THE

© 1 970 by Philip S. Foner

First published by J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia/New York.

This edition published in 20 1 4 by Haymarket Books

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ISBN: 978- 1 -60846-328-2

Edited by Philip S. Foner Cover design by Ragina Johnson. Cover image of Black Panther Party members
demonstrating on the steps of the Alameda County Courthouse for the release
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y
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Acknowledgments
Excerpts from The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon, copyright © 1963 by Presence
HaymarketBooks Africaine, are published with the permission of Grove Press, Inc. "Huey Newton Talks to the
Cl1icago, IL Movement about the Black Panther Party, Cultural Nationalism, SNCC, Liberals and White
Revolutionaries"; "You Can Murder a Liberator, but You Can't Murder Liberation;' by Fred
Hampton; and "Black Caucus Program: An Interview" are published with the permission
of theMovement. "Bobby Seale Explains Panther Politics" is published with the permission
of theGuardian. "An Open Letter to Stokely Carmichael;' by Eldridge Cleaver, is published
with the permission of Ramparts. "We Will Win: Letter from Prison;' by Afeni Shakur,
and "To Judge Murtagh: From the Panther 21" are published with the permission of Ray.
"People's Medical Care Center" is published with the permission of Daily World. "Ten-Point
Health Program of the Young Lords" is published with the permission of the Y. L. 0.
Contents
Foreword by Barbara Ransby ix
P reface by Julian Bond xxi
Introduction xxi i
Black Panther National Anthem xi i i

1. Black Panther Party Platform and Program

Rules of the Black Panther Party
W hat W e Want/W hat W e Bel ieve 2
Rules of the Black Panther P a r ty 4

2. The Black Panther: Voice of the Party 7

The Black P a n t her: M i r ror of the People 8
A Pig 14
Black Lawye rs 14
Revol ut ionary Art/Black Liberation 16
On Violence 19
F r e e b y Any Mea n s Necessary (poem) 20
Correc t i ng M i s t a ke n Ideas 21
The Power of t h e People 23
Black C h i l d 's Pledge 24
In W h ite America Today 25
Ed itorial Statement 26
Revo l u t i o n a ry Letter # 1 5 (poem) 26
The Genius of Huey Newton 27
Erica's Poem 29
The Revo l u t i o n a ry S p i r i t of Anton io Maceo,
Lives on Today in the People's Revol u t i o n a ry Vanguard,
the Black P a n t h e r P a r ty, and in Our New Revo l u t i o n a ry
Warrior Named after Him 30
A Black Panther Song (poem) 31
To t h e Cou rageous V i e t n amese People, 32
Commemor a t i n g the Death of Ho Chi M i n h
T h e Ch icago 8 32
P igs-Pa nthers 34
On Cr i t i c i sm of Cuba 37

3. Huey P. Newton Speaks 39

In Defe nse of Self-Defense: Exec u t ive Mandate Number One 40
The Cor re c t Hand l i ng of a Revol u t ion 41
F u n c t i o n a l Def i n i t ion of Pol i t ics 45
Message to "Freey Huey Ral ly," O a k l a n d Aud itorium, 47
Febr u a ry 1 7, 1 968
Huey Newton Ta l ks to the Movemen t About the 50
Black Panther P a r ty, Cultural Nation a l i sm, SNCC,
Liberals a n d W h ite Revol u t io n a r ies
 Message on the Peace Movemen t 67 10. Black Panthers in Court 183
To the R.N.A. 70 Bobby Seale vs. Judge Hoffman 185
P rison, W he re Is Thy Victory? 74 To Judge Murtagh: From the Panther 21 196

77 Closing Remarks to the Jury by Charles R. Garry 212

4. Bobby Seale Speaks
T h e Ten-Poi n t Platform a n d P rogram o f t h e Black P a n t h e r Party 78 in People of California v. Huey P. Newton

B obby Seale Exp l a i n s P a n t h e r Polit ics: An Interview 81 11. Alliances and Coalitions 219
Black Soldiers a s Revolutionaries t o Ove r t h row the R u l i n g Class 88 The Black Panther Party Stands for Revolutionary Solidarity 220
B r i ng It Home 93 We Must Develop a United Front Against Fascism (leaflet) 222

97 On Establishing a United Front with Communists 223

5. Eldridge Cleaver Speaks From Exile
Message to Sister Erica Hugg i n s of the Black Panther Pa rty 98 SDS Resolution on the Black Panther Party 225

The Black Man's S t a ke i n Vietnam 100 The Young Lords Organization on the Move: 229

An Open Letter to Stokely Ca rmichael 104 Interview with Rafael Viera

Eld ridge Cleave r Discusses Revolution: An Inte rview f rom Exi l e 108 Young Lords Block Street with Garbage 234

The Fascists Have Al ready Decided i n Adva nce to Murder 1 17 Young Lords Party 13-Point Program and Platform 235

Chai rman Bobby Seale in the Elec t r ic Cha i r: A Man ifesto Ten-Point Health Program of the Young Lords 238
The Patriot Party Speaks to the Movement 239
6. David Hilliard Speaks 121
Latinos Walkout 243
The Ideology of t h e Black P a n t h e r P a r ty 1 22
Getting Together 245
Black Student Unions 124
Ten-Point Program and Platform of the Black Student Unions 246
If You Wa n t Peace You Got to Fight for It 128
The Black Panther Party and Revolutionary Trade Unionism 249
Interview w i t h CBS News, December 2 8, 1 969 130
Black Caucus Program: An Interview 252
7. Fred Hampton Speaks 137 Petition to the United Nations 254
You Can Murder a Liberator, but You Can't Murder Liberation 138
Appendixes 257
8. Black Panther Women Speak 145 I. The Persecution of the Black Panther Party 257
Liberation a n d P o l itica l Ass a s s i n a t ion, by Kathleen Cleave r 146
a. The Old Rules Do Not Apply: A Survey of the Persecution 257
On C u l t u r a l Nat ion a l i sm, by Linda Harrison 151
of the Black Panther Party by Charles R. Garry
The S t r uggle I s a World S t r uggle, by Con n i e Mat t hews 154
b. News Release Issued by the American Civil Liberties 263
I Joi n e d t h e P a n t hers, b y Joan B i rd 1 59
Union, December 29, 1969
We W i l l W i n : Letter From P rison by Afe n i S h a k u r 161
c. Resolution Adopted by the New York Group of the 265
A Word for P a n t h e r Pa rents, by M rs. Jewel B a rker 164
Society for Philosophy and Public Affairs, May 23, 1970
9. Community Activities 167
To Feed O u r Ch i l d ren 168
IL Call for Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention, 267

W hy t h e Free B re a kfast? 1 69 September 7, 1970, Philadelphia, PA

Liberation Schools 1 70 Notes 27 2

The Youth Make t h e Revolution 171
People's Med ical Ca re Center 1 73
Pocket Lawyer of Lega l First Aid 1 76
In Memory of Dr. Ma r t i n Luther King 177
Petit ion Stateme n t for Comm u n ity Con t rol of Police 179
Defen d the Ghetto (lea f l e t) 180
Comm u n i ty Discussion Groups (leaf let) 181
Foreword

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, later simply the Black
Panther Party (BPP), was founded in Oakland, California, in 1966
by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, two students at Merritt Col­
lege who were influenced by the political upsurge in the country
and angered by the continued police violence and harassment in
African American communities, including Oakland. They were
later joined by Eldridge Cleaver, David Hilliard, and others. Es­
timates are that at their peak, the Panthers claimed thousands
of members and many more supporters, including a number of
prominent celebrities, artists, and intellectuals. Romanticized by
some and vilified by others, they became icons of the Black Power
movement, but the organization was eclectic and complex and its
story is a nuanced one. Its macho image disguises a reality where
the struggle against sexism was intense and ongoing. The stoic,
militant urban-warrior profile camouflaged a profound commit­
ment to the organization's survival and service programs. And
the "all-things-Black " exterior cloaked the internal politics of sol­
idarity and internationalism.
I was nine years old when the Black Panther Party was founded,
but its emergence would have a profound impact on my evolv­
ing consciousness as a young Black woman growing up in the late
1960s and early '70s. I remember the familiar image of large Af­
ro-wearing men and women hawking Panther newspapers on De­
troit street corners: "Black Panther paper, young sister? " And then
I remember the funeral of a friend's brother who died way too
young. He was a Panther. The funeral took place in a local Cath­
olic church with a casket draped in a red, black, and green flag
and pallbearers wearing black berets, leather jackets, and Black
Panther buttons, fists raised as they honored a fallen comrade and
brother. Their slogan, "All Power to the People," was ubiquitous. It
ix
x The Black Panthers Speak Foreword xi

