Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2016)

[bunniefuu]

There's an old story

and it's used in various cultures,

where a group of blind men approach

an elephant

and try and describe him. The

first man approaches the elephant,

touches its side and says,

"It feels like a wall."

The next man touches the tusk

and says the elephant must be

like a spear.

Another blind man touches the trunk

and says, "It feels like a snake."

And that is quite often what happens

with our descriptions

of the Black Panther Party.

We know the party we were in

and not the entire thing.

We were making history,

and it wasn't nice and clean.

It wasn't easy, it was complex.

From Chicago, Illinois,

the mighty Chi-Lites.

# For God's sake, give more

power to the people

# There's some people up there

hoggin' everything... #

The thing that led to the Panthers

was what we were seeing on

television every day -

att*ck dogs, fire hoses, bombings.

We stand on the eve of a

black revolution, brothers.

Now we had the emergence of voices

within the community that

were saying we're not going to

continue to turn the other cheek.

You tell them white folk

in Mississippi

that all the scared

n*gg*r*s are dead.

CHEERING

We want black power.

We want black power.

# For God's sake, give more

power to the people... #

This was a revolutionary time.

50 countries in the world gained

their independence in the decade

before the founding

of the Black Panther Party.

This is the time when people

are getting drafted to go

and fight in Vietnam.

So if somebody's coming and saying,

"Well, if you're going to fight,

"why not fight right here in

LA or Oakland?"

That made a lot of sense.

You couldn't be absent and

see what we saw.

We couldn't unsee it.

I was a cocktail waitress

in a white strip club

two years before I joined

the Black Panther Party.

How did that happen?

The rage was in the streets.

It was everywhere.

# Give more power to the people... #

We're not going to get nothing.

Not by sitting around here

doing these

sit-in demonstrations or nothing.

People not going to do anything...

Well, how are we going to do it?

By v*olence. v*olence.

Uprising and having a revolution...

with blood, you know?

Let everybody bleed a little bit.

NEWS REPORTER: Relations between

police and negroes

throughout the country

are getting worse.

One of the city's most

troubled by animosity between

police and negroes is

Oakland, California.

People always talked about freedom

and what that means.

During that time period being

black in America meant you didn't

walk down the street with

the same sense of safety

and the same sense of privilege

as a white person.

There was absolutely no difference

in the way the police treated us

in Mississippi than they did

in California.

They may not have called you

n*gg*r everyday,

but they treated you the same way

they did in Mississippi.

Police jump on you, b*at you up,

put the g*n at your head.

This is what we were going

through on a daily basis.

When I first met Huey and Bobby

they were in the process of forming

an organisation for primarily

self-defence.

We didn't plan to have a nationwide

organisation or anything like that.

We were organising and dealing with

the problems in Oakland.

We use the black panther

as our symbol

because the nature of a panther.

A panther doesn't strike anyone,

but when he's assailed upon

he'll back up first,

but if the aggressor continues

then he'll strike out.

Huey had studied the law.

In Oakland at that particular time

anyone could carry a firearm

who did not have

a felony conviction at the time.

The firearm could not be concealed,

it had to be in the open.

The California penal code

section 12,020 through 12,027,

and also the Second Amendment

of the Constitution guarantees

the citizen a right to bear arms

on public property.

Huey said we're going

to carry our g*ns

and we're going to

follow the police,

and if they stop someone

we're going to stop,

we're going to maintain a legal

distance and we're going to

observe these so-called law officers

in the performance of their duties.

We were in the car and

driving around and having fun.

We would be looking at the pretty

woman and chasing the sisters.

Then something might happen,

and then all of the sudden,

the focus would just become serious.

We're coming around the corner,

basically where you are.

We would stop,

we would get out of the cars,

we would walk up to the scene.

Those who had r*fles would carry

them in the open, clearly visible.

We would stand at a distance where

the police couldn't say we were

interfering with their arrest or

their detention of the individual,

and make sure that

there was no brutality.

We stood back with our weapons,

ready to throw down if necessary.

They would take the w*apon

and pass it across like this,

and it would sweep right

over the officer.

No-one would do anything

until a policeman ejected

a round in the chamber.

Then we would all eject

rounds in the chamber.

And all up and down the street

you could hear this clackety-clack,

clack, clack, clack.

And then when the traffic stop

or the incident's over,

they'd bring the w*apon down

across by you like this

and get back in their car

and drive off.

It was pretty intimidating.

We referred to ourselves

as the vanguard.

And we were setting, by example,

a new course that we wanted

the entire community to follow.

No-one wants to touch

the legitimate hunter,

but we've got to protect society

from nuts with the g*ns.

When bands of armed people with

loaded weapons can

move about our streets, intimidating

and frightening citizens,

then I think we should act,

and we intend to act.

It's my intention to make it

a misdemeanour to have

loaded r*fles and shotguns

and weapons in public places.

The police department had went

to a local congressmen

to get a bill written.

So Huey called me up and said,

"We have to go to Sacramento."

It was conceived as a

media event that the press

is always at the

California State Capitol.

No-one really wanted

Huey himself to go

because Huey was kind of

a quick-tempered firebrand.

Bobby was a little more cautious.

And it was like,

"Look, you've been great so far,

"but you might blow it up there,

"and bad things could happen."

We caravanned to Sacramento.

I think there were about 30 of us

like altogether,

and most of us had some w*apon.

We were on the State Capitol on

the lawn and Ronald Reagan,

then the governor of the

State of California, was there,

about ten feet away from us,

holding a press conference with

these young, parochial schoolkids.

And what happened was

as soon as the press seen us

they gravitated from Ronald Reagan

over to where the Panthers was.

The Black Panther Party

For Self-Defense calls upon

the American people in general,

and the black people in particular,

to take careful note of the

r*cist California legislature,

which is now considering

legislation aimed at

keeping the black people

disarmed and powerless.

At the very same time,

r*cist police agencies throughout

the country are intensifying

the terror, brutality, m*rder

and repression of black people.

The State Assembly

was in the midst of a heated debate

when the young negroes, armed with

loaded r*fles, shotguns and pistols,

marched into the Capitol.

When we got in the halls,

you have to imagine

there's 100 cameras,

still cameras, print media people,

backing up and I'm saying,

"Where is the spectators' section?"

And the press is saying,

"This way, Bobby."

Some party members got ahead of me

with shotguns, pistols,

and went up on the actual floor

of the California State Legislature.

They're heavily armed.

Whether their weapons are loaded

or not nobody seems to know.

The armed group, who said they were

members of the Black Panther Party,

retreated to a service station

several blocks from the Capitol.

I remember this one cop

came by on a motorcycle

and he seen all these g*ns

and he got on the...thing.

And that's when they started to

swoop down on us from everywhere.

You have no right to

take my g*n away from me.

You don't know the Constitution

right? Sure we do.

I'm well aware of the Constitution.

I would like to have my g*n back.

Why do you believe legislature

is r*cist?

Don't you know? You're a part of it.

It's a white system.

The news got to everyone

in the black community

who had a television,

everyone who had a radio.

It was in every newspaper

across the nation.

It put us on centre stage.

I don't think that loaded g*ns

is the way to solve a problem

that should be solved

between people of goodwill.

And anyone who would approve of

this kind of demonstration

must be out of their mind.

When I heard about Sacramento

I was like,

"Damn, these brothers are bad.

"They're here up in Sacramento

in the Capitol...packing?"

The boldness, the courageousness

about it,

the arrogance of it.

That put a whole new face on things.

I said, "Man, I want to be

a part of this. Whatever that is."

Yeah, I walked into the office

and told them

I wanted to join

the Black Panther Party,

and they kind of laughed.

I didn't know that there

weren't any other women

in the party at that time.

But then I asked them,

"Could I have a g*n?"

I was a student at Lincoln

University outside Philly

when I first heard

about the Black Panther Party.

I found my friend, John Huggins,

and I said, "We need to leave this

stupid campus. We have work to do."

We got in John Huggins'

little hoopty car,

we drove across the country

from New York,

and when we got to the West Coast

we joined the Black Panther Party.

What we want, what we believe.

Point number one - we want freedom.

We want decent housing.

We want an education for our people.

We want an immediate end

to police brutality.

People joined for all

kinds of reasons,

but the Panthers had a ten-point

platform programme that really was

sort of like the fundamental

organising tool

and orientation tool.

The civil rights movement was

basically a southern movement.

So when you had an organisation

like the Panthers, who were

taking on things like housing

and welfare and health,

that was stuff the people

in the north could relate to

and rally behind.

Our att*ck was not

only against white supremacy,

but it was also about capitalism.

