The first item is an article by Gary Brown which is based on discussions with leading members of the Los Angeles gangs, the Bloods and the Crips. One of the sources was a lengthy conversation held with truce leader, Dewayne Holmes, at the WASCO State Prison in California. It gives an incisive background to the political and social conditions from which the gangs were created.
The second is an article written by Adrian Wood and Nutan Rajguru on the history, program and policy of the Black Panther Party. It begins:
“Formed in 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was the largest Black revolutionary organization that has ever existed.”This fact alone justifies a full study of the organization by all revolutionaries. This article provides a concise summary of the main features of the party’s development and suggests reasons for its’ decline in the mid-70s.
We would recommend further reading on the Black Panthers, of which the best material is co-founder, Bobby Seale’s classic, Seize the Time, (published by Black Classic Press) and the more recent This Side of Glory by David Hilliard and Lewis Cole (published by Little Brown).
The third article is a compilation of the five part series on the civil rights movement and published in the Panther newspaper. Written by Colin De Freitas, it explains the principal events, processes and lessons of the huge Black rebellion which swept the USA over a period spanning 25 years.
These three articles deal with aspects of the African American experience. It often seems that there is a lot of coverage of the American situation and perhaps not sufficient material on Britain but there are important reasons for this.
Firstly, Black people have been in America for nearly 500 years, much longer than is the case for Britain. They also form a much larger proportion of the population – 13% in the US compared to 5% in Britain. Therefore, they have a much longer history of struggle from which there are enormous lessons to be learnt for our struggle here.
There are of course important differences which we need to take account of but the Black experience in America is more comparable to the situation in Britain than any other minority experience, even in the rest of Europe. More importantly, trends in the US influence events in Britain. It is not just in the cultural sphere but in political developments that the American experience is reflected here.
So, in many respects it is thee foundation on which the Black movement is based and is equally relevant to the African/Caribbean and Asian sections of the population.
Lorraine White’s contribution to this pamphlet, on the History of Blacks in Britain, outlines the most important landmarks of the Black British existence, demonstrating the concentrated experience which we have gathered in just over 40 years.
It also shows how the American movement interacted with the struggle here and how the response if the British ruling class to the upheavals of 1981 was itself borrowed from the strategy of the American rulers when they were faced with a similar crisis in the 1960s and 70s.
None of this material is intended as a full treatment of the issues and we would actively encourage further reading on all these topics.
Written material, discussions and speeches are but one side of the story. There is little point in learning about our history, which is predominantly a history of struggle, if we do not put that knowledge to good use.
None of our material is written for entertainment value or merely as a history lesson. History is not just a series of unconnected events. It is above all, a process involving huge layers of people trying to determine their own destiny.
We hope that the reader is able to learn from the articles produced here but our foremost desire is that it may lead to an active involvement in the struggle for our liberation.
Los Angeles Gangs: The Bloods and the Crips
CRIPs stood for Community Resources for Independent People. It was styled on the Black Panther Party which was formed 3 years earlier, by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, further down the west coast in Oakland.
There were many organizations springing up around the same time all over the country with the same ideas of protecting and serving the community.
Like so many of these organizations, their commitment to these basic values was not given the opportunity to run its course.
Individuals, marked out by police as leaders, were targeted and arrested on various bogus charges then convicted on the flimsiest of evidence.
Many organizations were pitted against each other through the work of informants and undercover FBI agents who would provoke confrontations as well as provide information as to the whereabouts and movements of individuals. Others were just plain murdered by the police.
The ferocity with which police departments went after the Black community, particularly young Black men, is shown by the fact that by 1971, 2 million Blacks were being arrested each year. The fear of the Black community producing any more Huey P. Newtons or Malcolm Xs, of the development of a strong revolutionary movement were the main reasons behind such police action and J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program).
Thus, any spirit of resistance was literally harassed, imprisoned or murdered out of the community. Gangs however remained, serving a different purpose.
With large amounts of Blacks being railroaded into prison, you could imagine the social impact. Virtually thousands of youths would be picked up by the police for no given reason, taken to police stations, mug-shotted, fingerprinted and then held until their families were notified and picked them up.
At a time when the availability of jobs were decreasing; to be young, Black and have a police record meant that the chances of finding a job was almost nil.
If you combine this with the steady removal of social provisions and the marginalization of whole sections of communities, it is not surprising that social relations began to suffer. The destruction of the Black family is a very real phenomenon.
It should be noted that during the very same period of the n70s, whilst Black communities were being forced into the lowest strata of society, “affirmative action” programs were working away to create a Black middle class.
Though in relation to the whole Black population they were a very small number, they occupied positions in city, state and federal government; worked inside corporate America and ran their own businesses. This class was purposefully and knowingly created by the establishment to give the impression that they could make it, if only they kept their heads down and noses clean.
In reality a culture of survival has now gripped a large section of Black America. When people cannot eat or clothe their children they will steal to survive. A person without a job who has been influenced by the rampant materialism of the dominant culture can be recruited into criminal activity. The illegal economies of crime and crack have become the only means of survival for many people.
In amongst such conditions, children are the most vulnerable. Society’s alienation of these youths means that the only place they can find respect, kinship and power is within a gang. The bond between gang members is so strong that many will kill or die for each other, no question. A gang has been described as being “your religion, your family, your college, your everything.”
However, the current level of violence cannot be explained by these factors alone. The stigma of Black people being called ‘naturally aggressive’ is over 500 years old but the explanation for violence cannot be linked to genes or biological make-up. Violence is learned behavior.
A child that is beaten frequently and unjustly will learn to resort to violence against others. Similarly, a community that is constantly visited with unjust killings and beatings at the hands of an oppressive police force can learn to settle conflicts through violent means.
The internalization of problems caused by external factors, by then, has taken place.
Los Angeles Police Department
The steady criminalization process against Blacks still rolls on today. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has earned for itself an infamous reputation under the guidance of former Chief Daryl Gates. On the streets it is looked upon as the only legalized gang. Police officers are viewed as no more than gang-bangers with badges.On a plaque above the entrance to the LA Police Training Center are the words “through these walls walk the world’s finest officers.” By the time Chief Gates finished with them they are some of the world’s most brutal.
Between 1986 and 1991 there were 2,611 citizen allegations of excessive force against LAPD officers. This is but a tiny fraction of the total number of incidents of police brutality since filing a complaint against the police is seen as a waste of time. Between 1986 and 1990, 1,400 officers were investigated on suspicion of using excessive force, less than 1% were prosecuted. (LA Times)
Gates has been quoted as saying: “I think that people believe that the only [policing] strategy is to harass people and make arrests for inconsequential types of things. Well that’s part of our strategy, no doubt about it.”
Daryl Hicks, a resident of South Central, recalls when he was 13 or 14 years old that “police would roll through the neighborhood and ask you: ‘Have you been to jail?’ If you told them you hadn’t, they would take you to jail. They would take you to jail so they could fingerprint you, so they could take your picture, then they let you go. Now all my friends have been fingerprinted and mug-shotted for nothing. That’s just the start of the brutality.”
Former LAPD Black cop Don Jackson recalls operation CRASH which stood for Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums. “Massive sweeps ran from 1987 to 1990. In one year 50,000 people were taken to jail without a blink. The large percentage had no criminal charge sustained against them, there was no significant reduction in crime. So it was simply a massive engagement of a denial of constitutional and civil rights… they’ve continued to have sweeps ever since then.”
Currently, nearly 1 out of 4, or 25%, of black males between 18 and 25 are either on parole, probation or in jail, compared with 6% of white male. There are about 1,000,000 people incarcerated in state and federal prisons in the US, 51% are African-American, Latino or other minorities.
The rate for youth held in short-term detention of ‘boot camps’ as they are usually known, increased by 15% from 1980 to 1990. The entire criminal justice system gets into motion, criminalizing layers upon layers of Black youths day on day, year on year. There are now more Blacks caught up in the criminal justice system than go to college.
Police who enter the LAPD are given paramilitary training. Its purpose, to desensitize and dehumanize officers so that when they hit the streets they have no problem in treating people in an inhumane manner.
