Revolutionary Suicide

8/18/2019 Revolutionary Suicide

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REVOLUTIONARY SUICIDE: OUTLINE

A MANIFESTO

○ Huey spent 22 months at California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo

■ Almost continually in solitary confinement○ Huey’s first trial: for the death of Patrolman John Frey

○ No reading allowed, but magazine that stood out to him slipped under his cell by one of

the inmates: May 1970 Ebony magazine issue

■ Written by Lacy Banko summarizing work of Dr. Herbert Hendin

■ Hendin’s work: studied disproportionately high suicide rates among black men

aged 19-35

■ Article reminded him of Durkheim’s study claiming that suicide is a result of social

conditions which led him to the idea of revolutionary suicide

○ Huey studied at Oakland City College

○Reactionary suicide: a man taking his own life in response to social conditions thatoverwhelm him and condemn him to helplessness

■ Analogy: Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment

● “While society may drive the poor man out with a stick, the beggar will be

swept out with a broom.”

■ Relates to a spiritual death in the Black community

○ Revolutionary suicide: “When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these

forces, even at the risk of death. We will have to be driven out with a stick.”

○ Huey doesn’t believe life will change for the better without an assault on the

Establishment (the power structure)

○ Che Guevara: said revolutionary death the reality and victory the dream

■ Bakunin thought the same in Revolutionary Catechism

■ Fidel Castro’s men didn’t understand this rule, his men thought revoltuion to be

more romantic

○ Huey Newton doesn’t expect to live to see the end of his revolution

○ Huey says black radicals are different from white radicals in that white radicals are not

facing genocide

○ Scholars consider Black Panthers suicidal, Huey says they are not

○ Said prison made him stronger, did not cooperate (He considered it reactionary)

CHAPTER ONE: STARTING OUT

○ Huey’s father’s father was a white rapist

○ Doesn’t know his grandparents, says racism ruined his family○ Parents: Walter Newton and Armelia Johnson

○ Both parents born in Deep South: father born in Alabama, mother in Louisiana

■ Parents’ families moved to Arkansas

■ Married in Parkdale, Arkansas

■ Moved to Louisiana after for employment prospects

○ Huey’s father believed in family; his mother never worked outside of the home


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○ Father ran through many jobs, was also a minister at Bethel Baptist Church in Monroe,

Louisiana

○ Oldest child: Lee Edward

○ Mother helped family see the light side, carried Huey through most difficult days

○ Huey born in Monroe, Louisiana

■ Last of seven children■ Grew up baby-faced, maybe why he fought so often in school

■ Named after Huey P. Long, former Governor of Louisiana

● Liked him since he was racist, but his policies ended up helping black

communities

○ Huey’s family had a tradition of “giving” a newborn to an older brother or sister

■ Given to his brother Walter, Jr.

■ Huey said this ritual was a surviving “Africanism”

○ 1945: Huey’s family moved to Oakland in black exodus for wartime work in North and

West

○ Oakland’s unemployment rate is high, horrible history of police brutality○ 2 Oaklands:

■ Hills: also rich area called Piedmont, home to upper-middle and upper class

● Home to US Senator William Knowland, owner of ultraconservative Oakland

Tribune

■ Flatlands: sub-standard income families, low-income minorities (many of them

Blacks)

○ Huey moved many times growing up since it was difficult to find decent homes for large

families

■ First house: corner of Fifth and Brush streets

■ Later: two-room apartment at Castro and Eighteenth streets● Slept in kitchen

○ Poor but happy, had many playmates

■ Especially his brother Melvin, who was four years older

○ Never went hungry, ate poor food

■ Cush: Corn bread mixed with leftovers

○ Even his toys were a reminder of his family’s status

■ Dirt, rats, and cats were the games and toys of the poor

○ In his family it was important that everyone get along with each other

■ Father served as an impartial judge

CHAPTER TWO: LOSING

○ In school Huey was constantly ashamed of being black

■ Enforced in curriculum: black cowardice in Little Black Sambo compared with

bravery of white knights in Sleeping Beauty

■ Found himself wanting to be one of those white characters, and began to cringe at

the mention of the word Black

■ “We not only accepted ourselves as inferior; we accepted the inferiority as

inevitable and inescapable”


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■ Got his white peers to do his math homework, felt he could not learn the material

■ This shame led to rebellion

○ Remembers two things of elementary school in particular, both taking place at Lafayette

Elementary School

■ Fifth grade: called out for not paying attention by teacher, forced to write the word

“business” on board but instead he froze up and walked out● Created a reaction of freezing up any time he was forced to speak in public

or read in public or perform in public

■ Dumping sand out of shoes from recess at too slow of a pace for the teacher,

teacher hit him and Huey hit her back with his shoe, gained respect from his peers

● Lower class schoolkids valued anyone who bucked authority

○ Only teacher Huey never had a problem with: Mrs. McLaren from Santa Fe Elementary

School

■ Had his older brother Melvin who she thought to be a model student

○ Developed a tough reputation in school, so there was no need to start fights with

teachers-- they began to instigate them○ Huey found that not one teacher taught him anything of use in Oakland public schools

CHAPTER THREE: GROWING

○ All real learning Huey learned outside of school

■ First thing a Black child must learn: how to fight

■ Huey used to feign sickness or find an excuse to miss school each day, his mother

caught on and had Walter, Jr. take him

● Huey learned how to stand his ground because Walter taught him how to

fight well

○ Huey wanted to be a fighter when he was younger

■ Looked up to Joe Louis as his saint; Jersey Joe, Kid Gavilan, and Sugar Ray weretheir pantheon

■ He didn’t need a nickname when fighting, Huey was enough

■ Would fight on the streets for “winos” (someone who drinks an excessive amount

of wine or is homeless) who loved it

● Huey was considered by them to be a “prize fighter”

■ Huey would train to fight at the Campbell Street Center with Walter, also had a few

bouts at the Boys Club

● Also learned a lot about fighting from Lee Edward, his oldest brother

■ In retrospect, Huey says their fighting was their way of affirming their masculinity

and dignity in reaction to social pressures

○ When fighting, Huey met his friend David Hilliard

■ Current Black Panther Party member

■ Huey met him right after elementary school in North Oakland where they could

finally buy a house

■ Both started junior high school at Woodrow Wilson

■ David’s wife: Patricia Parks, who was terrified of Huey but less so once she and

David got married


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○ Another good friend of junior high: James Crawford

■ Would fight constantly, but stopped once they formed a gang called the

Brotherhood in 1953

● Gang was a direct response to white aggression

■ James dreamt of being a singer or of opening a restaurant; educational system

failed him and he became an alcoholic and found himself in and out of statemental hospitals

○ Huey’s middle school years were just like elementary in the sense of constant ridicule by

teachers and learning little

■ Only class that Huey didn’t think was painful: a cooking class taught by Miss Cook,

the only Black teacher he had

■ Mrs. Gross: taught Crawford and Huey in the “dumb class” and kicked them out

constantly

○ Huey associated reading with being an adult

○ His refusal to learn became a matter of defiance, a way of holding onto his dignity in an

oppressive systemCHAPTER FOUR: CHANGING

○ Hope is considered a scarce commodity in the Black community

■ Illustrated by Claude Brown who grew up in Harlem and wrote of it in Manchild in

the Promised Land

○ Huey’s father had a dignity and pride seldom seen in southern Black men

■ Huey’s father’s survival may be because his father was half white

○ Through generations, mothers have tried to curb their son’s masculine aggressiveness for

fear of death from a hostile white community

○ All of Huey’s siblings influenced him, particularly his three brothers

■ His brother Melvin (who went on to teach sociology at Merritt College in Oakland)opened up the possibilities of intellectual growth

○ Huey began to appreciate poetry through his brother Melvin

■ He particularly loved Macbeth’s speech that begins: “Tomorrow, and tomorrow,

and tomorrow/ Creeps in this petty pace from day to day…”

■ “Adonais” also impacted him: talks of a friend who died and how life is seen

differently over time

● Made him think that marriage, family, debt, etc. were another form of

slavery

■ “Ozymandias” also impacted him:

● Could mean a man’s life is like the myth of sisyphus

● Could mean the king wanted to take people’s eyes off of achievements and

instead to look with despair

■ Obsession with poetry led to his desire to read, which changed his life profoundly

CHAPTER FIVE: CHOOSING

○ One of the most long-lasting influences on Huey’s life was religion

■ Mother would read the Bible to Huey and Melvin when they were little


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■ Huey’s favorite story from the Bible: the Samson story, followed by David and