was on posters, buttons, T-shirts, even bumper stickers. I did not Panther leadership knew at the time that they were being targeted,
really understand the politics of the Panthers at the time, or the but later, with the release of formerly classified documents through
seriousness of what those politics represented in the real world. the Freedom of Information Act, the vastness and ruthlessness of
All I knew was that their bold defiance to unjust authority was the government campaign against the Panthers was revealed. FBI
contagious and exhilarating. director J. Edgar Hoover insisted, "The Black Panther Party, with­
The BPP was one of the most audacious and influential orga­ out question, represents the greatest threat to [the] internal securi­
nizations of the 1960s and 1970s, but it was also an organization ty of the country."1 COINTELPRO was designed to eliminate that
that has been vastly misread and misunderstood. When histori­ perceived threat.
an Philip Foner first edited and published Black Panthers Speak From 1968 on, there was a series of killings and court cases that
in 1970, he disrupted the mythmaking by creating a platform for devastated the organization. In April 1968, seventeen-year-old
Panther voices to be accessed directly by a larger audience than Bobby Hutton was shot dead by police after his arrest in Oakland.
those who experienced the organization firsthand. In recent In January 1969, John Huggins and Alprentice (Bunchy) Carter
years, a new generation of scholars (and activists) are engaging the were killed during a confrontation with cultural nationalists in
Panther legacy with rigor and a resolve to get the story right and Maulana Karenga's US organization after a meeting on UCLA's
to position the Panthers not at the margins, but at the center of campus. Huggins left behind his wife and comrade Erica Huggins
the storm of political activity that, against all odds but with some and their infant daughter, Mai. The following December, young
margin of success, attempted to confront racism and injustice, Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed in a bloody
militantly strike a blow against empire, build new communities nighttime police raid on Chicago's West Side. And there were ar­
and social practices, and change the world. rests and trials that further tapped the resources of the group and
What these documents also demonstrate is something radical undermined its ability to carry out its work. The Panther 21 trial
Trinidadian intellectual C.L.R. James recognized decades ago: in New York and the New Haven Nine in Connecticut were two of
that, above all, we must remember that history and revolutionary the most high-profile cases, but the most dramatic was the surreal
movements are made by human beings: flawed, inconsistent and courtroom scene that surrounded Bobby Seale's indictment as a
sometime misguided, brilliant and confused, kind and vengeful, part of the 1969 Chicago Eight trial, an outgrowth of the 1968
selfless and self-promoting-all in the same moments of intensity protests at the Democratic National Convention. During the trial,
and passion. the judge ordered Seale bound, gagged, and shackled in his chair
The Panthers represented the militant spirit of urban Black youth in order to silence his outbursts, after which his trial was separat­
who refused to be broken by the policeman's baton, refused to de­ ed from his co-defenders, leaving them as the Chicago Seven.
fer to the authority of a racist state apparatus, and refused the fun­ By 1970 dozens of Panther leaders had been jailed, their offices
damentally skewed logic of American capitalism. They were bold had been raided in multiple cities, members had been wounded
and brazen, defiant, sometimes to the point of recklessness. And and killed, and two prominent leaders, Eldridge and Kathleen
for this they paid a terrible price. When most of these documents Neal Cleaver, were in exile in Algeria. It was a violent and tumul­
were written, the leaders of the BPP were under serious surveil­ tuous time in the United States and the world, and the Black Pan­
lance and assault. Many chapters had been infiltrated by the FBI's ther Party was in the thick of the fray.
famed COINTELPRO (counterintelligence) program. COINTEL­ In the words of the Panthers' eloquent young Chicago martyr
PRO sought to disrupt, divide, and destroy the organization. The Fred Hampton, "You can kill a revolutionary, but you can never
xii Th e B l a c k Panthers Speak Foreword xiii

kill the revolution." The revolutionary ideas and ideals that the The issue of gender, the role of women in the Party, and the ide­
Panthers embraced were indeed bigger than them. Their reach was alized notion of Black manhood continue to be significant points
long and it touched young radicals around the globe. More import­ of interest and analysis when it comes to the Panthers. Initially, the
ant even than what the Panthers did or said is what they represent­ gender discourse around the Panthers was male-centered, ground­
ed. The organization's powerful symbolism extended well beyond ed in the assertion of Black manhood through self-defense. Even
its membership and has lived long after its demise. A narrow read some women in the Party expressed their own humanity in mas­
of what the Panthers symbolized would focus on its youthful, mil­ culine terms in those days. Elaine Brown's poem in this volume is
itant defiance to the violent racism and police brutality suffered a good example. She ends it with: "We'll just have to get guns and
by urban Black populations. The actions that first earned them be men." At the same time, Panther ideas and symbolism may have
notoriety were their armed police-monitoring efforts and their in­ both inhibited and ignited radical Black feminist (or womanist)
sistence on the right to bear arms for community self-defense. But consciousness and actions. Angela Davis, the late June Jordan, and
there was more. The Panthers also engaged in the gender-bending other Black feminists trace their political lineage, in part, to a crit­
practice of promoting women warriors and male community ser­ ical engagement with the politics and practices of the BPP.
vants. They, like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Black Panthers Speak foregrounds, above all, the sense of urgen­
(SNCC), also recalibrated notions of intergenerational work. No cy that characterized the historical moment in which the BPP ex­
longer was the accepted protocol simply to defer to wise elders and isted. The Panthers believed, for good, reason that in the late 1960s
seasoned political experts. Equally significant was their broad and Black urban communities were under siege and had to be defend­
forward-looking Third World internationalism. Finally, their class ed. They refused to turn a blind eye to the threats, intimidation,
politics were pivotal. Working-class Black youth were not viewed police beatings, and killings that occurred. In cities like Detroit,
as angry rebels or as young proteges of successful movement vet­ for example, there was a police decoy unit called S.T.R. E. S. S. (Stop
erans, but as strategists and revolutionary change agents in their the Robberies Enjoy Safe Streets), which was notorious and feared
own right-at least, that was the aspiration. This praxis was in­ for its extreme entrapment methods, which led to many arrests
formed by the Panthers' appreciation of Marxist, and specifically and shootings on city streets and alleyways.2 Militant resistance
Maoist, ideas about class struggle, nationalism, and revolution. seemed at the time to be a necessary tactic for survival.
Over the years there has emerged a growing body of scholarship Police brutality and harassment were not the only threats to
on the Panthers, including significant research on the role of gen­ Black survival, however. The problem, as the Panthers saw it, was
der in Party politics and the importance of the organization's "sur­ systemic and required a dual set of responses that were both de­
vival" or community service programs. These scholars are re-en­ fensive and proactive. The survival programs of the BPP were in­
gaging the Black Panther Party with the benefit of hindsight as well timately bound up with their notions of personal transformation,
as the challenges of distance and time. But this re-engagement is liberation, and community defense. The defenses they sought to
not simply an academic pursuit. The Panthers remain a source of provide were against poverty, despair, unemployment, physical
political fascination and inspiration, even as their legacy is hot­ illnesses, and miseducation as much as against police tyranny.
ly contested, their mistakes fully acknowledged, and their losses They radically and idealistically organized thousands of young
deeply mourned. Panels, conferences, reunions, memorials, and Black people and their white supporters to help create alternatives
memoirs have provided opportunities for new revelations, insights, to existing institutions, a process through which they hoped both
and debates regarding the history of the Black Panther Party. communities and individuals would be transformed. One example
xiv The Black Panthers Speak Foreword xv

of this effort was the Oakland Community School, founded by the the need for transnational solidarity campaigns remains a critical
Panthers as an innovative model for community-based education, part of any serious transformative politics, from post-apartheid
which lasted until 1983. The Free Breakfast for Children program, South Africa to Palestine.
held in community centers, schools, and church basements around Woman-of-color feminism and "queer of color" analyses of
the country, was another such program. A site for political educa­ gender and sexuality emerged after the Panthers' demise as an
tion as well as nourishment, this program showcased the Panthers' organization, but to their credit, and despite some pretty inex­
compassion for the suffering of poor Black folks and exposed the cusable sexism by individual leaders, there was a persistent push
unwillingness of the government to adequately meet community within the organization for women's leadership, sexual freedom,
needs. The Panthers' ethos was a spirit of self-help coupled with a and independence from the conservative confines of traditional
practice of protest and confrontation. heterosexual family structures.Collective childrearing practices,
Similarly, the People's Free Medical Clinics, which historian community nurseries, and schools were alternatives to privatized
Alondra Nelson chronicles in her book Body and Soul, were set parenting and male-headed nuclear families where women were
up in Portland, Washington, D.C., Oakland, and elsewhere. The expected to do the domestic work.Scholars Tracye Matthews and
clinics relied on donated labor and supplies and held up a differ­ Robyn Spencer have written on the complex gender dynamics in
ent view of medicine and health that promoted prevention and the Party; in former Party leader Elaine Brown's memoir, A Taste
health education and stressed the social and political context in of Power, she offers her own take on the nexus between sex, power,
which health and illness occur, pointing out racialized health dis­ and violence in the Panthers.5

parities that negatively affected Black and Brown communities.3 In this volume, a 1969 message from a male party leader reads:

All of this work was undergirded by an analysis of the racialized "It is mandatory that all manifestations of male chauvinism be

nature of Western capitalism and imperialism that is as relevant excluded from our ranks and that sisters have a duty and the right

today as it was in 1966 . The Panthers focused their organizing to do whatever they want to do to see that they are not relegated to

efforts on the so-called "lumpenproletariat," those at the very an inferior position." Saying this did not make it so, but the formal

bottom of the social and economic hierarchy who make a living position represented an advance over other Black organizations

on the margins or in the illegal underground economy. In other and most white organizations in 1969, which did not even see gen­

words, those bearing the brunt of what Beth Richie calls the "pris­ der inequality as a problem.
In terms of the BPP's stance on gender and sexuality, Huey New­
on nation" and Michelle Alexander calls "the new Jim Crow" to­
ton's 1970 statement on homophobia was also hugely important.
day. Even as they recruited young people who had previously been
One year after the Stonewall rebellion in New York's Greenwich
in street gangs or in jail, the Panthers also reached out to college
students. Martha Biondi's book The Black Revolution on Campus Village credited with igniting the modern gay rights movement,
Huey wrote:
argues that the BPP had considerable sway among Black campus
activists in the 1970s.4 Whatever your personal opinions and your insecurities about
The Panthers also stood in solidarity with the rising new na­ homosexuality and women (and I speak of homosexuals an.d
tions of the former colonial world, with the expectation that many women as oppressed groups), we should try to unite with them
of those countries, from Cuba to Algeria to Vietnam, were head­ in a revolutionary fashion. ... We must gain security in our­
ed toward a more humane alternative to capitalism. History did selves and therefore have respect and feelings for all oppressed
not unfold the way they hoped. Still, into the twenty-first century, people.... We have not said much about the homosexual at all,
xv i The Black Panthers Speak Foreword xvii

but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a gave themselves, as Nelson's book title reminds us, "body and
real thing. And I know through reading, and through my life soul" to the struggle for Black liberation, and by extension human
experience and observations that homosexuals are not given liberation, in the late 1960s and '70s are elders now. Some did not
freedom and liberty by anyone in society. They might be the survive. Some were set up by COINTELPRO and spent decades
most oppressed people in society. . . . There is nothing to say in prison. Panther political prisoners like Dhoruba bin-Wahad
that a homosexual cannot also be a revolutionary. . . . Maybe a and the late Geronimo ji-Jaga finally had their convictions over­
homosexual could be the most revolutionary. . . . We should be
turned and were released. Others like Ahmad Rahman, jailed at
careful about using those terms that might turn our friends off.
age nineteen in Detroit for Party activity, did their time, got out,
The terms "faggot" and "punk" should be deleted from our vo­
rebuilt their lives, and continue to "serve the people." Still others
cabulary. . ..We should try to form a working coalition with the
remain in prison or exile. There is the well-known case of Mumia
gay liberation and women's liberation groups. 6
Abu-Jamal, but there are the lesser known cases of Black Libera­
Finally, something must be said of Philip Foner, the prolific white tion Army members Mutulu Shakur and Sundiata Acoli, who have
leftist historian who edited the first edition of this powerful collec­ spent most of their adult lives in prison for their political activities
tion of primary documents in 1970, when the history of the BPP was in the 1970s. A campaign continues to win their freedom and that
still unfolding. Shaped by the radical interracial organizing of the of others, including their Puerto Rican nationalist comrade and
1930s, Foner understood not only the importance of a group like the fellow political prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera. Former BLA mem­
Panthers to Black communities and to the left in general, but to our ber Assata Shakur has lived in exile in Cuba since soon after her
collective understanding of late-twentieth-century United States escape from a New Jersey prison in 1979, for a crime most who
history overall. His antiracist consciousness and selfless service to a know her and the details of the case insist she did not commit.
people's history and a useable past were truly exemplary. Others took different paths after the Panthers split in 1971 and the
Forty-eight years after the Panthers' founding, it is important organization gradually unraveled. Some former Panthers wrote
to revisit what the organization meant in its own time and what books, others became lawyers and college professors, and one,
it means in ours. What is the lesson for this historical moment? It Bobby Rush, was elected to the US Congress from Illinois's First
is a different time and we are in a different place. Yet many of the Congressional District. Many former Panthers remain committed,
problems, challenges, and threats the Panthers faced remain with in various ways, to ongoing struggles for freedom and justice.
us. COINTELPRO surveillance is mirrored in the far-reaching The legacy of the Panthers is not defined, however, by the life
high-tech surveillance of the US National Security Agency. With and career trajectories of individuals. It is defined by how the cur­
the wanton murder of Black Florida teenager Trayvon Martin by a rent generation of activists has learned from its strengths and its
white vigilante in 2012 and the court's subsequent refusal to hold mistakes and how they read Panther history into current Black
his killer accountable, we are reminded of the continued devalu­ political realities. The coercive arm of the state still polices young
ation of Black life, even as we witness a greater display of power Black bodies on the streets of major cities, demanding that they
wielded by privileged Black politicians and elites than ever before. justify congregating together, walking in certain areas, and even
In the language of the Panthers, poor black folk are still "catch­ wearing their clothes a certain way, but much more sinister is that
ing hell." The epidemic of mass incarceration is but one symptom; more than a million Black and brown bodies are policed inside the
continued disparities in health, education, and income are others. walls of prisons and correctional facilities of various types. The
Many of the brave, idealistic, and committed young people who United States cages and confines more of its citizens than any oth-
xviii The Black Panthers Speak Foreword xix

er society in history. Young people in groups like Students Against What a Man's Role in the Revolution Is': Gender and the Politics of the

Mass Incarceration (at Howard and Columbia Universities), the Black Panther Party, 1966-1971," Black Panther Party Reconsidered,
ed. Charles E. Jones, (Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 2005).
Black Youth Project 100, the Florida-based Dream Defenders, and
6. Huey P. New ton, "The Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Move­
the intergenerational and interracial activists in prison-abolition ments" (August 15, 1970), in The Huey Newton Reader, ed. David Hil­
groups like Critical Resistance are responding with steady chal­ liard and Donald Weise (Boston: Seven Stories Press, 2002).
lenges, mobilizations, popular education, courage, and creative
determination to confront and change that reality, as are networks
of activists like Ella's Daughters. The documents, speeches, essays,
and poems in this volume represent the militant voices of resis­
tance in the twentieth century. The voices of the twenty-first cen­
tury may speak, chant, scream, and "flow" in a different rhythm
and register, but they are no less outraged at the injustices of their
time and no less hungry for something different and better.

-Barbara Ransby, 2014

I. Curtis J. Austin, Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Un­
making of the Black Panther Party (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas
Press, 2006), xxvii.
2. Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study
in Urban Revolution (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012).
3. Alondra Nelson, Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight
Against Medical Discrimination (Minneapolis: University of Minneso­
ta Press, 2011).
4. Beth Richie, Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and the Build Up
of the Prison Nation (New York: NYU Press, 2012); Michelle Alexan­
der, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
(New York: New Press, 2010); and Martha Biondi, The Black Revolu­
tion on Campus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). See
also Peniel E. Joseph, ed., The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the
Civil Rights-Black Power Era (New York: Routledge, 2013), and Don­
na Murch, Living for the City: Migration, Education and the Rise of the
Black Panther Party in Oakland, California (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2010).
5. Robyn Spencer, "Engendering the Black Freedom Struggle: The Black
Panther Party and Revolutionary Black Womanhood," Journal of
Women's History 20 (2008); Tracye Matthews, "'No One Ever Asks,
Preface

In April, 1 970, I was asked by Edward P. Morgan, Correspondent

for the American Broadcasting Companies, how black people feel
about the Black Panthers. I replied ( and the reply was broadcast on
the ABC-TV program "The Panthers " ) :
\Vhat the Panthers do more than anything else is they set a stand­
ard, that young black people particularly want to measure up to . . . .
It's a standard of aggressiveness, of militancc, of just forcefulness, the
sort of standard we haven't had in the past. Our idols have been Dr.
King who, for all of his beauty as a man, was not an aggressive man,
but the Panthers, and I think Malcolm X, have set this new kind of
standard that a great many people want to adhere to.
Mr. Morgan then asked, "But figurative [ly] speaking, you're not
about to become a Panther?" I replied, "No, not today or tomorrow
at any rate. Maybe the day after."
The Black Panthers Speak should give the American people a clear
idea of why I answered as I did . So much has been written and
spoken about the Black Panthers in the press and over the radio and
TV that one might suppose that most people know what the organi­
zation really stands for and seeks to achieve. But this is far from the
case. Only rarely does the press report what the Panthers are actually
saying and doing and how they view the problems of black people
in our society. The result is that most Americans have obtained their
impression of the Panthers from statements issued by those who
wish to see them eliminated as a factor in American life.
The language of the Panthers is often shocking to those accustomed
to the ordinary expressions of political figures, but we might as well
get accustomed to it, for it expresses the sentiments of a vast section
of oppressed Americans. The Panthers articulate what the people
in the ghettoes feel and, in so doing, enable all of us to gain insight
into deep-set anger of so many of our deprived citizens as well as their
determination to change these conditions.
Mr. Morgan observed back in April that throughout his talks with
black Americans, it became clear that "there is a great deal of truth
in what the Panthers have been saying." Now all of us have the op­
portunity to learn what that is.
-J ULIAN BOND