Part of their induction includes a training video called the “Tazer dance”. The video shows how to restrain a hostile suspect. An officer fires a 5-meter long wire at the suspect which pierces his skin. Through the wire an electrical charge is then sent, shocking the man’s nervous system and thereby causing him to lose control of his body. As he loses control and begins stumbling tike a baby another officer knees him in the groin area whilst yet another strikes him with a nightstick until he collapses to the ground. This is all part of the training to become “the world’s finest police officer”.
In an excerpt from transcripts of police walkie-talkie messages, one officer is caught saying: “Skip the broad… they just tazed this fool twice in the holding cells… Yeah, I saw them bring him in screaming… Cops love that stuff. Guys you should see these darts, it turned into a free for all.”
Officers have nothing to fear if they beat up someone who is Black, Hispanic or poor. The city of LA paid out $19,680,577 in civil liability to pay cases relating to police matters in 1992. The chances of an officer having to pay is virtually nil. In fact, if a police officer is involved in a “bad shooting incident”, where it is questionable as to whether or not it was necessary to pull the trigger, the worst that usually happens is they get signed up for further training.
The list of people shot or killed by the LA Police and Sheriffs departments reads like the ending credits of a movie. Between 1989 and 1993, 217 people were shot and killed by officers in LA alone.
It is this wanton disregard for the law by so-called law enforcers which the Rodney King beating shows. As ex-gang member Juan Longino recounts: “Chief Daryl Gates said it was an aberration and he was right. Because it is not usual that them fuckers get on camera. They got busted.”
Juan is correct in that beatings of the King type are common. Residents of the Black and Hispanic communities have become used to such levels of violence. To an extent, many have resorted to violence because they too have learnt to devalue the humanity and dignity of those individuals with whom they are in conflict.
LA is still a segregated city. Hispanics in one area, Blacks in another, poor over here, rich over there. The uprisings in April 1992, following the acquittal of the officers responsible for the King beating, however, were probable the first ‘multi-cultural’ uprising in the US.
The media portrayed it as a Black/White issue but Blacks, Latinos and Asians, who have all been affected to one extent or another by the oppressive forces at play in the inner cities, took to the streets. The acquittal sparked a 20-year long fuse that exploded on the streets of LA and across America.
The uprising was a clear sign that people were not willing to put up with that level of blatant injustice for much longer. However it didn’t tackle the issue of the self-inflicted genocide that was occurring at the same time. One brother did.
On November 19, 1991, Henry “Tiny” Peco was shot and killed by LAPD in Imperial Courts Housing Project, Watts. Peco’s cousin Dewayne Holmes explains:
“My cousin was killed by 2 LAPD officers. The police claim that he had an automatic rifle, he fired then they fired back. Yet no gun was found. There were 6 officers and 40-plus rounds were fired. 5 hit him in the back of his body. Following the incident, youths in projects rebelled, shooting out streetlights etc…”In early December Dewayne Holmes and his family organized the Henry Peco Justice Committee and hundreds took to the streets. Dewayne says:
“The truce was planned to put an end to the violence and the false boundaries that we ourselves orientated.On April 26 the historic gang truce was signed, giving everyone “free passage” through Watts.
“It put the focus on police brutality. In Watts, Muslim brothers helped construct a meeting. Meetings were taking place 2 or 3 months before the riots. The truce started 2 weeks before the riots. Members of each gang were present at the talks. The aim was to end brutality and create jobs and work programs. Gang members devised a plan.”
By October 1992 however, the truce leader had been sentenced to seven years imprisonment for allegedly stealing $10. Dewayne was convicted in a manner that has become common to young Black males in the US Courts: Contradictions, lack of any real evidence, coercion of witnesses, a hanging judge, an unscrupulous prosecutor, inadequate defense and a jury ready to believe “if you’re Black you’re guilty”.
Dewayne believes he was targeted and framed. His family was active in peaceful but persistent protests against police tactics in South Central. They embarrassed Chief Gates and ruined Deputy Chief Hunt’s chances to become the next chief.
Shortly after Dewayne Holmes was sentenced, he wrote:
“It hurts me to think of how naive I had to be to believe that because I am innocent I would not be sent to prison; to believe that the very same laws that send thousands of innocent Black men to jail everyday would somehow become fair and impartial for me… The gang truce gave us a chance to show the world that we are not the animals that we are labeled to be, that we are not beyond help… I am writing to you hoping that you’ll understand how important it is for me and brothers like me to be out at this crucial moment and that you’ll express this importance to all who will listen.”The gang truce is of such significance because it represents the realization by these people that although having been manipulated for years, they have the ability amongst themselves to turn the whole situation around.
Despite the conspicuous absence of any positive media attention, news has spread all over the country about the truce and is applauded and supported by large sections of the community. Organizations such as Community in Support of the Truce (CIST) have endorsed the truce pledging to support it by working for:
“the establishment of a grassroots rumor control network to counteract misinformation – a speakers’ bureau made up of active supporters of the Truce who have been taking the real story of the truce and the LA Rebellion across the country and around the world.Other organizations such as CAPA (Coalition Against Police Abuse), spearheaded by former Black Panther Michael Zinzun, work with ex-gang members and keep them abreast of issues that are relevant to the successful advancement of the truce.
“Neighborhood cooperative zones as an alternative to the cruel hoax of so-called enterprise zones. Resistance against the criminalization of youth of color, especially the use of non-conviction arrest records to deny jobs to youths and young adults.
“A united front against all efforts to divide African Americans from Latino and Asian youth, or to deny the human rights of immigrants”
BADCO (Black Awareness Community Development Organization) targets African American men between 15 and 30, providing support through education and cultural awareness.
Mothers ROC began when the Watts gang truce leader was arrested, then convicted on a bogus charge. Hurt, angry and determined, his mother, Theresa Allison, set out on a mission. Together with Geri Silva from the Equal Rights Congress and a small group of mothers, the Los Angeles Chapter of Mothers ROC was formed.
That was in December of 1992. Since then, the chapter has grown close to one hundred members with chapters in the Inland Valley, California, Chicago, Illinois and St. Louis, Missouri. In the words of Theresa Allison:
“It was the longing, the anger and the need to Reclaim Our Children that gave rise to Mothers ROC. We formed it to ensure that our children are no longer alone in court at the mercy of judges and lawyers, who have no interest in justice.On October 21, 1993, the national gang peace summit was held in Chicago. Young ex-gang members from Cleveland, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Los Angeles and many other cities with no other desire than to turn back the establishment’s plan to destroy oppressed people, particularly African/Latino Americans.
“We formed it to be the voice of tens of thousands who are locked away and forgotten. Finally we formed it to take our battle into the streets, to make ourselves seen and heard, to inform the powers that control and oppress us that we will build, we will grow, we will overcome.”
After years of stagnation the spirit of resistance is returning to the section of Black America with the least to loose, and the most to gain. A distinctive factor about the truce that makes it incomparable to other “peace treaties” (such as the Arab/Israeli agreement or the IRA cease-fire) is that it has been a totally grassroots initiative, without the involvement of politicians or Black leaders. By the same measure, the responsibility for sustaining it lies with those people on the streets.
It would be foolish to be complacent and think it will be an easy road to travel. The police have already visited truce partied, breaking them up and harassing the attendants, the media’s minimal coverage has been negative and the installing of provocateurs and undercover agents to provoke confrontations and thereby break the truce should be expected.
Possibly the greatest threat however, is Bill Clinton’s newly passed Crime Bill. It has released billions of dollars to cities in order for them to take even tougher measures on crime prevention. In LA, new prisons are already being built directly opposite housing projects. Causing most concern is the new “3 Strikes” law.
The 3 Strikes law exposes large numbers of people with prior serious or violent felony convictions (including violence convictions related to workers’ strikes or political demonstrations) to mandatory minimum sentences of 25 years to life. Even if these convictions happened 10, 15 or 20 years ago, a third felony of any kind can get you life in prison.
Many believe the temptation for police to plant drugs, guns or anything to get a 3 strikes conviction will be too much to resist. It would be an effective new tool to get rid of anyone they feel represents a threat, just as they have got rid of so many others.
The supporters of the truce’s biggest strength will come through their ability to grow and influence more people.
