to Huey's poor performance at the Philadelphia plenary session as a nadir of the Party's attempt to institutionalize a truly revolutionary movement in the US.
Time may mellow that assessment somewhat.
The Party did indeed attempt something massive and, perhaps with the exception of John Brown's Chatham Convention in Canada, something almost unprecedented. It tried to erect a revolutionary institution that would formalize a truly multicultural, multiclass, multigendered revolution against the repressive status quo. While the Party dared greatly, it was not, in truth, a failure of the Party so much as it was a failure of the movement entire.
Were millions of white youth, no matter what they claimed their political or ideological persuasions, really ready to embark on a revolution, one that did not prize whiteness?
Were millions of feminists ready to join in working coalition with men and women of color, to destroy white supremacy as a binding stitch for the White Nationalist (Herrenvolk) Republic?
Were millions of mostly white gays and lesbians willing to join a political entity where, though represented, they were not in the ascendancy?
It is indeed possible that the Black Panther Party, which saw itself as profoundly nonracist, could not appreciate the deep levels of white supremacy that lay subsumed within much of the white left. They opposed the war in Vietnam -- yes; they opposed the excesses of the Nixon/Mitchell regime -- yes; they may have felt an ideological affinity with the Civil Rights movement -- yes; but were they ready to do all that was necessary to break asunder from their Mother Country -- White America?
While Huey's speech was lackluster, dry, academic even, he and other Panthers did articulate a new constitutional arrangement that transformed power relations in a new nation. They did that.
Moreover, if the will was present in the hearts and souls of those thousands assembled to truly support the vision, then it would not have been abandoned to the dust of history. It would not be hidden, as was the Chatham Convention, to the realm of patient scholarship, instead of the realm of our dreams.
What was not lacking in that small, sweaty room in Philadelphia in 1787, where men gathered to draft the US constitution, windows barred from the angry throng outside, was will.
Again in Philadelphia, nearly 200 years later, with thousands inside, thousands outside, with throngs praising their presence and their mission, a new constitution did not emerge. It is not logical to solely blame those who brought them together. Nor is it fair.
It may be argued that the Black Panther Party, to the extent that it was possible, performed in the role of a shadow state -- with its Ministries, its uniformed personnel, its soldiers, and its persistently independent voice that spoke in sharp opposition to that of the US government. [18] Professor Nikhil P. Singh has argued that the Party's actions, indeed, its very existence, posited an alternative that called into question the very existence, or authority, of the US nation-state. In Singh's analysis:
The Panthers, then, were a threat to the state not simply because they were violent but because they abused the state's own reality principle, including its monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Patrolling the police armed with guns and law books was in this sense a form of mimicry in which the Panthers undermined the very notion of policing itself by performing, and in effect deforming, it themselves. Here, we must grasp the fact that the police themselves are among the most important of the state's "actors." The continued, repeated performance of the police function is crucial to the institution of the everyday fantasy of being subject to a national, social state. By misrecognizing the status of policing as it operated within Black communities, the Panthers effectively nullified this fantasy and substituted a radical alternative. By policing the police, in other words, the Panthers signaled something far more dangerous than is generally acknowledged: the eruption of a nonstate identity into the everyday life of the state. That such a small and relatively poorly equipped band of urban Black youth could demand so much attention from federal and local police only attests to the tenuousness of the state itself and the degree to which it depends upon controlling and even silencing those who would take its name in vain. [19]
If actions that marked the Party's daily life in forty-four communities across the nation presented such a challenge, what of the proposed Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention, which by its very existence, pointed to the defective nature of the original convention of 1787, with its coterie of racists, slave owners, misogynists, and wealthy landowners?
Which constitutional convention was, indeed, far more representative of the masses of people in America? Which was more racially mixed? Which more culturally mixed? Which more reflected the average guy or gal in the cities or towns across America?
