by Joshua Bloom
Between 1968 through 1970, three factors exacerbated these tensions. First, counterintelligence activities by the federal government worked to vilify the Party. The government recognized that raids and other forms of direct repression of the Panthers tended to legitimize their claims and increase allied support for the Party. Thus, it sought to discredit the Party by sowing internal conflict through agent provocateurs who fostered unpalatable and impolitic violence. The FBI master-minded campaigns to destroy the reputations of Black Panther leaders, such as the effort to pin the murder of Alex Rackley on Bobby Seale.
Second, the success of the Party created a conflict between promoting insurrection and maintaining the Party’s image. For example, Huey Newton’s release from prison suggested to many potential allies that the Panthers could get justice in court but suggested to many rank-and-file members that they could get justice through armed resistance to police. And the increased influence and budget of the Party gave Panther leaders something to lose and something to fight over. But neither of these first two factors—repression nor success—could on its own undermine the Party’s politics, and the Black Panthers continued to grow through 1969 and 1970, when it experienced both its greatest repression and its greatest success.
The third factor that made Black Panther politics unsustainable was the establishment’s decision to offer political concessions to Panther allies, thereby shifting the political context and cutting into the Panthers’ ability to maintain allied support. As many of the Panthers’ potential allies among antiwar activists, black moderates, and others saw their interests addressed by government policy and rhetoric, they became less willing to support revolutionary activities. At the same time, normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and the Panthers’ international allies made it ever more difficult for the Party to sustain international support. The times were changing, and the Black Panthers’ revolutionary politics of armed self-defense began to lose resonance.
As the tension increased between the need to please potential allies and the commitment to the Panthers’ politics of armed self-defense, so did the tension between some chapters of the Party and the national leadership in Oakland. This tension was evident in the growing strife between the New York Panthers, the Cleavers, and Geronimo Pratt, on one side, and national Party leaders David Hilliard and Huey Newton, on the other. In each case, local leaders chafed against management by the national organization.
As internal and external pressures mounted, ideological differences began to solidify, pitting the Central Committee’s social democratic emphasis against the breakaway Party elements’ emphasis on guerilla warfare. With the mutiny, and especially with the deaths of Webb and Napier, this ideological split hardened.
The killings of Webb and Napier may have had nothing to do with ideological differences. They could have resulted from simple factional power struggles, and it is hard to establish with certainty who committed these murders. Nevertheless, the killings rendered insurrectionary rhetoric untenable for the Party and crystallized a sharp ideological division.
In previous cases in which Panthers were accused of killing a police officer or suspected informant, the Party could recast the charges as state repression.
For example, the Party had argued that Huey was defending himself against police brutality when Officer Frey was killed and that the FBI had likely ordered Rackley’s murder as a means of framing Bobby Seale and sending him to the gas chamber. The aggressive and often explicit repressive actions by the state in these cases and others, such as the killing of Fred Hampton while he slept in his bed, lent credibility to the Panther perspective and allowed the Party to continue advancing insurrectionary rhetoric and still appeal to potential allies as victims of oppression.
But with heavy media coverage of vicious factionalism, the brutal murders of representatives of each faction, and the subsequent widespread accusations that the rival factions were responsible, the Panthers could not simultaneously maintain broad support and insurrectionary rhetoric. The Central Committee could not denounce Cleaver, the New York 21, and Geronimo—some of the most important former members of the Party—deny any role in the killing of Webb; credibly appeal to black, antiwar, and international allies for support against state repression; and at the same time glorify armed resistance against the state.
Instead, the Central Committee renounced immediate insurrection, denounced the “defecting” rival faction for its reckless embrace of insurrection, and insisted that the Panthers focus exclusively on social democratic programs until a sufficient mass of people was ready for revolution. This stance was a sharp departure from the rhetoric of armed resistance and the practical politics of armed self-defense against the police that had fed the Party’s explosive growth.
The dissidents faced the same dilemma, unable to promote insurrectionary rhetoric and expect to appeal to a broad base of potential allies. But whereas the Central Committee had been managing relations with allies all along, the rival faction had been chafing at the demands of its leadership. The New York 21 had already called for immediate insurrection in their open letter to the Weather Underground in January, and the deaths of Webb and Napier only cemented this position. Abroad in Algiers, the Cleavers and their group yearned for action and felt cut off and restrained by the Oakland leadership. Eldridge Cleaver had been the main architect of the Party’s insurrectionary rhetoric. For him, a pacified call for social democracy held no appeal. Geronimo had gone underground and been arrested for illegal activities, and then was exiled by the Central Committee. Joining up with the Cleaverites and the call for immediate insurrection was his best—if not only—option.
The politics of immediate insurrection was not completely without allied support. An extreme Left best exemplified by the Weather Underground—but also by some of the lawyers who continued to defend the New York 21 and Geronimo in court, some of the alternative press, and a few wealthy funders—agreed fully and explicitly that immediate insurrection was essential. But the much broader base of allies that supported the national Panther organization in 1969 and 1970 did not support this position.