Juan Longino understands the odds. “Right now I’m unemployed. I’ve got to be a strong Black man to keep from going back out there and dealing with the underground economy that I know so well. But the thing that keeps me from going back is my new awareness and my new found family. That I have with the people.”
Gary Brown
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense
Formed in 1966, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was the largest Black revolutionary organization that has ever existed.
Famous for taking up guns in defense against police brutality, the Panthers had many other little-known sides to their work. They organized dozens of community programs such as free breakfast for children, health clinics and shoes for children.
Such was their success that they rapidly grew to a size of 5,000 full time party workers, organized in 45 chapters (branches) across America. At their peak, they sold 250,000 papers every week. Opinion polls of the day showed the Panthers to have 90% support amongst Blacks in the major cities. Their impact on Black America can be measured by the response of the state. J. Edgar Hoover, then head of the FBI described them as “the number one threat to the internal security of the United States”.
In this chapter, we will be looking at the formation of the Panthers, their program and activities, but more importantly, what marked the Panthers out to be different from all other organizations, what led them to be the inspiration to generations around the world to join the struggle against oppression.
The Civil Rights Movement
The formation of the Panthers was the direct result of the development of the civil rights movement which had already been in full swing for more than a decade before they were created.The movement had largely been based in the south and around demands for desegregation of the busses, schools, waiting rooms and lunch counters. Hundreds of thousands had been mobilized to participate in the demonstrations, sit-ins and freedom rides. Both from the police, local white mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, civil rights protesters faced the constant threat of brutal attack or even death. Despite this, the guiding philosophy of the civil rights leaders – in particular Martin Luther King – remained one of civil disobedience and passive resistance.
The increasing ferocity of the violence put a great strain on the movement. Contrasting views on a strategy for Black liberation began to emerge. Stokely Carmichael was prominent among those who opposed passive resistance and represented the feelings of a new generation of Blacks who felt that the peaceful approach was played out.
Alongside the mainstream civil rights was another current: much smaller than King’s movement but still with significant numbers were the Black Muslims. The Nation believed in separation instead of integration and were completely opposed to passive resistance. Their radical ideology was appealing but they refused to participate in the civil rights movement or to become involved in the activities of non-Nation members.
Malcolm X
Malcolm X saw the limitations of both the Muslims and King’s strategy of non-violence. He saw the need to embrace the social and economic issues and he attempted to put forward a more coherent strategy than any Black leader up to that point. It was against this background of upheaval that the Black Panther Party was created. The Panthers took the revolutionary philosophy and militant stand of Malcolm X, they were determined that although Malcolm X had been cut down, they would make his ideas come alive.The Black Panther Party was founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. They met in the early sixties whilst at Meritt Junior College in West Oakland. The civil rights movement had ignited Black America: Seale and Newton were no exception. Both were active in Black politics for several years before they came together to form the Panthers. Bobby Seale was part of RAM (Revolutionary Action Movement) and both Seale and Newton became involved in a college-based group called the Soul Students Advisory Committee. These experiences were critical in the formation of the ideology of the Panthers as it led to them rejecting the philosophy of what they called the cultural nationalists.
In Seize the Time, Bobby Seale explains,
“Cultural nationalists and Black Panthers are in conflict in many areas. Basically, cultural nationalism sees the white man as the oppressor and makes no distinction between racist whites and non-racist whites, as the Panthers do. The cultural nationalists say that a Black man cannot be the enemy of the Black people, while the Panthers believe that Black capitalists are exploiters and oppressors. Although the Black Panther Party believes in Black nationalism and Black culture, it does not believe that either will lead to Black liberation or the overthrow of the capitalist system, and are therefore ineffective.”Cultural nationalism was a powerful current in the Black movement and one which influenced Malcolm X in his early years as a Black Muslim. The nationalists rejected the integrationist approach and believed in separation from whites.
In forming the Panthers, Seale and Newton made a clean break with both the integrationist and the separatist approach. They argued instead that the economic and political roots of racism were in the exploitative capitalist system and that the Black struggle must be a revolutionary movement to overthrow the entire power structure in order to achieve liberation for all Black people.
Under pressure from the mass civil rights struggle, the government had made certain concessions: promoting Black officials, mayors, Congressmen etc., but no lasting improvement to the daily lives of most Black people had taken place. In fact, whilst segregation laws had been broken down, the level of poverty had actually increased. Black unemployment was higher in 1966 (after more than a decade of struggle) than in 1954.
32% of Black people were living below the poverty line in 1966.
71% of the poor living in metropolitan areas were Black.
By 1968, two-thirds of the Black population lived in ghettos.
The Panthers realized that the movement needed to progress beyond the battles for desegregation and to address the fundamental economic problems that people faced in their daily lives. They were the first independent Black organization to have a clear analysis of the type of society we live in: one in which a small class hold all the economic and political power and use it to exploit the majority.
Bobby Seale said,
“We do not fight racism with racism. We fight racism with solidarity. We do not fight exploitative capitalism with Black capitalism. We fight capitalism with basic socialism. And we do not fight imperialism with more imperialism. We fight imperialism with proletarian internationalism.”This was the guiding philosophy of the Black Panthers. But critical to their development was the knowledge that it was not enough to have the right theories, that this must be translated into a concrete set of demands that people can relate to and a clear course of action to achieve those demands. And so the first task of Seale and Newton was to sit down and write a program for the Panthers.
October 1966As soon as the program was written, they printed 1,000 copies and went out onto the streets to distribute them. Seale, Newton and their first member, Bobby Hutton put their months paychecks together to rent an old shop front as a base for operations. They painted up a sign saying Black Panther Party for Self Defense and on January 1, 1967 the office was opened. Weekly meetings and political education classes were held to spread the word, and so the first chapter of the Panthers was formed.
Black Panther Party
Platform and Program
What We Want
What We Believe
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black community. We believe that Black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.
2. We want full employment for our people.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
3. We wand an end to the robbery by the white man of our Black community.
We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.
4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.
5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in present-day society.
We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.
6. We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.
We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.
7. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people.
We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The second amendment to the constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self-defense.
8. We want freedom for all Black men held in federal state, county and city prisons and jails.
We believe that all Black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
9. We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black communities, as defined by the constitution of the United States.
We believe that the courts should follow the United States constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The Fourteenth Amendment of the US constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the Black community from which the Black defendant came. We have been and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the “average reasoning man” of the Black community.
10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the Black colony in which only Black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of determining the will of Black people as to their national destiny.
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter such principles, and organizing its powers in such a form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
The party began to grow not only because an organization of that character with a clearly worked out program was needed at that time but because they based themselves in the community, working with the people, for the people. They had an office, they had the ten point platform and program – now was time to put that program into action.
Self Defense
The Panthers decided to take up their constitutional right to carry arms and to implement Malcolm X’s philosophy of self-defense, by patrolling the police. They did this at a time when severe police brutality was common – the police would beat down and kill Blacks at random. They would even recruit police from the racist south to come and work in the northern ghettos.On one occasion, whilst on patrol, they witnessed an officer stop and search a young guy. The Panthers got out of their car and went over to the scene and stood watching their guns on full display. Angrily, the policeman began to question them and tried to intimidate them with threats of arrest. But Huey P. Newton had studied the law intimately and could quote every law and court ruling relevant to their situation.
Huey stood there with a law book in one hand and a gun in the other and told the “pigs” about his constitutional right to carry a weapon as long as it was not concealed. He told them about the law and said that every citizen had the right to observe a police officer carry out his duty as long as they stood a reasonable distance away. And he told them about the Supreme Court ruling which defined that distance.
A crowd gathered and watched this whole scene in amazement. The Panthers made it clear that they were not looking for a shoot-out and that they would only use their guns in self-defense. They took the opportunity to distribute copies of their ten point program, inform people of the Panthers ideology and invite them to their political meetings. Meanwhile, the flustered and nervous cop took the opportunity to get the hell out of there.
The gun had a huge psychological effect, both on the Black community and the police. For the police, it reversed the fear that they so enjoyed creating in others. But for the Black community, it fired their imagination, people felt empowered by seeing Black brothers and sisters protecting their interests.