We actually thought that the way

in which capitalism created

a working-class

that was kept absolutely

destitute, that was wrong.

So we took the position

that in order for us to be free

that system had to be dismantled.

We cannot be free in a system that

had oppressed us in the first place.

So you have to get

rid of that system.

We were not after the church folks,

we were not after the Muslim folks.

We wanted the brother on the corner,

the brother who was getting his head

banged every weekend by the police.

We wanted the brother

who was going to jail,

just snatched out of his car for

a traffic ticket cos he was black.

That's who we were after.

We would get calls from Atlanta,

Nashville, Raleigh, North Carolina,

Washington DC,

Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Every city, small or large,

you can think of wanted a chapter

of the Black Panther Party.

We would send members

of the organisation

to help connect them to us.

But it was destabilising in

the sense it was somewhat chaotic

the way the party was growing,

and it was too fast and too big.

There was no screening process.

There was no, "Why are you here?

"What do you expect to have happen

while you're here?

"What are you trying to accomplish?"

There was none of that.

Members came from, whoever

just came in off the street.

The downside, of course, was

we had no idea who

any of these people were.

We didn't have time

for a whole lot of,

"Who are you, what are you doing?

"You want to do this? Fine, go."

This week on f*ring Line, my guest

is Mr Eldridge Cleaver,

the information minister of

the Black Panthers.

Eldridge Cleaver comes out with

this book, Soul On Ice,

a series of his essays from prison,

and the New York Times says

that it's brilliant,

it gets onto the bestseller list.

So when Eldridge joined

the Panthers,

the Panthers had gotten themselves

a star, a literary star.

I've been called by

the National Review

"The Goebbels of the

Black Panther Party."

And all of this is an attempt

to undermine the party or

to give it a bad presentation

to the public.

Huey Newton always had this vision,

he was the visionary of the party.

Bobby Seale, he had the personality,

Eldridge Cleaver was the person

who made the party

credible to black intellectuals,

to the white left intellectuals.

All of them loved Eldridge Cleaver.

They understood what

he was talking about,

or at least they thought they did.

Eldridge had this incredible ability

to encapsulate a thought in

a few sentences and form it into

an artistic statement that pointed,

stabbed right into

the heart of the enemy.

And he did that all of the time.

Now, was he always correct? No.

I say that Ronald Reagan is

a punk, a sissy and a coward,

and I challenge him to a duel.

APPLAUSE

I challenge him.

I challenge

him to a duel to the death,

or until he says "Uncle Eldridge."

LAUGHTER

Was he insane?

f*ck, yeah! That boy was crazy.

And he got a lot of people hurt.

And I give him his choice of w*apon.

He can use a g*n, a Kn*fe,

a baseball bat or a marshmallow,

and I'll b*at him

to death with a marshmallow.

That's how I feel about him, see?

I said, "They're not going

to be able to control Eldridge."

Eldridge was a rottweiler,

uncontrollable personality.

Who could be in an organisation with

Eldridge and he not be the leader?

Nobody.

And that's basically

how it ended up.

A pool of blood marks the spot

where 23-year-old officer John Frey

was found fatally

wounded from four g*nshots.

The sh**ting happened at 5am

approximately where I'm standing

on 7th Street in the heart

of Oakland's n*gro ghetto.

The suspect, charged with m*rder and

attempted m*rder, is Huey Newton -

25-year-old leader of the

Black Panthers For Self-Defense.

Newton is hospitalised in serious

condition and under heavy guard.

We went up to Highland Hospital,

and it looked like

every police in America was there.

We didn't know for sure

if Huey was dead or alive.

We didn't sleep that night.

Nobody slept then, I don't think.

As he was handcuffed to a gurney,

going into surgery,

he was arrested for m*rder

and expected to face execution.

A lot of the other

Panthers were in jail

because of the protest

that they'd done in Sacramento,

so Eldridge was the only

available spokesperson

for the Black Panther Party.

The Black Panther Party demands

that Huey P Newton be set free.

And we wish to make it

very clear that

if he is not set free

there is little hope of avoiding

open armed w*r in

the streets of California,

and sweeping across this nation.

We said, "Well, Huey's in jail,

he's facing the death penalty.

"What can we do?"

I think the initial slogan was,

"Huey must be set free."

Eventually it got shortened to,

"Free Huey."

# Black is beautiful

# Free Huey

# Set our warrior free

# Free Huey

# Black is beautiful

# Free Huey

# Set our warrior free

# Free Huey... #

It became a huge movement.

# ..Free Huey

# Set our warrior free

# Free Huey

# Black is beautiful

# Free Huey

# Set our warrior free

# Free Huey

# Black is beautiful

# Free Huey

# Set our warrior free... #

Today there were a number of

Free Huey Newton

rallies across the nation...

You did not have to be

a member of the Black Panther Party,

all you had to be

was a human being.

People of all kinds took up

that cry for Huey.

Free Huey! Frey Huey!

The Examiner made a report back here

in the last Sunday's paper

that we were anti-white,

that we "Hold no bones," -

this is a quote - "Hold no

bones about being anti-white."

This is a bald-faced lie.

We don't hate nobody because of

their colour.

We hate oppression,

we hate m*rder of black people

in our communities.

APPLAUSE

People just turned out.

They wanted to help us,

they wanted to give us money,

they wanted us to come speak.

There was this gathering

of connection

to the Black Panthers that was

different to before.

# We got to free Huey

# We got to free Huey

# We got to free Huey

# We got to free Huey

# Everybody

# We got to free Huey

# We got to free Huey

# We got to free Huey... #

We were a phenomenon.

The way that we walked and talked

and dressed.

We had swagger.

# We got to free Huey

# We got to free Huey... #

It was a rhythm.

SHE CLICKS HER FINGERS

It was a rhythm to how we spoke,

it was a rhythm to how we walked,

and the people recognised

that we stood out.

Outside of that on the street

they'd probably think,

"Oh, that's a butt-ugly person.

Oh, they ugly."

But in the party it was just

something that gave them

this tremendous sex appeal.

THEY CHANT: Free Huey!

The Panthers didn't invent

the idea of black is beautiful.

People had started wearing afros

and dashikis.

One of the things the Panthers did

was that URBAN black is beautiful.

And that look just

blew people away.

If you were a young black man

living in the city anywhere,

you wanted to be like this.

You wanted to dress like this,

you wanted to act like this,

you wanted to talk like this,

you wanted to be this.

The standard of aggressiveness,

of militants,

of just forcefulness of the sort of

standard we haven't had in the past.

THEY SHOUTHEY CHANT: Free Huey! Free Huey!

But figuratively speaking you're

not about to become a Panther?

No, not today or tomorrow,

at any rate.

Maybe the day after.

# Am I black enough for you?

# Am I black enough for you...? #

This brother here, myself,

all of us,

we're born with our hair like this

and we just wear it like this.

The reason for it, you might say, is

a new awareness among black people

that their own natural

physical appearance is beautiful.

Black people are aware now,

they're proud of it.

It's pleasing to them. Dig it?

Isn't it beautiful? All right.

# ..We gotta get rid of poverty

# I got to stay black

Black enough for you

# We're gonna move on up

# Four by four

# We ain't never gonna

suffer no more

# I got to stay black

Black enough for you... #

You're talking about people

who were teenagers.

17, 18, 19, 20.

That's bulk of the Panthers

are teenagers.

So the fact that

we were so young

and the fact that this

hadn't happened before,

I'm not certain we recognised how

startling it looked to other people.

Dear, Mr Newton,

I'm a 13-year-old black girl

and I want to be a Black Panther.

I wish you would fill me in.

Does it matter what

your religion is?

What are some qualifications

to be a Black Panther?

PS, write me back personally.

I was taught to be proper.

Behave yourself,

if you're going out in public

to always know that

the white man was listening.

With the Black Panthers

coming to the scene

it was just a completely

different message.

As a 12-year-old, you know, "What?"

You had this whole other

portrayal of self,

and just digging it.

# ..We gotta move on up

# Eight by eight

# Without no witness

# We ain't too late... #

Photographers took advantage.

I mean, they took our pictures,

they put them on newspapers,

they put them on magazines.

And that look that we projected,

you know, the big afro,

the leather jacket, the shades,

that became a hit.

And obviously photographers were

drawn to the Panthers.

Well, we hear a great deal

about the Black Panthers...

Black Panthers... Black Panthers...

Black Panthers...

The Black Panthers

were absolutely unique.

The Black Panthers...

The Black Panthers...

The Black Panthers...

The Black Panther Party...

The Black Panthers movement...