Goliath

■ Huey heavily involved in the Antioch Baptist Church: belonged to the Baptist Young

People’s Union, the Young Deacons, the junior choir, attended Sunday school and

worship services

■ Father was a fire and brimstone preacher, a “burner”■ Everyone in the family involved in the church

■ Would read at church (not well) but compensated with acting, where he had

attained an eloquence from reciting poetry with Melvin

○ Huey studied piano for seven years with great music theorists and pianists

○ Huey saw later that with church, he and his friends were heading for a hell on earth and

trying to reach heaven through church

○ Pastor at Antioch Baptist Church: Reverend Thomas

○ For Huey, church offered a countermeasure against the fear and humiliation he

experienced in school

○ Huey relates to James Baldwin’s experience with religion in The Fire Next Time○ Thought about becoming a minister in college, studied philosophy instead as he began to

question God and the foundation of his beliefs

○ Religion impacted Huey in different ways

■ He never used profanity

■ Huey saw the sense of community and the belief in a common goal as what the

Black community should be doing outside of church, too

○ The life of a hustler appealed to Huey

■ Admired them because he felt they were free, as they defied authority

■ Huey’s second-oldest brother, Walter, Jr., known as “Sonny Man” in Huey’s family,

was a hustler■ Huey: “To be a hustler means to be a survivor.”

○ Relates to George Jackson’s belief on bills and how they take away a man’s freedom

○ Huey’s father always paid his bills on time, and never mailed them for fear of being

overcharged

■ Huey and Melvin would pay bills for their father, which is what Huey was doing

when he was arrested in 1967

■ Huey hated bills and vowed to never have them, hated how bills affected his father

who worked so hard yet had so little

■ Huey blames his father’s hard work on the state of his father’s health

○ Huey thought that these bills were people’s own fault

■ In avoiding these responsibilities, he became a hustler for a while

○ Huey says that all Black men face the dilemma that if you’re a moral, hard-working man

then you get nothing, while hustlers get all things desired

○ Huey says that Black boys grow up learning to distrust authority, and that the system can

affect every aspect of life in the Black community

■ Many Black boys turn to rebellion, finding it to be their only weapon

○ Huey avoided chores and other responsibilities like his paper route


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○ Huey attributed his resistance to his need to be a separate person, separate from his

family

○ Huey has always hated to see people go without their needs, an idea he thinks came from

his father’s sermons

○ Huey received punishment when he was young; his parents never spared the rod

■ Huey believes this punishment came from a place of caring, and that they didn’twant to see him get eaten up by the system

CHAPTER SIX: HIGH SCHOOL

○ Huey constantly battled with instructors throughout high school, led to his transfer out of

the Oakland school system and into Berkeley High School in Berkeley with his oldest

sister, Myrtle

■ Before Berkeley, Huey started out high school in tenth grade at Oakland Technical

High School

■ Started to get into real trouble with the police at Berkeley

■ Started a fight with Mervin Carter over some girls where he was arrested

■ Huey refused to give up Merv’s name, thinks it to be immoral within the Blackcommunity since you’re giving someone up to white authority

■ Huey retaliated by threatening him with a hammer and a gun, when somebody

called the police on him and he was taken to Juvenile Hall

○ Huey also had stolen frequently in his adolescent years, although he din’t think of it as

stealing, and ratheer as something he was owed

○ Released from Juvenile Hall and had to leave Berkeley since his parents lived in Oakland

■ After that, things went well at Oakland Tech

■ Became a hustler and a hipster just like Sonny Man

■ Was called “crazy,” but he liked the label

■ His first car, “Gray Roach,” helped solidify his reputation as crazy■ Began to feel as though he could outmaneuver death

■ The film Black Orpheus inspired him, and even though the main characters died he

would always think of what he could do differently so that he wouldn’t die

○ Began to learn how to perform hypnotic trances from his brother Melvin (who was taught

by Solomon Hill, a fellow student at Oakland City College)

■ Hypnosis began to be about “styling,” so he found it boring and quit

○ At parties he would recite poetry since he couldn’t dance

■ David’s favorite poem: Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

○ Supported Fidel Castro and the Communist Cuban people and Paul Robeson since his

teachers taught him to hate them

■ On his way to becoming a revolutionary

CHAPTER SEVEN: READING

○ Huey was a functional illiterate by his last year of high school

○ His high school counselors told him that he wasn’t college material

■ Warranted this allegation by testing him to find out he has an IQ of 74

■ He decided to learn how to read in order to rebel against authority, also to be more

like Melvin


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■ Taught himself to read, was ashamed to ask others, especially Melvin who was

disgusted when Huey didn’t know certain words

■ Huey taught himself by reading Plato’s Republic and looking up words he didn’t

know in the dictionary

■ When talking about the shame of not knowing how to read, Huey says nothing is

more painful than shame● Huey said shame hurt more than the pain he endured during fights

CHAPTER EIGHT: MOVING ON

○ Huey began a period of confusion in his last two years of high school that lasted until he

and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party

■ Began to question everything

■ Desperately wanted to know why his father and others, despite working so hard,

never got ahead

● Wanted to know why so that this would never happen to him

■ Questioned religion

● Wanted to join a monastery so that he could answer these questions inpeace

● Torn between college like Melvin and the life of a hustler like Sonny Man

○ Valued Melvin’s detachment

○ Didn’t appreciate that Sonny Man and hustlers rejected family that

Huey valued so highly

● Ashamed to question religion

○ Related to Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a

Young Man

○ Ended up going to Oakland City College in the fall of 1959

■ His lifestyle of a beatnik alarmed his parents■ Grew a beard, which his parents rejected and considered bohemian

● His father demanded that he shave it, one night cornered him and

demanded that he shave it

● Huey’s love for his family and need for independence, symbolized by the

beard, were clashing

● Huey would not shave his beard, moved out and lived with Richard Thorne

● Huey’s room was kept for him in his father’s house until his arrest in 1968

CHAPTER NINE: COLLEGE AND THE AFRO-AMERICAN ASSOCIATION

○ Huey started at Oakland City College (now Merritt College) in 1959

■ Still ran with his brothers on the block in college, all of his money came from petty

crime

○ One of his first friends at Oakland City College: Richard Thorne

■ He was a tall, Black guy who wore his hair natural

■ He excited some, frightened others

■ Huey stayed with him for a month after he left home

○ After he stayed with Richard, Huey moved into the Poor Boys Hall


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■ Enjoyed it here because he was among boys who were also “getting their life

together”

○ Richard Thorne was always talking to Huey about books he intended to write

○ Richard had a theory that nonpossessive love was pure love, and that possessive love was

a mockery of pure love

■ Richard was critical of “bourgeois love relationships”■ He thought a partner should not be owned like cars or houses

○ Huey was an angry man at this time

■ Found himself drinking and fighting on the block, committing burglary in Berkeley

homes, and going to school in Oakland

■ Began to move away from family and church

○ Huey was a member of Phi Beta Sigma, a social fraternity where he expressed his anger

about society

■ Someone there told him like he sounded like Donald Warden who was preaching

Blackness at the Berkeley campus at the University of California

○ Huey went to Berkeley to find Donald Warden and his Afro-American Association■ The first person he met there was Maurice Dawson, who shamed Huey for not

understanding what he meant about “Afro-Americans”

● This taught Huey never to shame people who do not understand, and he

applies this lesson to the Black Panther Party

○ Huey began to attend meetings of the Afro-American Association, who taught Black

people to develop pride in their culture and contributions to society

■ Much of it was book readings of authors like W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, Booker

T. Washington, and James Baldwin

■ On Saturdays they would speak on street corners of the Black communities of

Oakland or San Francisco■ While many of the members were bourgeois college students, Huey brought in his

poor, uneducated brothers off the block

○ Huey’s family did not believe Warden was up to any good, thought this was all a ploy to

expand his law practice

■ Huey’s disillusionment with Warden began when he saw that Warden stood up to

no one

● One time a group of white guys came down to fight at a meeting in San

Francisco; Huey began to throw hands but saw that Warden had run away

● Oakland Tribune ran an article saying the City Council made derogatory

remarks about the Association,

○ Warden wrote asking to be on the agenda of the Council’s next

meeting, but when they went to City Hall, Mayor John Houlihan said

that they could not speak since important people from Piedmont (an

all-white, upper class area within Oakland) were there

○ Houlihan said to wait until last and Warden didn’t object, and after

Piedmont’s speech they said the agenda was closed


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○ One of the councilmen insisted they be heard, and Warden spoke to

say that the Afro-American Association did not want trouble, instead

wanted to get “welfare-collecting” Black people off of the streets

○ The councilmen and Mayor Houlihan ate it up

● Huey found that without white people there, Warden could tear them up,

but that he had little interest in Black people○ He did have interest in Barry Goldwater’s daughter’s donation to his

sister’s sewing shop

■ Huey left the Association, disillusioned by Warden’s inability to deal with the Black

present

■ In the end, Warden really was just interested in building his law practice and when