There were two sides to the carrying of guns though, most people saw it as a positive move but others were put off by the militaristic image. On the other side, many brothers in particular, came to the Panther office purely for the gun, the Black uniform – the whole image. When this happened, the Panthers would simply explain that the Black struggle was about a whole lot more than just picking up the gun: it was about educating yourself and then others, about organizing the community programs, selling the newspaper and serving the people. At the same time, they would get the brother to work in the nursery for a while, looking after the children while other members went out on party business. In this way, they tried to make sure that people understood the Panther ideology and that they got a balanced view of what it was all about.
Community Programs
The programs were of key importance in the Panthers strategy. Firstly, they demonstrated that politics was relevant to peoples lives – to feed a hungry child, give out food, clothing and medical care showed that the Panthers related to people’s needs. Secondly, it showed what could be achieved if you were organized. The programs achieved a great deal with very limited resources but it also raised in peoples minds how much more could be achieved if they had the resources available to the government and the business corporations. Some people have criticized the community programs saying it was not a revolutionary thing to do but Bobby Seale answers this clearly.“A lot of people misunderstand the politics of these programs; some people have a tendency to call them reform programs. They’re not reform programs; they’re actually revolutionary community programs. A revolutionary program is onset forth by revolutionaries, by those who want to change the existing system for a better system. A reform program is set up by the existing exploitative system as an appeasing handout, to fool the people and to keep them quiet. Examples of these programs are poverty programs, youth work programs and things like that.”The first program the Panthers organized was the Free Breakfast for Children Program. Lesley Johnson explains how this led her to get involved in the Panthers.
“Well, one of the things that I could immediately respect and admire the party for, was its Breakfast for School Children Program. You know my parents were both workers, my father was a shipper and my mother, she worked cleaning clothes, rubbing the spots out, what was known as a spotter. And there were times when I was growing up, the week’s oatmeal or whatever would run out and I went to school hungry. So that I could really appreciate what the party was doing.”The Panthers would go out and get donations of food from businessmen. Any chain of stores that refused even a small donation would be boycotted. Leaflets would be produced and distributed in the community exposing that business.
The programs usually took place in a church hall. Party members would have to work very hard, starting work at 6am every day. They would prepare breakfast, serve children, they would usually sing some songs with them and then, when the children left, they would have to clear the place up and go out to collect provisions for the next day.
The FBI
The success of the Panther’s political activities and community programs and their huge growth and influence and membership soon brought them under fire from the American state. The FBI intensified the COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) against them. Nearly every office in the country was raided at some point. In Chicago, all the food provisions for the breakfast program were burnt out. During one raid in the spring of 1968, Bobby Hutton, the party’s first member, came out with his hands up. The police shot him in the head and killed him. The attacks became even more vicious in 1969. On December 4, at 1am, the police burst into Fred Hampton’s apartment and opened fire in the bedroom where he lay sleeping with his pregnant girlfriend. Another Panther called out that a pregnant sister was in the room and the police paused their firing. Deborah Johnson recalls:“One of the policemen grabbed my robe and threw it down and said ‘what do you know, we have a broad here.’ Another man grabbed me by the head and shoved me into the kitchen. I heard a voice from another part of the apartment saying ‘he’s barely alive’, or ‘he’ll barely make it’. Then I heard more shots. A sister screamed from the front. Then the shooting stopped. I heard someone say ‘he’s as good as dead now.'”In 1969 alone, 25 Panther members were killed. But the FBI’s operations went further. Aside from the constant arrests of Panther members which disrupted the work of the organization and drained them financially, the FBI infiltrated the party and manufactured rivalries and disputes between different members.
Today, some would explain the demise of the Panthers as due to the successful operations of the FBI. Undoubtedly, this placed an enormous strain on the organization but there are many countries in the world where political opposition faces even greater repression from the state. Without underestimating the difficulties, they cannot entirely account for the fall of the Panthers. There are a number of factors which contributed.
Women in the Panthers
The role of women within the Panthers was an area with many problems. At one point, women comprised 70% of the membership of the organization. Yet, all the leading positions were occupied by men. This is not a petty point because it illustrated the different roles that men and women took on. It seems that many women were confined to secretarial, administrative, childcare or other traditional roles whilst men were encouraged to develop the political ideas, speaking and leadership abilities. Also, some of the brothers complained that they were not taking directions from a woman! At other times it was found that accusations of being a counter-revolutionary were spread about a woman just because she did not want to sleep with someone.These problems would have cut the Panthers off from a whole layer of Black women who were not prepared to put up with this nonsense. However, we have to see that sexist attitudes were not unique to the Panthers – it is something that occurs in all organizations because it is related to the oppressive nature of this society and the way in which it exploits women. The Panthers did take action against these attitudes but they did not fully succeed – equality in the party was never achieved. And you cannot be a true community organization, fighting the oppression of society if women are being oppressed within your organization.
The membership of the Panthers was 5,000. This seems pretty low when you consider all they achieved but the reason is that those 5,000 members were all full-time! You could not be a member of the organization unless you were unemployed or prepared to give up your job. It is a sign of the tremendous commitment that the Panthers inspired, that they had 5,000 full-time workers but they would definitely have had a much, much larger membership if they had allowed students and people who were working to join. In effect they cut themselves off from hundreds of thousands of people who would have supported them. This also set themselves apart from the rest of the community.
Revolutionary Black Workers Groups
At that point in time, there were several radical Black workers groups such as DRUM (Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement), DODGE – named after the car plant in Detroit and ELARUM (Eldron Avenue Revolutionary Union Movement). They organized large numbers of revolutionary Black workers. Although they had some Black caucuses within the trade unions, the Panthers did not sufficiently develop this aspect of the work. It was of particular importance because the Black working class are critical in the struggle for Black liberation.The Panthers were one of the few groups who understood the whole basis of American society had to be transformed. It was this understanding that gave them a revolutionary outlook. But this alone, guarantees nothing. The clarity of ideas which enables the development of a coherent and effective strategy is essential in accomplishing the task of the overthrow of capitalism. We would argue that there were many confused ideas in the Black Panther Party. Some believed they could develop on the basis of a struggle conducted by a small armed minority and didn’t have a strategy for building a mass organization which could be sustained over a longer period.
Huey Newton says in Revolutionary Suicide
“But we soon discovered that weapons and uniforms set us apart from the community. We were looked upon as an ad hoc military group, acting outside the community fabric and too radical to be a part of it. Perhaps some of our tactics at the time were extreme; perhaps we placed too much emphasis on military action.”This was particularly important as they had reached their high point at the time of the ebbing of the huge civil rights movement. Had the organization been developed with a more long term perspective then the Black Panthers would have been in a position to put themselves at the head of a mass resurgence of radicalism amongst the Black population or even in wider American society. This, above all demonstrates the need for a clear forward view of how events will unfold in society. That is why a careful and disciplined study of events is an important aspect of shaping the outlook of any revolutionary organization.
The Panthers have left us with an invaluable experience. Their dedication, will and bravery in the face of what might have appeared as insurmountable odds is an example which any serious Black activist or revolutionary should be proud to follow. They were the highpoint of the civil rights movement.
Adrian Wood & Nutan Rajguru
The Civil Rights Movement
Preparing the Black Rebellion – The Inter-War Years
The Civil Rights Movement spanned 25 years. It was the largest mobilization of Blacks, and one of the biggest movements in US history.In one way or another, it influenced the lives of every Black American. It reached Blacks as far afield as Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. It stirred new forms of music and dance. Above all, it changed the way we saw ourselves. Today we are proud to be Black.
Although it appeared to be a sudden development, events in the inter-war period had prepared this huge rebellion.
400,000 Black soldiers returned home after World War One. They refused to live under the old conditions of racist America.
Slavery had been abolished but for Blacks, America was still a place dominated by race hatred and oppression. Ten southern states had laws prohibiting the mixing of races in transport facilities including railways, ferries and steamboats.
From 1908, Atlanta had racially segregated elevators. Taxicabs were segregated in Mississippi, Jacksonville, Florida and Birmingham, Alabama. In Atlanta it was illegal for white and Black baseball clubs to play within two blocks of each other. In 1930, a law passed in Birmingham made it “an offence for Blacks and whites to be in the company of each other at checkers or dominoes.”