Black Panther Party...

The Black Panthers...

I think the Black Panthers really

understood the media.

They knew what we were after,

they knew what we were focusing on.

The Panthers has amounted to...

The Black Panther Party...

Many people know of the Panthers...

You might say we exploited

the Black Panthers, but I think

there's a lot of evidence that

they used us to their advantage.

They were able to establish their

legitimacy as a voice of protest.

The chairman of the Black Panther

Party, and here he is.

APPLAUSE

We have a film of your

breakfast programme.

Is this without sound also?

Yeah, I think so.

All right, will you comment

on this? Yes, I will.

This is a free breakfast

for children programme,

and they're preparing the food there

early in the morning.

It's about two hours'

work in the morning.

These Party members primarily

set this whole programme up,

and then we get involved as many

of the community people as we can.

Come on in, little fella,

come on in, little sister.

Sit down and get something to eat.

Studies came out saying that

children that didn't

have a good breakfast in the morning

were less attentive at school

and less inclined to do well

and suffered from fatigue.

I mean, there was all sorts

of scientific reasons to have

a good breakfast in the morning.

And we just simply took

that information

and a programme was developed

serving breakfast to children.

After my father came home

from Vietnam and was discharged from

the army and couldn't get work

we were going through

a very hard time.

Food was kind of, you know, just

the everyday necessities were hard.

I was embarrassed to go,

but when you went, you know,

kids are all laughing.

And then all of sudden

the stigma, or whatever you

thought was a stigma, went away,

and you really got to see that,

yes, this is what

the Black Panthers are.

We was showing love for our people.

If you have a child

and you know that

"Hey, these men and women are going

to feed my child in the morning."

That's a big deal.

The breakfast programme actually

really caught on.

It served about 20,000 meals a week

to young people in

19 different communities.

So it wasn't a fly-by-night thing,

it really, actually,

was making a difference.

Just at the moment that

the Panthers are turning towards

survival programmes,

towards free breakfast programmes,

free clinics and

free food programmes

that will help them reconnect with

the black community and build

their membership,

and repudiating

this earlier advocacy

of armed self-defence

and police patrols,

J Edgar Hoover att*cks the Panthers.

Hoover saw any form of

black organising as a thr*at

to the status quo, as he saw it.

Change that would have involved

equality, would have put power

in black people's hands,

was very much a thr*at to Hoover.

He started something called

Cointelpro,

directed against what he called

black nationalist hate groups.

Cointelpro was the abbreviation

of Counterintelligence Programme.

"The purpose of this new

counterintelligence endeavour

"is to expose, disrupt,

misdirect, discredit

"or otherwise neutralise the

activities of black nationalists.

"Neutralise" could mean

making somebody an informant

or putting somebody in jail

or having somebody k*lled.

Hoover was sending letters

to various offices,

almost on a weekly basis, to come up

with new ideas to go after

members of the Black Panther Party.

245 of the 290 Cointelpro actions

were against the Black Panthers.

One of the mandates was,

"Do not make this programme public.

"Do not tell anybody

that it exists."

FBI has a memo that states

the objectives of

counterintelligence operations.

One is to prevent the rise of what

they call the black "messiah" -

a single, charismatic leader that

could unify the movement.

They wanted to prevent the appeal

of radical political movement

to black youths.

And they wanted to isolate these

groups to prevent them

from gaining respectability

in the black community.

And they were very explicit

in stating these goals.

We were followed every day,

we were harassed,

our phones were tapped,

our families were harassed.

My parents were both

visited by the FBI.

"We must create suspicion with

respect to their respective spouses,

"and your imagination

and resourcefulness must be employed

"in order for the Bureau

to be successful."

They would send letters to my wife,

and the letters would say that

Landon is sleeping with this woman

or sleeping with that women

or sleeping with the other woman.

Then when I got arrested

the FBI came to me

and said, "Ah, look, we've got

all this evidence.

"All these people are going to

flip and turn on you.

"We're going to execute you.

"Cos we've got you now,

we're going to execute you.

But if you will be an informant

for us, then we'll let you go.

My recruitment by the FBI

was very efficient.

Very simple, really.

I'd stole a car and went with

joyriding over the state limit,

and they had a potential

case against me

and I was looking for an

opportunity to work it off.

And a couple of months later

that opportunity came

when FBI Agent Roy Mitchell

asked me to go down to

the local office of

the Black Panther Party

and try to gain membership.

The FBI wanted to destroy

the Panthers.

They absolutely saw the Panthers

as the vanguard of a very, very

threatening and violent

revolutionary movement.

They absolutely wanted this

organisation to be destroyed.

The FBI was coming round

to my mother-in-law, my wife,

and for me to stop that kind

of activity, I stopped going home,

and a lot of other people did also,

to protect their families.

You could kind of, in a sense,

say we abandoned our families

for the Panther Party.

You might have a three-bedroom

apartment that might

have ten Panthers staying there,

sharing bedrooms.

The living room was basically

also a bedroom.

We called them Panther pads.

Somebody would be on 24-hour

security, someone was responsible

for cleaning the place, often it was

a rotating list of responsibilities.

It was a sense of community

that we created.

The rank and file was

the everyday members

that did the daily work

of the party.

They were the ones that

made the party -

the backbreakers,

the ones you put all the work on.

# Cos we know

# We got to live together

# We know

# We got to love each other... #

The Panthers realised we have

to live together to protect

one another.

We have to also be committed

to this thing,

to this cause,

to this movement, 24 hours a day.

The rank and file,

whatever orders that

came down for our captains

and lieutenants, we did that

because that spirit was in us

to stay in this movement

to our death,

or if it meant going to jail.

So whatever they told us

to do, we did it.

# ..Live together

# Love each other

# Stay together... #

I was in labour, cooking breakfast

for the breakfast programme.

So I was, between contractions,

flipping pancakes.

I would spend all the day answering

the phones, even after I had my son.

When I came back to work

I used to have to

jump him up and down

really heavy,

cos he just wouldn't stop crying

as I'm answering the phone.

You name it.

I cleaned freezers with a toothpick.

And that's how I'd answer the phone.

"Black Panther Party

national headquarters.

"Black Panther Party central

headquarters, can I help you?"

One of the ironies of the

Black Panther Party is that

the image is the black male

with the jacket and the g*n,

but the reality is that the majority

of the rank and file

by the end of the '60s are women.

Everybody knows that all the people

don't have liberties,

all the people don't have freedom,

all the people don't have justice

and all the people don't have power.

So that means none of us do!

The Black Panther Party

certainly had a chauvinist tone,

and so we tried to change some of

the clear gender roles,

so that women had g*ns and men

cooked breakfast for children.

Did we ever overcome it?

Of course we didn't.

As I liked to say,

"We didn't get these brothers

from revolutionary heaven."

Black Panther Paper.

The paper was the lifeblood

of the party.

That's how we survived.

We sold the papers, 25 cents

back then,

it cost maybe 12 cents to print it,

the other 12.5 cents went to the

various chapters and branches, and

that's how we basically survived.

The party paper went places party

members would never get to go to,

and reaching people

we would never see.

But the paper got there,

some kind of way or other.

So it was very important

to get the paper out.

Los Angeles, 2,850.

New Haven, 3,000.

When we were loading boxes

and bundling papers or whatever

we were doing, we did it

in an assembly-line fashion.

And we would just start singing.

# Ain't no mountain high enough

# Ain't no valley low enough

# To keep me from getting

this paper to you. #

Or whatever we would do.

We would change the lyrics

just a little bit.

# It's your thing

# Do what you wanna do

# Whitey can't tell me what the... #

And then we'd...what to do.

Decent housing fit for

shelter of human beings.

In the paper everything

came together.

We had the platform,

the ten-point platform was in there.

It was the first thing you see

when you open up the paper.

We want an end to the robbery by the

white man of our black community.

That's what we're talking about,

like number three.

Number four, "We want decent housing

fit to shelter human beings."

You dig? And then we got...

It explained who we were and what

we were about, what our goals were.

Tell me, ma'am, do you read the

Black Panther Party newspaper?

Yes, I do.

Why? Because I'm black

and I'm proud.

What do you like best

about the paper?

Because they are a proud people

and I love them.

# Black is you, black is me,

black is us, black is free

# Black is me, black is me,

black is us, black is free

# Black is us, black is me,

black is us, black is free

# Black is free, black is me,

black is us, black is free... #

For me there was only one reason

to read the Panther newspaper

and that was to see

Emory's illustrations.

His paintings, his caricatures,

his illustrations literally

gave us the story.