Researcher Jerry Fresia, in his remarkable Toward an American Revolution, paints a picture of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 as something far removed from the people. This was an assembly of opulence, of means, and of men who, in fact, deeply trembled at the thought of the mob -- the many, unhappy poor who populated the colonies. It was not for naught that Gouverneur Morris, a co-author of the Constitution and Pennsylvania delegate, noted, "I see and see with fear and trembling, that if the disputes with Britain continue, we shall be under the domination of a riotous mob. It is in the interest of all men therefore, to seek reunion with the parent state." [20] Fresia's notes on the convention are indeed telling:
The series of meetings that led to the convention were engineered by men who did not like the Articles. They were part of an elite consensus that was forming in reaction to the many rebellions (black and white) and democratic tendencies among excluded people and it was their private meetings that led to the initiative for the Constitutional Convention. At every turn, the popular voice was absent, and elites were increasingly empowered. No special popular elections were held to select delegates. Instead, delegates to the Convention were selected by the state legislatures, who were already once removed from the limited electorate. Moreover, the Constitutional Convention had been called to amend the Articles only and any proposed changes had to be approved by all the states before they were adopted. But the Framers defied these legal stipulations, abandoned their authorization to amend the Articles only, designed an entirely new centralized national government, and inserted in the Constitution that it should go into effect when ratified by only nine states. J.W. Burgess has stated that what the Framers "actually did, stripped of all fiction and verbiage, was to assume constitutional powers, ordain a constitution of government and liberty and demand a plebiscite thereon over the heads of all existing legally organized powers. Had Julius or Napoleon committed these acts, they would have been pronounced coup d'etat." [21]
In historical retrospect, which convention was more representative of the people of the nation?
The Black Panther Party, at this "Convention from the Bottom," had hundreds of committed activists, from a variety of movements, sitting down and convening workshops, where a wealth of ideas was discussed. Various workshops developed reports. According to the Party:
Taken as a whole, these reports provided the basis for one of the most progressive Constitutions in the history of humankind. All the people would control the means of production and social institutions. Black and third world people were guaranteed proportional representation in the administration of these institutions, as were women. The right of national self-determination was guaranteed to all oppressed minorities. Sexual self-determination for women and homosexuals was affirmed. A standing army is to be replaced by a people's militia, and the Constitution is to include an international bill of rights prohibiting U.S. aggression and interference in the internal affairs of other nations .... The present racist legal system would be replaced by a system of people's courts where one would be tried by a jury of one's peers. jails would be replaced by community rehabilitation programs .... Adequate housing, health care, and day care would be considered Constitutional Rights, not privileges." [22]
This was the fruit of the Party's call for a convention of the many, not the few.
It reflected the Party's understanding (perhaps influenced by the perceptions of its California founders, who lived in small Black communities, relative to their eastern, or southern kin) that we all live together in this vast land, and, as such, none of us could do all that was necessary alone.
The Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention manifested a distinct tendency within the BPP that distinguished it from its contemporaries, and left it, especially within nationalist circles, subject to some criticism. The very framework of the RPCC conflicted with the norm of the more insular nationalist groups of the era. This meant that although the Black Panther Party did not have non-Blacks in its ranks, it did think about and act upon the idea that coalitions across lines of race and ethnicity could prove effective in reaching broader segments of the US and global polity.
Internationalism = "Intercommunalism"
In the beginning, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was, for want of a better term, a Malcolmist party. As early as 1967, under seven months into the Party's existence, Newton would speak of the BPP as "the heirs of Malcolm." [23] The influence of Malcolm X permeated early BPP thought, rhetoric, and self-perception. In this formative period, the BPP used language and themes that did not significantly differentiate it from other Black nationalist groups of the period, such as the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Black Liberators (of St. Louis, Missouri). Such groups drew their inspiration from Malcolm X, and his speeches, tapes, and articles were sources of ideological positions and purity.
This meant, in practical terms, that whites were anathema to any organizational or political work. In his earliest incarnation, Malcolm, as a young NOI minister, referred to whites as devils, and many nationalists held similar views, even if they did not embrace his pre-hajj Muslim ideas.