In most southern states, restaurants, bars, toilets, parks and public facilities were strictly segregated. In effect this meant that Blacks could not socially congregate since the only decent facilities were reserved for whites.
Today these laws may appear farcical but for Afro-Americans they were no joke. Jim Crow (the popular term for racial segregation) was not just legalistic, it was a dynamic and violent caste system vigorously enforced by the state. Its ideology of white racial superiority gave birth to crazed lynch-mobs – a means of forcibly “keeping Blacks in their place”. But war, the mother of revolution, gave Blacks, particularly the soldiers, a new determination to fight these indignities.
Dr. Moton (successor to the “Uncle Tom” Booker T. Washington Tuskegee movement) was sent to France by President Wilson to “issue certain warnings to Black troops”. He told them “they must not expect the same democracy they had experienced in France” and “they should return contented with the same status they had before experiencing democracy abroad.”
These warnings fell on deaf ears. Between 1918 and 1919 huge strikes involving Blacks broke out across America. To organize these struggles effectively Black workers were clamoring to join the unions. But against the protests of many union branches, the racist leaders of the American Federation of Labor – AFL (the US equivalent to the TUC at that time) barred Blacks and non-craft labor from membership.
This policy played right into the hands of big business. The employers would often but in non-union labor to break strikes which were organized by the AFL. The wages of those in the unions were also depressed to what the bosses called “Negro pay”. This was possible because of the availability of cheap labor from the non-unionized workforce.
Black Americans were left isolated and at the mercy of rejuvenated lynch mobs which were unleashed to check the Black rebellion. All this was after many had died in what they were told was a war to make the world safe.
But Blacks were fighting back. In the early to mid 1920s a new spirit of “Negro self-assertion” led to the formation of several Black Nationalist and separatist organizations. The largest of these was the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) led by Marcus Garvey.
Black separatism was not typical of the Black movement in America. Garvey’s movement, for instance, acquired a mass following only when other forms of struggle were cut off – particularly entry into the unions.
The UNIA developed in the heyday of the Ku Klux Klan which in 1925 claimed a membership of 4-5 million whites. Moreover, white America was enjoying its biggest boom (the roaring 20s) while there was still mass unemployment amongst Blacks which increased during 1929-33 depression. With fascism on the horizon in Europe, Garvey’s back to Africa movement expressed a yearning to literally flee the misery of racial oppression in America.
To stem the rising Black revolt the US administration encouraged the growth of a small Black middle class (a policy which was further developed in the late sixties and early seventies).
President Roosevelt appointed small groups of Black lawyers and journalists to hold posts within his government. Their mouthpiece was the now expanding Black press. The St. Louis Argus, the Chicago Defender and the Pittsburgh Courier were all Black papers subsidized by the Pullman Railway Company. This whole machinery was mustered to agitate against Black radicals, especially union organizers.
In 1934 the American Federation of Labor met in San Francisco on the eve of a general strike in that city. Huge rows on the question of organizing non-craft labor and particularly Blacks broke out at the conference. The subsequent split led to the formation of a new union, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
The leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who had formed close links with the big employers during the depression immediately declared they were “opposed to all unions”.
Lester Granger, head of the Black organization, The Urban League, warned Blacks against “jubilantly rushing towards what they assume to be a new day for labor and a new organization to take the place of the AFL.”
They were completely ignored and 500,000 Black workers signed up to join the CIO. By 1950, over 1,500,000 Black Americans were organized into unions. These Blacks were to play a critical role in the civil rights movement which developed after World War Two.
Their impact on the movement was immediate. The leadership of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (a union of Black railway porters) planned to stage a national march on Washington against discriminatory hiring practices in defense industries.
The date was set for July 1941. Huge Black rallies were held in union halls and churches across America. By April, the Negro March on Washington had 50,000 fully paid-up members.
The march itself never took place. The government gave in to the central demand, a law banning racial discrimination in federal war production factories.
This was an important victory. It boosted the confidence of Blacks and was a trial run which prepared the immense organizational skills that proved invaluable to the Black movement of the 50s and 60s.
But it was a mistake to cancel the march as a whole string of demands for ending segregation at work remained unfulfilled. And as a show of strength by Afro-Americans the demonstration would have dealt a severe blow to Jim Crowism.
World War Two had marked a new stage for the Black struggle in America. Over 3 million Black people registered for the armed services and half a million served in the Pacific, Africa and Europe in racially segregated units.
At home the war economy drew Blacks into the northern factories. The migratory process that began in the First World War accelerated during the Second. Between 1941 and 1946 a million Blacks left the south for the north. The war further diminished the Black rural population and increased their concentration in key northern cities.
So at the end of the war, Blacks were organized into unions, the population was less dispersed and they had notched up their first victory with just the threat of mass action. India, Africa and China were in the throes of rebellion. These developments had a profound effect on the consciousness of Black Americans.
The same determination not to return to the old conditions which gripped Black America after the First World War returned after the Second World War. As soon as the war ended a spate of protests broke out in the south over segregation in transport facilities. The first major battle was the now famous Montgomery bus boycott.
The Opening Shots
Montgomery, Alabama, 1955. Mrs. Rosa Parks, a Black widow in her early 50s, refuses an order to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. She is dragged off the bus and is fined $10. It was the first time ever that a Black person had been charged with violating the city’s segregation laws.Even though 70% of Montgomery’s bus passengers were Black, the white drivers continuously harassed and insulted them with calls of “nigger” and “ape”. They particularly singled out Black women for their racist jibes.
They made Blacks pay at the front and then board at the back. Behind the first four rows stood a sign which read “Whites Only“. If all these seats were take, a white person had the right to demand that Blacks in the next row gave up their seats.
Rosa Parks had boarded the bus and sat behind the whites section. When asked to give up her seat she refused. She said she was tired from work and tired of giving in.
Her brother, Ed Nixon was a Brotherhood union organizer. He approached Montgomery’s most famous preacher, Martin Luther King and impressed upon him the need to organize a mass bus boycott.
Nixon told King: “We got to make it clear to the white folks we ain’t taking this type of thing any longer.” King agreed. He organized the ministers to alert their congregations to the boycott. At a meeting to launch the boycott, King declared “the clock on the wall read about midnight but the clock in our souls read it was daybreak.” On December 5 the boycott began.
The boycott was 100% effective. Not a single passenger stood at the bus stops, just gangs of youth cheering :no riders today”.
The racists counter-attacked. They carried out eight bombings in the course of the campaign. This time Blacks were not going to be cowed into submission. A group of white reporters approached a middle aged Black woman making her now daily trek to work and asked, “Why are you walking?” She replied “For me, my children and my grandchildren.”
The White House became increasingly alarmed as boycotts spread through the south. After six months the Supreme Court made segregation illegal. But the boycott continued until after almost a year, the state of Alabama finally agreed to desegregate the buses.
This victory triggered a protest movement that would shake the very foundations of white supremacy in the southern states of America. The ensuing struggle threw up forms of resistance and new militant Black organizations.
The preacher, Martin Luther King, was a brave and courageous fighter who quickly emerged as the most important leader of the civil rights revolution. The churches were the only places where Blacks could freely congregate. They were not just religious centers but a place where all the issues in the Black community were discussed.
As the struggle progressed, political discussion took over the Black church services. On third of the southern protest leaders were preachers. This was why pacifism was the main strategy adopted in the early period of the civil rights movement. King developed the principle of non-violence. He said:
“We must say to our white brothers all over the south who try to keep us down: we will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering.”The struggle in the 1950s culminated in a new law: the Civil Rights Act. This was rightly dismissed by the movement as a token measure, designed more to take the steam out of the movement rather than seriously address the problem of civil rights. Thus, far from appeasing the movement, the 1957 Act served to embolden it.
The whole of the south quickly became a seething cauldron of revolt. In city after city, Blacks were rising up to challenge the laws of racial segregation.
An early flashpoint came in 1957, when the Little Rock, Arkansas school board agreed to comply with a court order demanding that the city’s central high school admit Black students. When a group of Black students finally attempted to enter the school they were pelted with bricks and stones by a white mob.
In 1957, Martin Luther King launched the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Although its leaders were mainly preachers, the SCLC supported direct acts of civil disobedience, in sharp contrast to the Black organizations which had previously dominated Black politics in the south.