# ..Black is you, black is me,

black is us, black is free

# Black is me, black is me,

black is us, black is free

# Black is us, black is me,

black is us, black is free... #

The community would

respond to the artwork

because it was a reflection of them

in the artwork itself.

Because you're putting them

on the stage as the characters

and heroes in the images.

They could see their brother,

or they could see their uncle,

in the images.

Through the breakfast programmes,

through the other programmes that

we had to help black youth,

people come in and talk about how

they can't pay their bills,

or they need childcare.

That teardrop symbolised

that pain that I observed.

Even through that pain, there was

the strength and determination

and conviction to still battle on.

So, I was trying to put

that into the artwork itself.

Emory was our social realism.

He gave you a sense of bravery,

resilience, courage

and, most of all, beauty.

That was what I loved about Emory.

It was Huey and Bobby's ideal

to draw a pig, uh, drawing

that would symbolise the police,

so the first pig I did was one

on the four hooves.

It just came to me one night, "Why

don't I stand it up on two hooves?"

I put a bandolier g*n,

bandolier with a holster

and a badge, and the flies

around it, and that became

the symbol, the icon of the pig.

It took on a life of its own.

THEY CHAN# Off the pigs

Time to pick up the g*n

# Off the pigs... #

That rhetoric didn't bother us

when it was spoken by the Panthers.

# ..Power to the people

Off the pigs

# Power to the people

Off the pigs... #

But when it was picked up

by college students,

them saying it,

that definitely bothered us.

# ..Off the pigs

Off the pigs

# Power to the people

Off the pigs

# Power to the people

# Off the pigs... #

I was a sergeant,

patrolling in the projects,

and there was a...cutest

little girl,

so I stopped to say hello,

and I said, "Hi, honey,

how are you doing today?"

And she looked at me

and she said, "f*ck you, pig."

And I thought, "We have lost it,

man, we have flat lost it."

Anybody that criticised the police,

especially that didn't have

fear of saying it publicly,

made the police angry.

It was us against them.

That became the theme.

We have seen the pig on the scene.

We know what he's like.

We know what he's capable of.

Just being a damn pig,

oinking and b*ating,

and walking the street.

The police must be brought under

control by any means necessary,

including through force of arms.

These r*cist, Gestapo pigs

have to stop brutalising

our community, or we're going

to take up g*ns,

we're going to drive them out.

That tendency to keep

escalating the rhetoric,

that was a major part of

the growth of the party,

but it was also a destructive force,

because you were always

upping the ante.

# I said g*n,

pick up the g*n

# Pick up the g*n

and put the pigs on the ground

# Pick up the g*n... #

It brought all

the repression down on them

before they were prepared

to handle it.

I just want to deal with black

and black liberation.

My scene is picking up my damn g*n

and I'm a mother.

Have my baby in one hand,

my g*n in the other,

and then I'm here, m*therf*cker,

to get what's mine.

The voice that called for justice

and brotherhood has been stilled.

Men of all races now must

join together

in this hour to deny v*olence

its victory,

and to fulfil the vision

of brotherhood.

The effect of the death of

Martin Luther King on the Panthers

was overwhelming,

in the sense that...

..once King was assassinated,

and the way he was assassinated

so publicly,

it shattered many, many people.

They'd k*lled their last chance

for me to be peaceful with them.

They had k*lled their last

chance for negotiation.

They k*lled the man who walked

through hell to try to

get along with you -

and you k*ll him?!

That was our champion.

You k*lled whatever hope

I had in you.

And I have no more use for you.

None.

SIREN BLARES

I believe that there was a decision

made that some response on the

part of the Black Panther Party has

to be made to what happened to King.

Eldridge Cleaver was worried that

if the Panthers didn't take

decisive action,

they would cease to be the vanguard,

so he had this idea of actually

actively attacking the police.

He goes and he approaches

members of the party in Oakland,

and all of the older people

refused to participate.

They knew that this would be

su1c1de, but the youngest member of

the party, Little Bobby Hutton,

decides to follow Eldridge

into battle.

Little Bobby called me.

"Big man, I need a w*apon."

I gave him a Winchester

12-gauge pump shotgun

that I had and I told him,

"Well, be careful out there,

you know? Watch yourself."

And he said, "OK, I will."

And he left.

And then, first thing

in the morning,

I have the radio on.

The Oakland Police stated that they

were fired upon during a routine

investigation of a suspicious

person, and after a short search,

cornered Hutton and Eldridge Cleaver

in the basement of a nearby house.

A tear gas canister

blew up and the basement

they were hiding in caught on fire.

They decided they didn't want

to burn to death -

they would rather surrender.

Eldridge told Bobby Hutton

to take off all your clothes,

so they can't say you're

concealing a w*apon.

When you surrender,

take off everything.

But Bobby was embarrassed

and he just took off his shirt.

And he kept on his pants.

Bobby Hutton came out

with his hands in the air.

First member who walked out of

the house and was gunned down.

My heart sank.

He's only 17 years old,

and one of the first people

to get k*lled in the party,

and so young.

In essence, I felt that, man,

I got my little brother k*lled.

What if I had not given him

the w*apon?

Those are some of the demons

that, uh...

..were in my closet.

sh*t down like a common animal, he

d*ed a warrior for black liberation.

In the name of brotherhood

and survival, remember Bobby.

That could have been my son

lying there.

And I'm going to do

as much as I can.

I'm going to start right now...

..to inform white people

of what they don't know.

For the Black Panther Party,

it was crisis and chaos,

because this was the first time

that this had ever happened.

There had been no Panther

m*rder*d by police.

We want non-v*olence,

just like Martin Luther King.

But non-v*olence on the part of who?

To sit and watch ourselves be

slaughtered, like our brother?

We must defend ourselves.

As Malcolm X said,

"By any means necessary".

After the loss of Bobby Hutton,

Eldridge was ordered to

surrender to

the San Francisco police

to go back to prison.

But on November 28, 1968,

he didn't turn himself in

and...he was...

..not to be found.

Mrs Cleaver, do you know where

your husband is? No.

When was the last time you saw him?

Sunday night.

It's rumoured that Eldridge

is out of the country.

Do you think this is possible?

No, I don't think so.

And so the mystery remains.

Where is Eldridge Cleaver?

It's entirely possible that his wife

and lawyer really do not know.

For the law, he is simply

a fugitive from justice.

He had gone to Algeria.

There's nothing the United States

government can do to us in Algeria.

They don't have diplomatic

relations with Algeria.

We could function openly,

politically, in Algeria,

so we opened our international

section of the Black Panther Party.

The Black Panthers were welcomed by

all sorts of liberation movements.

The North Vietnamese, who were

moving into a newer embassy,

gave their old embassy to the

Panthers, and the Black Panthers,

of course,

loved being accepted like this.

In Eldridge Cleaver's successful

attempt to establish an

international wing, he's able to do

some things that are very important.

Malcolm X and other black

nationalists had talked about

forging those types of alliances.

The Panthers actually did it.

HE SPEAKS IN FRENCH

He wishes you victory

in your struggle.

HE SPEAKS IN FRENCH

And we hope to receive you

in liberated Saigon.

Tell him I hope to receive them

in Washington DC.

At that time, America was being

demonised considerably

because of the w*r in Vietnam,

so here we are, black Americans,

who are opposed to all of this,

we're the counter to

the United States.

We were able to connect

with North Koreans,

with Vietnamese, with the Chinese,

and with also many African

liberation movements,

and many people came

to see us there.

We came over here to do what

we can to communicate to you

what's happening in our struggle

in the United States.

I think a lot of what draws these

groups together is

a kind of anti-American sentiment.

If you want to really shake

the American establishment,

you want them

to think that they are in danger,

that a revolutionary

new world is on its way.

The Panthers are certainly the

people you're going to support.

Since the United States of America

is the backbone of oppression

in the world,

the blows that we strike

against the empire there

will also aid the liberation

struggles in Africa,

Asia, North America,

as we aid ourselves.

APPLAUSE

Face The Nation, a spontaneous

and unrehearsed news interview

with the chief of staff of the

Black Panther Party, David Hillier.

Your Minister Of Information is now

in exile, Eldridge Cleaver.

You speak with him often

on the phone, is that correct?

Well, you know I do.

They tapped the phones.

The phone is probably hooked-up

through the White House.

The leaders of the party,

its national leadership,

sits with David Hillier.

Bobby Seale is in and out of prison,

Huey Newton is in jail, at this

point for a number of years,

and Eldridge Cleaver is in Algeria.

David was someone

who was considered,

a, um...

..you could say he was

a sound storekeeper.