Because Newton read widely in the years prior to the development of the Party, he did not limit himself to Malcolm as an inspiration, or as source material, for either his or the Party's ideology. He was a perceptive reader. He was original in his thinking. He read, not to consume the quantity of words as they rushed across the page, but to gather, question, challenge, and deconstruct ideas. He read, and was influenced by, writings on the Algerian, Kenyan, Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions. These studies influenced him, as did spiritual and philosophical texts, like works on Buddhism and by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Newton's intellectual development, and as a direct correlate, the Party's intellectual ideas came from a range of sources, and the Party was therefore open to a variety of influences.
Because Huey was a preacher's kid, he developed early on a skepticism toward religious dogma, and, as he quite easily questioned the existence of a god, he could not abide the existence of a devil. Whites were not gods, nor were they devils, he reasoned. They were but human beings who, because of the mind-bending toxin of racism, often behaved badly when it came to people of color. Therefore, the enemy is racism, the toxin, not whites, who were intoxicated.
It is largely under Newton's influence that the Party emerged as an antiracist group and opened the door to interactions with those whites who would not try to undermine the Party's platform. From this, a working alliance with the largely California-based Peace and Freedom Party (P&F Party) emerged. This coalition would launch the Black Panther Party deeply into the consciousness of many Californians, through the posters and campaigns of the P&F Party, which ran various Black Panther Party members for state and regional offices. Perhaps the most renowned was the candidacy of Eldridge Cleaver for president of the United States in 1968 (he polled some 36,000 votes in perhaps half a dozen states). Cleaver, a brilliant orator, could rock a crowd with his quick wit and colorful language. One of his albums, Soul on Wax, was a big seller in Panther offices, and his speeches would play (or blare through neighborhood loudspeakers) for hours throughout the day. On the record, he moved a group of nuns to chant "Fuck Reagan."
Yet for the BPP internationalism didn't just mean Black/white interactions; it meant working with Chican@s, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and others. If the revolution were to be successful, it needed the participation of all in the creation of a new society.
This was the essence of Newton's idea of intercommunalism. He reasoned that interactions across communities were the primary connections for building a new society and that, in an age of empire, nations could no longer exist and, therefore, neither could true internationalism. He coined the term intercommunalism to describe this new relationship. [24] As Newton explained it:
We found that because everything is in a constant state of transformation, because of the development of technology, because of the development of the mass media, because of the firepower of imperialism, because of the fact that the United States is no longer a nation, but an empire, nations could not exist, for they did not have the criteria for nationhood. [25]
Nations, thought Newton, were far more than flags, embassies, or even standing armies. If the imperialists could penetrate a given nation-state's economy, culture, airwaves, and, indeed, consciousness with relative impunity and impose its will, that imposition is imperial. The recipient, while certainly a geographical, ethnic, linguistic, and perhaps cultural community, is not a nation in the classical sense. It is the shell of a nation, at best.
Thus, the Black Panther Party inaugurated the Black revolutionary political practice of working closely with disparate and diverse ethnic and racial groupings, and it influenced the development of similar political formations in other non-Black communities.
For Black Americans, however, Newton diverged from his colleagues in the nationalist community further when he split from their almost iconic fascination with ancient Africa. Again, using an intercommunal analysis, Newton would explain:
The economic power of the US. rulers is so great that there is no denying its effect upon the rest of the world. This economic power is manifested in the concentration of production capabilities and raw materials in the hands of American forces. What the United States cannot obtain and develop, it can synthesize in its technological laboratories.
Looking further at the situation, let us consider black Americans. Tied only historically to Africa, they can lay no real claim to territory in the US. or Africa. Black Americans have only the cultural and social customs that have evolved from centuries of oppression. In other words, US. blacks form not a subjugated colony but an oppressed community inside the larger boundaries. What, then, do the words "black nationalism" concretely mean to the US. black? Not forming anything resembling a nation presently, shall US. blacks somehow seize (or possibly be "given") US. land and expect to claim sovereignty as a nation? In the face of the existent power of the United States over the entire world, such a nation could only be a fantasy that could lead to the extinction of a race.