In 1960, four Black students from North Carolina marched into a Woolworth’s white-only canteen and refused to leave until they were served. Their audacity had an immediate effect. Hundreds of young Blacks started to invade white lunch counters, steadfastly remaining seated until served or physically evicted by the state police.
These sit-ins were important because they signaled the entry of the youth into struggle. Young Blacks in the south had grown up in an age of struggle. Inspired by the liberation movements sweeping Africa and Asia, the new generation would not be cowed. They were ready to fight for their own liberation.
King invited the students to organize themselves into a youth wing of the SCLC. They declined and instead created their own organization, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The students defended the politics of non-violence but unlike the SCLC, non-violence was seen as a political tactic rather than a principle founded on religious belief. The crucial differences revealed in outline some of the divisions that were to emerge later within the civil rights movement over vital questions of strategy and tactics.
King believed that non-violence would win support from white liberal opinion in the United States. He placed considerable faith in the Kennedys and the Democratic Party. The reality, however, was that the Democratic Party establishment in Washington, then as now, acted at every stage as a brake on the movement.
The attempts of the Kennedys to persuade the SCLC to call off protests and demonstrations often brought King into conflict with the younger militants. On one occasion, the president’s brother, Robert Kennedy, claimed that the civil rights agitation was embarrassing the Administration and called for a “cooling off period”.
“Doesn’t the Attorney General know that we’ve been embarrassed all our lives?” was the reply of one militant. Another, James Farmer, leader of the Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE) said: “We’ve been cooling off for a hundred years. If we got any cooler, we’d be in deep freeze.” Mass action, rather than words, would eventually compel the Democratic administration to act.
A year after the sit-ins began, CORE launched the famous freedom rides to challenge segregation at bus stations.
In May 1961, groups of freedom riders, Black and white, boarded two buses in Washington DC and set off towards New Orleans. On route, in Anniston, Alabama, the first bus was surrounded by a white mob and set on fire. The passengers only just managed to escape before the whole bus was engulfed in flames. The second bus escaped and went on to the city of Birmingham. There the riders were attacked and beaten by a mob of Klansmen wielding lead pipes and bicycle chains.
The freedom riders came under attack in many other cities but they remained absolutely firm and so too did the campaign of mass sit-ins. Important victories were won. Lunch counters were desegregated in over 150 cities and Robert Kennedy was eventually forced to order the Interstate Commission to end segregation on the buses.
Birmingham, Alabama, would see some of the worst violence. Just before launching to a group of his closest aids: “I have to tell you that in my judgment, some people sitting in this room today will not come back alive from this campaign.”
Thousands of school children took part in the marches and demonstrations in this bastion of white supremacy. But the state police showed little mercy. “So long as I’m po-leece commissioner in Birmingham, the niggers and the white folks ain’t gon’ segregate together in this man’s town” declared police chief, Bull Conner.
In one of the first marches, made up of school kids, the police fired water cannon and unleashed dogs into the crowd. “look at those niggers run” sneered the satisfied police chief. But still the children came. The marches grew larger by the day.
The spirit of the times was magnificently dramatized when television cameras recorded a brief exchange between a policeman and a young Black girl: “What do you want?” the policeman asked. Staring him straight in the face the girl replied: “Freedom!”
At the height of the Birmingham events over 3,000 Blacks were in jail, the largest number ever imprisoned at any time in the history of the movement. But thousands more were still on the streets. Demonstrations had to be dispersed without any arrests – the jails were already full!
There were also moments of intense drama. On one of the biggest demonstrations, Connor shouted an order to the firemen: “Turn on the hoses”. His men just stood there, as if paralyzed. “Damn it! Turn on the hoses.” They still refused. Some broke down in tears. The triumphant marchers proceeded unhindered through the cordon singing at the top of their voices.
It wasn’t long before it dawned on the city’s business community that the movement could not be beaten. Sid Smyer, a local businessman, declared: “I am a segregationist from bottom to top gentlemen, you see what’s happening. We’ve got to do something.” Thus a group of businessmen decided to go over the heads of Conner and the city authorities and started negotiations.
Jim Crow was in retreat but Blacks were still denied equal rights. Racism and police brutality still reigned supreme, north and south. Within the civil rights movement, young militants who had thrown themselves into the frontline of battle had become critical of King and the strategy of passive resistance. They were no longer prepared to act as cannon fodder. If and when attacked, they were ready to fight back.
Differences also emerged over the movement’s attitude towards the Democratic Party. Significantly, Martin Luther King had himself begun to stress the importance of building an alliance between the Black movement and those organized in the trade unions. But by now the youth were beginning to challenge the SCLC’s and King’s domination of the movement.
This generation had gained experience in the heat of the battle. They were not encumbered by the religious sensibilities of the past. They were of an entirely different mettle. Conscious of their own strength, they were ready to raise the struggle onto a new, higher level. The American state power was about to find itself confronted with an entirely new kind of politics. It was called Black Power!
The Rise of Black Power
1963 was probably the most crucial year for the Black rebellion which was sweeping America in the 1960s. That year saw protests in 115 cities across 11 states. Ten protesters had given their lives, thousands more were injured. More than 20,000 were arrested. After a fierce battle there was a victory against segregation in Alabama. The year culminated in a gigantic march of 250,000 on Washington to force the passing of a new Civil Rights Act of far greater scope and content than previous legislation. It was the biggest demonstration of African Americans in History.This mobilization was a huge achievement for the movement. But its very success raised searching questions about what had been achieved so far and how best to take the struggle further.
While the movement had been successful in removing some of the most blatant forms of segregation in transport, at the lunch counters and in public facilities, in many other areas of Black life things had actually worsened.
More African Americans were in segregated schools in 1964 than in 1954. There was more unemployment and housing had become more segregated than in 1954. Black people had actually become poorer.
Even as King delivered his now famous speech from the Lincoln memorial to the Washington marchers, not everyone shared his dream of integration.
Anne Mood was at the demonstration. She recalls:
“I sat on the grass and listened to the speakers to discover we had dreamers instead of leaders leading us. Martin Luther King went on and on talking about his dream. I sat there thinking that in Canton, Mississippi, we never had time to sleep much less to dream”Malcolm X said later:
“While they’re dreaming, our people are living a nightmare.”Before the march, King and Rustin had pressurized John Lewis of SNCC to change his speech which they felt was too critical of the Kennedy administration.
Kennedy’s flirtation with the civil rights movement was based on a desire to partially tackle obvious segregation but only to soften the protests which were a source of instability and embarrassment to American imperialism.
The US was after waging a war in Vietnam under the banner of human rights and democracy and threatening Cuba with more of the same. Meanwhile rioting had already taken place in Rochester, Pennsylvania and Harlem.
King wrote in 1963:
“We shall be able to oppose the unjust system and at the same time love the perpetrators of the system.”But this strategy of non-violence came under increasing strain as white resistance stiffened.
In June 1963, Medger Evars, the moderate leader of the NAACP in Mississippi was murdered in front of his own home. In the summer of 1964 a voter registration campaign was launched, six Blacks were murdered and 1,000 arrested.
That same summer, 30 buildings were bombed and 36 Black churches burnt out. In August 1964, the bodies of three freedom riders were found in Mississippi; the two white men had been shot, the Black man had been chain-whipped and then mutilated.
In Gransville, Louisiana, the sheriff presided over the savage beating of the leader of the NAACP youth council by organized racists. Racist attacks were widely reported in every southern town.
Moreover, white racists made spectacular electoral gains across the board in the south. Goldwater, an avid opponent of the civil rights bill, became the first Republican candidate to win the votes of all electoral colleges in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Louisiana.
Lester Maddox, the crazed leader of Georgians Unwilling To Surrender (GUTS) and the White Citizens Council was elected governor of Georgia.
And George Wallace, governor of Alabama, proclaimed at his inauguration ceremony in January 1963:
“From the cradle of the Confederacy, the very heart of the Anglo-Saxon southland, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say: ‘Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!'”It was clear that the pacifist approach was completely ineffectual in changing the attitudes of stubborn white racists in the south.
SNCC and CORE, which had a larger youth membership than SCLC or the NAACP, were at the forefront of the protests and so took the brunt of the attacks. It was in these organizations where King’s tactics received their sharpest criticism.