He kept the shop in order.

Richard Nixon is the chief

spokesman of the American people,

and if the man is not

responsible for the people

in government, like the FBI agencies

or the local police,

then he should stand up

and let the American people

know that he does not endorse

the kind of campaigns that have been

waged against black...

THE INTERVIEWER INTERRUPTS

Nixon is elected with

a sense of a mandate

to cr*ck down, and he feels that

it is his personal charge,

after the '68 election,

to repress.

This is a nation of law,

and as Abraham Lincoln has said,

"No-one is above the law,

no-one is below the law",

and we're going to enforce the law,

and Americans should remember

that if we're going to have

law and order.

The Nixon administration

gives J Edgar Hoover

even more of a sense

that he can repress

without restriction.

Do you feel the nation

is in trouble?

I think, very definitely, it is.

What is the answer?

The answer is vigorous

law enforcement.

That's the only answer? That's

the only answer. How about justice?

You hear a lot about justice

with law enforcement.

Justice is merely incidental

to law and order.

FBI director J Edgar Hoover today

asserted that the Black Panthers

represent the greatest

internal thr*at to the nation.

Hoover said the Panthers have

perpetrated numerous

assaults on police and have

engaged in violent confrontations

throughout the country.

When Hoover identified the Black

Panther Party as the number-one

thr*at to the national security

of the United States

at a time when they're fighting

in Vietnam, you know,

of course that was...crazy, but it

was politically very effective.

And it says to law enforcement

at the local level,

we can take the gloves off now.

We don't have to respect

the civil liberties

and we can go after them

with everything we got.

One of the executive

orders of the Panther Party

was that we was to defend

ourselves from unwarranted att*cks.

To not allow the police to just

forcibly come in.

Yes, tear gas is on. Here's

your water and your, er, mask.

Keep this on you. OK.

Nobody coming in the front door.

Nobody. Nobody getting on the roof,

you hear? Sure enough.

I just wish they WOULD come tonight.

Yeah, I want them to come.

The Panthers were a criminal

organisation, were violent,

and they wanted to k*ll cops.

That's all I needed to know.

NEWSREEL: About 40 policemen

arrived on the scene

and began surrounding

the Black Panther headquarters.

They were trying to change

government as we know it

to t*rror1st activity.

We took a very proactive stance

in combating

what we considered

a t*rror1st organisation.

I think the FBI manipulated

the police.

The FBI arranged for

the Black Panthers to get g*ns.

Through informants,

they would convince the police

that the Panthers had weapons.

They had to go in

and be ready to be sh*t at,

so the police went in

and sh*t at them first.

You'd hear about raids taking place

against Black Panther officers.

They were coming to k*ll us.

NEWSREEL: Police say there was

sn*per fire throughout

the early-morning hours

so they moved in cautiously

and then began sh**ting.

The Black Panther/police sh**t-out

lasted 30 minutes.

It was obvious that the Government

had made a decision that

this was all-out att*ck

on the Black Panther Party.

Every significant office is going

to be raided, is going

to be bombed, is going to be sh*t,

there are going to be mass arrests.

NEWSREEL: In the predawn hours

in Chicago today,

police and negroes fought a...

Police and Black Panthers

clash in Houston, New Orleans

and other cities.

For the Black Panther Party, it was a

crisis situation, because we didn't

have the resources to handle all

these arrests and all these trials.

In other cities, er, the Panthers

were under physical att*ck,

er, from police departments.

But New York City

was going to handle

its Panther problem differently.

They created a conspiracy case

that allowed them to arrest

the entire leadership of the

New York City Black Panther Party.

A New York grand jury has

indicted 21 alleged

Black Panthers on charges

of plotting several bombings

in the city tomorrow.

On April 2nd, 1969,

in predawn raids,

21 Black Panthers were charged with

all kinds of t*rror1st activity.

NEWSREEL: These are some of the men

the police are accusing of being

involved in the plot,

which could have wounded or k*lled

scores of busy New Yorkers.

12 men were arrested today,

two are already in jail

and seven more are still at large.

And so the Panther 21 started.

I had just turned 16 years old but I

had already become a section leader.

When they first kicked in the door

of my grandmother's house

at four o'clock

in the morning I thought,

"Wow, I'm important enough to be

arrested, I'm a real Panther now."

There was a feeling that

it was a badge of honour.

This group, 21 people,

was the leadership of the New York

area, all tied up in court

with $100,000 bails,

which none of them could make.

We were facing 360-plus years

in prison.

And I began to feel

and accept the fact

that I was going to spend

the rest of my life in prison.

The Black Panther Party is

riddled with informers

who are intent on creating

situations in order to bring forth

such indictments in an attempt

to destroy...

Are you saying that they tried to

frame them? No question about it.

I mean, I told the jury that maybe

the police started the party.

CROWD CHANPeople who come back to New York are

going to work full-time

until the Panther 21

and the people accused

are allowed to get a fair trial.

We spent a lot of time building

awareness and doing fundraisers,

and then we had to have

high-profile fundraisers

because this kind of money

that we needed

couldn't come from

the black community.

We would wind up doing fundraisers

at places like

Jane Fonda's townhouse

so that we could raise money

for the legal defence fund.

After a 13-month trial,

where the New York State

spent millions of dollars

and put dozens of witnesses

and hundreds of pieces of evidence,

a jury deliberated for three hours.

The jury have considered

all of the counts and charges

against the defendants

and have found them not guilty.

CHEERING

Power to the people!

There were 156 not-guilty verdicts.

That is astonishing.

The courtroom erupted.

The city erupted.

There were people dancing

in the streets as word spread.

Even as the New York 21

are being acquitted,

you're seeing smaller trials,

other trials, pop up,

really, all over the country.

Some of them result in acquittals,

some of them result in convictions,

but this really consumes

most of the party's energy.

People were afraid to join.

They knew that it was infiltrated.

They knew that they would be

watched immediately.

They were afraid of

being prosecuted unjustly.

Nobody wants to go near

such an organisation that's so hot.

CROWD MURMURS

CROWD CHANTS

I was part of planning

a demonstration against Vietnam

at the 1968 Democratic

Convention in Chicago.

Bobby Seale was invited to speak.

The revolution in this country

at the time is, in fact,

people coming forth

to demand freedom.

THEY CHEER AND SIRENS WAIL

He then left and didn't

have anything to do with

the demonstrations or riots

or confrontations in Chicago,

but he was arrested

on the advice of the FBI

and he was later indicted

for that speech.

Bobby Seale asked to have his...

to postpone the trial

until his lawyer Charles Garry

could come to Chicago.

The judge refused and then Bobby

said, "Well, I'll present myself."

It started when Seale demanded to

cross-examine a prosecution witness,

accusing the judge of

denying his constitutional rights

to defend himself.

The judge ordered him

to sit down and be quiet

but the fiery Black Panther leader

continued to cry out.

The judge told

the marshals to hold him there

and that started

several days of insanity.

This judge is a liar,

and we have a right to defend,

and if you att*ck me,

I'll represent myself.

He kept insisting

on his right to represent himself

and the judge's response to that

was to order the bailiffs to

put gaffer tape over his mouth

and tie him to his chair.

I mean, it couldn't have been

more definitive

if they had put a sign on him

saying "sl*ve".

You know? The tape.

BOBBY GROANS AND STRUGGLES TO SPEAK

But it turned out Bobby

could make noise

and say things through the gag.

BOBBY YELLS INDISTINCTLY

BOBBY KEEPS TRYING TO YELL

Stop the trial! Stop the trial!

Stop the trial! Stop the trial!

Stop the trial!

Stop the trial! Stop the trial!

Stop the trial! Stop the trial!

Stop the trial...

One of the most amazing phenomena

of that time was

outside the federal court building

there was a plaza.

It was right in the heart of town,

right in the middle of the Loop,

and these kids were coming down

from the court room and...

with fire in their eyes, having just

seen that madness up there,

and, all of a sudden, one day,

this black orator,

who at that time was 20 years old,

starts talking to these people,

and all of a sudden

it's like a magnet.

The Deputy Chairman of the Illinois

Black Panther Party - Fred Hampton.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And I just want to tell you that

the chairman of the Black Panther

Party is going to be ungagged

and they're going to have to

take those chains off of him.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Bobby Seale is going through

all kinds of physical

and mental t*rture,

but that's all right, because we

said it even before this happened,

and we're going to say it after

this, and after I'm locked up,

and after everybody's locked up,

that you can jail a revolutionary,

but you can't jail a revolution.

Right.

