The Black Panthers Storyville

This programme contains very strong language

There's an old story and it's used in various cultures,

where a group of blind men approach an elephant

and try and describe it.

The first man approaches the elephant, touches its side

and says, "It feels like a wall."

The next man touches the tusk

and says the elephant must be like a spear.

Another blind man touches the trunk and says, "It feels like a snake."

And that is quite often what happens with our descriptions

of the Black Panther Party.

We know the party we were in

and not the entire thing.

We were making history, and it wasn't nice and clean.

It wasn't easy, it was complex.

From Chicago, Illinois, the mighty Chi-Lites.

# For God's sake, give more power to the people

# There's some people up there hoggin' everything... #

The thing that led to the Panthers

was what we were seeing on television every day -

attack dogs, fire hoses, bombings.

We stand on the eve of a black revolution, brothers.

Now we had the emergence of voices within the community that

were saying we're not going to continue to turn the other cheek.

You tell them white folk in Mississippi

that all the scared niggers are dead.

CHEERING

We want black power. We want black power.

# For God's sake, give more power to the people... #

This was a revolutionary time.

50 countries in the world gained their independence in the decade

before the founding of the Black Panther Party.

This is the time when people are getting drafted to go

and fight in Vietnam.

So if somebody's coming and saying,

"Well, if you're going to fight,

"why not fight right here in LA or Oakland?"

That made a lot of sense.

You couldn't be absent and see what we saw.

We couldn't unsee it.

I was a cocktail waitress in a white strip club

two years before I joined the Black Panther Party.

How did that happen?

The rage was in the streets.

It was everywhere.

# Give more power to the people... #

We're not going to get nothing.

Not by sitting around here doing these

sit-in demonstrations or nothing.

-People not going to do anything...

-Well, how are we going to do it?

By violence. Violence.

Uprising and having a revolution...

with blood, you know?

Let everybody bleed a little bit.

NEWS REPORTER: Relations between police and negroes

throughout the country are getting worse.

One of the city's most troubled by animosity between

police and negroes is Oakland, California.

People always talked about freedom

and what that means.

During that time period being black in America meant you didn't

walk down the street with the same sense of safety

and the same sense of privilege as a white person.

There was absolutely no difference in the way the police treated us

in Mississippi than they did in California.

They may not have called you nigger everyday,

but they treated you the same way they did in Mississippi.

Police jump on you, beat you up, put the gun at your head.

This is what we were going through on a daily basis.

When I first met Huey and Bobby they were in the process of forming

an organisation for primarily self-defence.

We didn't plan to have a nationwide organisation or anything like that.

We were organising and dealing with the problems in Oakland.

We use the Black Panther as our symbol

because the nature of a Panther.

A panther doesn't strike anyone, but when he's assailed upon

he'll back up first,

but if the aggressor continues then he'll strike out.

Huey had studied the law.

In Oakland at that particular time

anyone could carry a firearm who did not have

a felony conviction at the time.

The firearm could not be concealed, it had to be in the open.

The California penal code section 12,020 through 12,027,

and also the Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees

the citizen a right to bear arms on public property.

Huey said we're going to carry our guns

and we're going to follow the police,

and if they stop someone we're going to stop,

we're going to maintain a legal distance and we're going to

observe these so-called law officers in the performance of their duties.

We were in the car and driving around and having fun.

We would be looking at the pretty woman and chasing the sisters.

Then something might happen,

and then all of the sudden the focus would just become serious.

We're coming around the corner, basically where you are.

We would stop, we would get out of the cars,

we would walk up to the scene.

Those who had rifles would carry them in the open, clearly visible.

We would stand at a distance where

the police couldn't say we were

interfering with their arrest or their detention of the individual,

and make sure that there was no brutality.

We stood back with our weapons, ready to throw down if necessary.

They would take the weapon and pass it across like this,

and it would sweep right over the officer.

No-one would do anything

until a policeman ejected a round in the chamber.

Then we would all eject rounds in the chamber.

And all up and down the street you could hear this clackety-clack, clack, clack, clack.

And then when the traffic stop or the incident's over,

they'd bring the weapon down across by you like this

and get back in their car and drive off.

It was pretty intimidating.

We referred to ourselves as the vanguard.

And we were setting by example a new course that we wanted

the entire community to follow.

No-one wants to touch the legitimate hunter,

but we've got to protect society from nuts with the guns.

