Repression of the Black Panther
Party
W. Andrew
McClelland, Matt Sachse
The Black Civil Rights Movement caused a change in
racial consciousness that fostered the notion of black militancy and collective
action mobilization. Various groups
challenged the legitimacy and authority of important institutions within United
States society. These groups opposed
institutional racism in the U.S. One
organization that emerged was the Black Panther Party (BPP). It’s major objective was to channel the
growing militant rage of the Black youth into concrete programs that would
benefit the community. “The Black
Panther Party advocated the right to self-defense, full employment, decent
housing, an end to exploitation, constitutional civil human rights and fairness
in the courts (Gilliam 1975, p. 45).”
The leaders of the BPP, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, believed that these
basic goals should be obtained through any means necessary, including
violence. Seale’s comments exemplify
this thought:
“The nature of a panther is
that he never attacks. But if anyone
attacks on him or backs him into a corner, the panther comes up to wipe that
aggressor or the attacker out, absolutely, resolutely, wholly, thoroughly, and
completely (Brisbane 1974, p. 198).”
The advocacy of violence as a means of achieving
social change caused the BPP to be perceived as a militant organization. This perception led the Federal Government
to repress and target the group for destruction because they posed a direct
threat to the security of the nation.
COINTELPRO, also known as the Counter-Intelligence Program of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, was created to use various tactics for the
purpose of destroying radical groups such as the BPP. The review of sociological literature by Sidney Tarrow and William
Gamson will be used to describe characteristics of social movements that help
explain why authorities target and repress violent groups. Historical background of the BPP will be
explored to show why they were perceived to be a violent organization and a
target of repression. A timeline of
specific instances will highlight government repression of the group and the
different tactics that were used to do so.
Ultimately, the oppression of the Black Panthers caused organizational
changes in the BPP ideology and action patterns that eventually led to the
group’s de-radicalization.
De-radicalization is defined by Charles Hopkins as, “a process in which
political discontent is channeled into society’s legal institutions, which are
accepted by the rebellious group as the parameters for its activities. This acceptance may come as a result of
government coercion, or as a result of voluntary actions by the rebellious
group” (Hopkins 1978, p. 29).
Review of Prior Theory
As Tarrow states, “The modern movement repertoire
offers activists three basic types of collective action - -violence, disruption
and convention. They combine in
different degrees the properties of challenge, uncertainty and solidarity”
(Tarrow 1994, p. 116). Violent acts are
considered social action for groups willing to exact damage and risk
repression. Opponents to the group respond to the challenge and uncertainty the
group evokes and the solidarity they see in protest. They also respond to the fear of violence by large groups because
it poses extreme risks and high costs.
Tarrow’s analysis of collective action as it moves from disruption to
violence may indicate why authorities repress movements. As Tarrow states, “The first and most basic
aspect of collective action is its capacity to challenge opponents or
elite’s” (Tarrow 1974, p. 101). He says that the easiest way for a group to
gain a following and attention from allies and opponents is to create a
disruption. The power of disruption
results from their uncertain outcomes, ability to challenge the elite and from
the possibility that others will join the group. However, disruption is unstable and can lead to violence easily
which will cause authorities to counteract with various measures. These measures taken by authorities will
cause the leaders of the group to be separated from their followers and may
create dissension from the original goals of the movement.
William Gamson looks at the consequences of violent
actions by social movements and the role the media plays in regard to
government repression. He states, “Although the media spotlight to a degree
protects non-violent, unruly challengers from overt attack, covert means of
repression are a different story” (Gamson 1975, p. 161). Gamson gives one
hypothesis to media related phenomena regarding unruly challengers and
repressive authorities. The spotlight
effect is when a media presence complicates efforts for authorities to control
challengers. Challengers who use
non-violent means of collective action get an added measure of protection from
the media spotlight. Any overt attack
on such group will seem unprovoked to the media audience and would promote
divisions among the authorities.
However, when authorities use covert action against challengers, there
is a different scenario. “In the
absence of a media spotlight, authorities can safely undertake actions that
would cause a public scandal if acknowledged and publicized. The fear that such actions may eventually
become public can act as some deterrent, but delayed exposure may be too late
to do the challenger any good (Gamson 1975, p. 166).”
Gamson gives an example of covert actions taken on by
authorities to repress violent collective action organizations. He wrote that in 1947, the attorney general
established a list of subversive organizations that helped to legitimize and
protect internal security within American politics. This list helped to lay the foundation for a broader
institutionalization of domestic intelligence.
The FBI and CIA launched many domestic intelligence investigations, such
as COINTELPRO, that were covert actions.