Huey went to him for consultation, Warden wouldn’t even give him a discount and

instead his prices were higher than any other

■ Huey took a lesson from this and applied it to the Black Panther Party: do not take

a stance just because it is popular

■ Huey believes Warden got attention because he lead people away from the truth ofthe Black community’s situation

○ Others also drifted from the Afro-American Association

■ Richard Thorne left to found the Sexual Freedom League, and later he organized a

spiritual cult called Om Eternal, where he is considered the unquestionable high

priest, and changed his name to Om

■ Ron Everett went to Watts, Los Angeles and established his own cultural nationalist

group, US, which became a cult

● Ron called himself Karenga (“the original”) and later US had confrontations

with the Black Panthers, killing two of Huey’s finest comrades

CHAPTER TEN: YEARNING○ Life began to open up for Huey, found himself beginning to enjoy the learning process

■ Sometimes at college he would skip classes and go to the library to find more

information on the subject

● For example, he would read about psychology of biological behaviorism of

John B. Watson, also works of B. F. Skinner and Pavlov

■ Huey also enjoyed philosophy

● Felt the need to understand definitions before engaging in dialogue, a

theory he applied to the Black Panthers

● Huey was impressed by A. J. Ayer’s logical positivism and his distinction

between the analytical statement, the synthetic statement, and statements

of assumption

● Black Panther Party stands on Ayer’s idea that nothing can exist without

being conceptualized, articulated, and shared

■ Huey began to move towards existentialism- read Camus, Sartre, and Kierkegaard

● Found their teachings to be similar to the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible,

Huey finds the “Preacher” to be the first existentialist

● From then on, Huey would always engage in existentialist discussions


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○ College did not give him the answers he had been seeking, but it did give him a better

understanding of people

■ Realized the system wanted him to fail and wanted to label him as dumb; in college

another IQ test labeled him at a level of “dull normal” while another “indicated” that

he was intelligent

■ Huey concluded only he knew what was happening inside of himself○ Huey was free to pursue his education in his own style since he supported himself

through activities on the block

■ He ran gambling sessions at his apartment, served as the “houseman”

○ Huey’s studying and reading led him to become a socialist

■ His progression from nationalist to socialist was slow, but he was around a lot of

Marxists and occasionally went to meetings of the Progressive Labor Party

■ Supported Castro and read of Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Revolution

■ Realized the benefits of collectivism, began to see the link between racism and the

economics of capitalism

● Created the belief that you could not destroy racism without wiping out itseconomic foundation

○ Despite his ideas, Huey did not identify with the campus lifestyle, preferred to hang out

with his brothers on the block

■ Loved college so much because he wasn’t forced to go

○ Thought of groups like the Afro-American Association as a training ground for Muslims

■ Began to investigate Black Muslim rhetoric, read C. Eric Lincoln’s Black Muslims in

America, but he really was attracted to Minister Malcolm X

● First saw Malcolm X speak at McClymonds High School in Oakland at a

conference sponsored by the Afro-American Association, Muhammad Ali

(Cassius Clay) was there, too● Huey was impressed with Malcolm X and believed in his program: armed

defense when attacked, and reaching the people with ideas and programs

that speak to their condition

● Would have joined Black Muslims and started going to mosques, but already

questioning religion and didn’t need another one

○ Back at college, Kenny Freeman and others began to organize a West Coast branch of

RAM, the Revolutionary Action Movement

■ Bobby Seale tried to get Huey into the chapter, but they wouldn’t let him in, finding

him to be too bourgeois (which was a lie)

■ Huey found RAM to be a lie, and thought that while they talked of revolution, they

were all bourgeois and were headed for occupations within the system

■ Huey thought they really didn’t want him because he hung out with boys off the

block

■ RAM formed a front group called the Soul Students Advisory Council, dedicated to

getting a Black history course into the curriculum

● Once this was achieved, the group disbanded

CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE BROTHERS ON THE BLOCK


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○ Huey noticed that so many of his friends were on their way to be forever in debt and

paying bills like his father

■ Huey said this system was like a modern-day sharecropping on an urban

plantation

■ Huey thought that no organizations existed to help his brothers within this cycle,

and he desperately wanted to help○ At college, Huey found that many of his peers still wanted to be a part of the system,

having pipe dreams of success

■ Huey found that he could not relate to these goals, associated possessions with

nonfreedom

○ On the block, Sonny Man was only involved with brothers who didn’t go to college

○ Huey thinks that one of the reasons that he got into so many fights on the block was

because he weighed only about 130 pounds

■ Sonny Man taught Huey how to fight, and Huey got a reputation as a bad dude

● Occasionally a “tush hog” (tough street fighter) would challenge him

○ On the block, Huey would sometimes bring up philosophical ideas■ Some of his brothers thought he was a pedant, putting them down, and rap

sessions would occasionally start

■ Told his brothers about the cave allegory from Plato’s Republic , and they enjoyed it

○ Street philosophy crept into Huey’s academic work

■ Huey began studying police science and law so he would know how to

outmaneuver the police; his mother always wanted him to be a lawyer

● His first time he stood a policeman down: 1965 he was walking across Grove

Street and saw a white man sideswipe a brother’s car

● The officer was about to write a ticket to the brother when Huey challenged

himCHAPTER TWELVE: SCORING

○ Huey studied law to be a better burglar

■ Studied the California penal code with books like California Criminal Evidence and

California Criminal Law by Fricke and Alarcon

■ Later learned how to deal with the police since he now knew his rights

■ His studying worked, since every time he was arrested he got off with no charges

● He found the court would convict you, but if you were familiar with your

right and the law that they would let you go since you were indoctrinated

into their way of thinking

○ Huey was doing a lot that was unlawful

■ He and his friends would steal or buy or sell blank checks

■ They burglarized Berkeley and Oakland homes in broad daylight, would use

lawnmowing ploy

■ Huey would go car prowling by himself

■ Huey would short-change, where he scored best

○ Once he had gotten into petty crime, Huey stopped fighting, shifting his anger from the

community onto the establishment


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○ He would never score on Blacks, but he would score on Whites since he thought it to be

retribution

○ He would stay home and read whenever he scored enough money to have a stretch of

free time

■ Particularly, he read and reread Les Miserables , since he related to Jean Valjean,

who spent thirty years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread■ Camus’ The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus made Huey feel even more justified in

his liberating property from the oppressor

○ He never wanted to hurt poor whites, however

■ At the time he admits that he still associated having money with whiteness

○ Huey’s purpose then was to have as much leisure time as possible

○ Eventually he got caught, but by then he was educated of the law and decided to defend

himself, which gave him great pleasure

■ Considers defending himself a manifestation of freedom as an existentialist

■ Huey finds that the law exists to protect those who possess property

■ He liked arguing traffic tickets, the only time he got in trouble with the law for onehe coincidentally did not commit

■ He would beat cases in the pretrial period because they could not establish the

corpus delicti , or the elements of the case

○ In a short-change case, he was accused of running his game in sixteen stores

■ Only a few people were short in their registers, few would admit it

■ One girl said the police were trying to persuade her to testify against him

■ Huey got a dismissal on grounds of insufficient evidence

○ Huey had also been accused of stealing books from a bookstore near the college

■ In his gambling, some students would pay him in books that he could cash in

■ The bookstore tried to confiscate the books but Huey informed them that theycouldn’t without due process of law

■ Bookstore then notified the Dean of Students, who called the police

● No one could arrest him, since there was no warrant

■ Huey found that nobody knew how to deal with a confident Black man who knew

his rights

■ Women from bookstore brought to trial for case, but jury realized that she had

personal reasons for testifying since she had been seeing Huey

■ Dean testified, claiming at the time he didn’t even know his rights, making his

testimony void to the jury

■ Ended up with a hung jury, went on three times all with same result until the fourth

time when the judge refused the case

○ Third case came at a party Huey went to with Melvin

■ Huey doesn’t consider a party good unless there’s a good rap session

■ At this party, a man named Odell Lee came into the conversation, who Huey didn’t

know but had gone to school with his wife, Margot

■ When asked if he was an Afro-American, Huey turned away after replying, steak

knife in hand


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■ Odell challenged him and turned around again, sensing that he was a tush hog

with his scar and with his hand in his pocket, so when Huey was turned around

again by Odell, Huey stabbed him with his steak knife

■ Odell then fell into Melvin’s arms

○ After that, word got around that Odell was coming for Huey

■ Huey started packing a gun then, and was arrested for assault with a deadlyweapon