When bands of armed people with loaded weapons can

move about our streets, intimidating and frightening citizens,

then I think we should act, and we intend to act.

It's my intention to make it a misdemeanour to have

loaded rifles and shotguns and weapons in public places.

The police department had went to a local congressmen to get a bill written.

So Huey called me up and said, "We have to go to Sacramento."

It was conceived as a media event that the press

is always at the California State Capitol.

No-one really wanted Huey himself to go

because Huey was kind of a quick-tempered firebrand.

Bobby was a little more cautious.

And it was like, "Look, you've been great so far,

"but you might blow it up there,

"and bad things could happen."

We caravanned to Sacramento.

I think there were about 30 of us like altogether,

and most of us has some weapon.

We were on the State Capitol on the lawn and Ronald Reagan,

then the governor of the State of California, was there,

about ten feet away from us,

holding a press conference with these young parochial school kids.

And what happened was as soon as the press seen us

they gravitated from Ronald Reagan over to where the Panthers was.

The Black Panther Party For Self-Defense calls upon

the American people in general, and the black people in particular,

to take careful note of the racist California legislature,

which is now considering legislation aimed at

keeping the black people disarmed and powerless.

At the very same time,

racist police agencies throughout the country are intensifying

the terror, brutality, murder and repression of black people.

The State Assembly was in the midst of a heated debate

when the young negroes, armed with loaded rifles, shotguns and pistols,

marched into the Capitol.

When we got in the halls, you have to imagine

there's 100 cameras, still cameras, print media people,

backing up and I'm saying, "Where is the spectators' section?"

And the press is saying, "This way, Bobby."

Some party members got ahead of me with shotguns, pistols,

and went up on the actual floor of the California State Legislature.

They're heavily armed.

Whether their weapons are loaded or not nobody seems to know.

The armed group, who said they were members of the Black Panther Party,

retreated to a service station several blocks from the Capitol.

I remember this one cop came by on a motorcycle

and he seen all these guns and he got on the...thing.

And that's when they started to swoop down on us from everywhere.

You have no right to take my gun away from me.

-You don't know the Constitution right?

-Sure we do.

-I'm well aware of the Constitution.

-I would like to have my gun back.

Why do you believe legislature is racist?

Don't you know? You're a part of it.

It's a white system.

The news got to everyone in the black community

who had a television, everyone who had a radio.

It was in every newspaper across the nation.

It put us on centre stage.

I don't think that loaded guns is the way to solve a problem

that should be solved between people of goodwill.

And anyone who would approve of this kind of demonstration must be out of their mind.

When I heard about Sacramento I was like,

"Damn, these brothers are bad."

"They're here up in Sacramento in the Capitol...packing?"

The boldness, the courageousness about it,

the arrogance of it.

That put a whole new face on things.

I said, "Man, I want to be a part of this. Whatever that is."

Yeah, I walked into the office and told them

I wanted to join the Black Panther Party,

and they kind of laughed.

I didn't know that there weren't any other women

in the party at that time.

But then I asked them, "Could I have a gun?"

I was a student at Lincoln University outside Philly

when I first heard about the Black Panther Party.

I found my friend, John Huggins,

and I said, "We need to leave this stupid campus. We have work to do."

We got in John Huggins' little hoopty car,

we drove across the country from New York,

and when we got to the West Coast we joined the Black Panther Party.

What we want, what we believe.

Point number one - we want freedom.

We want decent housing.

We want an education for our people.

We want an immediate end to police brutality.

People joined for all kinds of reasons,

but the Panthers had a ten point platform programme that really was

sort of like the fundamental organising tool

and orientation tool.

The civil rights movement was basically a southern movement.

So when you had an organisation like the Panthers, who were

taking on things like housing and welfare and health,

that was stuff the people in the north could relate to

and rally behind.

Our attack was not only against white supremacy,

but it was also about capitalism.

We actually thought that the way in which capitalism created a working-class

that was kept absolutely destitute, that was wrong.

So we took the position that in order for us to be free

that system had to be dismantled.

We cannot be free in a system that

had oppressed us in the first place.

So you have to get rid of that system.

We were not after the church folks, we were not after the Muslim folks.

We wanted the brother on the corner,

the brother who was getting his head banged every weekend by the police.

We wanted the brother who was going to jail,

just snatched out of his car for a traffic ticket cos he was black.

That's who we were after.