CHEERING

You can run a liberator like

Eldridge Cleaver out of the country

but you can't run a liberation

out of the country.

You might m*rder a freedom fighter

like Bobby Hutton

but you can't m*rder

a freedom fight...

Whatever it was, Fred had it.

When he got up in front of a group

of people, the words just flowed.

You were awash in the words, OK?

It was like that, and I don't care

how many people were there,

it's like he was talking to you.

That's a dangerous person.

So, we're going to see about Bobby,

regardless...

He wasn't above us.

He was one of us.

I'm the Deputy Chairman of

the State of Illinois

Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton.

By the time he was 17,

he was the head of

the NAACP youth branch.

You're going to have to

do more than listen.

He was already experienced

by the time the Illinois chapter of

the Panther Party was formed,

so he was the natural choice

to lead it.

And we say

all powers to all people.

CROWD: All powers to all people.

Fred spoke in the People's Church

in August of 1969,

and I was in the crowd.

Towards the end of his speech,

he said, "Everybody stand up."

And we did, and he says,

"Now raise your right hand."

Say that,

"I am a revolutionary."

CROWD: I am a revolutionary.

Say it...

And I couldn't say it

because I thought to myself,

"I'm a lawyer for the movement.

I'm not a revolutionary."

And then he said it again,

"I am a revolutionary,"

and by the third or fourth time,

I was saying "a revolutionary"

as loud as anybody else in the room.

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

We say white power to white people.

CROWD: White power to white people.

Brown power to brown people.

Brown power to brown people.

Yellow power to yellow people.

Yellow power to yellow people.

Black power to black people.

Black power to black people.

We say Panther power to

the vanguard party.

A lot of us thought that we were

on the eve of a revolutionary

situation here in the United States.

We used to call the Panther Party

the vanguard of the movement,

because they were out

in the forefront.

There were kind of...

setting the pathway.

The things that we would face

some repression for, they would face

it ten times as great.

They were sacrificing their,

oftentimes,

their lives in the struggle.

These people, if you ask,

they'll divide themselves.

They'll say,

"I'm black and I hate white people."

"I'm white and I hate black people."

"I'm Latin American

and I hate hillbillies."

"I'm a hillbilly

and I hate Indians."

So we're fighting amongst

each other.

Fred Hampton here in Chicago was

the main voice for racial unity.

The Black Panther Party

stood up and said

that we don't care about

what anybody says.

We don't think you

fight fire with fire,

you fight fire with water,

and we're going to fight racism,

not with racism,

but fight it with solidarity.

We worked with organisations

such as the Young Lords -

a Puerto Rican street g*ng that had

become political -

and the Young Patriots -

hillbillies, Appalachian whiteboys.

Bob Lee, who was our Deputy Field

Marshal, had a meeting with them,

and he was explaining

why we should work together.

The coalition that Fred was

building in Chicago represented

the Latinos, the poor whites

and poor blacks,

but also,

because he had been in the NAACP,

he had linkages with folks

who were in the congregations -

you know, church folks -

and with working-class folks,

so Fred was building

a broad-based coalition in Chicago

and that was the thr*at.

J Edgar Hoover most feared

young whites uniting

with the blacks' struggle

and he was most afraid

of what he called a black "messiah"

rising up out of this movement.

Fred Hampton was very good

at running an organisation.

He could delegate responsibility.

He could spot talent.

The one thing that he failed

to spot, however,

was the FBI plant who was,

of course, his personal bodyguard.

I routinely supplied whatever

floor plans or diagrams

I could to the FBI.

I... That started in June of 1969.

I mean, they had a floor plan

and keys to the Black Panther

headquarters.

December 3rd, 1969, there was

a rally at the People's Church

on the west side of Chicago

and it was one of those rallies

where Fred gave

one of those speeches.

FRED: I don't believe

I'm going to die in a car wreck.

I don't believe I'm going to die

from slipping on a piece of ice.

I don't believe I'm going to die

because I've got a bad heart.

Why don't you live for the people?

Why don't you struggle

for the people?

Why don't you die for the people?

Close to 12 midnight,

William O'Neal came and picked me up

and brought me back

to our apartment.

Chairman Fred had been running 24/7,

trying to organise,

so he fell asleep.

I was eight and a half months

pregnant with our son,

so I fell asleep, too.

Police attached to the Cook County

State's Attorney's office

raided a Chicago apartment

shared by two high-ranking members

of the Black Panther Party

before dawn today.

The police were acting on a tip

that a supply of weapons

was in the apartment.

The State's Attorney recreated

the layout of the Panther apartment

and made arrangements for them

to produce his version

of what happened.

He stands up. I stand.

I stepped over and the machine...

Foot out... In short bursts...

We realised that there were still

some people remaining inside...

In, and before I could

get past the threshold,

there were three sh*ts fired

from the rear bedroom.

The immediate, violent,

criminal reaction of the occupants

in sh**ting at announced

police officers emphasises

the extreme viciousness

of the Black Panther Party.

So does their refusal

to cease f*ring

at the police officers when

urged to do so several times.

When the 15-minute g*n battle was

over, two Black Panthers were dead.

Police and Panthers differ

about what happened.

In the apartment,

we received no warning, no tear gas,

nothing to offer us to surrender

or come out.

b*ll*ts start coming through

the walls, plaster flying...

I saw a b*llet coming from,

it looked like,

the front of the apartment,

from the kitchen area.

And they were...

The pigs were just sh**ting.

I laid on top of chairman Fred

and I could feel, even through him,

the mattress vibrating.

I could feel the b*llet

going into him.

I just knew we'd be dead,

everybody in there.

We told them we were wounded,

and they said,

"Come out with your hands up."

One of them grabbed my robe and they

swung it open, and they say,

"Oh, what do you know?

We've got a broad here."

And then another one grabbed my hair

and slung me into the kitchen area.

I heard a voice say, "He's barely

alive. He'll barely make it."

They started sh**ting again.

BABY GROANS

I heard just a scream,

and they stopped sh**ting.

The pigs said,

"He's as good as dead now."

SIRENS WAIL

The police made what must be

an historic type of blunder.

in leaving the apartment open,

so, right away,

people went in there.

I stepped into the living room

and there was blood, Fred's blood,

pouring from all the way

from the bedroom in the very

back of the house, out into,

from the kitchen,

into the living room.

It was like a slaughterhouse and

there was blood all over the place.

When we lifted the mattress up

to look underneath,

three 45-calibre machinegun slugs

fell out of the mattress.

Only one sh*t came from a Panther

w*apon, because Mark Clark,

the young kid who answered the door,

was sh*t in the heart

as he answered the door,

and the g*n dropped and went off

through the ceiling.

All of the splinters were

coming into the apartment,

so we said, "This was a sh**ting.

It wasn't a sh**t-out."

And this was... This was planned?

This was a planned get for him?

All indications to me,

personally, are that this was...

obviously a political assassination.

I don't think anybody would have

expected the police to commit

just m*rder.

It takes a certain kind of guy

to carry that out.

They laughed about

what happened that night.

Much of what they said happened

couldn't have happened the way

they said it happened.

I do not intend to quibble

about that account, nor...

You're saying... Is it the truth?

The account that we gave

of the events is the truth.

It was a death squad

that did this raid.

It was a police death squad and the

whole thing was set up by the FBI.

The funeral of the slain Panther

leader was marked by angry eulogies,

including one from Ralph Abernathy,

head of the nonviolent Southern

Christian Leadership Conference.

Enjoy your peace, Freddy,

because there will be no peace

in this land

until freedom comes to roam.

We are going to trample

these streets with our feet.

APPLAUSE

The last message that I think

that Fred would have

wanted everybody to hear,

and that is, "I am..."

CROWD: I am.

"..a revolutionary."

A revolutionary. "I am..."

I am a revolutionary.

I am...

..a revolutionary!

..a revolutionary!

I am a...

FAINT VOICE ON POLICE RADIO

We didn't know when

it was going to happen

but we thought there was

something about to happen.

We were filling up sandbags,

fortifying the headquarters,

putting sand in the walls,

putting sandbags

around the entrance to the office.

We were actually trying to build

a tunnel to the sewer line.

If the police att*cked us,

we were going to escape into

the sewers and, you know,

we were going to set charges

on the building

and blow the building after we left.

It seemed like it was more...

There was more of a

police presence around.

We were getting stopped more.

We were getting harassed more.

I think they found out that it was

a different climate for them here.

We'd stop them. We'd search them.

We'd shake them down

and I think we did establish that

we were the dominating force.

The Special Weapons And Tactics

concept was formed in 1966.

