Oakland was in disrepute in the 1960s. Unemployment, crime and inter-racial tensions marked this working-class city in the San Francisco Bay Area. The consequences of the economic and social decline hit hardest the African-American community, which felt marginalised. Without a future, without jobs and, above all, without rights. In the ghettos, police violence was part of everyday life. The Men in Blue considered the African-American community a threat that had to be fought against by all means. A quarter of the population was black, yet there were 645 police officers out of a white population of 661.
Feelings of powerlessness and inferiority have turned to anger among young African-Americans. Two of them, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defence in October 1966. Young men in black berets and leather jackets, riding around Oakland with guns in their hands, making sure that police officers did not harass innocent people, suddenly became world famous overnight.
The Black Panthers’ mix of revolutionary spirit, uncompromising spirit and concern for the most vulnerable members of society has brought them a huge following at home. They distributed free breakfasts to children in poor neighbourhoods and opened health centres for people without health insurance. Abroad, for example, they were also supported by Communist China, which invited them for an official visit before Nixon set foot on Chinese soil as the first US President. The Black Panthers also directed their fury against American capitalism and the Vietnam War, thus sealing their fate. In the words of the all-powerful FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, they have become “the greatest internal threat to national security”. Provocation, incitement and murder followed. State repression was successful, although the Party did not officially cease to exist until 1982.
Parallel worlds
Race riots, white supremacist rallies and African-Americans’ distrust of the impartiality of the police are still hot topics in the US today, dividing society and sparking heated debates. The issue of race, however, has a very long history, which did not end in 1865 when the historic 13th Amendment was added to the US Constitution, officially abolishing slavery.
The conflicts between whites and blacks, between supporters and opponents of slavery, are woven into the core of American nationhood. After all, it was precisely this issue that was one of the main causes of the Civil War, which is considered a key event in US history. The clash between the ‘free’ North and the slave-owning South was a major threat to the cultural and social unity of the country. The consequences of this schism continued to be felt long after the end of the war. Evil tongues say that the country is still today divided between the advanced North and the backward South.
Although slavery was officially abolished in 1865 by the 13th Amendment, segregation still existed in the American South. Whites and blacks lived in parallel worlds. Schools, buses, hospitals, restaurants, hotels and all forms of public life were legally segregated. This situation persisted deep into the 20th century. Segregation was not in itself the worst of evils and, although it seems unthinkable to modern man, it was considered normal at the time. Black people in the American South were second-class citizens mainly because of another kind of discrimination.
In fact, the electoral legislation effectively prevented black people from exercising one of the main gains of the civilised world – the right to vote. In the USA, it is still the case today that anyone wishing to exercise this fundamental human right must register to vote before an election. In the late 19th century, southern states began to pass legislation designed to discourage black people from voting. This was done, among other things, by requiring every citizen to pay a ‘poll tax’ when registering to vote, which poor people simply could not afford.
Since poverty is not a colour issue, the “poll tax” also discriminated against poor whites. An exception was therefore made to allow anyone who could prove that they had a relative who had voted before 1867 to register. It should be added at this point that it was not until 1870 that black Americans were given the right to vote.
In addition to subtle state discrimination, African-Americans also faced harsher methods of oppression by the Ku Klux Klan. Home burnings, public lynchings and intimidation were part and parcel of life in the Deep South. It is not surprising, therefore, that in 1940 only three per cent of the black population in all the Southern states was registered to vote.
Discrimination meant that black people could not take part in decisions affecting their communities. Black schools were run down, roads in black neighbourhoods were potholed, and all positions in state and local government were held almost exclusively by whites, with all public funds going to their communities. Blacks could not count on the state for help and were left to their own ingenuity.
A small victory in a big battle
The first major successes in the fight against discrimination against black people came after the Second World War. The “Civil Rights Movement”, as African Americans in the USA call their struggle for equality, began in an unlikely place – on a bus. In 1955, an Alabama seamstress named Rosa Parks was taking the bus home from work. After a few stops, all the seats were taken, and a white man approached her and demanded that she give up her seat. According to the rules, written and unwritten, Rosa Parks should have greedily complied with the request of her fellow white citizen, but she resisted. The police intervened and arrested Parks for breaking segregation laws. After her arrest, the African-American community organised a boycott of city buses that lasted for more than a year, until the US Supreme Court ruled that segregated buses in Alabama were unconstitutional. This was a great victory for all African Americans.
