The rise and fall of the Black Panthers
Socialist Outlook newspaper1990sPaul ClarkeTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
Bitter Grain – Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party. Written by Michael Newton. Published by Holloway House, £3.50.
MALCOLM X had a phenomenal effect on the consciousness of Black America, but it was not until after his death that the ideas of Black Power began to take organisational shape.
The slogan of 'Black Power' was coined by Stokely Carmichael, in the mid-1960s the leader of the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee, working in the racist deep south.
The moves to form an organisation inspired by the ideas of Black Power took shape following the Watts, Los Angeles, riots of August 1966. Watts burned for six days; 35 people were killed and thousands arrested.
In the ferment of black politics which followed, a group of young blacks came forward in South California to form the Black Panther Party for Self-Defence, which rapidly became the most prominent, most notorious, black nationalist organisation.
Its founders like Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver, started with the idea of black armed self-defence. They mounted armed patrols of the ghettoes, to confront racist attacks by the police. They organised provocative armed defiance, such as marching straight into the California State legislature with automatic weapons.
Once underway, though, the party had to define its strategy. This wavered between militarism, ideological flirtation with 'marxism-leninism', and the kind of populism which led to their immensely politically successful programme to provide breakfast for the schoolkids of the ghettoes.
From the start the Panthers were targeted by the state, and especially the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. Because of their militarism, the Panthers were an easy target. The party was smashed up through state para-military violence, many of its members being murdered in so-called 'shoot-outs' with the cops.
The very un-militant state of the black movement in the US today, with dozens of black politicians co-opted into becoming mayors and getting positions in the Democratic Party, is part of the legacy of the crushing of the Panthers and the other black nationalist organisations twenty years ago.
This book is a timely reminder of the period of the civil rights movement, and the era of militant struggle for Black Power.