xxi
 I ntroduction Introduction xx iii

"destructive and illegal acts." 1 Writing in Dissent (March-April,

1970 ) under the provocative title, "Panthers : Black Men in Ex­
tremis,'' Jervis Anderson accused the Black Panthers of deliberately
provoking the police to kill them because of a psychological desire
In 1919 Paul R. Brissenden, Professor of Economics at Columbia for "martyrdom." He advises the Panthers to cease playing· with
University, wrote in his pioneer study of the Industrial Workers of "martyrdom,'' and devote themselves to the business of "getting
the World : "The public still knows but little about the organization your work done,'' adding the sneering comment-"assuming, in the
and its members . . . . The public has not been told the truth about case of the Panthers, that there is something worthwhile they would
the things the I.W.W. has done or the doctrines in which it believes. like to do, and that they have some idea of how to do it."
The papers have printed so much fiction about this organization In general, the attacks on the Black Panthers, whether from die­
and maintained such a nationwide conspiracy of silence as to its hard reactionaries or liberals, boil down to the theme that they
real philosophy-especially to the constructive items of its philos­ deserve what they get. A letter to the editor of Life (February 20,
ophy-that the popular conception of this labor.: group is a weird 1970 ) , put it this way : "If the Panthers didn't preach the overthrow
unreality." If one were to substitute the words "white Americans" for of society and didn't make their homes arsenals, there would be no
"the public" and "Black Panther Party" for "I.W.W.," Professor raids. One has but to reflect back a few years to the raid on con­
Brissenden's statement could be reprinted today without any other servative 'Minutemen'-all white-to see that social justice is against
alteration. armed camps of revolutionaries and not against Black Panthers per
To the average white American the Black Panther Party conjures se." This sweeping judgment has about as much substance to it as
up the picture of an anarchistic band of gun-toting, white-hating I In addition to being labeled "black racists," the Panthers have also been
thugs. This is hardly surprising, for the Black Panthers have been accused of being an ti-Semitic. (See the document issued by the American Jewish
subjected to a campaign of vilification (to say nothing of terror. ) Committee, February, 1970, entitled "The Black Panther Party-the Anti­
Semitic and Anti-Israel Componen t," and the article by Gerald Emanuel Stem
from the inception of their organization, and this was intensified
in the New York Times Magazine, March 8, 1970.) The Black Panthers, how·
as the movement grew. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (who spear­ ever, insist tha t they are not anti-Semitic and "do not lump all Jews with slum­
headed the drive against the I.W.W. and other radical groups in the lords." But they do contend tha t they are anti-Zionist and view Israel as a
post-World War I era ) described the Panthers as a "black extremist "puppet imperialist state." While one can certainly a rgue tha t this is a simplistic
organization" consisting mostly of "hoodlum-type revolutionaries" view of a complex issue, it is difficult to see how being anti-Zionist and anti­
Israel makes one ipso facto anti-Semitic. Certainly th e American Jewish Com·
who stockpile weapons, espouse Marxist-Leninist doctrines, and ter­ mittee is on weak ground when it asserts in its document: "While we do not
rorize black communities. Vice-President Spiro Agnew, exceeding his necessarily equate an ti-Israel or anti-Zionist sentiment with anti-Semitism, the
usual caustic language when dealing with dissenters, declared that Panthers' expression of support for Al Fatah has been so strident and distorted
the Panthers are a "completely irresponsible, anarchist group of crim­ as to make it impossible to make the distinction." But thousands of Jewish
inals." Attorney-General John Mitchell has ruled that "the Panthers Americans who have rallied to the support of th e Black Pan thers do make that
distinction. Moreover, on January 13, 1970, at th e win ter leadership meeting of
are a threat to national security and thus subject to FBI wiretap­ th e Jewish Cultural Clubs and Societies, representing sixty-six New York organi­
ping." zations, the persecution of th e Panthers was protested. "We will do everything
Even liberals have gotten into the popular act of vilifying the in our power," the clubs' resolution sta ted, " to oppose those forces that are now
Black Panthers. Daniel P. Moynihan obviously had the Panthers in trying to use repression, terror and police brutality against the black people and
other minorities in our land, a repression tha t will soon be applied to Jews,
mind when, in his notorious "benign neglect" memorandum to labor, students and others fighting for full freedom and equality for all peoples
President Nixon, he referred to "black extremists" who used "lower­ if it is not halted by the united action of all Americans who cherish democracy."
class" blacks "to threaten white society with the prospect of mass And Rabbi Arth ur J. Lelyveld, head of the American Jewish Congress, declared
arson and pillage." Daniel J. Boorstein, an American historian, di­ on December 16, 1969, in calling for the defense of Panther civil liberties, "No
rector of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of History consideration of which we can conceive would justify lawless activity on the part
of the police."
and Technology, in a paper presented to the House Committee on A criticism of a different nature, most sharply voiced by Harold Cruse, is tha t
Science and Astronautics, referred to the "aggressive ethnicity and f o r a l l i t s revolutionary rhetoric, t h e Black Panther Party works for essentially
racism of groups like the Black Panthers," and accused them of reformist demands. Of course, those wh o voice such criticisms a re clearly unaware
of the essential unity between immediate demands and a long-term revolutionary
goal.
xx i i
xx iv "Ihe Black Panthers Speak Introduction xxv

the other comments on the Black Panthers cited above. The writer When asked about the charges that the Panthers are a violent
ignored the easily ascertainable facts that though the Minutemen group, the feelings of all three men were summed up in the comment
of one of them, Ed Mayo of Clara Maass Hospital in New Jersev:
were arrested with an arsenal that included $ 140,000 worth of arms,
"They're fighting for the same cause as we are in the union-to be
including an anti-tank weapon and a bazooka, two of the Minute­ free and have human dignity. Some people don't see clearly what the
men were released on their own recognizance pending trial, and fight is about because they see only violence. But these people don't
were ultimately given a suspended sentence of six months. Robert see the disgusting things that are happening to us in this country.
Boliver De Pugh, national coordinator of the Rightist paramilitary Every organization has its own way of fighting these things."
organization, was sentenced to four years in prison, to be followed
by five years' probation, for conspiracy and violation of the Federal It may be argued that this finding is hardly convincing since it
Firearms Act after a cache of machine guns was seized in rural reflects the views of members of a militant and progressive trade
Missouri. Minutemen have been treated gently and never harassed by union . But it is not so easy to dismiss reports in the established mass
arresting officials. Contrast this with the treatment meted out to the media . On January 1 3, 1 970, The Wall Street Journal featured on its
New York Panthers, who were arrested and charged with "conspir­ front pag e a lengthy article headed, "Panther Supporters " and sub­
acy "-no actual act at all was charged-to bomb and destroy property headed : "Many Black Americans Voice Strong Backing for Defiant
and lives all over the city. All twenty-one had bail immediately set Militants. " Four reporters had in v est igat ed a sampling of opinion
at one hundred thousand dollars for each alleged conspirator, and among black citizens of San Francisco, New York, Cleveland, and
were not even given a hearing on reduction of bail-a request for it Chicago, and concluded that "a clear majority of blacks support
was denied-until three and a half months after their arrest. both the goals and methods of the Black Pa nthers. An even larger
In an address on March 4, 191 1 , delivered before the Republican percentage believes, moreover, that police officials are determined to
Club of New York City, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, the distinguished crush the party by arresting or killing its key officials. " Here is a
black scholar, declared : "If the question before the court was simply response from one of the blacks who were interviewed :
one of justice between individuals the task would be an easy one, "I dig the Black Panthers. I think a lot of them," says Evord
but a man enters court today to be tried and convicted according Connor who is head of an antipoverty cente r in Yonkers, N.Y., and
to the class he belongs to . . . . The Negro never enters a court in who is black himself. "They appeal to young kids and create a lot
the South as a man, but always as a Negro. He knows that individual of black awareness. They're not just advocating militancy; they're
virtues will not weigh in the court's decision. The natural result of talking about economic and political power. Right now, they're back­
this is that the Negro has no faith in the courts. " On April 24, ing up what they preach, and that's why the man is coming down
1970, Kingman Brewster, president of Yale University, brought Dr. on them."
Du Bois's observation up to date when he said that he was "skepti­ Much of the support for the Black Panthers, The Wall Street
cal of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial any­ Journal pointed out, came from young people who were attracted
where in the United States. " And on July 6, 1 970, The New York by the distinctive uniforms of black berets and black leather jackets,
Times quoted the courageous black jurist, Judge George Crockett of their display of guns, "their avowed determination to overturn the
Detroit's Recorders Court, as saying that while "the public likes to American 'system,' their refusal to back down under intense police
believe that the courts are crystallized in majestic neutrality, the truth pressure. " It continued :
is that they are not. The legal system does not work for blacks now.
But a sizeable number of blacks support the Panthers because
We have all the laws we need but we have too many police and they admire other, less-publicized activities of the Party such as its
government officials who do not live by the laws we have. " Cer­ free-breakfast program for ghetto youngsters, its free medical care
tainly the experience of the Black Panthers in court bears out the program and its war on narcotics use among black youth.
truth of these comments. "The news media never says how strong the Panthers are against
The fearsome picture painted of the Black Panthers by men who narcotics," says Mr. Conner of the Yonkers antipoverty center. "You
have little understanding of their program and little desire to under­ take the kids in Harlem, they sort of envy hustlers-guys who take
stand it is not shared by the black community. Three black members numbers, push dope. But the Panthers are telling kids from grade
of Local 1 1 99 ( Drug and Hospital Workers Union ) , interviewed by school level, don't mess with dope. It works."
the union's magazine in January, 1 970, as to their reaction to the The Wall Street Journal concluded that "Mr. Conner's view Il_l ay
Black Panthers, expressed admiration for them. The report noted : be su rpri si n g t o t ho s e wh i t es wh o re ga rd the Panthers as a rad i cal
xxvi The Black Panthers Speak Introduction xxvii