■ Huey was found not guilty, which he thinks was because the jury was not a jury of

his peers

■ Huey finds it almost impossible for a man to defend himself unless he is of the

oppressor class

■ Huey thinks the body language of fighting is expressed well in Bobby Seale’s Seize

the Time

■ Confined to the Alameda County Jail, when his family hired lawyer Leonard Dieden

■ Found guilty of a felony, they gave him six months for a misdemeanor

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: LOVING○ Huey’s parents, Christianity, his older brothers, and the theories of Richard Thorne all

shaped Huey’s view on relationships

○ As a child, Huey had accepted the institution of marriage, but as he saw the turmoil his

father went through, he saw the ideal bourgeois family was suffocating

■ Huey also goes on to describe marriage as “imprisoning”

○ Richard Thorne, Huey’s friend who thought an ideal relationship to be a nonpossessive

one, thought that a bourgeois marriage was unnacceptable

■ This was reinforced for Huey in Bertrand Russell’s critique of the family and

marriage

○ Huey moved out of the Poor Boys Hall and into his own apartment, which is when hebecame involved with several women

■ He would often accept money and favors from the women in his life, and in these

relationships he would set certain rules: he would tell these women that there

would be certain things that they would have to do with, and that they were in a

free relationship and that they could see other people

● When setting these rules, Huey would state that their original relationship

would always be special and the most important, however

○ Huey would often be together with Richard and both of their women, and they became

like a cult

■ They would spread their ideas of nonpossession around Oakland City College and

Berkeley

■ This is where Huey thinks was the origin of Richard’s Sexual Freedom League

○ Huey found these relationships to be exploitative on his part since he would readily

accept favors from women, and these women would pay for his expenses

○ Huey was also committing small-time armed robberies at this time

○ In these nonpossessive relationships, Huey often fought his deep-rooted desire to marry

■ He thinks this came from Christianity


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■ He only truly felt an impulse to marry twice

■ Everytime he felt close to a woman, he saw it as a sign for the relationship to end

○ He tried pimping for a brief stint, but quit since he felt flashes of the slave experience

when he pimped Black women, and guilt for becoming the oppressor when he pimped

white women

○ During these years, he met Dolores■ They were together for five years, until he went to jail for the Odell Lee case

■ Huey called her an “Afro-Filipino, free spirit child”

■ She wrote beautiful, small poems

■ They lived together but not as a conventional family, they would break up for

months at a time then get back together

■ His inability to make a commitment led Dolores to disaster, one night he brought

another girl to his family’s house and when Dolores found out she took forty

sleeping pills

● Huey said that he should have anticipated her self-destructive nature by her

poems■ This relationship reinforced his belief of nonpossession, and he applied it to the

Black Panther Party, where everyone lives and acts communally

○ Huey finds that bourgeois values define the family situation in America and give it certain

goals

○ Huey felt that by rejecting a conventional family and its’ consequences that he held on to

his freedom

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: FREEDOM

○ Huey claims he found his freedom at the Alameda County Jail in 1964, on the tenth floor

of the Alameda County Court House

■ There he was made a trusty■ He participated in a strike against eating starches and split-pea soup at nearly

every meal, and was thought to be the coordinator since he was the only trusty

who participated

○ After he was charged with organizing the strike, Huey was put in the “hole” or the “soul

breaker”

■ He was no stranger to jail by 1964, but he had never been in solitary confinement

■ He was in the fourth level of confinement; the soul breaker was your “last” end

■ There he was kept in the dark and nude, and was expected to defecate and urinate

in a small hole in the ground

■ He was allowed a half-gallon milk carton of water for his weekly ration

■ Most men broke after a few days, and would be released, but Huey never broke for

his fifteen day stints

● To do this, he followed Gandhi’s lesson to take little sips of nourishment,

just enough, but not enough to defecate

● He also would check under the door for when the lights went off, this was

his “testing time”


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● He also made sure to provide himself with his own stimuli to keep himself

sane-- he would play his own memories, and after a certain amount of time

he was able to control the flow of his memories

● In the hole he also exercised, especially when guards came

● His position in the hole was a Zen Buddhist posture

○ After his fifteen days in the hole, he was evaluated, and since he did not repent, he wentback to the hole

■ He found this was the first time he was truly free

■ In total, he spent a month in the hole

○ Huey believes he could not have done his twenty-two months at the Penal Colony in 1967

without his time in the hole on 1964

■ He does not advise young comrades of the Black Panther Party to get themselves

into solitary, since he knows what it can do to a man

○ Now, the strip cell is outlawed thanks to the work of lawyer Charles Gerry, who defended

Huey in 1968, when he fought the of Warren Wells, a Black Panther accused of shooting a

policeman○ He was moved after his month in the hole to the county farm at Santa Rita, fifty miles

south of Oakland

■ Didn’t stay long, Huey, a “dipper”, got into a fight with Bojack, an enforcer of small

helpings

■ From there, he went to Graystone, the maximum security prison at Santa Rita

● Always a lack of heat in his cell, to this day his room interiors must be cool

■ Santa Rita administration got tired of his complaints and shipped him back to jail in

Oakland

○ He says his time in prison helped him understand the men who devised these

punishmentsCHAPTER FIFTEEN: BOBBY SEALE

○ Once getting out of jail, Huey took up with Bobby Seale, who he never hung out with too

much prior

○ He met Bobby Seale at a Progressive Labor Party rally supporting Fidel Castro’s cause

■ Seale spoke against Donald Warden’s warnings against civil rights organizations,

saying that he found the NAACP to be the hope of Black people

● Huey argued with him, saying that civil rights organizations hoped to change

the law, but that the law wasn’t enforced

● Huey credited this argument to the Afro-American Association and Malcolm

X

○ When Huey got out of prison, he gave his old bed that he no longer need after breaking

up with his girlfriend to Bobby

■ They began to talk, and Bobby said that he left the Afro-American Association to

hook up with Ken Freeman and the Revolutionary Action Movement

● RAM was more intellectual than active, did a lot of writing but Bobby was no

writer


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● This group was mainly underground, and the campus front was called Soul

Students Advisory Council

■ They then tried to figure out why no Black political organization had succeeded

● The only successful one that came to mind was the Organization of

Afro-American Unity started by Malcolm X

● They theorized that it was because the groups weren’t recruiting to thepeople they claimed to represent-- poor Black people

○ Bobby was an actor and a comic, and did a great job of acting out

their anger with impressions (Huey himself hated comedians but

admitted he had a talent for acting)

■ They decided to try out their recruiting through the Soul Students Advisory Council

● When the hot issue of a Black curriculum came about, Huey and Bobby tried

to tack on a program of armed self-defense; they proposed to arm

themselves with guns and patrol the sidewalk in front of the school

● They considered the weapons a recruiting device

● Soul Students completely rejected this plan■ They tried again, this time through RAM

● They tacked on the idea of patrolling the police to self-defense

● RAM also rejected this plan

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE FOUNDING OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY

○ Huey was convinced that he and Bobby Seale’s time had come; what good was taught to

Black Americans if the police continued to rule by force?