Rosa Parks was not the first to fight against injustice in American society, but her story has become a symbol of the determination of African-Americans to stand up against discrimination. One of those who helped organise the Alabama bus boycott was Martin Luther King Jr, who soon became a leading figure in the civil rights movement. The movement grew stronger and stronger, and soon “white America” was also learning about the oppression of African-Americans.
Dreaming of a better world
“There comes a time when people have had enough… Enough of segregation and humiliation, enough of being trampled on by the brutal foot of oppression,” King preached. Black America had had enough. In the 1960s, the time came when the first cracks in a system built on discrimination began to show.
The mild-mannered and prudent King was the face of a mass of disaffected African-Americans who fought for their rights through social disobedience. He advocated coexistence between blacks and whites and non-violence. His Gandhian approach also made him popular among the white majority. Under his leadership, the civil rights movement made major changes in the struggle for equality. When more than 200,000 people marched peacefully on Washington in August 1963, where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, white America was also moved.
Segregation was abolished by law in 1964. On 6 August 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which gave African Americans the right to vote.
But just five days later, brutal riots broke out in Watts, a black neighbourhood in Los Angeles, lasting six days and claiming 34 lives. It was allegedly caused by police brutality. From 1964 to 1972, more than 700 riots were recorded across the country, claiming hundreds of lives. Despite the clear progress made by the civil rights movement, the country was still seething.
A hero and an extremist
Before World War I, 90% of African Americans lived in the Southern states. But in the decades that followed, the so-called Great Migration took place, during which millions of African-Americans left their homes. They migrated to industrial cities in the North and on the West Coast in search of a better life. California was the region that saw the biggest increase in the African-American population. In Oakland, for example, the proportion of African-Americans increased tenfold between 1940 and 1960.
The struggle for African-American rights has moved from the rural South to the streets of American cities. It changed its peaceful image and became more brutal and uncompromising when it arrived in the ghetto. The civil rights movement was unable to offer a response to the challenges in urban centres where poverty and police violence reigned. Segregation was defeated in the South, but the battle for a decent life for African Americans continued on other battlefields and with other commanders.
The most charismatic of them was certainly Malcolm X, who is still seen by the American public as the antipode to Martin Luther King. He was a complex and controversial figure. He was initially an advocate of black nationalism and, unlike King, he was not an advocate of non-violence at all costs. He tried to restore self-esteem to African Americans, which he felt had been damaged by centuries of discrimination. Later, he increasingly directed his criticism against the injustices of capitalism, and although he and King were quite different in personality and ideology, towards the end of their lives they began to move closer together politically.
Because of their untimely deaths, we will never know how the struggle for African-American rights would have unfolded if they had joined forces. King went down in history as an American hero, Malcolm X as a black extremist whose ideas infected many an angry African-American in those troubled times.
Brothers from the ghetto
Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were two of them. They were born in the American South, but their families came to Oakland during the Great Migration when they were both children. Newton was a mix between a “ghetto boy” and an intellectual. He often found himself in conflict with the law and was illiterate by the time he graduated from high school. His disillusionment with ghetto schools led him to self-education. He became an avid reader and devoured books one by one. He studied Californian law to become a better villain than he admitted. He knew that sooner or later he would be caught red-handed, so he wanted to be prepared. He later studied law and, in his old age, graduated in philosophy.
Bobby Seale was the son of a carpenter and had no academic ambitions when he was young, but wanted to become an engineer. He joined the army at the age of 18, but was discharged after three years for insubordination. He earned his living as a metalworker and enrolled in night school. He was active in various associations fighting against discrimination. Like many others in those days, Seale began to flirt with the progressive ideas that were spreading throughout the USA. After graduating from high school, Seale attended Merritt College in Oakland, where he met Newton for the first time.
They both lived in the Oakland ghetto, where there was no future for a young man, and where white policemen behaved like sheriffs in the Wild West. They beat unarmed young men and even children with impunity. Some ended up with a bullet in the back for the smallest infractions. Unemployment and police violence were a combustible combination. African-Americans felt that they were living under occupation in their own country. The feeling of powerlessness turned from frustration to rage.