But it was more than just a dissatisfaction with the method of non-violence. At question here was the whole strategy of integration. Matters came to a head in 1965 in Selma, Alabama where a Black man, Jimmy Lee Jackson, was beaten to death by policemen while trying to protect his mother.
On the protest march, 2,000 non-violent demonstrators were mercilessly beaten by state troopers and police. King led a second march. To everyone’s surprise, when the demonstration reached the Alabama police, King ordered the marchers to turn back.
He had made a secret agreement with Johnson’s attorney general that there would be no confrontation with the state police. In anger, shocked SNCC leaders and others walked back singing “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around”
Martin Luther King was not consciously selling out. He believed that what he was doing was the most effective way to achieve liberation for Black Americans. It was his genuine intentions, his honesty and his willpower which would later play a part in offering a serious challenge to the American system.
But for the moment, he seemed out of step with the growing radical elements in the movement who did not agree that the road to equality was through changing the hearts and minds of racist America.
In September 1964, eleven leaders of SNCC traveled to Africa to meet with leaders of newly independent Black countries. They also met Malcolm X who seemed to be offering African Americans a militant alternative.
“This whole phony effort at integration” said Malcolm “is no solution. Because the most you can do with this phony effort… is to put out some token integration.”But it was never clear, least of all to the leaders of SNCC and CORE, how this was to be achieved. Most blacks now lived in the cities, a consequence of huge migrations from the south into the northern factories during the two world wars.
“Integration in America is hypocrisy in its rawest form.”
“With complete racial separation, however, Blacks would not have to beg the system for jobs, food and clothing.”
The idea of a separate state or states for Black Americans would be very difficult to attain. And even if it were possible, it would be isolated in the midst of the most powerful capitalist country in the world. To the vast majority of African Americans it was not a viable alternative.
However, there was a feeling that at least the movement should deliver more empowerment to the Black people. Being able to sit next to whites at a lunch counter was one thing, but having the money to buy enough food was quite another.
It was out of this that the slogan of “Black Power” was raised. Moves in this direction were already afoot within the organized movement.
In 1964, many Blacks forced white members of CORE to resign their posts as chairs of local chapters. By the end of 1964, CORE’s membership became for the first time Black. SNCC was also moving in a similar direction.
The slogan, Black Power, also fulfilled an important psychological need to a people whose history had been denied them. For a people who had suffered hundreds of years of humiliation and indignity, it was a time of confidence, time to be Black and proud.
This development coincided with huge uprisings in every city with a significant Black population. In August 1965, the Watts district of Los Angeles exploded into a race riot lasting five days. The riot left 35 people dead (28 of them were Black) and over 1,000 injured.
Detroit was to follow in 1967, where 47 people were killed, 2,000 injured and 2,700 businesses were destroyed. Almost every major US city was hit by race riots. Across America, from 1964 to 1972, 250 people were killed in riots and 10,000 seriously injured.
After these events, there was no way that the civil rights movement could exist the way it did before. The riots accelerated the growing radicalism and added a few further nails in the coffin of non-violence. The slogan of Black Power gained further notoriety when SNCC activists, Stokely Carmichael and Willy Ricks shouted it on the protest march for James Meredith who was gunned down whilst walking from Memphis to Jackson.
McKissick, one of the leaders of CORE, gave an embodiment of Black Power with which many identified:
“1966 shall be remembered as the year we left our imposed status of Negroes and became Black men. When Black men realized their full weight in society, their dignity, their beauty and power.”King on the other hand observes:
“There are positive aspects of Black Power, which are compatible with what we have sought to do in the civil rights movement” but “its negative values prevent it from having the substance and program to become the basic strategy of the civil rights movement.By 1967, however, Black Power had become the dominant ideology within the radical wing of the civil rights movement. In polls, the majority of African Americans expressed sympathy with the slogan of Black Power.
“Beneath all the satisfaction of a gratifying slogan, Black Power is a nihilistic philosophy born out of the conviction that the Negro cannot win.”
With a history of racial brutalization and self-denial, Black Americans were rediscovering their history and culture and exuding pride in their Blackness.
There was an explosion in radical Black music with artists like Curtis Mayfield and “Power to the People”, James Brown and “Say it Loud I’m Black and Proud” and Bob Marley with “Young, Gifted and Black”. Even the form of music was given a new boost of energy with deep heartful soul to upbeat hard-hitting funk.
A new breed of Black poets and playwrights were born in this era, of which perhaps the two most popular were the poet Leroi Jones (Imama Amri Baraka) and the writer Don L. Lee.
But the Political driving force of Black Power was its rejection of the approach adopted by the leaders of the civil rights movement: of gradual integration, of accommodation with the US administration and big business, conducted through the tactics of non-violence.
By 1968 the leadership of CORE and SNCC were taken over by the advocates of Black Power.
But to the majority of African Americans, including the activists in the movement, it was never clear what Black Power really meant. This was not just a question of definition. To offer a way forward to the struggle, particularly in the middle of a huge movement, concepts had to be concrete.
In essence, Black Power expressed a mood of defiance rather than a philosophy with a worked out program for change. It was a sign that the movement was in a profound transition. From the fight against blatant racial segregation and denial of democratic rights, to a fight for housing, jobs, education and an end to Black people’s grinding and humiliating poverty.
To begin on this road would require a fundamental challenge to the American capitalist system. In an attempt to head off this growing radicalism the American administration moved swiftly and introduced spending programs in the inner cities.
Although these programs were largely window dressing, they were part of a conscious policy to expand the Black middle class in order to give some African Americans a stake in the system.
The idea of Black Power became a radical cover for some Blacks aspiring for individual advancement. According to the Black historian Manning Marable:
“Black Power quickly became the cornerstone of conservative forces.” The first major Black Power conference was held in Newark, New Jersey, in July 1967 and was organized by a Black Republican, Nathan Wright.
The conference was housed in a plush, white-owned hotel and attracted 1,300 mostly middle-class Black professionals. It concluded with a statement to the effect that Black Power connoted getting a “fair share” of American capitalism.
The second conference was co-sponsored by a white corporation, Clariol. Its president who addressed the conference gave a hearty endorsement of Black Power.
Even Richard Nixon was now happy to endorse Black Power. He said in 1968:
“Much of the Black militant talk these days is actually in terms far closer to the doctrines of free enterprise” and that his policies would be orientated towards “Black ownership… Black opportunity and yes, Black Power.”Nixon’s speech was welcomed by major corporations including America’s rich man’s paper, The Wall Street Journal. Moreover, it was supported by McKissick and Inns – the leaders of SNCC and CORE! These former Black Power militants were moving closer towards the outlook of the American ruling class but the debate on Black Power had not finished yet. Meanwhile, the movement continued with King, the “pacifist”, fiercely opposing the policies of the American administration.
The Hour of Reckoning
Martin Luther King was still the number one leader of the civil rights movement. On February 25, 1967, King gave his first speech entirely devoted to Vietnam.“We must combine the fervor of the civil rights movement with the peace movement. We must demonstrate, teach and preach until the very foundations of our nation are shaken.”This set him on a collision course with Lyndon Johnson’s administration.
At this point, many other civil rights leaders distanced themselves from King. But by 1967, relatively twice as many Black soldiers as white soldiers were fighting and dying in Vietnam. Whitney Young, leader of the NAACP and Roy Wilkins of the Urban League criticized King for attacking Johnson who in their eyes “was the best president the Black man ever had”.
Newspapers and journals which previously sung his non-violent praises told him in effect “to mind his own business” and “concentrate on civil rights”.
Unperturbed, by April, King was leading a 125,000 strong anti-Vietnam march to the UN building in New York.
But it was not just the Vietnam question. While on a tour in Chicago ghettos, King was booed as he preached to a group of youths. This had never happened to him before. He recalled:
“I went home that night with an ugly feeling… for twelve years I, and others like me had held out radiant promises of progress. Their hopes had soared. They were booing because they felt we were unable to deliver on our promises.”David Halberstam, a journalist close to King, noted that:
“The struggle” he said, “was in a different phase in which Negroes sought an end to economic exploitation and racism itself.”