■ Out of this need for self-defense came the Black Panther Party

■ They set out to form an organization that included the lower-class brothers

■ The headquarters of the early Black Panther Party was Bobby’s living room

○ To form their beliefs, they reflected on Black achievements■ Read the works of Frantz Fanon ( The Wretched of the Earth )

■ Read Chairman Tse-tung’s four volumes as well as Che Guevara’s Guerilla Warfare

■ These authors believed that the rights of the oppressed had been stripped at birth

and at gunpoint, and that the oppressed fighting back was merely self-defense

■ Fanon during the Algerian war called the third phase of violence the “Year of the

Boomerang”

■ Negroes with Guns by Robert Williams armed many in Monroe, North Carolina and

had a great influence on Huey

● Huey did not like how he called on the government for assistance as a

president of the NAACP

■ They also read some literature on the Deacons for Defense and Justice in Louisiana

● They did a great job of protecting marchers but also called on the

government for help

○ To Huey, the police and other enforcers were all a group that opposed the will of the

people

○ They also read Malcolm X’s The Militant and Muhammad Speaks


17/37

■ Huey says the Black Panther Party exists in the spirit of Malcolm and that he had a

profound influence

○ Got the name and symbol idea when reading a pamphlet about voter registration in

Mississippi and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, who had a black panther for

its symbol

■ Huey also chose the panther because it will strike back once backed into a cornerCHAPTER SEVENTEEN: PATROLLING

○ Forming the platform of the group, Bobby and Huey began testing ideas by checking with

street brothers

■ Most of the brothers were interested when informed of their right to possess arms

○ Huey was always prepared to give his comrades legal advice; he would always keep law

books in his car

○ The North Oakland Service Center was at his disposal for law books, also where Bobby

worked

○ They circulated Black communities of Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond and San Francisco to

recruit■ They were all interested but skeptical, and they were won over with the idea of

patrolling the police

○ Although they drew influence from other revolutionaries, they didn’t follow any of them

since Huey found that all forms of oppression vary

○ When forming their doctrine, they separated ideas into two categories: “What We Want”

and “What We Believe”

○ The Black Panther Party had a ten-point program:

■ 1: They want freedom and the power to determine the destiny of the Black

community

■ 2: They want full employment for Black people● Said that the means of production should be taken from oppressors and

given to oppressed

■ 3: They want an end to the robbery by the capitalist of their Black community

● Wanted literal payment and said they would accept it in currency

■ 4: They want decent housing, shelter fit for human beings

● Said that if decent housing shall not be given, then housing and land should

be made into cooperatives

■ 5: They want education, and an education true to society

● Want a Black curriculum

● Said a man cannot relate to anything else if he has no knowledge of himself

■ 6: They want Black men to be exempt from military service

● Did not want to fight for a government that doesn’t protect them, or fight

other peoples that are not protected by their government

■ 7: They want an end to police brutality and the murder of Black people

● This is where they propose Black self-defense groups

■ 8: They want to free all Black men from prisons and jails

● Believe they have not received a fair trial


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■ 9: They want Black people to be tried in a jury of their own peers

■ 10: They want food, shelter, education, clothing, justice, and peace

○ In the Black Panther Party, Bobby was Chairman and Huey was the Minister of Defense

■ They wanted to have a political wing of street brother and an educated,

middle-class advisory cabinet to do research on each of their points

○ First member of the Black Panther Party aside from Bobby and Huey was Little BobbyHutton

■ Bobby Seale met Little Bobby at the North Oakland Service Center

■ Little Bobby was just fifteen, and a true revolutionary

■ His family moved to Oakland from Arkansas

■ He was the first Black Panther to die for the cause, was reading Black Reconstruction

in America by W. E B. Du Bois at the time of his death

○ They started by attacking the seventh point to attract attention and give people

something to identify with

■ These armed patrols were also a recruiting method

■ These patrols were initially a total success■ With guns, the oppressed were now equal to their oppressors, according to Huey

■ Many policemen would leave when they saw the Black Panthers

○ Oftentimes, when someone was being talked to by the police, Huey would pull a lawbook

out of his car and recite portions of the penal code

■ If someone got arrested, the Panthers would follow and immediately post bail

■ Statistics of police brutality and murder fell

○ They began to patrol everywhere-- Richmond, Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco

○ Black Panthers would always keep their acts within legal bounds, and when people saw

that their self-defense was legitimate, people would lose their doubts and join them

○ The police began to react strangely, they would call them names in hopes of provokingmembers

■ Sometimes they would retaliate or try to arrest members on any charges

■ Sometimes they would get in stand-offs

○ Their main office was located on Fifty-eighth Street in Oakland, sometimes stand-offs

would happen there

○ Police wanted badly to arrest Huey, began working at night

○ One time an eleven-year-old asked Huey, Warren Tucker, and another member to go help

him, as the police were raiding his house

■ Warren Tucker was the only one armed, but Huey had a knife

■ When they got to the house, the officer was looking for a gun, but didn’t have a

warrant

■ The officer challenged Huey until the boy’s father came home

■ The officers then put handcuffs on the three members, but didn’t place them

under arrest

■ The policeman who started this incident testified against Huey in a 1968 trial for

killing a police officer


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■ His attorney, Charles Gerry, questioned the officer, and the officer exaggerated his

testimony

○ They began to get more members from Oakland City College

■ Huey also recruited in pool halls and bars

■ Called the bar “Bosn’s Locker” in North Oakland his office since he spent so much

time recruiting, found it to be fulfilling work○ The Black Panther Party eventually became accepted in the Bay Area

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: ELDRIDGE CLEAVER

○ In early 1967, Huey and Bobby went to a radio station in downtown Oakland

■ Bobby arrived in the car of Beverly Axelrod, a lawyer active in civil rights cases in

California

■ Bobby arrived with a Muslim brother and Marvin Jackmon, a Black playwright who

they had tried to recruit, but he couldn’t since his Muslim beliefs meant that he

wanted nothing to do with weapons

■ They were going to meet Eldridge Cleaver, an ex-convict who wrote Soul on Ice and

supported the movement○ After meeting Cleaver, Huey tried to convince him to join the Black Panthers, explaining

that they carried out Malcolm X’s message

■ He nodded, but said he committed to Malcolm X’s widow, Sister Betty Shabazz, that

they would carry out Malcolm’s dream together

■ Huey later realized he barely spoke because he was in complete agreement

○ Few weeks later they were at a meeting in the office of the “Panther Papers” in San

Francisco

■ Called themselves the “Black Panther Party of San Francisco,” but David Hilliard

labeled them the “Paper PAnthers” since their activity was all printed matter

■ Their office was close to the Black House, an organization that Eldrige and Marvin Jackmon started in San Francisco

● Poets like LeRoi Jones gave readings there

● Huey believed that the Black House exploited Eldridge, since he paid the

bills and they didn’t do anything

○ Early 1967, all of these groups put together a program honoring Malcolm X on the

anniversary of his assassination

■ Guest of honor was his widow, Sister Betty Shabazz

■ Huey and his crew provided security along with the Paper Panthers

○ At this rally, Huey made sure his group knew not to give themselves up to the police

■ Made this decision for two reasons: She was the widow of their Party’s martyr, and

because her cousin, Hakim Jamal, told Huey that Karenga’s group had been run off

by the police in Los Angeles

○ When Sister Betty Shabazz arrived, they took her to the office of Ramparts magazine

■ On her way out, she said she wanted no pictures of her taken, so they held up

copies of magazines to shield her

■ A reporter named Chuck Banks from Channel 7 tried to grab Huey’s magazine,

Chuck kept hanging on so Huey hooked him


20/37

■ Huey pointed his gun, but Roy Ballard of the Paper Panthers told him not to

● Roy Ballard fled inside

● Turns out the Paper Panthers was yet another front for RAM

● Huey knew that if it was just the Paper Panthers, then Sister Betty Shabazz

would not have been protected

● Huey later learned the Paper Panthers did not even pack weapons that day● Huey later threatened them to change their name (they did after force)

■ They then went to the rally at the Hunter’s Point Community Center, in the middle

of San Francisco’s Black community

● Huey’s Party was supposed to speak, but Kenny Freeman of RAM froze them

out

■ On the way home, Eldridge asked to join the Black Panther Party (and leave the

Organization for the Afro-American Unity and the Paper Panthers)

● Huey was pleased, Eldridge was skilled and an especially skilled writer

● Eldridge confused Alex Papillon, Bobby Seale, and Huey

○ Alex Papillon is “Pistol-patting Panther”● Huey now sees that Eldridge had no interest in the movement, but wanted

to find a strong manhood symbol

○ Huey didn’t like this: Huey thought the Party didn’t act to be men,

they acted because they were men

■ Initially, Eldridge made great contributions to the Party

● He took a good part of the workload for The Black Panther paper

● He would only work with enthusiasm when something sensational had

taken place

● His sporadic nature was unwelcome, as Huey thought independence hurt

the Party■ Eldridge wouldn’t teach classes to younger children

● He misunderstood radicalism: He encouraged young whites to think of

themselves as “bad” Blacks, and young Blacks to think of themselves as

bohemians from middle-class “Babylon”