We would get calls from Atlanta, Nashville, Raleigh, North Carolina,

Washington DC, Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Every city, small or large,

you can think of wanted a chapter of the Black Panther Party.

We would send members of the organisation

to help connect them to us.

But it was destabilising in the sense it was somewhat chaotic

the way the party was growing, and it was too fast and too big.

There was no screening process. There was no, "Why are you here?

"What do you expect to have happen while you're here?

"What are you trying to accomplish?" There was none of that.

Members came from, whoever just came in off the street.

The downside, of course, was we had no idea who any of these people were.

We didn't have time for a whole lot of,

"Who are you, what are you doing?

"You want to do this? Fine, go."

This week on Firing Line, my guest is Mr Eldridge Cleaver,

the information minister of the Black Panthers.

Eldridge Cleaver comes out with this book, Soul On Ice,

a series of his essays from prison,

and the New York Times says

that it's brilliant, it gets onto the bestseller list.

So when Eldridge joined the Panthers,

the Panthers had gotten themselves a star, a literary star.

I've been called by the National Review

"The Goebbels of the Black Panther Party."

And all of this is an attempt to undermine the party or

to give it a bad presentation to the public.

Huey Newton always had this vision,

he was the visionary of the party.

Bobby Seale, he had the personality,

Eldridge Cleaver was the person who made the party

credible to black intellectuals, to the white left intellectuals.

All of them loved Eldridge Cleaver.

They understood what he was talking about,

or at least they thought they did.

Eldridge had this incredible ability to encapsulate a thought in

a few sentences and form it into an artistic statement that pointed,

stabbed right into the heart of the enemy.

And he did that all of the time.

Now, was he always correct? No.

I say that Ronald Reagan is a punk, a sissy and a coward,

and I challenge him to a duel.

APPLAUSE I challenge...

I challenge him to a duel to the death,

or until he says "Uncle Eldridge." LAUGHTER

Was he insane?

Fuck yeah! That boy was crazy.

And he got a lot of people hurt.

And I give him his choice of weapon.

He can use a gun, a knife, a baseball bat or a marshmallow,

and I'll beat him to death with a marshmallow.

That's how I feel about him, see?

I said, "They're not going to be able to control Eldridge."

Eldridge was a rottweiler, uncontrollable personality.

Who could be in an organisation with Eldridge and he not be the leader?

Nobody.

And that's basically how it ended up.

A pool of blood marks the spot where 23-year-old officer John Frey

was found fatally wounded from four gunshots.

The shooting happened at 5am approximately where I'm standing

on 7th Street in the heart of Oakland's negro ghetto.

The suspect, charged with murder and attempted murder, is Huey Newton -

25-year-old leader of the Black Panthers For Self-Defense.

Newton is hospitalised in serious condition and under heavy guard.

We went up to Highland Hospital, and it looked like

every police in America was there.

We didn't know for sure if Huey was dead or alive.

We didn't sleep that night.

Nobody slept then, I don't think.

As he was handcuffed to a gurney, going into surgery,

he was arrested for murder and expected to face execution.

A lot of the other Panthers were in jail

because of the protest that they'd done in Sacramento,

so Eldridge was the only available spokesperson

for the Black Panther Party.

The Black Panther Party demands that Huey P Newton be set free.

And we wish to make it very clear that

if he is not set free there is little hope of avoiding

open armed war in the streets of California,

and sweeping across this nation.

We said, "Well, Huey's in jail, he's facing the death penalty.

"What can we do?"

I think the initial slogan was, "Huey must be set free."

Eventually it got shortened to, "Free Huey."

# Black is beautiful

# Free Huey

# Set our warrior free

# Free Huey

# Black is beautiful

# Free Huey

# Set our warrior free

# Free Huey... #

It became a huge movement.

# Free Huey

# Set our warrior free

# Free Huey

# Black is beautiful

# Free Huey

# Set our warrior free

# Free Huey

# Black is beautiful

# Free Huey

# Set our warrior free... #

Today there were a number of Free Huey Newton rallies across the nation.

You did not have to be a member of the Black Panther Party,

all you had to be was a human being.

People of all kinds took up that cry for Huey.

Free Huey! Frey Huey!

Free Huey! Frey Huey!

Free Huey! Frey Huey!

The Examiner made a report back here in the last Sunday's paper

that we were anti-white, that we "Hold no bones," -

this is a quote - "Hold no bones about being anti-white."

This is a bald-faced lie.