splinter group without wide support among black Americans. But arose in black communities, and older ones increased their mili­
his' views may be more widely shared among blacks than many tancy. Since the assassination of Malcolm X on February 21, 1965,
whites suppose." the most militant and effective leadership in the black community
In the next two months "those whites" were further surprised. A has been that of the Black Panthers-a name chosen because the
nationwide poll of black people in the United States, conducted by panther is reputed never to make an unprovoked attack but to
Louis Harris for Time magazine (published on March 30, 1970, in defend itself ferociously whenever it is attacked.2
a special issue of Time which for the first time devoted virtually The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was organized in Oak­
an entire issue to one subject ) revealed that while "the vast majority land, California, in the fall of 1966 by two black militants : Huey P.
want to work through the existing system" to further their position, Newton and Bobby G. Seale. ( Seale was Chairman and Newton
9 per cent of the black people across the country, more than two Minister of Defense. ) Newton was born in Louisiana in 1942; when
million black Americans, count themselves as "revolutionaries," and he was a year old, his family moved to California. Although he was
believe that only a "readiness to use violence will ever get them graduated from high school, he became literate by "self determina­
equality." The poll showed that the number of those who believe tion," attended Merritt Junior College and went to law school for
that the blacks "will probably have to resort to violence to win six months. He also attended a music conservatory and mastered the
rights," had risen from 21 per cent in 1966 to 31 per cent in 1970. concert piano. Seale, a musician, carpenter, journeyman sheet metal
The finding also disclosed that while 75 per cent of blacks admired mechanic and a mechanical draftsman, was born in Dallas, Texas,
the NAACP "a great deal," 2 5 per cent had this view of the Black in 1936. He moved with his family to California, and was graduated
Panthers. from Oakland High School after a stint in the Air Force.
Another poll, of black Americans living in New York, San Fran­ Newton and Seale met at Merritt College and worked together
cisco, Detroit, Baltimore, and Birmingham, Alabama, taken by Mar­ to initiate courses in Black History and lay the groundwork for h iring
ket Dynamics, Incorporated, for ABC-1V (broadcast on ABC-1V's more black instructors. They also worked at the North Oakland
"The Panthers," April 13, 1970 ) , disclosed that of the best-known Poverty Center, and both joined the Afro-American Association-a
organizations, the NAACP is regarded as having done most for black nationalist group at Merritt�arly in 1965. They left within
black people over the past two years; the late Martin Luther King's a year, dissatisfied with the group's emphasis on cultural nationalism 8
Southern Christian Leadership Conference came next, with the Black and its middle-class composition . Not content to remain classroom
Panthers showing up in third place. But when it comes to the future, theoreticians, they began working in the black community, knocking
the Panthers are rated the only black group which will increase its on doors and asking the residents of Oakland's ghetto what they
effectiveness if only in a small way, while both the NAACP and needed and wanted. From the answers they received, they developed,
SCLC contributions to the black cause are expected to diminish. after forming the Black Panther Party, its ten-point program. ( See
Sixty-two per cent of the people polled admire what the Black page 2 below. ) "We're going to draw up a basic platform," Newton,
Panthers are doing. who wrote the program, explained, "that the mothers who struggled
Never before in the history of black Americans has an admittedly hard to raise us, that the fathers who worked hard to feed us, that
revolutionary party won such support in the leading black communi­ the young brothers in school who come out of school semi-illiterate,
ties of this country. Yet the Black Panther Party has been in existence saying and reading broken words, and all of these, can read . . . . ''

less than four years. During all this time, Newton and Seale had been reading Malcolm
X and Frantz Fanon, and they were deeply influenced by these
In 1896 the National Association of Colored Men declared that black revolutionaries. (Later, they were to read and study the writings
"the American Negro has at no time in the past been either un­
mindful or indifferent to or failed to assert and contend for his own 2 The "Black Panther" was originally the emblem of the Lowndes County
Freedom Party in Alabama, organized in 1965. The Panther, symbol of black
rights." What was true prior to 1896 has also been true since that militancy, was hailed and copied a t other points across the nation . .
year. The history of black Americans from 1619 to the present has 8 Cultural nationalists see the white man as the oppressor, and make no dis·
been a history of protest. This protest reached a climax in the decade tinction between racist whites and nonracist whites. They also emphasize that a
of the 1960's-the decade of the Civil Rights demonstrations, of the black man cannot be the enemy of the black people. Apart from questioning the
validity of this thesis, Newton and Seale were irritated by the fact tha t the cul·
freedom rides and the sit-ins, of the Black Power movement, of the tural nationalists mainly met and talked and did nothing concrete to end the
rebellions in Watts, Newark, and Detroit. New protest movements oppression in the black ghetto.
xxviii The Black !'anthers Speak I n t roduction xx ix

of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, Ho Chi Minh, and Che other aspects, Oakland was a typical black ghetto. What this means
Guevara.) Both knew that Malcolm had consistently denounced was graphically spelled out by the National Commission on the
white oppressors, but after his visit to the Near East and Africa, Causes and Prevention of Violence, set up under the chairmanship
he had no longer based his philosophy on hatred of whites alone. of Milton S. Eisenhower at the Center for the Study of Law and
Rather, he chose to stress the beauty of black culture, its historic Society in Berkeley, California, August 28, 1 968. In its report sub­
contributions, the joy of black brotherhood and community, and mitted March 2 1 , 1 969, the Commission said :
the wisdom of working with whites whenever it would be useful
for black people to do so-provided that the power to decide policy . . . for the black citizen, the policeman has long since ceased to be
and action alternatives lay in black hands. Modeling themselves on -if indeed he ever was-a neutral symbol of law and order. Studies
Malcolm's philosophy-Newton viewed himself as Malcolm's heir of the police emphasize that their attitudes and behavior towards
and the Black Panther Party as the successor to his Organization of blacks differ vastly from those taken toward whites. Similar studies
show that blacks perceive the police as hostile, prejudiced, and cor­
Afro-American Unity-the founders of the BPP expressed belief in rupt. In the ghetto disorders of the past few years, blacks have often
black nationalism and black culture, but they did not believe either been exposed to indiscriminate police assaults and, not infrequently,
would lead to black liberation . to gratuitous brutality . . . . Many ghetto blacks see the police as an
It was the martyred Malcolm X's emphasis on self-defense and occupying army . . . .
his effort to lead the struggle for freedom "by any means necessary" In view of these facts, the adoption of the idea of self-defense is
that most deeply impressed Newton and Seale, and they frequently not surprising . . . .
quoted his famous statement: "We should be peaceful, law-abiding, The Commission might have added, first, that black Americans
but the time has come to fight back in self-defense whenever and had taken up guns and practiced self-defense in the struggle against
wherever the black man is being unjustly and unlawfully attacked. slavery, kidnappers of fugitive slaves, anti-Negro rioters, and lynchers,
If the government thinks I am wrong for saying this, then let the and, secondly, that organized white and black workers had also armed
government start doing its job." Newton and Seale read and reread themselves and used guns in self-defense against armed vigilantes,
Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, and they were impressed by Pinkerton Detectives, militias, and police serving the interests of
the black psychiatrist's thesis that revolutionary violence was nec­ antiunion employers .
essary in order for the oppressed to get the oppressors' boot off their "The readiness of police to use their weapons is a tenet of black­
neck and that it was essential in order to achi1"'e the transformation town life," W. H. Ferry has observed . "The cop's trigger-finger is the
or rebirth of the black personality._ By fighting back, the black man gavel of justice in blacktown.' To meet this ever-pressing problem
would assert his dignity as a man .4 The Black Panthers repeatedly facing the black people of Oakland, the Black Panther Party began
reminded black Americans that their future was linked to their past, to operate as an armed association for community protection against
to the experience of such slave rebels as Toussaint L'Ouverture, the police. ( Carrying rifles and other unconcealed weapons was then
Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner, who did not legal in California. ) Newton, a meticulous student of every legal
hesitate to use revolutionary violence in their efforts to free their aspect of the right of citizens to arm themselves, instructed all party
people from slavery. members in the basic constitutional rights governing arrests and
In its early phase, the BPP emphasized Point No. 7 of its ten­ gun laws. He pointed to the second amendment of the Constitution
point program: "We want an immediate end to police brutality and of the United States and read the words-"the right of the people
murder of black people.' In its relations with the police as in all to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Newton went to great
4 It is interesting to note tha t the personality of Frederick Douglass was trans­ lengths to stress two points about armed self-defense : first, they were
formed when as a slave he fough t back, risking death , against Edward Covey, operating within the law as defined by gun regulations and the
the slave breaker.After h aving been Bogged daily un til he was "broken in body,
soul and spirit," he found th e courage one day to tum on h is tormentor and
constitutional right to bear arms; second, the arms were to serve a
soundly thrashed th e slave breaker. The result was tha t Covey abandoned the political purpose and were not to be viewed in purely military terms.
whip and ignored Douglass for the four remaining months of hire. "111e battle The Party established a system of anned patrol cars, completely
with Mr. Covey was th e turning-point in my career," Douglass wrote later. "I legal, carrying both guns and lawbooks. The Panthers trailed police
was a changed being after tha t fight.I was noth ing before, I was a man now ...
with a renewed determination to be a free man ....I now resolved that, how­
cars through the slums of Oakland with guns and a lawbook, to halt
ever long I migh t remain a slave in form, th e day had passed forever when I could police brutality. Whenever black men or women were stopped by
.
be a slave in fact.. ." the police, armed Panthers would be on the scene, making sure that
xxx The Black Panthers Speak I n t rod uction xxxi