■ Eldridge also attracted Diggers in San Francisco from Haight-Ashbury

● Huey was furious since the Diggers wanted the Party to make a peace force

for them

● Eldridge also brought a lot of hippies and Yippies, bringing a lot of drugs

○ Huey and Bobby steered clear of drugs since they followed the

teachings of Malcolm and Muslims

■ Eldridge dealt serious blows to the Party, and in the end betrayed them

CHAPTER NINETEEN: DENZIL DOWELL

○ North Richmond is an all-Black community of 9,000

■ Kaiser Industries was responsible for the establishment of the community

■ Lots of rats and oil from Standard Oil runoff

■ All streets leading out blocked by train tracks, making it difficult to leave in

emergencies


21/37

■ Half of the population is under 19

○ Denzil Dowell’s family lives in North Richmond, and he was killed at the age of 22

■ Mark Comfort, who has a history of organizing Blacks in Oakland, introduced Huey

to Denzil

■ Dowell family asked the Party for help, the whole family considered themselves

Black Panthers○ Huey wanted to help, talked to Mrs. Dowell, who believed her son was killed in cold blood

■ Huey was investigating at the same time as the police, and when the police

searched her house, Huey asked for a warrant; they did not have one and left

■ Huey found inconsistencies in the police report

● Huey says this happens to young Blacks all over, and Huey condemns

“justifiable homicide”

○ Huey called a community meeting to discuss his findings

■ The community came, and when they saw he was armed they got their arms, too

■ They went to Martinez, the county seat, and talked to Sheriff Younger

● When they went to see him, they tried to go in with weapons but theywouldn’t let him go in, but had no grounds to arrest him on

● Huey said this demonstrated that the oppressor will act illegally to get his

way

● Younger refused to suspend the policeman who shot Denzil

● After this, the family realized that nobody in the Establishment would help

them

○ No official investigation was ever held

○ After this, the Party decided to put out leaflets about the Dowell family’s situation

■ This case prompted a need for a newspaper, since they had no other outlets

■ Many willingly pitched in to write for the paper because they wanted to help Denzil,and paperboys put out leaflets for free

● The paperboys also accepted donations for paper costs and the Dowell

family

○ Huey says the Party’s “propaganda” was walking through Richmond armed

○ The Dowell case gave the Party its first national exposure

CHAPTER TWENTY: SACRAMENTO AND THE “PANTHER BILL”

○ Black Panthers began to experience great success, Huey wanted the whole country to

know the Oakland story

■ He went on a radio talk show in Oakland in 1967 where hundreds of calls poured in

● Among the callers was Donald Mulford, a conservative Republican state

assemblyman from Piedmont

● Mulford said on the air that he planned to introduce a bill that would make

it illegal for the Party to patrol with their weapons

● Affirmed Huey’s idea that if the ruling class had their laws turned against

their own interest, that they would simply change the rules


22/37

■ Mulford’s “Panther bill” was then introduced, which Huey found funny that there

were plenty of other groups that were armed, but that this bill was introduced

because the police had complained

● Huey never viewed these armed militias to be scary; Huey is scared of

armed groups that are backed by the Establishment, such as the local police

or the National Guard■ Sheriff Young suggested that the Party attempt to get the Dowell case heard at the

state capitol

● Huey knew nothing would come of it; the establishment will put the family

of the victim through a merry-go-round until they finally quit

● They went to Sacramento anyways

● They hoped to get a national outcry to help the Dowell family and to

mobilize the community

● Primary purpose was to deliver the message to the people rather than the

legislators

● A group of brothers from East Oakland, recruited by Mark Comfort, alsocame along with the Party and the Dowell family

● Huey did not make the trip: He was on probation, and if any arrests were

made, someone would need to raise the bail money

○ Huey prepared Executive Mandate Number One to be read on the steps of the capitol

■ Huey told Bobby before he left that his goal should be to deliver the message, and

that if he was fired upon, then he should fire back

■ Huey watched the reading on TV from his mother’s house

■ His brothers were arrested after the reading; Bobby was arrested for carrying a

“concealed weapon” even though it was perfectly visible on his hip

○ The next phase of the plan was to raise bail money■ Huey went on a radio talk show, asking for equal time where he raised enough to

get his troops back on the streets

○ They took the arrests because they knew it was for a higher purpose, but from that point

on the police started attempting to disarm the Party

■ The police thought that without weapons that the brothers would not protect

themselves

○ Sacramento was a success, however, because they got national attention

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: GROWING PAINS

○ Mulford bill passed by a huge majority

■ After this, the Party stopped all armed patrols

○ One time, a bail party was held in Richmond, where the police hid out

■ When the brothers left, Party member John Sloane made a U-turn and was pulled

over by the police

■ The police gave him a ticket, but Sloane refused to sign it

● Huey asked Sloane to sign it

● A young officer walked by all of the brothers, stepping on all of their feet in

an attemot to provoke them


23/37

● Sloane agreed to sign the ticket, but the officer stepped on the foot of one

brother who helped him off of his foot; the officer considered this grounds

to arrest him

● Huey tried to restrain the young officer, but then Huey was also arrested

○ The Party realized they lacked a true administrative body

■ They needed bourgeois skills, but didn’t want the people that possessed them■ They made a plan to merge with SNCC, the most disciplined of civil rights

organizers

● They wanted to make Stokely Carmichael of SNCC their Prime Minister, then

to add SNCC leadership to the Party’s administrative positions

■ Huey wanted to coordinate soon, as the brothers needed to channel their energy

and the police became more organized

■ It was tricky because they needed the skills and resources, but they also felt SNCC

was headed for a decline

■ They wanted to give the Party leadership entirely to SNCC

● Even considered moving their headquarters to Atlanta● Their plan was for Carmichael to be PM, H. Rap Brown to be Minister of

Justice, and James Forman as Minister of Foreign Affairs

■ Eldridge reached out to Carmichael, and they also got in touch with Brown and

Forman

● The scheme never worked: apparently the idea never was brought up

● Some in SNCC thought it was a ploy to take over SNCC, so some like Julius

Lester wrote articles criticizing the Party, which greatly offended them

● Huey thinks the main problem was a lack of trust

○ Huey thinks it to be best that they didn’t merge with SNCC since they took a turn in the

wrong direction■ Stokely aligned himself with reactionary African governments (Nkrumah) and lost

his credibility

■ Stokely wrote (falsely) in a book that Huey had asked permission to start the Black

Panther Party

● It was because they got the idea from the Lowndes County Freedom

Organization, started in part by Stokely

■ Huey also didn’t like Stokely Carmichael because he would say one thing then act in

another way

● Stokely also said that he would help any Black person, which Huey found to

be dangerous

○ Outside of this merger, trouble was erupting in Newark and Detroit: younger Blacks were

expressing frustration, which Huey knew would result in a backlash of conservative ideals

■ The Party sought to prevent this backlash, so they specifically wanted to alert

Blacks of their constitutional rights

● They released pieces in their paper called “Pocket Lawyer of Legal First Aid”

■ The paper was a source of satisfaction; the Black community got to hear their ideas

unadulterated by media


24/37

● The paper also became a steady source of funds

○ Bobby ended up having to serve six months in jail

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: RAISING CONSCIOUSNESS

○ Black Panthers stress action over rhetoric, but Huey understands the importance of

language

○ Huey says Nietzsche’s The Will to Power

had a great influence on the Party■ It argues that the will to power controls our understanding rather than an inherent

quality of good or evil

■ This applies to Black society and how “black” has become a potent word in

American culture

● Huey argues that the rising consciousness of this had led the Black

community to redefine ourselves

● The Black Panthers decided that they need a new word for “policeman” so

that Black people could see themselves in a new light; they chose the word

“pig” because it has unpleasant connotations

○ They also wanted a new word because they thought that this wouldmake white people empathize with Blacks since people like to be on

the winning side

● They really got white youths to sympathize with the cause when white

protestors of the Vietnam War saw what the police were really like

● The true effect was on the police themselves

○ Forced police to change their behavior

● Another saying of the Party was “All Power to the People”

○ They thought that in order to achieve this, co-operatives should be

put in place, which is their long-range objective

○ They also say this saying should demonstrate their completecommitment to the people

○ They say this saying implies that man is God

○ Huey says that for Blacks, Christianity has been a tool of oppression, and that it helps

them through life for a Promised Land after life, which Huey could not accept

○ Huey thinks that when man devotes himself to God, he reduces himself and his own

potential

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: CRISIS: OCTOBER 28, 1967

○ When Huey was convicted of assaulting Odell Lee in 1964, he was sentenced to three

years probation with the first six months served in the county jail

■ When his probation ended, he and his girlfriend LaVerne Williams agreed to

celebrate

○ The afternoon he got off parole, he was speaking at San Francisco State College for the