We don't hate nobody because of their colour.

We hate oppression,

we hate murder of black people in our communities.

APPLAUSE

People just turned out.

They wanted to help us, they wanted to give us money,

they wanted us to come speak.

There was this gathering of connection

to the Black Panthers that was different to before.

# We got to free Huey

# We got to free Huey

# We got to free Huey

# We got to free Huey

# Everybody

# We got to free Huey

# We got to free Huey

# We got to free Huey... #

We were a phenomenon.

The way that we walked and talked and dressed.

We had swagger.

# We got to free Huey

# We got to free Huey... #

It was a rhythm.

-SHE CLICKS HER FINGERS

-It was a rhythm to how we spoke,

it was a rhythm to how we walked,

and the people recognised that we stood out.

Outside of that on the street they'd probably think,

"Oh, that's a butt-ugly person. Oh, they ugly."

But in the party it was just something that gave them

this tremendous sex appeal.

THEY CHANT: Free Huey!

The Panthers didn't invent the idea of black is beautiful.

People had started wearing afros and dashikis.

One of the things the Panthers did was that URBAN black is beautiful.

And that look just blew people away.

If you were a young black man living in the city anywhere,

you wanted to be like this.

You wanted to dress like this, you wanted to act like this,

you wanted to talk like this, you wanted to be this.

The standard of aggressiveness, of militants,

of just forcefulness of the sort of standard we haven't had in the past.

THEY SHOUT

THEY CHANT: Free Huey! Free Huey!

But figuratively speaking you're not about to become a Panther?

No, not today or tomorrow, at any rate.

Maybe the day after.

# Am I black enough for you?

# Am I black enough for you?

# Am I black enough for you?

# Am I black enough for you...? #

This brother here, myself, all of us,

we're born with our hair like this and we just wear it like this.

The reason for it, you might say, is a new awareness among black people

that their own natural physical appearance is beautiful.

Black people are aware now, they're proud of it.

It's pleasing to them. Dig it?

Isn't it beautiful? All right.

# We gotta get rid of poverty

# I got to stay black Black enough for you

# I got to stay black Black enough for you

# We're gonna move on up

# Four by four

# We ain't never gonna suffer no more

# I got to stay black Black enough for you... #

You're talking about people who were teenagers.

17, 18, 19, 20.

That's bulk of the Panthers are teenagers.

So the fact that we were so young

and the fact that this hadn't happened before,

I'm not certain we recognised how startling it looked to other people.

Dear, Mr Newton, I'm a 13-year-old black girl

and I want to be a Black Panther.

I wish you would fill me in.

Does it matter what your religion is?

What are some qualifications to be a Black Panther?

PS, write me back personally.

I was taught to be proper.

Behave yourself, if you're going out in public

to always know that the white man was listening.

With the Black Panthers coming to the scene

it was just a completely different message.

As a 12-year-old, you know, "What?"

You had this whole other portrayal of self,

and just digging it.

# We gotta move on up

# Eight by eight

# Without no witness

# We ain't too late... #

Photographers took advantage.

I mean, they took our pictures, they put them on newspapers,

they put them on magazines.

And that look that we projected, you know, the big afro,

the leather jacket, the shades, that became a hit.

And obviously photographers were drawn to the Panthers.

Well, we hear a great deal about the Black Panthers...

-Black Panthers...

-Black Panthers...

Black Panthers...

The Black Panthers were absolutely unique.

-The Black Panthers...

-The Black Panthers...

-The Black Panthers...

-The Black Panther Party...

-The Black Panthers movement...

-Black Panther Party...

The Black Panthers...

I think the Black Panthers really understood the media.

They knew what we were after, they knew what we were focusing on.

The Panthers has amounted to...

The Black Panther Party...

Many people know of the Panthers...

You might say we exploited the Black Panthers, but I think

there's a lot of evidence that they used us to their advantage.

They were able to establish their legitimacy as a voice of protest.

The chairman of the Black Panther Party, and here he is.

APPLAUSE

We have a film of your breakfast programme.

-Is this without sound also?

-Yeah, I think so.

-All right, will you comment on this?

-Yes, I will.

This is a free breakfast for children programme,

and they're preparing the food there early in the morning.

It's about two hours' work in the morning.

These party members primarily set this whole programme up,

and then we get involved as many of the community people as we can.

Come on in, little fella, come on in, little sister.

Sit down and get something to eat.