The original SWAT team

in the United States -

or anywhere, for that matter -

was the LAPD SWAT team,

and in this particular case,

this was the first time

the SWAT team

was activated to serve

a high-risk warrant.

It was decided that a no-knock

warrant would be utilised

and surprise would be the element

that you would use.

I'm on watch, on the roof,

and it's a real quiet night.

Everything is just still.

You don't hear anything.

The access to that roof on either

side - pow! It breaks open.

By the time I was swinging around,

I'm seeing a light's on me -

they had a big light -

and I'm hearing the whole, "Freeze!

Freeze! Stay there! Drop it!"

And the front door blew open.

Boom!

expl*si*n AND g*nf*re

Well, Cotton had went

in the g*n room.

He had a Thompson sub-machine-g*n,

putting it down, with their tops.

Wah-wah-wah-wah-wah!

Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh! Buh-buh-buh!

MACHINEGUN FIRE

When it sprayed across the roof,

you could see it in the light

from the street.

and I was seeing,

it was like, at the time, man,

I'm going to tell you,

at that instance,

it was the best music I ever heard.

g*nf*re

And then, all of a sudden,

my g*n just went off.

I don't know what happened.

The g*n just went off, you know,

so we had them in flank in front,

and then Paul Redd got down.

He got busy and we drove them out

the front door.

Three officers were down...

g*nf*re CONTINUES

..and the gunfight continued

as the officers were dragged out

the way by other officers.

g*nf*re

Peaches and Tommy were

two sisters that were there.

They went into the communication

room to, just, you know,

start calling the news media and

calling our national headquarters

and calling everybody

they could call.

SIREN WAILS

Loud noise after ten,

about four and a half hours after

the original raid this morning.

FAINT g*nf*re

We had riflemen across the street -

on the roofs across the street.

They were sh**ting into the,

well, the sh**ting ports of

the building that

the Panthers had created.

The Panthers, on the other hand,

were sh**ting back out.

GUNSHOTommy had come downstairs

and she was laying behind me,

like, in a T.

You could see a light, a sunbeam,

going across her legs, like that.

Like, you know, "You need to move."

And she... You, know, she didn't.

She just kept talking and sh*t.

Next thing, you hear a sh*t go off.

GUNSHOThe b*llet went through

both her legs, like that,

so, you know, at this time,

you know, we had pretty much

got sh*t out.

You know, we were saving enough

b*ll*ts that when they came in

the door that we would have

some b*ll*ts to sh**t back with.

You know, I mean, it was like...

It wasn't like it took

no brain scientist to figure out,

"Well, this sh*t is over with."

We were talking about

giving up and...and...

You know, all the brothers say,

"Well, man, I ain't going out

there, man. I'm not giving up."

And, for like 30 minutes,

it just went around.

"Oh, I'm not going out first."

"I'm not going out first."

"We're going to die

in this, m*therf*cker.

"I'm not going out first."

Peaches said, "I'll go out there."

And I said, "Peaches..."

She said, "No, I'll go."

The white flag

coming out of the door.

The woman -

she's holding her hands up.

And she went outside

and Peaches gave up,

and when they didn't sh**t Peaches,

then we came out, one at a time.

That's how that went.

It was a big, glorious sh**t-out

but, after they raided us,

they had all the players locked up.

All of the main players was in jail.

CROWD: We want Huey out today!

We want Huey out today!

For about three years,

the Black Panthers have

used Huey Newton's name

for a rallying cry...

Free Huey! Free Huey! Free Huey!

..demanding that

he be freed from jail,

where he is held on a charge

of k*lling a policeman.

The words "Free Huey Newton"

have been chalked

and spray-painted on

1,000 fences and walls.

This being, the California

Supreme Court found some errors

in his trial

and ordered a new trial.

Now, right now, free Huey forever!

Right on!

Right on!

It was extremely tense.

You could feel the energy

and the tension in the air.

The Panthers had been getting

ready for guerrilla warfare

and they said, the sky is the limit

if the jury convicted him.

CROWD: We want Huey! We want Huey!

We want Huey! We want Huey!

We want Huey!

Shouting, "We want Huey now",

the crowd got their wish.

At this hour,

Huey Newton is a free man.

There he is!

CHEERING

Everybody was just

jubilant that day.

Finally, he gets to walk

out of that jail a free man.

The sky was the limit

and the sky had turned blue.

CHEERING AND YELLING

The image that was mobilised to

create the Free Huey movement

gave Huey almost mythic status

in the party.

He had become an image

and not a man,

and that gave him a power that

ultimately proved dangerous.

Come to the clinic tomorrow

for an appointment.

He came out, focusing on returning

to the survival programme,

the breakfast programme

and the free health clinics,

the free food programme

and the sickle-cell anaemia

research programme.

I remember Huey P Newton saying

that the Black Panther Party

was not going to last.

He said the organisation was

going to get destroyed,

based on the way we were...

We were very aggressive

and we kind of realised that this

wasn't going to last long.

We know that those are not

revolutionary programmes.

They are, at best,

survival programmes.

We know that the people are in

jeopardy of genocide

and that, if they do not survive,

then it won't be possible

to bring about revolution.

We were really trying

to connect more with

the people in the community,

and this was a...

This was a big push

and there was probably some...

some people who were not happy.

We have a breakfast for children

programme, you know?

But that's not what the Black

Panther Party is all about, you see?

I don't agree with saying that

the Black Panther Party

supports breakfast for children and

that's all we're about, you know?

"Don't talk about this other thing."

The Black Panther Party

is for overthrowing

the United States government.

Eldridge Cleaver, who was sitting

comfortably in Algeria,

was assailing the Black Panther

Party as being weak,

and it didn't have any more muscle,

and it was a reform organisation,

a Breakfast For Children Club,

and he denounced the party

and he denounced the administrator,

chief administrator of the party at

that time, who was David Hilliard.

He wanted to have

even more bloodshed,

which was not endearing us

to the community.

There were also problems with

the Panther 21 case.

There were legal fees,

and there became questions about

how much of the money that was

raised for the Panther 21

was actually getting back

to defend the Panther 21.

We wrote an open letter,

really criticising national

leadership and Huey P Newton,

and the response of

the national leadership

and, in particular, Huey P Newton,

was to kick out the Panther 21.

They were expelled

from the Panther Party.

Eldridge came to the defence

of the Panther 21.

The Black Panther Party has

split into two factions -

namely, the Cleaver

and Newton supporters.

The FBI was picking at Huey

and picking at Eldridge,

and I don't know who else

they were picking at,

to create this sense of distrust.

In the future,

submit counterintelligence proposals

against the Cleaver faction

and the Black Panther Party,

designed to widen

the existing rift,

effectively driving a wedge between

Newton and Eldridge Cleaver.

Ensure this mailing cannot be

traced to the bureau.

What we thought the FBI

wanted to do was k*ll us.

Blow up our offices. sh**t us.

I don't think we understood exactly

how insidious their project was.

They created a culture of paranoia

which was incredibly destructive.

In this sense, it was the

ultimate intelligence success,

being able to pit the party

against itself,

and the Panthers' internal conflict

would soon erupt

in the mainstream media.

Good morning.

Yes, it's AM, all right,

and this is Jim Dunbar,

with Nancy and Fleming here...

'We had become aware of

some sort of a rift'

that had come to pass

between Huey and Eldridge.

We had booked Huey and arranged

the call from Eldridge in Algeria

to take advantage of that.

We've got lots of things

coming up here on AM this morning.

Lots of things that

you'll like to see,

and we're looking forward to them

too, right here on AM.

'I'll not try to sugar-coat this.

'We thought this was a wonderful

opportunity to build audience,'

so we decided to go ahead

and put the two of them together.

HE PUTS THE PHONE DOWN

Huey's goal in having Eldridge on

the show was to show people that

he and Eldridge were on the same

page, and Eldridge sabotaged that,

so Hughie was livid.

He was embarrassed.

He was furious, and so, within

ten minutes or so, he called back.

PHONE RINGS

HE SLAMS PHONE DOWN

It was a split in the party

and, within days,

we began to feel

just how bad it was.

Someone has to be disciplined,

and my recommendation is

to discipline Eldridge Cleaver,

not for the criticism itself but of

the way in which it was presented.

The word got back to us

that Eldridge had put out the edict

that the streets were not

supposed to be safe for Panthers.

Whether he said that or not,

he was in Algeria, we were here.

Who knows? It was chaos.

There were certain chapters

that stayed with Huey.

Many of the people

who followed Eldridge

leave the party and go underground,

and then, some people just

were confused and frustrated

and walked away.