What does "Pan-Africanism" mean to the black African who did not live Nkrumah's dream, but lives in the real nightmare of U.S. economic/ military might? For what does a national flag actually mean when Gulf Oil is in control? Or if Gulf Oil is expelled, what happens to the "nation" that cannot supply for its own needs?
The oppressed people of the world face a serious dilemma: the Chinese people are threatened by the American Empire, just as blacks globally and people in South America are similarly threatened. Even Europe bends to the weight of the United States, yielding theoretical, national sovereignty. [26]
Huey and the Party founded by him were iconoclastic. Both tried to demolish old ideas and notions that dwelt deep in consciousness. To say that both were controversial is an understatement. They were both projected as so far from the so-called mainstream as to be aberrant. Newton, who loved the struggle for ideas, would perhaps relish the claim, but would equally challenge the definition of mainstream as a creation of upper class, bourgeois culture.
To Newton what was perhaps an aberration was the set of social relations handed down to us, for they were based not on rationality or humanity, but on violent repression and malevolent conditioning, like racism, classism, and chauvinism.
Yet ideas do not change simply because some social actors come up with better, or even more logical, ways of looking at the world. It can scarcely be argued that freedom was better than bondage, yet abolitionists had to fight for over a century, and a war divided the nation, before this idea prevailed.
Similarly, it can be said that the notion of women's equality seems so obvious to us now. However, it took 200 years and tortuous, dangerous, much-damned organizing for that idea to prevail in the nation's political psyche. These ideas prevailed because people fought for them, and did so against terrible odds.
In short, it took deeply committed people, organized into movements, to force these changes.
The same could be said about some of the ideas promoted by the Black Panther Party decades ago. While practiced in that time and place, these ideas have not found purchase in the American political economy. Moreover, a changing political environment has made many of those ideas, such as socialism and the working alliances of people across race, ethnicity, and gender, not as popular today. We live in an era when reactionary nationalism seems to prevail, when the very notion of white (or other) Americans interacting in Black affairs seems like anathema. The relatively new, New Black Panther Party, formed by people raised in the Nation of Islam, seems to reflect this shift.
There are other reasons why this is so; principally among them is a history that breeds deep distrust between African Americans and European Americans.
Downside of "Intercommunalism"
The Black Panther Party, as perhaps the most influential exemplar of the Black revolutionary ethic of the latter twentieth century, had serious barriers to its expansion and the continued development of its ideas. It could analyze ideas and promote the seemingly correct ideological solutions to social conflicts and crises. Yet it had to contend with the deep and, perhaps, at the time, unarticulated white nationalism that pervaded consciousness during the period.
Some social scientists contend that this tendency is deep within American consciousness and colors all it perceives. One scholar has likened America's addiction to whiteness as a way of thinking closely akin to that of South African apartheid (which in turn drew many formative lessons from the US). Scholar George Fredrickson has described both the United States and South Africa as Herrenvolk states:
More than the other multi-racial societies resulting from the "expansion of Europe" that took place between the sixteenth century and the twentieth, South Africa and the United States (most obviously the southern United States during the era of slavery and segregation) have manifested over long periods of time a tendency to push the principle of differentiation by race to its logical outcome -- a kind of Herrenvolk society in which people of color, however numerous or acculturated they may be, are treated as permanent aliens or outsiders. [27]
Fredrickson drives the historical analogies further to reveal the roots of both societies in racial conflict and bitter, often archviolence:
The basis for our first comparison, therefore, is the common fact of a long and often violent struggle for territorial supremacy between white invaders and indigenous peoples. Starting from the small coastal settlements of the seventeenth century, the whites penetrated into the interior of North America and southern Africa; by the end of the nineteenth century they had successfully expropriated most of the land for their own use by extinguishing the communal title into private property within a capitalistic economy. The indigenes were left with a collective ownership of only a small fraction of their former domain in the form of special reserves. Divesting the original inhabitants of their land was essential to the material success of these settler societies. [28]
What Fredrickson argues is that the very notion of American nationhood is interlaced with the notion of whiteness, as it is in South Africa. It will take generations of discrete experiences to disabuse these notions. (Indeed, in the American historical experience, not even a ruinous civil war, where some 600,000 people perished, successfully transformed the American mind, as the post-Reconstruction-era pogroms and lynchings of Blacks proved.)