their constitutional rights were not violated. The Oakland police black people, explains that the dropping of "for Self Defense " re­
were outraged, but the black community was impressed, especially sulted from the understanding on the part of the Panther leaders
after Newton, Seale and a half dozen other young Panthers cal ml y "that a broader political offensive was necessary to realize the self­
faced down a carload of police outside their Oakland headquarters. defense they sought. It [ the BPP] took a political and organizational
More important, the brutality and harassment directed against black leap forward that carried it beyond the positions occupied by any
men and women tapered off. Little wonder then that news of the of the other organizations of the black liberation movement. It began
Party's existence spread rapidly, and the armed and disciplined groups to measure the strength of capitalism in the United States and to
of Panthers in the Bay Area began to be the talk of black com­ analyze the position and weight of the forces aligned against the
munities on the Coast. blacks. " Patterson points out that the Panther leadership challenged
Just how the Party operated in its early phase was shown in the the "illusion that the black people, of historical necessity, had to go
action taken around the death of Denzil Dowell at the beginning it alone . . . and began to see that the unity of the oppressed
of 1967. Dowell, a black youth living in North Richmond, California, was something for which a desperate fight had to be made. " He also
had been shot and killed by the police, whose official account of observes that the Black Panther Party not only "repudiated the anti­
the slaying contradicted dozens of black eyewitnesses. The Dowell white abstraction, " but rejected anti-Communism . "The Panthers, "
family called in the Panthers to investigate, and the Party decided he notes, "are the first black-led organization to understand the
to hold a street-comer rally in the neighborhood to expose the facts menace of anti-Communism and unqualifiedly to express opposition
of the slaying and the political importance of self-defense. The to it. "
Panthers, assuming the police would try to stop the rally, decided To this, one should add that the Black Panthers, while by no
to demonstrate their point on the spot and set up armed guards means the first blacks in the United States to oppose the capitalist
around the rally site. system and espouse the cause of Socialism, were the first to do so
Hundreds of black people turned out, many carrying their own as a separate organization . Heretofore, blacks who favored a Socialist
weapons. The police who came to stop the rally quickly turned away, solution for the evils of capitalist society-and there have been many
except for one, caught in the middle of the crowd, who sat quietly since the end of the Civil War-<lid so either through the Socialist
and listened to the speeches. Several Panthers addressed the crowd, Party, the Socialist Labor Party, or the Communist Party. Here they
explaining the Party's program. Then Huey Newton spoke. "The became members of parties made up mainly of whites. The Black
masses of the people want peace. The masses of the people do not Panthers, though favoring Socialism and coalitions with other op­
want war. The Black Panther Party advocates the abolition of war. pressed groups, retain their separate identity as a revolutionary
But at the same time, we realize that the only way you can get rid of movement.
war, many times, is through a process of' war. Therefore, the only While the Black Panthers were receiving attention for their self­
way you can get rid of guns is to get rid of the guns of the oppressor. defense activities, by 1 967 they were already deeply involved in a
The people must be able to pick up guns, to defend themselves . . . . " wide variety of other work. The Party was protesting rent eviction,
At that point a police helicopter began buzzing over the crowd. informing welfare recipients of their legal rights, teaching classes in
Newton pointed up and shouted, "And always remember that the Black History, and demanding and winning school traffic lights. The
spirit of the people is greater than the man's technology." The installation of a street light at 5 5th and Market Streets is an im­
crowds cheered, and hundreds signed up to work for the Party that portant event in the Party's early history. Several black children
day. had been killed coming home from school, and the community was
After the meeting, the first number of The Black Panther, the enraged at the indifference of the authorities. Newton and Seale told
official organ of the Party, was issued. It was two sheets of legal­ Oakland's power structure that if the light was not installed, the Party
sized mimeographed paper, printed on both sides. The headline would come down with its guns and block traffic so the children
was WHY WAS DENZIL DOWELL KILLED? ( See page 9 could cross in safety. The traffic light was installed.
below. ) About five to six thousand copies were printed and dis­ At this time, the Panthers had about seventy-five members, and
tributed in the black community of Richmond. were based primarily in the Bay Area. But the Party was attracting
Early in 1967 the Party dropped "for Self Defense" from its title. statewide attention, and new recruits were joining every day. One
William L. Patterson, a veteran black Communist and a longtime of them was Eldridge Cleaver, who had spent nine years .in priso �
figure in the struggle for civil rights and for the legal defense of anc't:-was out on parole; he was writing for Ramparts, a radical, anh-
xxx i i 'The Black Panthers Speak I n t roduction xxx i i i

war, muckraking magazine published in San Francisco. Early in 1 967 thirty members of the Party went, carrying firearms. On May 2,
Cleaver got his first sight of an armed guard of Black Panthers, 1967, while the gun bill was being debated, the armed Panthers,
organized to escort Betty Shabazz ( Malcolm X's widow) on her twenty-four men and six women, walked up the steps of the Capitol
appearance at Black House, San Francisco. Here is how he was building, and Bobby Seale read a statement, written by Newton,
affected : asserting the Party's principles ( see page 40 below ) . Then the
Panthers walked into the visitors' gallery of the legislative Chambers.
The most beautiful sight I had ever seen. Four Black men wearing When the police, press and TV cameramen arrived, creating a
black berets, powder-blue shirts, black leather jackets, black trousers, flurry of excitement, the Panthers left the building, read the state­
shiny black shoes-and each with a gun! In front was Huey P. New­
ton. Beside him was Bobby Seale. A few steps behind him was Bobby ment again, and started to leave. At this point they were all arrested
Hutton. Where was my mind at? Blown. on a charge of conspiring to disturb the peace and held for several
days until bailed out.
Cleaver joined the Party and became Minister of Information . Newton had planned the action carefully and had taken every
Later, the publication of his widely acclaimed Soul on Ice, written precaution to make sure it was legal at every step. But while members
in prison, gave the Party nationwide publicity. Kathleen Cleaver, of the "gun lobby" who were also present registering opposition to
Eldridge's wife, also joined the Party and became Communications the new law went unnoticed in the press, the specter of "blacks­
Secretary. with-guns-invading-the legislature"-as the headlines the following
"We're the other half, the equal half," explained Artie Seale [Mrs . day read-was too much for the Establishment, and the news media
Bobby Seale, who also became a member of the Party] . "At first, reported the awesome event across the nation. None of this was
when Bobby and Huey were just starting the organization, the women entirely unexpected by the Panthers. 'Tm going to show you how
hung back. They felt they belonged at home in their kitchens because smart brother Huey was when he planned Sacramento," Bobby Seale
that had always been their role. But we began to find out that the stated. "He said, 'Now the papers are going to call us thugs and
pigs• don't care that we were women. So we had to change our way hoodlums . . . . But the brothers on the block, who the man's been
of looking at ourselves." calling thugs and hoodlums for 1 00 years, they're going to say,
111e Party's initial successes had already reverberated to the state "Them's some out of sight thugs and hoodlums up there." ' . . .
legislature in Sacramento, where California Assemblyman Don Mul­ Who is these thugs and hoodlums? Huey was smart enough to know
ford introduced a gun-control bill designed as an attack on the that the black people were going to say, 'Well, they've been calling
Panthers. Huey Newton developed a plan to protest the state as­ us niggers, thugs and hoodlums for 400 years, that ain't gon' hurt
sembly's attempt to pass a bill infringing on the Panthers' right to me, I'm going to check out what these brothers is doing!' "
bear arms as guaranteed by the second amendment to the Consti· To be sure, Bobby Seale and several others served a six-month
tution . Although it was decided that he should not go to Sacramento, prison sentence as a result of the action and the gun restrictions
G The expression "pig," originally signifying the police and later extended to
were passed. But the Panthers were now nationally known, and within
all elements in the capi talist power structure, was first popularized by th e Black a few months branches had been established in Los Angeles, Ten­
Pan thers and later adopted by other radical groups, including many student pro· nessee, Georgia, New York and Detroit. Hundreds of black ghetto
testers . I t is in teresting to note that the Panthers were not the fi rst to use the youth were attracted to the party and its program.
concept of the "pig" to denote evil forces in American society . In The New Flag,
an anti-imperialist poem by Henry Blake Fuller, published in 1 899, American
But Sacramento initiated a campaign of hysteria against the Pan­
imperialism is depicted as a "hog . " In the in troduction to his poem, Fuller pre· thers on a nationwide scale, and most white Americans recoiled in
sen ted the following " Picture of th e Grea t Expansion Argumen t." fear and horror at the sight of armed blacks. To the Panthers this
reaction was to be expected. In time, the Panther program would
,.- ., ,,,,,-- ..
/ win allies among whites who would understand that they, too, were
/
-.;\\) victimized by the system. "We feel there are two things happening
\�-- - · "' < in this country," said Eldridge Cleaver. "You have a black colony
In view of th e militant stand taken by th e Black Pan thers agai nst imperialism and you have the white mother country and you have two different
as a worldwide system whose center is in the United States, it is worth noting that sets of political dynamics involved in these two relationshi ps. W hat's
leading black Americans, such as W. E . B. Du Bois, Kelly Miller, and Lewis H . called for in the mother country is a revolution and there's a black
Douglass, son o f Frederick Douglass, were members o f the American An ti­
Imperialist League, founded in 1 89 8 .
liberation called for in the black colony."
xxxiv The Black Panth e rs Speak I n troduction xxxv