Black Students Union at a forum on “The Future of the Black Liberation Movement”

■ Huey was not excited since he hated talking to groups

■ He shared the platform with Dr. Harry Edwards, sociology professor at San Jose

State College and orchestrator or Olympic boycott by Black athletes


25/37

■ Students at forum were opposed to whites participating with the movement and

working with white groups

● Huey pointed out that many young whites had discovered the hypocrisy of

the Establishment and grown disenchanted

● Students at the forum insisted all white people were devils

● After this Huey decided that he had to implement Point 5 of the program toeducate the people

○ After the forum, he had dinner with his family and went to LaVerne’s

■ She fell ill but insisted he take her car

■ Went to Bosn’s Locker, then to a nearby church for a social, then to a party on San

Pablo Street in Oakland

● Went to the party with Gene McKinney

■ After the party, he and Gene went to Seventh Street in West Oakland for some soul

food

● They were trailed by a policeman who pulled them over, pat them down,

and asked who the car belong to● Officer took Huey back to his car and slugged him, and Huey got back up but

was shot by the officer

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: AFTERMATH

○ Next thing Huey recalls is arriving at Kaiser Hospital

■ Police burst in and handcuffed Huey while he was in the gurney

■ Huey screamed for his doctor, Thomas Finch, who told him to shut up

■ Police told Huey that he had killed John Frey and wounded Herbert Heanes

■ He was moved to the Highland-Alameda County Hospital in East Oakland

○ Huey feared death without meaning, not death itself

○ A song was dedicated to him , the Minister of Defense○ Dr. Aguilar defended Huey in The Black Panther newspaper

○ Police would harass and exhaust Huey during his time at the hospital

■ Huey complained to nurses of the abuse but nothing came of it

■ Police didn’t let Black people see Huey

■ Eventually, his family hired private nurses

○ Melvin, his sister (Leola), Eldridge Cleaver, and others built up a legal defense

■ Beverly Axelrod (who got off Eldridge Cleaver) came into room and told him that

she couldn’t take up that case but would find someone

● Recommended Charles Garry, who had a history of helping the oppressed

● John George, a Black lawyer, was not allowed in to see Huey at first, and also

told him that he couldn’t take on his case

■ Charles Garry came to see him

● The first day they did not discuss strategy but talked and told him that he

would be proud to represent Huey

○ Huey never thought he would live this long when he started the movement, simply

thought that he was running on borrowed time


26/37

○ Huey never unhappy about death so long as his death progressed the movement and set

a model for others

■ In Black history, many revolutionaries have not been covered in curriculums

■ Hopes to model Malcolm X in that his death had significant meaning

○ Huey was transferred to the medical unit on Death Row in San Quentin

■ On Death Row, he met, Robilar, who lived next door in the psychotic ward andHuey got along well with since he identified as a Muslim

● Robilar had been in and out of prison all of his life, tried to defend himself

but rendered incompetent to do so

● One night, a white man was placed in a cell next to Huey

○ Robilar slipped into his cell and killed the white man and he was then

declared incurably insane

○ From San Quentin they took him to Alameda County Jail in downtown Oakland

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: STRATEGY

○ Huey was accused of three felonies: the murder of John Frey, assault of Herbert Heanes

with a deadly weapon, and the kidnapping of Dell Ross (Huey allegedly forced him to driveHuey to the hospital)

○ Huey was not concerned as much with the legalities of the trial as he was with the political

strategy

■ The Party decided that attorneys stay out of the political decisions so long as they

stay within legal bounds

■ Huey wanted this trial to be a platform for his idea that him having to fight for his

life stems from the necessity to release himself from the burden of the oppressor,

since the police were gathering forces to crush their revolution forever

○ Huey says the system hurts the poor through neglect and that police force is simply the

coup de grace, the enforcer○ Huey says the goal of his trial was not to save his life, since he figured that he would die

■ Huey says he has faced death before, but on his own accord; death by the system

is degrading and inevitable

○ Charles Garry’s first defense strategy was that he argued that it is impossible for a Black

man to receive a fair trial in America

■ Argued that a jury of his peers was necessary, but that judges instead choose those

who have no understanding of the lives of poor people

■ Gary tracked movements of previous juries to show that there was no deliberation

about my case

■ The jury is selected from the Alameda County voter list, which also makes it unfair

○ Nine months between trial, November until july

■ The case had made Huey a celebrity, and many believed he was guilty

■ The police were also under fire after “Bloody Tuesday,” where they attacked a

group of protestors

■ Police increased their attacks on the brothers

● David Hilliard arrested for handing out leaflets about Huey


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■ Party needed broad support, announced a coalition with the Peace and Freedom

Party

■ “Free Huey” emerged out of his trial for people who believed in his innocence

○ Black Panthers growing all across the country, even spread internationally

■ Zengakuren, a group of revolutionary nationalists from Japan, invited the Party to

speak● They sent Kathleen Cleaver, wife of Eldridge, and Earl Anthony, a Party

member from Los Angeles

○ Kathleen couldn’t make it, but Earl presented a personal platform

that argued for separatism, which wasn’t what the Party stood for

○ Huey thinks that idea might have been Kathleen’s influence

○ Most of the 11 months Huey spent at the Alameda County Court House he spent in

solitary

■ Never out of touch, kept faith because of the attorneys working on his team

■ Black brothers working to help Huey, went onto campuses and raised money

■ Many members of SNCC came to rallies to speak, among them Stokely Carmichael● Carmichael said an armed Black revolution would get Huey out of jail; Huey

disagreed

● He also discouraged the Party’s coalition with white groups

● Huey thought it should be approached by a class analysis rather than a race

analysis

○ In the time Huey was in jail, leadership of the Party fell, and they fell into the psychadelic

fas

○ One of the most unhappy moments of his time in jail was learning of the death of Little

Bobby Hutton

■ Number of troops in community doubled during that time, also time of MLK’sassassination

○ Bobby attributes it to Garry’s work that a defendant has a right to be tried by a jury of his

peers

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: TRIAL

○ Demonstrators gathered outside courthouse the day the trial started

■ Building was under heavy guard

○ Superior Court Judge Monroe Friedman thought Huey was guilty from the beginning

■ Awful to Black witnesses, rigid in interpretation of the law

○ Prosecutor in Huey’s case: Lowell Jensen

■ Developed a system where he would select Blacks to be on jury panels but

eliminate them before trial

■ Willing to stretch the law to get the conviction of first-degree murder against Huey

so that Lowell could get fame and fortune

○ Jury selection took a while, and the final jury had one Black man: David Harper

○ Most crucial challenge for the prosecution was establishing a motive


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■ Came up with three motives: Huey had just gotten off probation and wanted to

avoid them finding that he had a concealed weapon, said Huey had marijuana on

his person, and that he had given a false identification to the officer

■ Huey says marijuana charge was a fabrication since no drugs are allowed within

the Party

○ Prosecution built whole case around the fact that he was a “felon”○ Eldridge released a leaflet talking about Huey’s case which implied that Huey killed the

officer, which upset Huey’s family

○ Huey decided to reveal the name of Gene McKinney, knowing that the prosecution legally

couldn’t do anything to him

○ Heanes took the stand as a witness for the prosecution

■ Huey found him to be dim, disturbed, cleaerly trained

■ Garry’s cross-examination of Heanes pointed to the fact that HEanes and Frey shot

each other

■ Ultimately, Heanes’ testimony did little for the prosecution

○ Next witness, Grier, a Black man, was important because he was the only other one whoclaimed to see Huey had a gun at the scene of the shooting

■ Grier was a bus driver who Huey thought was also bought, and Huey thought that

he may have been in trouble with the law

■ Jensen kept Grier completely out of sight during the 9 months leading up to the

trial

● They kept him in the Lake Merritt Hotel so that he could not be talked to by

Garry

■ His testimony to Inspector McConnell made his testimony unreliable, had many

contradictions

● In this testimony, Huey was short and wore a tan leather jacket■ The discrepancies between the testimonies worked in favor of Huey and Garry

○ Garry then motioned for a mistrial blaming the hiding of evidence and the atmosphere of

the courthouse, which was denied

○ Next testimony was Dell Ross

■ He claimed Huey had a gun in his hand

■ When asked where he was the morning of October 28th, he said “I refuse to

answer on the grounds it would tend to incriminate me.”

