Black Panthers For Beginners

Herb Boyd, Lance Tooks

• Publisher: For Beginners
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781939994400
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Black Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

A crowd of onlookers gawked from the sidewalk as four young black men dressed in black leather jackets and berets leaped from a Volkswagen, each of them wielding shotguns with bandoliers strapped across their bodies. The young men surrounded two white police officers who had accosted a black man and had him spread-eagled against a building.

The young men did not say a word as the police officers watched them nervously, their eyes fixed on the shotguns. One of the young men held a large law book in his hand…This was the Black Panther Party in ideal action. The real story—the whole story—was both more and less heroic.

So begins  Black Panthers For Beginners. The late 1960s, when the Panthers captured the imagination of the nation’s youth, was a time of regulation. While their furious passage was marked by death, destruction and government sabotage, the Panthers left an instructive legacy for anyone who dares to challenge the system.

Herb Boyd has done exhaustive research, examined the claims of all parties involved, and boiled the story down to “the truth.” We believe this is the most truthful book on the market, but each Panther has his or her own story to tell. We suggest that you check out the stories of all the Black Panthers.

1

We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our community. We believe that Black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

Whether they knew it or not, Newton and Seale's list of demands and beliefs were nearly identical to earlier ten point programs proposed by Marcus Garvey and Elijah Muhammad. Their next task was to decide who did what.

With this agreement the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was born on October 15, 1966.

The panther was ready to prowl. With stacks of the Ten Point Program under their arms, Newton and Seale—later joined by Little Bobby Hutton, their first recruit—began passing out the programs in the neighborhoods of Oakland, stopping folks in the streets and arguing their reasons for armed struggle against the “pigs.” In their vernacular, pigs were cops who harassed Black residents without provocation. To them, the Panthers said,

“All Black people were under suspicion.”

People the trio of Panthers encountered on the streets were stunned by the new group's boldness and wondered why they had chosen a panther as their symbol.

Newton, who was never at a loss for an answer, explained: “The nature of the panther is that he never attacks. But if anyone attacks him or backs him into a corner the panther comes up to wipe the aggressor or that attacker out.”

Newton and Seale decided that these Panthers needed guns.

Actually, there was nothing new about using the panther as a symbol, or about Black people using guns. Several months before Newton and Seale started the Panthers, the Lowndes County Freedom Party of Alabama had declared the panther the symbol of their party.

A few years before Newton and Seale conceived their plans, militant activist Robert Williams expressed his outrage against racism in his book Negroes with Guns:

“All those who dare to attack are going to learn the hard way that the Afro-American is not a pacifist; that he cannot forever be counted on not to defend himself. Those who attack him brutally and ruthlessly can no longer expect to attack him with impunity.”

Newton and Seale were no fools: They not only carried guns, they studied law books. From the law books they read, Newton and Seale learned that it was permissible to carry an unconcealed, unloaded rifle or a shotgun in California. Because Newton was on probation, he couldn't carry a pistol; so, Seale carried the pistol, and Newton shouldered an unloaded M-1 rifle. When they were accosted by the police, they would recite the Second Amendment of the Constitution about the people's right to bear arms:

“A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Residents of the Black community would see the Panthers coming and run for cover. The question on everybody's mind—which nobody had the nerve to ask—was: “Who in the world are those crazy radicals?”

“Power flows from the barrel of a gun,” was one of Mao Tse-Tung's famous quotes, and it was while selling Mao's Little Red Book to earn money to buy the guns that the young Panthers adopted both the Mao's words and became, in their own eyes, revolutionaries..

“Power flows from the barrel of a gun...”

The Panthers admired the militant philosophy of Malcolm X -- especially his advocacy of armed self-defense.

“WE'RE GOING TO BE THE PERSONIFICATION OF MALCOLM'S DREAMS,”
Newton told his comrades.

Malcolm called for freedom and justice
“BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!”

The Panthers, at rallies and marches, screamed in unison,
“POWER TO THE PEOPLE!”

It all came down to the same thing, didn't it?

2

We want full employment for our people.

Inspired by Malcolm's legacy and funded by the sales of Mao's Red Book, the Panthers expanded their activist agenda and stepped up their plan to defend the community.

“We'll protect a mother, protect a brother, and protect the community from racist cops...”

...Seale proclaimed in his autobiography Seize the Time.

“And in turn we get brothers in the organization and they will in turn relate to the Red Book. They will relate to political, economic, and social equality in defense of the community.”

The activity that really put the Panthers on the map was “policing the police.”

There were only 19 Blacks out of 600 officers on the Oakland police force, so the Panthers, to say the least, had their hands full. They were so balsy that they actually followed the Oakland police around. Whenever they encountered the police harassing or arresting somebody, Newton, Seale, and Li'l Bobby Hutton would jump from their car and approach the officers.

Brandishing a camera, a tape recorder, a law book, and with their guns in full view, they would stand off to the side and make sure the police conducted themselves within the law. “So long as we remain the proper distance from you,” Newton often told the police, “we can observe what you do. This is not interfering or disorderly conduct.”

Their policing the police was quickly the talk of the town. It was also the talk of every law enforcement agency in the country. It was only a matter of time before the Panthers aggressive monitoring provoked a showdown with the nervous, racist police officers... .

AND EVERYBODY ON BOTH SIDES KNEW IT.

The Panthers didn't invent the idea of keeping tabs on cops. A similar plan was started in Los Angeles after the Watts riots in 1965. But the Panthers took the idea a step—a GIANT STEP— further: They used guns! They did it in a perfectly legal way— and their patrols were successful. Too successful: The police stopped harassing the citizens and turned their attention on the Pant...