Efforts of these counter-intelligence programs towards repression
included:
“anonymous or fictitious
letters attacking an ally, a membership sector, or a leader through false,
defamatory, or threatening information; forging signatures, letterheads,
membership cards, press credentials, or other items of identification for the
purpose of disruption; instructing informers to spread false rumors, or
promote factionalism or
mistrust, and creating bogus organizations to attack or disrupt a bona fide
group. Another script “putting a snitch
jacket” on an individual (raising the charge of informer) was designed to
eliminate or discredit a subject and to disrupt his or her organization (Gamson
1975, p. 163).”
These tactics were often fabricated
and media related that were leaked to the public in order to discredit leaders
and their movements. These movements
experienced “extralegal violence as well and were also subjected to illegal
covert action by authorities, aimed at disrupting and demobilizing their
challenge” (Gamson 1975, p. 165).
COINTELPRO and the Conspiracy
COINTELPRO was created in 1967 by the director of the
FBI at the time, J. Edgar Hoover. The
purpose of the program was to expose, disrupt or discredit the activities of
organizations fighting for African American human rights. There were many long-range prevention goals
this covert operation set as the basis for their existence. First, they aimed to prevent the coalition
of Black Nationalist groups for fear of a revolution. They additionally wanted to prevent the rise of a “messiah” who
could both unify and electrify the Black Nationalist movement. Next, they believed that through counterintelligence
it would be possible to pinpoint potential threats and neutralize them before
they exercised their potential violence.
Their final goal was to prevent the long-term growth of militant Black
organizations among the youth of the communities. Special tactics were used to prevent these groups from converting
youth that would cause them to gain more membership.
COINTELPRO was employed on the BPP after the major
leaders were already under attack by local and state agencies. The FBI fought
long and hard in their quest to annihilate the BPP and its leaders. The Bureau used what they called “Black
Propaganda” that included fabricated publications targeted at different party
members in order to discredit each member publicly and among their peers. The FBI also used random infiltrators to provoke
illegal activities among the party leaders which would further the possibility
of arresting them. “Specifically, FBI
engaged in or encouraged a variety of actions intended to cause (and in fact
causing) deaths of BPP members, loss of membership and community support and
false arrests of members and supporters”(Newton 1980, p. 54). These actions by the FBI occurred because
they thought of the BPP as a violent organization
Why the BPP was Considered Violent and a Target for
Repression
Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale organized the Black
Panther Party while students at Merritt College in 1966. Newton and Seale wanted to secure the rights
of he Constitution for Black people. To
do this, they wanted a group with a radical orientation that desired an
immediate change in Black civil rights.
The party differed from other Black organizations at the time because
they embraced a socialist ideology and sought to integrate theory and
practice. They named their ideology
revolutionary inter-communalism.
“Revolutionary inter-communalism provided an important paradigm for
interpreting the world, much as a belief in laissez-faire capitalism affects
the actions of corporate decision makers who embrace it”(Newton 1980, p.
28). The BPP expected the government to
have an opposition to the group because it had confirmed itself as an
organization with radical undertones.
The Party used many different specific strategies to achieve
revolutionary inter-communalism that would ultimately provide a framework of
community service programs.
The BPP began as a response to repeated instances of
police violence in the Black communities.
The leaders soon realized that higher political powers decided whom to
harass and why, not the police. The
police were the sole enforcement agency for these powers. Consequently, the BPP formed a political
program to combat the political decisions that allowed the police to harass the
black communities. This effectively
allowed the Panthers to generate support within the community. The creation of their ten-point platform
stated its main objectives and was both the political and community service
program for the party.
1)
We want freedom. We want power to determine
the destiny Black Community.
2) We want full
employment for our people.
3) We want and end to
the robbery by the
capitalists of our
black community.
4)
We want decent housing,
fit for shelter of human beings.
5)
We want education for
our people that expose the true nature of this decent American society. We want education that teaches us our true
history and our role in present day society.
6)
We want all black men
to be exempt from military service.
7)
We want an immediate
end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.
8)
We want freedom for all
black men held in federal, state, county, and city prisons and jails.
9)
We want all black
people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group
or people from their peer group or people from their black communities, as
defined by the Constitution of the United States.
10) We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing,
justice, and peace. And as our
major political objective, a United
Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial
subjects will be allowed to participate,
for the purpose of determining
the will of black people as their destiny.
(Brisbane 1974, p. 197)
Once the group gained a reputation
and popularity within the ghetto, the Panthers obtained weapons and began patrolling
the Oakland black neighborhoods, enacting the seventh article of the party
platform. The Second Amendment of the
Constitution of the United States allowed the Panthers to carry handguns while
monitoring the police from a legal distance.