● Granted Ross immunity, again refused to answer

● Jensen claimed Ross did not know, Jensen then fed him yes or no answers

■ Huey says that Judge Friedman’s bias was most obvious when dealing with Dell

Ross

■ Garry had interviewed and recorded the conversation with Ross prior, where he

said that he lied to the grand jury, which eliminated his testimony

■ After this, kidnaping charges dropped for lack of evidence

○ Garry found a number of flaws with Jensen’s story, claiming that there had to be a third

party to achieve what they claimed


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■ He also was confused by the tapes, claiming that these tapes were either tampered

with, or that there were accounts phoned in that the police did not have

■ Another piece of evidence was that Huey was carrying a lawbook at the alleged

time of the shooting, an action that Jensen couldn’t distort

■ Another thing they found was an incorrectly transcribed part of Grier’s testimony

to McConnell: it said he DID get a good look at Huey, when the proper phrasingwas that he DIDN’T

■ Despite all of this, Jensen still found him guilty

○ Garry then applied for mistrial AGAIN, showing all of the hate mail he has received from

racists

■ Denied again

○ Garry opened the defense with witnesses from the Black community, all of whom had

terrible encounters with John Frey

■ Daniel King was arrested by Frey after he was accused by a friend of Frey to know

who stole his pants

■ Luther Smith, Jr. ran a youth organization and said that Frey always used racialepithets

■ Belford Dunning had a run in with Frey the day before he died when he was given a

traffic violation

■ Bruce Byson, a young white schoolteacher, said that he used the n-word when

speaking to school children

■ Frey’s superiors had made the decision to move him out of the Black community,

but they were too late

■ Jensen offered no rebuttal in Garry’s defense with the witnesses

○ Gene McKinney also refused to speak, the same as Dell Ross

■ This was in hopes to create “reasonable doubt”■ Prosecution thought they were trying to get McKinney immunity so that he would

then confess to the crime, and then the two would walk free

■ Denied McKinney immunity, he went to jail for a few weeks

○ Huey testified, starting out by denying all claims

■ Described the struggle of African Americans

■ Huey’s sister, Leola, heard Jensen say he intended to upset Huey, so Huey was

prepared

■ Jensen tried to demonstrate that Huey loved guns, which was false

■ Jensen cited documents and Huey’s writings in his cross-examination, but

ultimately was unsuccessful

○ Garry’s closing argument talked about the Black community’s struggle, while Jensen’s

devoted his closing statement to straight facts

○ Jury deliberated for four days, ruled that

■ During this time, the mistake between did and didn’t in the McConnell testimony

came to light

■ Ruled Huey was guilty of a felony, voluntary manslaughter, and not guilty of assault

with a deadly weapon upon a police officer


30/37

■ Defense and Huey were unhappy, since it meant people thought Huey killed Frey in

a fit of passion

● Some particularly angry at David Harper, which Huey dispelled

○ Huey cautioned restraint because he know cops were eager to kill

○ Colleagues of Frey shot the Party building with no one inside and therefore couldn’t hide

behind “justifiable homicide”■ The two officers were dismissed from the force

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: THE PENAL COLONY

○ After conviction, Huey was sent to Alameda County Jail awaiting his fate

■ Hearing held in October, bail denied

■ Immediately after, he was taken to the California Correctional Authority for

confinement

○ In jail, Huey realized he received special treatment since he was a political prisoner

○ He was then taken to Vacaville Medical Facility, where he would spend up to 60 days being

tested and finding which penitentiary he would go to

■ In Vacaville he went through the degrading skin search■ Also given a prison number, a tactic which he said dehumanized people

■ Made to throw his clothes away, and he was frustrated since he wasn’t given an

explanation

○ Huey resents the guards and administrators, calls them ignorant brutes like in Orwell’s

1984

○ Huey would always be able to talk with the warden thanks to his privilege

■ Warden would dangle the carrot, try to get Huey to be submissive

○ Huey scored low on the IQ tests, told the psychiatrists that the test was based on white

middle-class standards, using the results to justify them considering Blacks unintelligent

and unequal■ Huey suggested that they examine his background, his work, and his

accomplishments instead (they refused)

○ Authorities couldn’t figure out where to put him: Huey’s preferences in order of proximity

to home were San Quentin, Folsom, and Soledad

■ Instead, he went to the California Men’s Facility, East Facility, in San Luis Obispo

■ Huey said they called it a “colony” to change the concentration camp’s objective

characteristics

■ Colony located halfway between LA and Oakland, 250 miles from each

■ Largely considered a model prison, because the inmates are separated into

quadrants and because eighty percent of the prisoners were homosexual

● Found it hard to politicize with them, and Huey said that to those prisoners

sex was all

● Huey thinks their homosexuality was used to oppress them and undermine

their freedom

○ Guards didn’t care so long as it wasn’t political action

● Huey says that many think conjugal visits are a step forward in prisons but

that it isn’t true, since both were used against the prisoners


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○ Warden warned Huey not to complain or act out

○ Huey’s counselor proposed that he enter a rehabilitation program where he works in the

prison dining hall at no salary, where he would eventually earn cents

■ Huey refused, suggested solutions where he would work for minimum wage or he

would go to school, both were refused

■ Since he wouldn’t comply, he was placed on lock-up○ In lock-up all privileges were denied

○ Huey says that prison work is little more than slavery

○ Huey said that lock-up was not too bad, and that he had many visits from the Party and

family

■ In prison, Huey learned that his LA comrades, John Huggins and Alprentice

“Bunchy” Carter, were assassinated at UCLA by Karenga’s group

● Karenga had warmed up to Mayor Yorty and was used to keep the Black

community under control

● Karenga exploited the Black community

● At a Los Angeles rally, the LA police came thanks to Karenga, and when theBlack Panthers found out they demanded the police leave, taking away

some of Karenga’s credibility from the power structure

● At the rally, too, any money promised to go to the Party or Huey’s defense

fund didn’t go to them

● When they were killed, Huey realized all of the Party were marked men, and

said that he never got used to his men dying

○ Said this was confirmed with the death of Fred Hampton and Mark

Clark in Chicago

● Huey refused to let violence erupt after the deaths, didn’t want useless

warfare● Robert Hall came from LA to see Huey, wanted to end friction between the

groups but Huey didn’t trust him

○ Huey ignored the probing by prison guards, and eventually they became concerned for

his mental health

■ To Huey, this proved that he had mastered the soul breaker

○ Huey snuck an article out of the prison (at the time, he wasn’t allowed writing material)

called “Prison Where Is Thy Victory?” and had it printed in the Black Panther newspaper

■ Taunted the guards for thinking they had a victory over a man and his ideas just

because he was in prison

■ After this, the prison believed Huey remained on lock-up because he thought his

conviction would be reversed by a higher court (in reality, Huey had no faith in the

courts)

○ Huey thinks that nobody knows the true reality of prisons since authorities see that the

public is not told the truth

○ Huey finds prison to be similar to slavery; he says the idea that slavery is degrading for

slaves and masters applies to prisons, too

■ Huey calls prison guards pathetic figures


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○ Once, Huey got a “beef” and went to the hole, which he said was the easiest solitary ever

since he had reading material and read the Bible

○ Huey says the guards always tried to keep Huey angry

■ Huey sometimes pitied them, as he also considered them victims

■ Huey finds their lives to be empty of meaning

○ Huey claims that the guards promoted racial animosity within the prison■ Huey says that whites are duped by the guards and come to love their oppressors

■ Huey says that Black prisoners are now seeing themselves as political prisoners in

the colonial sense: not tried by a jury of their peers

○ Huey thinks that many Black prisoners are rehabilitated past the point of comfort for the

authorities

■ A rehabilitated Black prisoner will see his “crimes” as a part of the capitalist system

■ Many end up socialists

■ Huey says this lengthens their sentences, keeping them in for new opinions rather

than previous activities

○ Another type of political prisoner that Huey self-identifies as is one who committed nocrime, but whose attitude holds a threat to the ruling circle

○ Guards eventually accepted that Huey would not break, although some kept trying

○ Huey was summoned to the psychiatrist for re-evaluation but refused, tell them that he

only trusted the psychological theories of Frantz Fanon

○ Huey’s counselor, Topper, tried to get Huey off of lock-up but Huey refused

■ Behind closed doors, Deputy McCarthy found Huey’s plea of minimum wage to be

acceptable

■ At a parole board hearing, they interrogated him about the contraband in his cell

● After finding out the contraband was soap and toil

Revolutionary Suicide

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