A book is a weapon
Huey Newton and Bobby Seale turned their rage into political activism. In October 1966, a year and a half after Malcolm X’s death, they founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defence. It was defence against police violence that was the Black Panthers’ core precept in the beginning. Unlike Martin Luther King, they rejected the principle of “turn the other cheek” and instead began to stockpile weapons. They followed the principles of Malcolm X, who believed that self-defence was the only solution to oppression. They patrolled the streets of Oakland, guns in hand, following the police. Surrounded by a group of armed young men, the officers thought twice before using force to carry out their actions.
The Panthers deliberately avoided breaking California’s laws, which Newton knew intimately. As well as carrying a gun, he always carried a Penal Code and began reading it aloud in front of his fellow citizens, who were no less surprised than the police officers. Not a single bullet was fired and the African-American community felt safer because of it.
The Black Panthers were almost completely penniless in the beginning, so they relied on donations from supporters. Donations in the form of weapons. After the first successful campaigns, people started bringing all kinds of weapons to the party headquarters, which they no longer needed. But Newton came up with another way to make some money. He and Seal sold the Little Red Book, a collection of quotes by Mao Tse-tung, around university campuses for one dollar. They had previously visited every bookstore in Chinatown and bought hundreds of books. The price – 25 cents. “They sold like hotcakes,” Bobby Seale later recalled. In this case, the book was really a weapon, because all the profits from the sale of the Little Red Book went to buy rifles and pistols. It later became compulsory reading for all party members.
A star is born
In the beginning, the Black Panthers were just a ghetto movement and their influence was limited to Oakland and the surrounding area. But in May 1967, they were heard of all over the country. Thirty armed Panthers marched on Sacramento, home of the California State Legislature. On the agenda was a vote to ban the carrying of weapons in public. It was with guns that the Panthers protected their community from police violence. But politicians could not sit idly by as groups of young African-Americans armed themselves and patrolled the city unchecked.
The Panthers entered Parliament, rifles and pistols pointed at the ceiling, where the vote took place. Although they did not break any law, the police asked them to leave. The scene unfolded in front of a crowd of journalists and the Panthers rushed to explain their opposition to the change in the law. Despite the fact that the Parliament voted for a law banning the carrying of weapons in public, thus depriving the Panthers of their main tool in the fight against discrimination, the Black Panthers have become well known outside California after the events in Sacramento.
Just a few months later, the party experienced another turning point in its short history. In October 1967, Black Panther founder Huey Newton was charged with killing a policeman and later sentenced to 15 years in prison. He became a martyr in the eyes of the public and the main face of the movement. He continued to lead the party from prison and was in constant contact with Seale. The Panthers demanded his release and the protests they organised in support of Newton gave the movement new impetus. The Panthers have maintained all along that this is a politically motivated trial. The circumstances surrounding the incident were never fully clarified and less than two years later Newton was released.
Newton’s conviction was reminiscent of the events in Sacramento. What at first seemed like a defeat unexpectedly turned into a victory overnight. Huey Newton became the star of the black movement and the Black Panthers gained even more followers. Within a few months, they had more than thirty chapters across the country and thousands of members. The party had successfully stemmed the tide of discontent among the young people of the ghetto and its influence within the black movement was growing.
It’s time for a revolution
The ban on carrying weapons forced the Panthers to change their tactics, which had worked extremely well up to that point. The struggle against oppression had to be broadened and turned into a revolution. Carrying guns was no longer enough. The ambitions of the Panthers had outgrown the Oakland ghetto. The party’s ten-point manifesto was born, a mixture of socialism and demands for equality for African Americans. The last point, “We want land, bread, housing, education, clothes, justice and peace”, could be attributed to Lenin or some other revolutionary. The Panthers looked at the problems of the African-American community through the prism of class struggle. The main opponent of progress was not racism as such, but exploitative capitalism.
Unlike other black nationalists, who believed that all whites were racist, the Panthers rejected this interpretation. “A black merchant who sells products at the same price or even higher than an exploitative white man is nothing but an exploiter,” said Bobby Seale. They won the sympathy of young and liberal whites in particular, who realised that they and the Panthers had a common enemy – the establishment. The Panthers organised round tables and rallies on university campuses, where they and white students demanded an American withdrawal from the war in Vietnam.
Black Panthers
The Panthers have also gained a large following and, above all, media attention for their well-considered appearance. Their black leather jackets and berets acted as a uniform. Shiny sunglasses and guns commanded respect. They became the urban face of the black rebellion, appearing fresh and modern. More and more women joined their ranks and slowly but steadily they gained influence within the movement and helped the party to fight for gender equality. Sexism was labelled counter-revolutionary.