The upshot of this Herrenvolk history is that white radicals of the 1960s were ill equipped to respond to the challenges of a Black revolutionary formation that claimed primacy of the revolutionary movement. In essence, they could not truly follow Black leaders.
Newton later recognized another reason for the failure of Black Panther efforts of the period; the radicals led no one:
Our hook-up with White radicals did not give us access to the White community because they did not guide the White community. The Black community did not relate to them, so we were left in a twilight zone where we could not enter the Black community with any real political education programs; yet we were not doing anything to mobilize Whites. [29]
These are concrete reasons why racial politics remain atomized in the dawn of the twenty-first century. People live, think, struggle, and die in different worlds, where their experiences, not to mention consciousness, rarely, if ever, mingle.
We live in a world that Huey saw decades ago, when he advanced his notion of "intercommunalism" amid the ridicule and derision of his contemporaries. He foresaw an era of "reactionary intercommunalism" when the US Empire strode the world largely unhindered.
The key to this US imperial expansion, Newton wrote in 1972, the year of Nixon's remarkable Beijing visit, would be the capitulation of the Soviet Union, an event that would have far-reaching impact:
Russia's first mistake came in the form of an incorrect analysis: that socialism could co-exist peacefully with capitalist nations. It was a blow to the communities of the whole world that led directly to the crippling of the people's ability to oppose capitalist/imperialist aggression and aggression's character. Remember, the capitalists claim that as soon as you agree to accept their trade and fall under their economic ideology, then they will agree to have peaceful co-existence.
The Russians allowed this to happen through naivete or treachery. Regardless of how this came about, they damaged the ability of the Third World to resist. They could have given the Third World every technique available to them long ago. With the high quality of Soviet development at a time when the United States was less advanced than it is today, the Russians could have built up the necessary force to oppose imperialism. Now, all ... they can do is whimper like whipped dogs and talk about peaceful co-existence so that they will not be destroyed. This presents the world with the hard fact that the United States is the only state power in the world. Russia has become, like all other nations, no more than a satellite of the United States. American rulers do not care about how much Russians say they are the Soviets, as long as Ford can build its motor company in their territory. [30]
According to Newton's analysis, both Vietnam and Russia amounted to "the overexpansion of capitalism, which turned into imperialism and then into an empire with its reactionary intercommunalism." [31] In essence, he concluded, it meant ''Americans themselves enjoying a higher quality of life than everybody else, at the expense of everybody else." [32]
The world that he foresaw is now upon us.
Panther Loose on the Coast
For white Americans, Philadelphia represents liberty's cradle; for Panthers, it was Oakland.
It was the homeland, the birthplace of the Black Panther Party. For a fifteen-year-old from Philly, it was almost like going to heaven:
Although National Headquarters was in the tony town of Berkeley, the gritty port city of Oakland was the real shebang. That was where Huey grew up, it was where the Party came into being, and where most of the dirtiest fighting took place in the formative experiences of the organization.
I longed to go there and, one day, was sent there to sell some papers. I was thrilled.
When I got to West Oakland, I was struck by several things: first, the ordinariness of it; second, I was again amazed at what folks considered ghetto, and how that term is often relative. Their houses, semi-detached and surrounded by green carpets of grass, closely resembled the houses in Philadelphia's West Oak Lane neighborhoods, which were seen by the ghetto residents of Philly as good living. Compared to the fine homes in the nearby hills, they were, of course, of lesser quality. Third, I was struck by the quiet level of hostility I sensed when I tried to sell the newspaper around the community. I had sold papers in Philadelphia, in the Bronx, in Queens, and in Harlem, yet this was the first time I sensed such resistance. Nobody verbalized anything, but it was written on too many street faces to ignore. Why? I never learned why, but in retrospect, one wonders, was this an early reaction to an emergent "black ops" phase of the Party underground? No one spoke about it, but there was something there, quiet, yet discernible.