Whenever they encountered a police officer apprehending a black person,
they watched to ensure that police brutality did not occur. This surveillance resulted in a decrease of
police brutality against members of the black community and an increase of
harassment towards the BPP by the government.
The image of Blacks armed for self-defense against police brutality
catapulted the Party nationally into the public consciousness and gave an
erroneous impression that it advocated armed confrontation. Ironically, however, the single event most
responsible for projecting this violent image was itself a pristine case of a
group legally petitioning the government for redress of grievances.
In April of 1967, a
twenty-two-year-old Black man named Denzil Dowell was shot and killed by
Richmond, California police. The police
claimed that the man ran from them after being stopped in a stolen
vehicle. Reportedly, he jumped a fence,
ran across automobile junkyard and was about to jump another fence when he was
shot and killed. There were no reports
of the man being armed. There were many
inconsistencies with the police accounts.
First, they said he had jumped a fence, but this would have been
unlikely because he had suffered a serious hip injury at an earlier age. Additionally, the police claimed he ran
through an automobile junkyard but no oil or debris was found on his clothes or
shoes. The police claimed it was
justifiable homicide because Dowell was in the commission of a felony. This prompted the Panthers to take action. As Newton states,
“When the BPP
members went with Denzil Dowell’s family to the sheriff of Contra Costa County
to complain about the shooting, they were advised to go to the state capital in
Sacramento and get the law changed that permitted officers to shoot at suspects
fleeing the scene
of a felony”(Newton 1980, p. 33).
This
incident reaffirmed the BPP leaders’ belief that armed citizen patrols of the
police were the most effective deterrents to excessive use of police force.
The Oakland District soon introduced
the Mulford Bill, prohibiting any person from carrying a loaded firearm in a
vehicle or any public place or street.
This bill led to the first public demonstration by the BPP because it
directly affected them. The Black
Panther’s march to the state capital in Sacramento signified their first
encounter with the law. Thirty armed
Panthers marched into the Capital and read a statement in front of newsmen
protesting the Mulford Bill. However,
the bill passed, making it a crime for citizens to carry loaded weapons in
public places. As they were leaving,
twenty-six members were arrested and charged with various violations of the
law, ranging from disturbing the peace to violation of the fish and game laws. Co-founder Bobby Seale and five other
Panthers received jail sentences for the disruption of a State of California
legislative body assembly. This
incident provided the Black Panther Party with the national publicity it was
striving for and the group began to be known for the “era of the gun”(Winston
1973, p. 220). It also signified the
beginning of attempts by the government to de-radicalize the BPP.
A Timeline of Instances: Repression of the BPP
October 1966 to 1967- Huey P. Newton was harassed and pulled over by the
Oakland police on numerous occasions for no apparent reason or cause other than
his car was recognized as being involved with the BPP (Foner 1970, p. 234)
May 22, 1967- Bobby Seale went to the Oakland Courthouse
to bail Newton out of jail. While
waiting for Newton, he was leaning against a retaining wall outside the
courthouse, carrying a weapon that was considered legal at the time. He was arrested and charged with an obscure
law from the 1800’s which makes it a crime to smuggle guns into a jail or to
possess a gun adjacent to a jail (Holder 1990, p. 213).
October 28, 1967- Huey Newton was pulled over by the police because his car was
recognized as BPP vehicle and was given a citation. This incident resulted in the death of a police officer, another
shot and Newton wounded with four bullets in the stomach and one in the
leg. He was charged with murder and
kidnapping because he was accused of commandeering a car and forcing the driver
to take him to the hospital. Newton
proclaimed his innocence and said he had passed out after being shot. No gun was found on Newton and was driven to
the hospital by a person who was never identified. He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of one
policeman and innocent of shooting the second and was sentenced to serve fifteen
years in the state penitentiary. Three
years later, a court of appeal reversed his conviction (Hopkins 1979, p. 122).
January
16, 1968- Eldridge Cleaver, the Minister of Information of the BPP, was at
his home sleeping at 3:30 in the morning, but was awoken when he heard someone
pounding on his door. The police
demanded entry even though they had no arrest or search warrant. The police then broke down the door with their
guns drawn and searched Cleaver’s apartment.
They left when nothing was found (Hopkins 1979, p. 123).
February 1968- Four people leaving the home of Bobby Seale were stopped and searched
on the grounds that someone had overheard them in the apartment talking about
killing. The police arrested them when
it was discovered they had guns and took them to jail. The police went to Seale’s apartment and
rushed in when his wife opened the door.
One policeman held a gun to Seale’s head while the others searched him
and the apartment. Seale was charged
with illegal possession of a sawed of shotgun with the serial numbers scratched
off and conspiracy to commit murder.