“King was closer to Malcolm X now than anybody would ever have anticipated five years before.”King also told Halberstam that “For years I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions of the south… now I feel quite differently. I think you’ve got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values.”
To do this would require “the nationalization of vital industries, guaranteed income for impoverished Americans and an end to the slums.”
Not surprisingly, under the orders of Lyndon Johnson, the FBI stepped up its activities against King and launched COINTELPRO activities against the SCLC.
Although never disbanding the tactic of non-violence, King gave it an interesting twist.
“Gentlemen” he said, speaking to his advisers in November 1967, “we are going to take this movement and we are going to reach out to poor people in all directions in this country… to enlarge this campaign into something bigger than just a civil rights movement for Negroes.”He intended to launch a “broad attack against class-based economic and social discrimination of which Negroes were the worst victims, but not the only victims.” He spoke of causing “major, massive dislocations at government buildings and installations.”
Bayard Rustin, veteran civil rights activist and one of King’s closest aids said that “King was getting up a class movement against the national and economic power structure, which included not just Washington but the powerful corporations and business moguls of capitalism itself.” In short, said Bernard Lee to King and his advisers, “what the powers of the country will kill you for.”
This was in February 1968. On February 23 he appeared in Carnegie Hall to pay tribute to the Black socialist W. E. B. Du Bois. By March 22 he was leading a protest of predominantly Black garbage workers in Memphis for union recognition and better pay.
With death threats mounting, King gave what was to be his last public speech at a rally in Mason Temple in Memphis. He recounted that “the masses were rising up in South Africa, in Kenya and Ghana, in New York City, Atlanta, Jackson and Memphis and everywhere their cry was the same: ‘We want to be free.'”
“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead… I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I am not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountaintop. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. And I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”The next day, April 4, 1968, at 6:08pm, he was shot on the balcony of his hotel in Memphis by a white man, James Earl Ray. The movement was in shock. It had lost one of its finest leaders. But the fight would continue.
As his death was announced, rioting broke out in major cities throughout the US.
Meanwhile, in Oakland, two young men were in the process of building an organization which by the late sixties would become the most influential revolutionary organization in America. They were Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. Their organization was called The Black Panthers.
A Legacy for Liberation
The death of King proved to be a severe blow and yet another turning point for the civil rights movement. For many Blacks, King personified their struggle, and his death seemed to disorientate the movement.This was particularly the case with the leadership King left behind. For a while they staggered aimlessly from event to event and were extremely reluctant to organize the kind of civil disobedience which in his last days, King felt was necessary to challenge the root of Black people’s oppression: the American capitalist system. For instance, King’s plan for a mass mobilization of poor people marching on the White House was half-heartedly organized.
Moreover, the weak-kneed approach adopted by the leadership to the Johnson administration failed to inspire the growing layers of radical African American youth. The march was therefore a flop and the Poor Peoples Campaign slowly died out.
Meanwhile, in Oakland, California, two young men, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, in the back room of a local community center had drawn up a ten point program and founded what was to become the largest and perhaps most well known revolutionary party in America, the Black Panther Party.
It was founded in 1966 and by 1971 it had 45 chapters and 5,000 full-time workers. With socialism as their guiding principle, they initiated hundreds of community programs and commanded the respect and support of the majority of African Americans in the cities. “We were” says Bobby Seale, “making Malcolm X’s philosophical polemics come alive.”
J. Edgar Hoover, the then director of the FBI said that the Panthers “were the most serious threat to the internal security of the United States.”
But the Panthers were coming to fruition at a time when the “mainstream” civil rights movement was ebbing. Also, they did not sufficiently politically organize and educate the huge support they had outside the party.
Hence they did not create a sustained mass movement to replace the muddled reformist leadership of the official civil rights protest.
The subsiding struggle gave the American administration room to deal with the situation with a combination of brutal repression and apparent reform.
Those who could not be bought off were killed. In 1969 alone, 25 Panthers were murdered by police and 749 jailed or arrested. The offices of several Black radical groups were raided and their members imprisoned on trumped up charges.
The legendary George Jackson, who was sentenced at the age of 18 to one year to life for a $70 robbery and was later to be given the title Field Marshall of the Black Panther Party, was executed by guards at San Quentin prison in August 1971.
The same year there was an uprising by 1,300 predominantly Black and Puerto Rican inmates of Attica prison. Treated like animals, the prisoners were demanding the basics of life, “adequate food, clothing and shelter”.
Hundreds of National Guardsmen and police stormed the prison killing 29 inmates and the ten guards who were being held hostage. Even pacifist protesters were not spared. In March 1972, civil rights activist Reverend Ban Chavis, eight black students and one white woman were arrested for allegedly burning a grocery store.
A jury comprising self-contested members of the Ku Klux Klan found the ten guilty and they were sentenced to a total of 282 years.
The other side of the strategy of the American ruling class was firstly to buy off a section of the civil rights leadership and then to sponsor the expansion of the Black middle class.
Disguised as a reform, this was an attempt to promote a layer of Blacks who having a stake in the system would promote the ideas of that system. Affirmative action programs for example created new, relatively high paid jobs for some Black workers.
Hence in the early 1970s, the earnings of the top 5% of the Black labor force increased by 32%. Between 1969 and 1977 the total number of Black business increased from 163,000 to 231,195 and between 1970 and 1975, twenty-four Black-owned banks were established.
The number of Blacks entering universities increased from 75,000 in 1950 to 660,000 by 1976.
While in and of themselves, these gains should be welcomed, they were never on offer to the majority of Black Americans. In fact, they were devised by the American ruling class as an attempt to cut off the Black rebellion.
Moreover, these gains were extremely fragile and many were easily wiped away under the Ronald Reagan administration. Meanwhile, there was a huge shift away from the radicalism of Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and even King by the leaders of the movement.
Baynard Rustin and Philip Randolph, former black militants in the trade unions, felt that “racism was no longer a problem in the labor movement.” Rustin called on Black workers to “stop griping”. Two of King’s closest aids, Ralph Abbernathy and Hosea Williams publicly endorsed Ronald Reagan’s bid for the presidency.
Eldrige Cleaver, former Minister of Information of the Black Panther Party, ended up as a supporter of Nixon and a prominent activist in the rightwing evangelical movement. In fact, almost all of the former civil rights leaders were, in one form or another, sucked into national or local administrations or big business.
But conditions for the majority of Black Americans were worsening. This process has continued and today, African Americans are facing their worst social crisis since the ending of the Second World War.
So what did this huge Black revolt, spanning almost 30 years, achieve? It certainly smashed the Jim Crow segregation laws enacted in the south.
It gave Black Americans democratic rights which they were denied since the ending of reconstruction which followed the American civil war.
Most of all, it gave them a feeling of their own potential strength when they became organized. Not just in relation to their own communities but in the wider society. For it was their movement which sparked and fed the anti-Vietnam war protests forcing America to withdraw from South-East Asia.
It also led to the development of the women’s liberation struggle, workers’ struggles and student protest. It encouraged national liberation struggles in Africa, the Caribbean and in the Third World in general. And this was achieved for the most part without a worked out strategy and largely on a reformist basis on the part of the leadership.
The primary goal of the leaders was to attempt to find an equal place for Blacks within the structure of American capitalism. The problem is that American capitalism was founded on slavery and cheap Black labor and the corresponding ideology of vicious racism.
That ideology is still necessary for that system to justify the continual exploitation of the Third World and is a vital political tool to agitate during elections or times of economic crisis.
their own sake but as a means by which they could improve their rotten living standards.
Attempts to do so by establishing Black business or by getting positions in American corporations or local administrations cannot adequately provide for the majority of Blacks within the racist confines of the system.
But a new generation of youth are growing up in America and Britain looking for a way out of their desperate situation.
In a way they are fortunate to have in the civil rights movement a rich history of struggle. They will pass through many stages but they will do so at a quicker pace than earlier generations. Panther aspires to build a movement in the best traditions of the Black struggle.
To deepen the revolutionary socialist perspectives and organization of the Black Panthers, to raise the consciousness of the Black and Asian population and build a powerful movement which would make a decisive contribution to our final liberation.
For us, this can be the only fitting legacy of the civil rights movement.
Colin De Freitas
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