In the March 20, 1971, issue of the Black Panther, alongside demonstrations of support for the national Party leadership, the back cover featured the banner headline “Survival Pending Revolution” and a graphic of a woman carrying items labeled for the “People’s” programs: a bag of food labeled “Free Food Program,” shoes labeled “Free Shoes Program,” a blouse labeled “Free Clothing Program,” and a book labeled “Liberation Schools.” The woman wore a nurse’s cap labeled “free health clinics,” and a bus in the backgrounds bears the sign “free busing program.” The graphic included a quote by Huey Newton: “There must be total transformation. But until that time that we can achieve that total transformation, we must exist. In order to exist, we must survive; so therefore we need a survival kit.”86
On March 27, following the heavy denunciations of the Cleaver faction and statements of allegiance to Huey Newton, the cover of the Black Panther featured photos of preschool and elementary-school children dressed in Panther uniforms and standing in formation. A large caption read, “The world is yours as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigour and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed in you.” The paper featured stories about the Panther school and social programs and included many photos of Panther children reading, marching, playing, studying in class, and eating breakfast.87
With this issue, the Black Panther Party implemented a sweeping demilitarization of its image, a shift documented in the Black Panther issues for the first half of 1971. The first twelve issues of the Black Panther in 1971, through March 20, included 225 graphic images of weapons, an average of more than eighteen images of weapons per issue. In sharp contrast, the twelve issues published March 27 and thereafter contained only five portrayals of weapons, an average of less than one image every other is
sue.88
In most issues of the Black Panther, the Party printed its Ten Point Program near the back of the paper. Until March 1971, the Ten Point Program layout prominently featured a photo of Huey carrying a shotgun and bandolier with the caption “Huey P. Newton, Minister of Defense, Black Panther Party”; the top of the layout featured the Ten Point Program, and the bottom featured a photo of a machine gun. On March 13, the photos were removed and from March 27 onward, the Ten Point Program layout featured the large bold caption, “Serving the People Body and Soul” alongside Newton’s new title, “Servant of the People.”89
This graphic change was emblematic of a sea change in Party rhetoric. From 1967 to 1969, 45 percent of political editorial articles in the Black Panther advocated “revolution now.” In 1970, that share jumped to 65 percent. But in 1971, it fell to 16 percent, and in 1972–73, it dropped below 1 percent. Conversely, advocacy of “traditional politics” in political editorial articles in the Black Panther greatly increased after the split. From 1967 to 1969, only 7 percent of such articles advocated “traditional politics,” and less than 4 percent in 1970, compared with 32 percent in 1971 and almost 67 percent in 1972–73.90
As the national Party leadership moved toward social democratic rhetoric and away from talk of insurrection, the Cleaverite faction took an insurrectionary turn. On April 3, 1971, it began publishing its own newspaper, Right On!, advocating full and immediate insurrection. The paper was published with support from the Weathermen via an above-ground ally—the Independent Caucus of SDS at the State University of New York. The paper featured articles by Eldridge Cleaver and the New York 21. At the bottom of the front page, a quote summarized the Cleaverite position: “The best example that we have of an alternative way of dealing with the courts is the case of Jonathan Jackson.”91
In early April, a reporter from the independent leftist newspaper the Guardian interviewed Kathleen Cleaver in Algiers about the rift. Cleaver railed against David Hilliard for his “right opportunism,” his “lack of militancy,” and his “bureaucratic methods” in running the Party since her husband had gone into exile.92 Kathleen claimed that David reoriented the party from “organizing violence against the pigs” to “concentrating on legal action and defending people in court,” and “consciously set about to destroy the armed underground.” She said, “He even ordered that guns be taken out of some Panther offices! . . . The phase of legal defense is over. . . . Jonathan Jackson ended all that. . . . Now we got to break them all out.” Kathleen Cleaver asserted that the conflict between the “Hilliard clique” and the Cleaver faction had long been simmering but that the International Section had hoped that Newton “would put the party back on the right course when he got out of jail last year.” Instead he endorsed Hilliard’s stewardship.93
Kathleen Cleaver noted that the International Section had opened a U.S. headquarters in the Bronx and that its main focus would be armed action, sabotage, and support for a military underground. She declared, “We are through with legal action. . . . What is necessary now is a party to advance and expedite the armed struggle. . . . There’s a revolutionary war going on. The people are ready for a real vanguard, for military action. . . . We need a people’s army and the Black Panther party vanguard will bring that about. . . . The people are ready.”94
On April 17, 1971, the same day that Kathleen Cleaver’s interview appeared in the Guardian, Huey Newton published an essay in the Black Panther titled “On the Defection of Eldridge Cleaver from the Black Panther Party and the Defection of the Black Panther Party from the Black Community.” Newton described the conflict as an ideological one. He claimed that the roots of the Party were solidly social democratic (pending sufficient support for a revolution) and criticized Eldridge Cleaver’s advocacy of insurrection:
You have to set up a program of practical action and be a model for the community to follow and appreciate. The original vision of the Party was to develop a lifeline to the people, by serving their needs. . . . Many times people say that our Ten Point Program is reformist; but they ignore the fact that revolution is a process. . . . The people see things as moving from A to B to C; they do not see things as moving from A to Z. In other words they have to see first some basic accomplishments, in order to realize that major successes are possible. . . . The Black Panther Party has reached a contradiction with Eldridge Cleaver and he has defected from the Party, because we would not order everyone into the streets tomorrow to make a revolution. We recognize that this is impossible . . . because the people are not at that point now. This contradiction and conflict may seem unfortunate to some, but. . . . we are now free to move toward the building of a community structure which will become a true voice of the people, promoting their interests in many ways. We can continue to push our basic survival program. We can continue to serve the people as advocates of their true interests. We can truly become a political revolutionary vehicle which will lead the people to a higher level of consciousness, so that they will know what they must really do in their quest for freedom.95
The politics of the Black Panther Party contained a tension. On the one hand, much of the Party’s political leverage and appeal to members derived from armed resistance to the police. On the other hand, its ability to withstand repression by the state depended largely on support from more moderate allies. Through 1969 and much of 1970, the national Party was able to contain this tension, shaping its public image through its service programs and maintaining internal discipline through purges. But over time, concessions exacerbated the contradiction the Party faced between practicing armed self-defense against the state and maintaining allied support. These tensions came to a head when key factions challenged the national Party leadership. As the intra-organizational struggle became violent, the Panthers split along ideological lines. The national organization called upon members to put down the gun and emphasize community programs, and the dissident faction called for immediate guerilla warfare against the state. Stripped of the viability of the politics of armed self-defense against the police, how would these new Panther politics fare in the 1970s?
16
The Limits of Heroism
In the months following the Panther rift in early 1971, sustained pressure from the state kept the Black Panther Party in the national spotlight. This pressure only exacerbated the tensions inside the Party as the national headquarters sought to distance itself from insurrectionary activities in order to hold on to allied support. Newspapers widely reported the trial of the New York Panthers charged with conspiracies to kill police and bomb public buildings. The state opened its criminal case against Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins on March 18, charging that the Panther leaders were responsible for the murder of Alex Rackley in New Haven. In June, the State of California began a retrial of Huey Newton on charges of manslaughter in the 1968 killing of Officer John Frey. That month, the trial of David Hilliard also began for charges stemming from the shoot-out in which Bobby Hutton was killed.1
At the same time, Panther members in chapters around the country continued to engage in insurrectionary acts, or at least to be accused of them. Juxtaposed with the national Party’s proclamations of its commitment to nonviolent service of the people pending future revolution, these actions—and accusations that the Party was responsible—were embarrassing to the Party, especially to its national leadership.
EMBARR ASSMENTS
On April 2, 1971, police raided the Black Panther headquarters in Jersey City, New Jersey, and arrested five Panthers. The police claimed they found an underground rifle range, sandbagging, rifles, pistols, ammunition, and various preparations for a battle with authorities.2 Also in April, police arrested and charged four Detroit Black Panthers—Ronald Irwin, Larry Powell, Anthony Norman, and Ronald Smith—with stealing drugs and money from residents of a “student commune” and killing one student in the process.3 On April 20, police announced they had found the charred, scattered remains of Fred Bennett, a Black Panther Party captain, near what they cl
aimed was a Panther “bomb factory” replete with “149 sticks of dynamite, quantities of nitroglycerin, fuses, timing devices, and dynamite caps.”4 On May 13, in a Chicago apartment “regarded as a Panther hangout” and “stocked with Black Panther literature,” gunmen shot three police dispatched to investigate a domestic dispute.5 On May 21, two New York police officers were ambushed and killed in Harlem. People claiming to be members of the Black Panther–affiliated Black Liberation Army notified the press, taking responsibility for the murders.6
In early June, Dhoruba Bin Wahad and Eddie Jamal Joseph—previously acquitted of all charges in the high-profile New York 21 case—were again arrested and charged with holding up a Bronx social club. Police claimed that the submachine gun the two men had used in the holdup had been “positively identified” as the weapon used in May to shoot two police officers.7 In July, former Panther Melvin “Cotton” Smith testified in the trial of Geronimo Pratt and other L.A. Panthers for charges stemming from the December 1969 siege in which the Panthers had attempted unsuccessfully to bomb a Los Angeles police station. He also claimed that one of the guns seized during the siege had been used by Panthers to kill three people.8 Various sources claim that Melvin Smith was working as a paid police agent both while he was a member of the L.A. Panthers and when he gave his testimony.9 In late July, a New York grand jury indicted seven New York Panthers—including Moore and Josephs—in the brutal murder of the national distribution captain of the Black Panther, Samuel Napier.10
Wracked by internal divisions, the Party was disintegrating and rapidly losing members and allied support. The New York Times reported in March 1971 that the Party was falling apart: “A check of the Party’s chapters across the country suggests that the operation is now only a shell of what it was a year ago.”11 Black Panther chairman Bobby Seale later recalled that immediately after the killings of Robert Webb and Samuel Napier, 30 to 40 percent of Black Panther members left the organization.12 Even the federal government recognized that the Party was no longer a serious threat. The House Committee on Internal Security reported in August 1971,