The Panthers were on the front lines, patrolling the streets of Oakland with their comrades. They also made a big mark on the party’s newspaper, The Black Panther, which had a circulation of 300,000 at its best. They were an indispensable part of the movement. The notion of a manly Black Panther with a gun in his hand, while effective, is misleading. At the end of 1969, for example, two thirds of the Party’s members were women.
Mirror of society
The Black Panther’s natural habitat is a ghetto, among broken street lamps and crumbling blocks of flats, where poverty and hopelessness reign. The country is not well suited to the urban jungle and has withdrawn from it. The panthers have therefore taken over some of the tasks that should have been theirs.
In line with their programme, they have sought to establish a public health system. In 13 American cities, they set up improvised health centres, often in store lobbies or rented trailers. They carried out various tests and vaccinations. Most of them soon closed their doors because of the high costs, but the experiment was nevertheless welcomed by the people.
Community work was their hallmark. They believed that everything begins in community, among people. They distributed food, clothes and shoes, provided legal aid and even plumbing services. They escorted elderly people who were afraid of pickpockets to the post office when their pensions needed to be withdrawn, because the police did not respond to their pleas for protection. People who did not have the money to visit their imprisoned relatives were bussed to prison. The Black Panthers organised more than 60 different projects to help people with their daily problems.
All these half-baked attempts, of course, could not eradicate poverty and were at best a band-aid. But they gave people in the ghetto the feeling that at least someone cared about them. The state had raised its hands over them. For this reason, the Black Panthers were held in the highest esteem, they were the kings of the ghetto.
The Black Panthers’ most successful project was certainly the distribution of breakfasts to malnourished schoolchildren. It was based on the simple premise that a hungry child cannot be a good schoolboy. The same problem was addressed by the US government at national level, but the project was much criticised as it did not reach those who needed food the most. Children in the ghetto were still sitting hungry in their school desks. The Panthers got to work and the project quickly became very popular. The breakfasts were prepared in cooperation with nutritionists and local shops, which donated the necessary ingredients. For many children, it was the only hot meal of the day. The programme operated in 36 US cities and fed thousands of children daily.
The Panthers have succeeded with this project. They have shown that, unlike them, the government is incapable of looking after its most vulnerable citizens. They have held up a mirror to American society. White America has realised that hunger is not only a problem in third world countries.
Yellow Panthers
The furious young men from Oakland conquered the whole country, but it wasn’t enough. The revolution must not stop. The Panthers travelled the world, linking up with related movements. They found common ground with all who shared their desire to overthrow capitalism. There are more than enough oppressed people – in Oakland and in Saigon. The Panthers believed that the ghetto belonged to the Third World.
The Panthers were fond of comparing their situation with that of the North Vietnamese – both of whom were supposedly suffering under the boot of US imperialism. They believed that the fates of African Americans and oppressed peoples in the Third World were linked. But the war in Vietnam was just an extension of the war in the ghetto. The Panthers had close relations with the North Vietnamese: “You are the Black Panthers, we are the Yellow Panthers”, declared the North Vietnamese Minister of Culture.
The Panthers also visited North Korea to study Juche, a Korean type of communism based on self-sufficiency. Articles began to appear in the party newspaper Black Panther, presenting North Korea as a “socialist paradise” and as “the homeland of Marxism and Leninism of our age”. The love was mutual. In 1970, a telegram arrived at the Party’s headquarters in Oakland, in which the Great Leader Kim Il Sung personally expressed his support for them in their struggle against oppression.
Let a hundred panthers bloom
“My conversion to socialism is complete,” wrote Huey Newton after reading a selection of Mao Tsetung’s works. The founder of Communist China was, along with Malcolm X, the most influential in shaping the ideology of the Black Panthers. The projects carried out by the Panthers in the communities were based on Mao’s slogan of “Serving the People”, which became popular in the West. Mao has always been considered a friend of African Americans. “On behalf of the Chinese people, I would like to express my strong support to all black Americans in their just struggle,” he said on 4 April 1968, when Marin Luther King Jr. was killed.