Following the Sacramento action and the legal defense they and white, rallied to his defense. During the same period, the Peace
had built around it, the Panthers continued their operations in the and Freedom Party emerged as a political force, first in California,
Oakland black community. The police patrols functioned, as did the and then across the country. The PFP was a coalition mainly of
Party's educational work, around its ten-point program, and the white left-liberals and radicals organized as a third-party electoral
circulation of the weekly Party newspaper grew. Newton made it alternative in opposition to the war in Vietnam and in support of
clear that the Party was "the people's party," and was "like an oxen, black liberation. The Panthers saw, in the emergence of the PFP and
to be ridden by the people and serve the needs of the people." I f its campaign machinery, a chance for a wider campaign in Newton's
black children were being harassed i n the schools, the Panthers defense. They indicated a willingness to join forces with the PFP,
organized mothers to patrol the halls while armed Party members but insisted that any "functional coalition" with· whites could be
stood guard outside. formed only on the basis of support for the demand to "Free Huey."
As the Party's community activities increased and its successes Because of fear of the liberal element that association with the
grew, so did the intensity of police harassment. Police bulletin Panthers would antagonize potential "respectable" voters, the PFP
boards featured descriptions of Party members and their cars. On at first hesitated to join forces with the Black Panther Party. But
foot or driving around, Panthers would be stopped and arrested on as the time approached for the PFP to file its ballot petitions at
charges ranging from petty traffic violations to spitting on the side­ the end of 1 967, a shortage of signatures brought the issue to the fore.
walk. Newton was stopped almost daily by the police intent on The radicals, who had favored the coalition from the beginning, won
arresting him . out and the alliance was formed. The Panthers took the petitions
Early i n the morning o f October 28, 1 967, an Oakland police ca r into the black community and put the PFP on the ballot. Huey
reported over the radio that one o f the occupants was asking for a Newton, Bobby Seale and Kathleen Cleaver ran as candidates for
license check on a tan VW and that he planned to stop it at Seventh state offices on the PFP ticket, but on the basis of the Panther
and Willow. "It's a known Panther vehicle," Officer John Frey ten-point program . Eldridge Cleaver was to be the California PFP's
radioed. presidential candidate, and later he won the national PFP nomina­
The driver of the VW was Huey Newton, and the car was regis­ tion. Even though his name was kept off several state ballots ( in­
tered in the name of LaVerne Williams, his fiancee. The car was cluding California ) because of his youth, the official election tallies
stopped, and Frey began to write out a citation before any informa­ gave him almost 200,000 votes. Moreover, his candidacy had enabled
tion on the license check came over the radio. Newton, who had him to bring the program of the Black Panthers and the significance
identified himself, was ordered out of the car. As he walked to of the "Free Huey" campaign to thousands around the country,
the police cars parked behind it, shooting was said to have started . espt�cially to scores of college campuses.
A few moments later Officer Frey was dead, another was wounded, The basis of the coalition with the PFP was that the Panthers
and Huey Newton was under arrest with four bullet wounds in his would set the PFP line on all issues related to the black community.
stomach. When he recovered, he was charged with murder and As Cleaver summed it up : "We approached the whole thing from
kidnapping, and locked in Alameda County jail without bail. the point of view of international relations. We feel that our coali­
Newton immediately proclaimed his innocence, and the Black tion is part of our foreign policy . . . . " Representatives of the "black
Panther Party mobilized its forces for a "Free Huey" defense cam­ colony" and the "white mother country" had joined in an alliance
paign . A number of blacks insisted that the Party hire a black lawyer which respected the rights of black people to self-determination.
to defend their leader, but the Panthers argued for a man with But a number of black radicals who were exponents of the
sufficient experience to win, especially with experience in defense doctrine of Black Power and of the necessity for blacks to form
of dissenters. Although it aroused considerable resentment among independent all-black political movements viewed the alliance with
cultural nationalists and caused a number of blacks to abandon the whites with considerable dismay, and some even charged a betrayal.
campaign to " Free Huey," the Party engaged the services of Charles The issue was complicated by the fact that precisely at this time,
R. Garry, a white lawyer with a background of successfully defending the Panthers were in the process of forming a "merger" with SN CC,
radicals and trade unionists. When asked what fee his firm would which was formally announced at an Oakland "Free Huey" rally on
charge, Ga rry replied, "Let's not worry about that. Let's worry about February 17, 1 968-Newton's birthday-and which was unus �al not
the fact that we want to free Huey." only for the size of the gathering, but for the fact that it was
While Newton was in prison awaiting his trial, thousands, black policed not by the police of Oakland but by the blacks themselv es
 xxxvi lhe Black Panthers Speak I n t roduction xxx v i i

-the Panthers. At the meeting, the principal leaders of SNCC­ defense efforts and the PFP campaign, provided the Panthers with
Stokely Carmichael, James Forman, and H. Rap Brown-were named an excellent opportunity not only to defend Newton but to expose
to prominent positions in the Black Panther Party, with the leaders the racist character of the entire legal system .
of both groups announcing a plan to form a mass black political The testimony during the trial-over four thousand pages-in­
party. cludes urban sociology, black history and the Declaration of Inde­
The "merger" was short-lived and began to crumble as soon as it pendence. At one point early in the proceedings, Superior Court
was fonned. Basically, the reason was the difference in outlook on Judge Monroe Friedman said, "I feel like I 've taken a course in
the question of forming alliances with nonblacks. The Panthers sociology the last few days." Viewing Newton as a "political prisoner"
would not accept the view of the SNCC leaders that all whites were and the trial as a "political trial," Charles R. Garry, his attorney,
evil and only blacks were wortJ1y of being considered for inclusion made it a practice to enable those in the courtroom and thousands
in any struggle which had black liberation as its goal. "We know that on the outside to learn the racist nature of court procedure in the
you don't have to be white to be a pig," the Panthers put it. "The United States : that black people are virtually excluded from jury
pig comes in all colors." By the same token, the victims of the panels, often cannot afford bail or are rejected by bondsmen, tried
"pigs," while primarily the black people, were also men and women by juries not of their peers and under laws they did not participate
of other colors who faced exploitation, poverty and repression.6 in making, and that they receive consistently heavier sentences . All
Soon after the PFP campaign and the defense of Newton got of this aside from the police harassment described so fully by the
under way, the anticipated police repression began. On January 1 6, Kerner Commission. In his address to the jury, Garry pleaded :
1968, the police raided the Cleavers' home. " From then on," said "White America, listen. The answer is not to put Huey Newton in
Kathleen Cleaver, "the harassment of the Party intensified." A month the gas chamber. The answer is to listen to him so that black brothers
later, following a raid on his home, Seale was arrested and charged and sisters can walk down the street with dignity."
with conspiracy to commit murder. Newly formed Party branches In his own testimony Newton had denied having fired any shot.
were raided across the country. On April 3, a public Party meetin g He had been wounded almost immediately after the car was stopped;
was broken up by armed searches by Oakland police. he said that he had slumped to the ground unconscious, and that
On April 4, 1 968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, and "I don't know what happened ." He did not have a gun when he
in the next few days riots exploded in the black ghettos of over left his car. Doctors testified at the trial that, indeed, Newton's
one hundred cities in the United States. But Oakland was not among wound was compatible with his claim that he had been unconscious .
them. It was the Black Panther Party, pictured daily in the press Garry asked that the jury be given instructions that unconscious­
as "gun-toting crazies who shriek a_nd practice violence," which was ness, if proved, constituted a complete defense to a charge of criminal
responsible. In his report for the National Commission on the Causes homicide. But Judge Friedman refused to give such instructions.
and Prevention of Violence, Jerome H . Skolnick acknowledged that After deliberating for twenty-eight hours and fifty minutes, the j ury
the Black Panther Party had to be "given credit for keeping Oak­ handed down a contradictory verdict. It found Newton guilty of
land cool after the assassination of Martin Luther King." He noted, "voluntary manslaughter" in the death of policeman John Frey, and
correctly, that "this has not stemmed from any desire on their innocent of shooting patrolman Herbert Heanes . ( Garry had already
[ the Panthers ] part to suppress black protest in the community. won an acquittal of the kidnapping charge. ) As Garry noted im­
Rather it stemmed from a sense that the police are waiting for a mediately after the verdict : "It makes no sense on legal or evi­
chance to shoot down blacks in the street." dentiary grounds . . . . He either had a gun or he didn't." But he was
Two days after the King assassination, dozens of police opened a Black Panther, and he had to be put away.
fire on a home where a Panther meeting was taking place. Bobby Newton was sentenced to two to fifteen years . On May 29, 1970,
Hutton, the first member of the Party to join after Newton and the California Court of Appeals, in a fifty-one-page opinion, reversed
Seale, was murdered while trying to surrender and Eldridge Cleaver the conviction. It ruled that the trial judge had erred in not in­
was wounded and placed under arrest. structing the jury that if it accepted Newton's contention that he
The trial of Huey Newton lasted from July 15 to September 8, was unconscious at the time of the shooting, this would have con­
and marked a high point both in Panther and Black History. The stituted a complete defense and would have resulted in a verdict of
public attention given to the trial, resulting in large part from the acquittal. The court also cited other errors it noted had occurred
e See Eldridge Cleaver's letter to Stokely Carmichael, page 1 04 below. during Newton's eight-week trial. Although Newton had already
 xxx v i i i '! h e B l a c k Panthers Speak Introduction xxxix