However unremarkable it seemed to me, it reminded me that, relatively speaking, ghettos still possess a certain sameness about them; there is an unmistakable psychic aura of funk about them.
It was indeed in Oakland that I received my introduction to the local constabulary; but it was not in the green ghetto of west Oakland.
As the next week's issue of The Black Panther had been laid out and was en route to the printers, a Panther sister named Sheila and I were sent out to hawk papers. We opted to hit downtown Oakland. She took one side and I took another. When I crossed the street, I did so in the middle of the block instead of at the crosswalk, where a lonely light stood. I didn't hesitate to scoot across the street, as I had all my life in Philly if the traffic were light.
No sooner had I crossed when a cop car rolled up. Two dark-uniformed cops exited the sedan and explained that I had violated an Alameda County ordinance against jaywalking.
Jaywalking?! I was dumbfounded. I was under arrest for jaywalking. Moments later so was Sheila because she had crossed after the cops pulled up to see what was going on.
I had yearned to see Oakland, I thought, now I'm gonna meet the most vicious, racist pigs in America. I expected to get whipped unconscious by these creeps in black uniforms.
The cops handcuffed me and Sheila, as I braced for a pummeling or a rain of racist insults. The cops spoke with such politeness that I was indeed shocked. "Sir," this; "Sir," that; "Ma'am," this; "Ma'am," that; I had never heard cops talk this way, either in Philadelphia, or in the Bronx. "Watch your head, sir " as I was placed in the vehicle, cuffed.
I looked at Sheila, and I just knew that when we got to the station, or precinct, or whatever they called it out here, the blackjacks, the kicks, the punches would rain like water.
To my utter surprise, they never came.
Our newspapers were seized, and, as we were juveniles, we were taken to the Alameda County Juvenile Hall.
It was then that the real meaning of what had happened dawned on me. What does it matter how polite the cops are when they lock you up and put you in jail -- for jaywalking!?
If we were not selling copies of The Black Panther, would this have happened?
I don't think so. They were beating us, softly.
We were placed in small rooms; while not classic, barred cells, they were clearly rooms constructed for restraint. We signaled to each other that we would agitate for a phone call and when we were able, she called her mother who lived in Berkeley and could come to pick her up.
Sheila's mom appeared shortly thereafter, a small bespectacled white lady (it was a day of shocks!), who nervously hustled her baby out of the clink. Sheila looked guilty as she left, as if she didn't want to leave her Panther brother behind. But there was little choice. She bravely curled her fingers into a Black Power salute and raised it to her comrade.
I smiled and returned it.
I would miss her, but I was glad to see her escape the pig's clutches.
Sheila went home.
I went to jail.
It was a juvenile jail (as I was under twenty-one), but it was a jail nonetheless.
I was remanded to the juvenile authority, because, unlike Sheila, I was some 3,000 miles away from home. There was no way my mom would, or even could, come pick me up.
For starters, she hadn't the slightest idea where I was.
While I called home occasionally, and even came ny the house as often as I could, I lived with the Party and was cautious about breaking security by letting her know my every move. It would only worry her, which I didn't want to do unnecessarily.
I loved her like crazy.
But I also loved life in the Party.
As Sheila lift, and I went through the processing stage, I was placed in a single-cell-like enclosure.
I thought about all the other Panthers in cells all across the nation, Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins, facing death in New Haven; the Panther 21 facing centuries in New York s gulags; the Panthers who were recently busted in a southern California shoot-out at the LA chapter; brothers and sisters like me; and thoughts of them warmed me like a campfire near the soul.
They were facing real drama! Here I was, for jaywalking! I had nothin' to holler about. I stretched out on the cool, plastic-covered mattress and slept.
I had just lain down and shut my eyes, it seemed, when I heard the sounds of the door being opened. I forced myself awake and stood up, feeling that an attack could come at any moment.