The invitation to the Black Panthers to pay an official visit to China in September 1971 can also be understood in this context. At that time, the USA and China did not yet have diplomatic relations, which made the visit all the more resonant. Huey Newton and two companions spent ten days in the “Middle Empire” that he will always remember. “Watching a classless society at work is something unforgettable,” he later recalled. The Panthers were welcomed by Zhou Enlai, Premier and the regime’s second man. Newton also met Mao’s fourth wife, Jian Qing. But he was not destined to meet his idol.
Newton’s mouth was full of praise for a free and just China. But he forgot that the country was still drowning in blood because of the Cultural Revolution, which Mao had started five years earlier.
For the Black Panthers, the support of Communist China was above all proof that the party had outgrown Oakland and had become internationally visible. The Black Panthers even had an embassy in Algeria, which had sheltered many revolutionaries after its secession from France in 1962. Algeria issued visas and financial support to Panthers fleeing the law.
The Black Panthers have become a model for many movements that have started to emerge in all corners of the world. In Israel, for example, the Black Panther Party was founded by Jews who had migrated to the Promised Land from Muslim countries. The Mizrahi, as they are called in Israel, faced discrimination and oppression, just like African-Americans.
Even in New Zealand, the Polynesian Panther Party was formed to unite Maori New Zealanders. They carried out projects in their communities similar to those of their American comrades.
COINTELPRO
At the turn of the 1960s into the 1970s, the Black Panthers were at their peak. Alongside their “ghetto brothers”, they were also supported by that part of “white America” which was against the war in Vietnam and which saw American capitalism as an exploitative machine that had to be destroyed. Abroad, they could count on the support of the various liberation and revolutionary movements, which considered US imperialism their worst enemy. But the projects they carried out in the communities showed their human face, which won them the sympathy of people who were not involved in politics. Last but not least, they were supported by people whose opinion always counts for a lot in the US – celebrities.
Black Panthers have become “trendy”. Hollywood star Jane Fonda has publicly defended them and helped them financially. The famous composer Leonard Bernstein was criticised for organising a party in his New York apartment to which he invited the Black Panthers.
The success and popularity of the Black Panthers was closely monitored by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who identified them as enemies of the system. For decades, the FBI had been monitoring various social movements it considered dangerous – from the Communist Party to the Ku Klux Klan to Martin Luther King Jr. The programme was known as COINTELPRO. Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a great deal of experience in covert operations.
Hoover approached the plan thoroughly and did not pick and choose the means to achieve his goal. The tactic was simple and proven – divide and rule. FBI agents infiltrated the party and began to sow discord. Suddenly, members began to receive letters from “anonymous” people smearing the party leadership. And female members were receiving letters detailing their partners’ romantic exploits with other women.
The FBI began mass mailing the Black Panther Colouring Book, supposedly the official Black Panther publication for children, to white families and Panther-supporting organisations. In it, panthers rape white businessmen and shoot policemen, and black children cut the necks of white old ladies with knives. The impact of this incredibly original discrediting is difficult to measure, but its execution is testimony to the zeal with which the FBI has tackled the Black Panthers.
But the biggest blow to the Panthers came from more traditional actions carried out by the police in cooperation with the FBI. Party headquarters across the country were targeted by police raids and invasions. In some cases, the officers carried a valid warrant, but this was not always the case. Tensions on both sides often led to shootings.
In December 1969, police attempted to break into the party’s Los Angeles offices, where the Panthers were barricaded. A gun battle ensued, involving SWAT for the first time in American history. After several hours of fighting, a handful of Panthers had to surrender. More than three hundred police officers stood in their way. The Panthers were arrested and later released.
Just five days after that, police raided a Chicago apartment in the middle of the night, where several panthers were living. The intention of the police was clear, as they fired almost 100 bullets, but the panthers fired only one. Fred Hampton, the leader of the Chicago Black Panthers, was murdered in his bed.
The FBI’s methods against the Panthers were so brutal that after Hoover’s death, his successor Clarence Kelly apologised for them.
Epilog
Although the Black Panthers did not officially cease to exist until 1982, the road to their doom began when J. Edgar Hoover wrote their name down in a notebook. They became too popular and too influential. Above all, they were too disturbing. The FBI’s attacks bore fruit and the party began to fight amongst itself, leading to a schism.
Considered by some to be terrorists, by others to be freedom fighters for the oppressed, the Black Panthers are above all part of the turbulent 1960s, marked by race riots, the Vietnam War and the dismantling of established social norms.