served over two years in prison, and although it agreed that he of having "committed unlawful and coercive acts, often against the
should have been acquitted, the Court still refused him bail pend­ black community itself," declared :
ing the state's appeal to a higher court.
The Oakland police had expected Newton to die in the gas cham­ The story unfolded by th.e Chicago grand jury makes it appear that
ber, and they were enraged by the verdict of manslaughter. Only the law-enforcement agencies, more than the .Panthers, were acting
out a conspiracy. The police, following Federal tips, sprayed the Pan­
hours after it was announced, the Panther office was riddled with thers' lodging with massive gunfire, even though no more than one
bullets. On September 27, the day Newton was sentenced, the courts shot was found to have been fired from the inside. Chicago officials
reversed the decision on Cleaver's parole and gave him sixty days subsequently engaged in a deliberate publicity campaign to depict
to return to prison. In November, Cleaver went into foreign exile the Panthers as the aggressors. Police laboratories, lacking either in
rather than return to prison, where he believed he would be killed. competence or integrity, provided erroneous findings to serve the
But this was only the beginning of a deliberate campaign to destroy same purpose.
the Black Panther Party. Late in November, 1968, Seale publicly Against a background of doctored evidence and coached police wit­
stated that the Party had been heavily infiltrated by police agents. nesses, it is not surprising that the State's Attorney, who initially had
By December, Party branches everywhere were under attack by local played a leading role in building the public case against the Panthers,
police, with clear indications that the attacks were directed from finally dropped all charges against them. A more pertinent question
now is whether a case which left two men dead can properly be
Washington . On February 7, 1970, Mayor Wes Uhlman of Seattle closed with the mere demotion of three police officers.
disclosed that he had turned down a Federal proposal for a raid on
Black Panther headquarters. His statement confirmed the widely Another "pertinent question" is whether The New York Times
reported information that Treasury Department Agents have been will report how an organization which it accuses of having com­
largely responsible for provoking and organizing nationwide raids mitted "unlawful and coercive acts" against "the black community
against the Black Panther Party. itself," how the Black Panther Party, while compelled to devote a
On December 5, 1 969, Charles R. Garry told newsmen that since large part of its time to defense activities, is carrying out the Party's
January 1 , 1%9, twenty-eight members of the Black Panther Party original "serve the people" program in the black communities. Four
had been killed by the police. 7 At a press interview on December 19, programs have been launched : free breakfast for children, free health
the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union de­ clinics, liberation schools and petition campaigns for community
clared : "The record of police actions across the nation against the control of the police. ( See page 1 68 below. ) Every branch has moved
Black Panther Party forms a prima facie case for the conclusion that to implement at least the breakfast program and the police petitions.
law enforcement officials are waging a drive against the black militant The Black Panthers have felt the type of repression that has been
organization resulting in various civil liberties violations . . . [and experienced by radical and labor groups throughout our history, but
that] high national officials, by their statements and actions, have in addition, they are black and they are experiencing the type of
helped to create the climate of oppression and have encouraged repression that only black revolutionaries can experience in a racist
local police to institute the crackdown." The ACLU released a list society. Yet the evidence points to the conclusion that the Panthers
of forty-eight major police-Panther "incidents." are continuing to grow and to advance their program, and that they
The whole world knows of the murder of Fred Hampton and are gaining wide support among increasing numbers of people­
Mark Clark, killed by an invasion of Chicago police as they slept. black, brown, yellow, red, and white. There already is a Black Panther
As usual the police claimed that they had been attacked by the Party in England.
Panthers, but so flimsy was the claim that a Federal Grand Jury On June 19, 1 970, the Panthers and their supporters gathered on
investigation labeled it false, and the case against the seven Panthers the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., to hear the
who survived the raid has been dismissed. ( No action, however, was Black Panther Party issue a call for a "revolutionary people's con­
taken to bring the guilty police to justice. ) In an editorial entitled stitutional convention" to be convened on September 7, Labor Day,
"Panthers and the Law," The New York Times ( May 1 8, 1970 ) , in Philadelphia . The gathering was in observance of the anniversary
while engaging in the typical anti-Panther diatribes, accusing them of the Emancipation Proclamation, officially dated January 1, 1 863,
7 The entire issue of The Black Panther of February 2 1 , 1970, is devoted to but actually delivered on June 19. The statement of the BPP, read
listing the victims of government harassment from May 2, 1 967, to December, by Chief of Staff David Hilliard, declared, "The end result of the
1969 . The "Special Issue" is entitled "Evidence and I n ti midation of Fascist Emancipation Proclamation was supposed to be the freedom and
Crimes by U .S .A." liberation of the black people from the cruel shackles of slavery;
xi The Black Panthers Speak I n t roduction xii

yet one hundred and seven years later black people still are not free. copies of the Party's weekly, radical journals, and the underground
Where is that freedom?" The statement documented the "unbroken and student papers. It is the purpose of this volume to correct
chain of abuse" committed against black people by the ruling class, this situation . Here in their own words are the views, the policies
including the murder of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and and objectives of the black men and women who have in a short
hundreds of ordinary black citizens. ( For the full text of the mani­ time built one of the most significant movements in the entire
festo, see page 267. ) history of black Americans, as well as those of men and women of
other races and colors-Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans, Chinese­
In February, 1 969, Mayor of San Francisco Joseph Alioto told Americans, and Poor Whites-who have been influenced by the
a Presbyterian convention that the Black Panthers "encouraged vio­ Panthers to build a similar movement in their own communities.
lence." Challenged from the audience by . the Director of the Com­ One does not necessarily have to agree with their philosophy or the
mission on Religion and Race, the Mayor retorted : "Have you ever solution they hold out for the evils of our society. But every
read the ten commandments of the Black Panther Party? . . . Did American owes it to himself at least to understand what the Black
you like that section about robbing and raping?" The reference ( a Panthers are saying.
perfect example o f the "big lie" ) was actually t o the "8 Points of It may be argued by some that the present volume may derive its
Attention" which the Panthers print in every issue of their weekly significance from the fact that it appears at a time when the Black
newspaper, and, as the reader will see if he turns to page 6, these Panther Party is doomed to extinction because of the nationwide
"commandments" actually encourage the opposite of what the repression against its leaders and members. David Hilliard, the
Mayor of San Francisco charged. But how many in the audience had Party's national chief of staff, and, at the time this is written (July,
ever read The Black Panther and how many who listened to him 1970 ) , its highest ranking officer out of jail, rejected this viewpoint.
over the air or read the account in the next morning's newspaper "I don't think that we can say," he wrote in The Black Panther
had ever seen the actual text of the "8 Points of Attention"? In his of January 3, 1970, "the organized attempt to destroy the B.P.P.
interview with Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers, late in June, 1 969, Lee was successful . What it has done, is that it brought to the attention
Lockwood asked the Minister of Information for the Black Panther of the American people the atrociousness of the American Govern­
Party : "But is it a Panther policy to tell somebody to take a gun ment, in tenns of its subjects . . . . But as far as their successfulness
and hold up a store?" Cleaver replied : "If you listen, you will not is concerned, they're not successful. They can never exterminate the
hear anyone saying that it is a Panther policy except those who are Black Panther Party because the Black Panther Party is not just a
saying it at the behest of the pigs and to help the pigs. So just party for itself but rather it's a party for the people." While I am
listen to what the Panthers are saying. . . . " aware of the effectiveness of government and vigilante repression in
What the Black Panthers have been saying has been public in­ destroying a large number of past radical and labor movements which
formation since the first issue of its weekly paper was published on seemed to pose a threat to the established order in America, I am
April 2 5, 1 967, a year after the Party was organized in Oakland, inclined to agree with David Hilliard. I am con fident that the Black
California. Each week thereafter The Black Panther made its ap­ Panthers will continue to speak for a long time to come.
pearance, carrying the Ten-Point Program and Rules and Regulations
of the Party, editorials, speeches by leading Black Panthers, inter­
views with a number of them, poetry, art, letters and dispatches
from various parts of the Third World . In addition, many of the
leading radical journals such as The Guardian, the Daily World, and
the People's World, and the less radical weekly, Village Voice, the
chief underground papers, among them The Movement, Rat, Nickel
Review, and Quicksilver, and student newspapers like The Rag of
the University of Texas, have featured articles about the program
and interviews with leaders of the Black Panthers .
In short, there has been no lack of information as to the program,
policies and objectives of the Black Panther Party. Unfortunately, it
has been easier to read distortions in the mass media than to obtain