A big dude appeared at the door and began barking orders at me. I looked at him like he was speaking Korean. The only word I understood was "strip," and I certainly wasn't going to do that. I had heard about prison rape.
"Strip," he said again, to which I again replied, "No!"
He returned five minutes later and seemed genuinely surprised that I hadn't removed a single stitch of clothing. "Boy, didn't I tell you to strip?" he thundered.
"Man, I ain't doin' a damn thing! We gon' fight!" I answered.
"Well, you ain't gettin' no shower then!" he announced angrily and slammed the door shut.
Shower? What was this dude talkin' about? It never dawned on me that he worked there. He wore regular clothes. I just thought he was a guy.
Several days later, I was taken to the counselors office at the center, and a man began asking questions about who I was, why wasn't I in school, and so forth. I explained to him that was working for the Black Panther Party.
At one point he said, "Young man, don't you know that we can keep you here until you're twenty-one years old?"
I looked him in the eye and said, "So what? When I get out, there'll still be a Black Panther Party!"
He shook his head.
Moments later, he was dialing the phone to my mother's house in Philadelphia, asked to verify her name, and passed the phone over to me.
"Mama?"
"Wes -- Is that you?"
''Yes, Mama --''
"Boy -- What did I hear this man sayin' --? Where are you?"
"I'm in Alameda County, Califor --"
"Cali -- what? Boy, what are you doin' --? You better carry yho narrow behind -- Boy! What in the Sam Hill -- Cali-What?!?!?!"
"Mama -- mama -- I'm workin' out here ona paper, for the Party -- you know --"
"Boy -- How long you been out California?"
''Yeah, Mom -- I'm OK --"
"OK? -- Didn't I just hear this man say you was callin' from some kinda jail --?"
"Mama -- Mama -- I'm in heref or jaywalkin'- -- jaywalkin'! Out here they real strict about traffic laws ... I just crossed the street, and --"
"'Crossed the street?' -- Boy, you done crossed the whole country! -- Wes -- mph! Boy, if you don't get yho bony behind back here --"
'Mama -- Mama! I can't, Mom -- I can't -- I'm doin' important work, Mom."
"Like gettin 'yhoself locked up, boy? How important is that?"
"Mama -- It's gonna be alright -- we got lawyers out here that are real good -- This ain't nothin' but harassment -- when the last time you heard about somebody gettin' busted for jaywalkin: huh, Mom?"
"Boy -- umph, umph, umph! Boy you somethin' else, boy -- I'm tellin, you, Califor -- ! -- umph, umph, umph! Boy, you are crazy, you know that, donchu?"
Her maternal fear was melting to pride that her boy was so aggressively doing something for our people. She was afraid. She was angry. But she was pleased as well. I could hear it in her voice, her high country laugh. She knew that I felt deeply about what I was doing.
As I listened to her pride and love override her fear, I thought about the many good, church-going (or temple-going) folks who were probably simpatico with the sweet teachings of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but who, deep down, were proud if the moxie shown by the Panthers. They might not help with the Breakfast Program. But when they read of us, or thought of us, in the private chambers of the heart, the mind, the soul, they admired us. Once I heard that tone in her voice, her deep sense of humor, I knew I was alright. Unlike perhaps thousands of youth throughout this vast state, I wasn't here for robbery or rape, I wasn't here for hurting my people; I wasn't here for "crime." I was here for defending my people. I was here because I was a member of the Black Panther Party.
Within a few weeks, I was back out, no worse for wear.
I was out if jail and back in the swing of things. I was working on the paper, selling them and editing stuff coming in from all the branches and chapters across the country.
My boss, editor Judi Douglass, seemed pleased with my work, and that pleased me. We worked hard to make the paper the best it could be.
This young Panther was home. [33]
The days were long.
The risks were substantial.
The rewards were few.
Yet the freedom was hypnotic. We could think freely, write freely, and act freely in the world.
We knew that we were working for our people's freedom, and we loved it.
It was the one place in the world that it seemed right to be.