They don't know which faction of

the Black Panther Party to follow

or if they should deal

with Panthers at all.

The party had leaders who,

at that point,

were not worthy of the dedication

of their followers,

and I think that that was probably

the worst aspect of the party,

is that, I think,

some of the followers felt

betrayed by their leaders.

And the split becomes so deep

that it erupts, in some cases,

into v*olence, into fights,

and into sh**t between Panthers.

This is exactly what

the Bureau, in fact,

wanted to see happen

in the first place.

This was part of what the Cointelpro

operations were really all about.

J Edgar Hoover, in particular, says,

"We've been pitting people

against each other.

"That's all worked out really well,

"but you know, now we don't even

have to worry about it any more.

"Now they're just going to

keep it going on their own

"and we can step back a little bit

and just let them play it out."

In the midst of all of this turmoil,

the Panthers decide to go in

a really radically new direction.

Bobby Seale,

the Black Panther leader,

has been in trouble with

the law for many years.

He's been imprisoned on some

charges, acquitted on others,

and now he's trying to make

a new career for himself.

He wants to be

Mayor of Oakland, California,

where the Black Panther

movement began.

All right. All right, there.

Nice to meet you.

How are you all doing?

The Panthers decide to call members

to Oakland, in an effort to

run Bobby Seale for Mayor of Oakland

and Elaine Brown for City Council.

John Seale, member of

the central committee of

the Black Panther Party,

called me at the Baltimore

chapter office and told me

to begin closing down

all of our programmes,

so we were instructed to cease

and desist all party operations,

and to bring as many party members

from Baltimore

out to Oakland as possible.

Ultimately, they roll the die.

They assume that if they're

successful in this campaign,

this might help to transform

one American city.

This might be the blueprint

for the future,

but they do roll the die.

The numbers were dwindling

and, therefore, the force of

the party was dwindling,

so it only made sense to

consolidate everything

and to say,

"What can we do with what we have?"

We laid down the g*ns two years ago.

"We don't need g*ns," we said,

because we knew

we had the ability to really

organise and educate the people

and show them, really,

some of the concrete things

we can do in the community.

Initially, the idea of Bobby

running for mayor seemed ridiculous.

Black Panther leader Bobby Seale

ran second in his race for Mayor of

Oakland, California, but Seale

polled just enough votes to

force a run-off with the

Conservative incumbent,

John Redding.

I think we were shocked when

he ended up in a run-off,

but as we got into the campaign,

and as he started doing

his campaign runs,

as Elaine started doing

her campaign speeches,

as people started getting -

we started galvanising

people's enthusiasm -

it started looking

like he might win.

MUSIC: Express Yourself

by Charles Wright

# Express yourself

# Express yourself... #

Part of the strategy

for the campaign was to

increase the number of black voters

on the rolls in Oakland.

We sent people out into the

community, going door-to-door,

walking the streets, registering

people to vote en masse.

And we went to the churches

and we went to the dope-houses

and we went to the streets

and we went everywhere where

the people were, trying to organise

people to vote for Bobby and Elaine.

# ..Whatever you do, do, do

Lord, Lord...

# Do it good... #

They ran an amazing campaign.

Bobby Seale used to

ride buses in Oakland

and do stump speaking on the bus,

and they really took it to

the streets in a different way.

# ..It's not what you look like when

you're doing what you're doing... #

Bobby had made a promise

that he was going to give away

10,000 bags of groceries

with a chicken in every bag,

and that was a takeoff on FDR's

"a chicken in every pot".

# ..Express yourself... #

We counted up and found out

last night it was 6,882 bags

that we actually gave away

last night,

and I think that

the voter registration

is running neck-and-neck with it.

I'm sure of that,

cos there's a lot of...

Oh, it blew our minds,

so many black people in

the black communities

that registered to vote.

It was amazing, because they

were able to register

between 20 and 50,000 people

to vote.

They basically turned their

survival programmes into

a "get out the vote" apparatus...

# ..Ah-ah

# Express yourself

Express yourself

# Express, express

Express yourself

# Express yourself

Express yourself... #

..but in the end, it wasn't enough.

Mayor John Redding of Oakland,

California was re-elected yesterday

in a run-off against Bobby Seale,

the Black Panther leader,

and Don Oliver has that story.

Looking at the mood

at Bobby Seale's headquarters,

you would have thought he won.

You know what somebody told me?

What is it? Tell us.

They say, we don't care how

the election goes, Bobby Seale,

as far as you can see...

They told me this, it blew my mind.

You're still our mayor

and we're going to keep going.

CHEERING

Power to the people.

Plan A was for Bobby to win,

Elaine to win,

and our slate to win.

There wasn't,

as far as I can remember, a plan B.

Once we lost the campaign,

there was kind of a, erm...

You know, there was a void.

It was, in theory, a great idea,

that you could marshal this army

of organisers to come to Oakland

but, for the most part, when all

the chapters come back to Oakland,

well, the Panthers as

a national phenomenon really cease.

After the elections in Oakland,

Huey Newton is known to have

some erratic behaviour.

People who are very close to him

would say that,

"It depends on the day

you meet him."

Some days, Huey Newton

could be a brilliant, thoughtful

political strategist, and committed

to the liberation of black people,

and another day, he could be

self-serving and thuggish.

I was one of the folks who oriented

new Panther members,

and I oriented them by

telling them about

what a wonderful person Huey was,

and about how he was

the leader of our party,

never knowing what the hell he was.

We had created the cult of the

personality around a f*cking maniac.

He surrounded himself

with former prisoners

and they became his inner retinue.

Around 1973,

we created a special unit

that would protect our leaders

and do other kinds of activities

related to what Huey Newton called

"the sterner stuff of politics".

We were going to take over

the underworld -

the underground apparatus

of the city of Oakland.

We were shaking down

the drug dealers, the pimps...

Some people were, like, stickup men.

He was bringing in revenue.

As he became more and more

addicted to multiple substances,

I don't think he wanted to live

and I don't think he wanted

the party to live any more.

From there on, you know, he was

less and less the Huey I knew

and more and more

listening to his demons.

If Huey wanted to see you,

or you wanted to see Huey,

you had to come to his penthouse,

which meant that

you went up in his elevator,

which meant that you were searched

before you got up there,

and when you get up there, then you

were confronted by this maniac,

in his penthouse, who did all

kinds of things to people -

physical as*ault, sexual as*ault,

p*stol-whipping,

threatening to k*ll...

He also became very abusive

to the people around him.

He abused people like Bobby.

There were changes in the

organisation.

Bobby Seale left.

There were a lot of people

who had been in the organisation

from the beginning and, and...

and then they left.

Then there was a time

when he was violent with me

and that was why

I left the Black Panther Party.

I said goodbye as I left but I left.

The great strength of the

Black Panther Party was its ideals

and its youthful vigour

and enthusiasm.

The great weakness of the party

was its ideals

and its youthful vigour

and its enthusiasm.

That sometimes

can be very dangerous,

especially when you're up against

the United States government.

MUSIC: Winter In America

by Gil Scott-Heron

# Just like the cities

that stagger on the coastline

# Living in a nation

# That just can't take much more

# Like the forest

they buried beneath the highway

# Never had a chance to grow... #

If there's anything

I can do that would truly

progress the people, let me know.

I may not be a member

of the Black Panther Party,

but I will always be

a Black Panther.

All power to the people.

Peace and freedom to the world.

We made mistakes.

We charged ahead too fast

and were too arrogant sometimes.

We certainly underestimated

the police and the government,

in terms of their response

to the Black Panther Party.

but I think what remains true -

the central guiding principle was

an undying love for the people.

# ..And now it's winter

# It feels like winter in America

# Yeah, it's a time when

all of the healer brothers

# Who could help us done been k*lled

# They put 'em in jails

# Yeah, people know

there's something wrong

# But everybody oughta know

# Winter... #

The Black Panther Party platform

and programme -

what we want and what we believe.

We want decent housing

fit for the shelter of human beings.

# ..Well, nobody knows

what to say... #

We want education for our people.

# ..The truth is there ain't

nobody fighting... #

We want an immediate end

to police brutality

and m*rder of black people.

# ..Nobody knows

Nobody knows... #

We want land, bread, housing,

education, clothing,

justice, peace...

# ..Nobody's fighting because

# Well, nobody knows what to say

# It feels like winter in America

# The truth is there ain't nobody

fighting because

# Well, nobody knows what to say

# The truth is there ain't

nobody fighting because

# Well, nobody knows

# Nobody knows what to do

# What to do

# The truth is there ain't

nobody fighting because

# Nobody knows what to say. #