Seale contended that the police filed off the serial numbers after the
arrest (Hopkins 1979, p. 123).
February
18, 1968- Four Black Panthers were in there car when at least 20 police
surrounded
the vehicle. All in the car were
arrested on weapons charges (Holder 1990, p. 219).
April 3, 1968- Police enter Father Neil’s church in Oakland when it is learned the
Panthers were holding a meeting there.
A black youth associated with the group was outside of the church
waiving a gun. Police surrounded the
church and entered it in a threatening manner, carrying 12 gauge shotguns. David Hilliard, a member of the BPP, came
out of the sanctuary and refused to let police enter the church. Upon seeing Hilliard, police lowered their
guns and looked around for someone else.
The Panthers believed they were looking for Bobby Seale (Heath 1976, p.
133).
April 6, 1998- Several Panthers in cars were approached by two policemen and menaced with
guns. When the members tried to defend
themselves, shooting began and the Panthers ran to a nearby house. After about 90 minutes of shooting by 50
Oakland police officers, the Panthers had to surrender because the police set
fire to the house because they filled it with too much tear gas. When member Bobby Hutton came out with his
hands up, someone yelled that he had a gun and he was shot over twenty times
and killed. He had no gun. Nine people were arrested and two policemen
slightly wounded (Holder 1990, p. 222).
May 1, 1968-
A sixteen-year-old girl was arrested for extortion for selling “Free Huey”
buttons (Hopkins 1979, p. 127).
April 2, 1969- The New York police serve warrants to 21 Black Panther members. They arrest 13 members and hold them on
$100,000 bail. They are charges with a
wide range of offenses ranging from conspiracy to robbing subway token
booths. Their most serious accusation
was the conspiracy to bomb department stores and a botanical garden (Holder
1990, p. 232).
April 26, 1969- BPP offices are destroyed y a bomb in Des Moines, Iowa. The police refuse to investigate the origins
of the bombing (Major 1971, p. 301).
May 22, 1969-
The BPP office in New Haven, Connecticut is raided and eight members of the
party are arrested on a variety of conspiracy and murder charges (Holder 1990,
p. 234).
December 4, 1969- The Illinois BPP leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are murdered in
Chicago by police raiders from the State’s Attorney’s office in cooperation
with the FBI. Hampton was drugged
beforehand by an agent who had infiltrated the BPP. Hampton was shot and killed in his sleep and Clark was killed as
he answered a knock on his apartment door.
Hampton’s personal bodyguard, William O’neal, submitted in a sworn
affidavit that he had provided the police with the floor plan of Hampton’s
apartment before the attack. He also
revealed that the FBI had paid him over $10,000 for undercover work against the
Panthers (Major 1971, p. 302).
In December of 1969, the records of
Panthers who had been murdered and harassed since its early years were
compiled. Unfortunately, the Party did not begin to keep records at its
inception of the men and women who were harassed and killed. However, the
incomplete records still reveal a story of systematic arrest and harassment of
men and women in the BPP. A member of
the Party would be charged with murder and be held in jail for five, ten or
twenty days. All of a sudden the charges
would be dropped and released from custody.
Between May 2, 1967 and December 25, 1969, charges were dropped against
at least 87 Panthers that were arrested for various so-called violations of the
law (Foner 1970, p. 258). However,
these members were held in prison for days, weeks and months without any
evidence against them before being released.
At least a dozen cases involving Panther members were dismissed in
court. These cases were clearly to
intimidate, frighten, and hope that the hysteria against the BPP would produce
convictions and imprisonments (Foner 1970, p. 258). At a News Release Issued by the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) in 1969 states, “The record of police actions across the country against the Black Panther Party
forms a prima facie case for the conclusion that law enforcement officials are
waging a drive against the black militant organization resulting in serious
civil liberties violations” (Foner 197, p. 263).
Conclusions
In summary, government agencies
viewed the politics of the BPP as a serious threat to political authority and
took measures to change the conditions that allowed the group to operate
successfully. Putting aside ethical and
legal questions, the tactics used by the police and COINTELPRO show systemic
authority acting to preserve its function and status in society. The Panther’s advocacy of community control
over community resources and their demonstrated willingness to use guns to
attain their goals were clear threats to the status quo of politically weak
Black communities and the politically powerful dominant society. The radical nature of the BPP challenge
dictated that one or perhaps both of the combatants would have to undergo
significant change.
The actions by the Federal Government
against the BPP illustrate not only the nature and extent of tactics the
government will employ to crush dissident groups, but also the seriousness with
which the Party was perceived as a potential threat to those in power. Many of the tactics worked, in the sense
that the Party lost members, leaders, supporters, thus becoming de-radicalized.