Studies came out saying that children that didn't

have a good breakfast in the morning were less attentive at school

and less inclined to do well and suffered from fatigue.

I mean, there was all sorts of scientific reasons to have

a good breakfast in the morning.

And we just simply took that information

and a programme was developed serving breakfast to children.

After my father came home from Vietnam and was discharged from

the army and couldn't get work

we were going through a very hard time.

Food was kind of, you know, just the everyday necessities were hard.

I was embarrassed to go,

but when you went, you know, kids are all laughing.

And then all of sudden

the stigma, or whatever you thought was a stigma, went away,

and you really got to see that,

yes, this is what the Black Panthers are.

We was showing love for our people.

If you have a child and you know that

"Hey, these men and women are going to feed my child in the morning."

That's a big deal.

The breakfast programme actually really caught on.

It served about 20,000 meals a week to young people in 19 different communities.

So it wasn't a fly-by-night thing,

it really actually was making a difference.

Just at the moment that the Panthers are turning towards survival programmes,

towards free breakfast programmes, free clinics and free food programmes

that will help them reconnect with

the black community and build their membership,

and repudiating this earlier advocacy

of armed self-defence and police patrols,

J Edgar Hoover attacks the Panthers.

Hoover saw any form of black organising as a threat

to the status quo, as he saw it.

Change that would have involved equality, would have put power

in black people's hands, was very much a threat to Hoover.

He started something called Cointelpro,

directed against what he called black nationalist hate groups.

Cointelpro was the abbreviation of Counterintelligence Programme.

"The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavour

"is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit

"or otherwise neutralise the activities of black nationalists.

Neutralise could mean making somebody an informant

or putting somebody in jail or having somebody killed.

Hoover was sending letters to various offices,

almost on a weekly basis, to come up with new ideas to go after

members of the Black Panther Party.

245 of the 290 Cointelpro actions were against the Black Panthers.

One of the mandates was,

"Do not make this programme public.

"Do not tell anybody that it exists."

FBI has a memo that states

the objectives of counterintelligence operations.

One is to prevent the rise of what they call the black messiah -

a single charismatic leader that could unify the movement.

They wanted to prevent the appeal of radical political movement to black youths.

And they wanted to isolate these groups to prevent them

from gaining respectability in the black community.

And they were very explicit in stating these goals.

We were followed every day,

we were harassed,

our phones were tapped,

our families were harassed.

My parents were both visited by the FBI.

"We must create suspicion with respect to their respective spouses,

"and your imagination and resourcefulness must be employed

"in order for the Bureau to be successful."

They would send letters to my wife,

and the letters would say that Landon is sleeping with this woman

or sleeping with that women or sleeping with the other woman.

Then when I got arrested the FBI came to me

and said, "Ah, look, we've got all this evidence.

"All these people are going to flip and turn on you.

"We're going to execute you.

"Cos we've got you now, we're going to execute you.

But if you will be an informant for us, then we'll let you go.

My recruitment by the FBI was very efficient.

Very simple, really.

I'd stole a car and went with joyriding over the state limit,

and they had a potential case against me

and I was looking for an opportunity to work it off.

And a couple of months later that opportunity came

when the FBI agent Roy Mitchell asked me to go down to

the local office of the Black Panther Party

and try to gain membership.

The FBI wanted to destroy the Panthers.

They absolutely saw the Panthers as the vanguard of a very, very

threatening and violent revolutionary movement.

They absolutely wanted this organisation to be destroyed.

The FBI was coming round to my mother-in-law, my wife,

and for me to stop that kind of activity, I stopped going home,

and a lot of other people did also, to protect their families.

You could kind of say we were abandoning our families

for the Panther Party.

You might have a three-bedroom apartment that might

have ten Panthers staying there, sharing bedrooms.

The living room was basically also a bedroom.

We called them Panther pads.

Somebody would be on 24 hour security, someone was responsible

for cleaning the place, often it was a rotating list of responsibilities.

It was a sense of community that we created.

The rank and file was the everyday members

that did the daily work of the party.

They were the ones that made the party -

the backbreakers, the ones you put all the work on.

# Cos we know

# We got to live together

# We know

# We got to love each other... #

The Panthers realised we have to live together to protect one another.

We have to also be committed to this thing,

to this cause, to this movement, 24 hours a day.

The rank and file,

whatever orders that came down for our captains

and lieutenants, we did that because that spirit was in us

to stay in this movement to our death,

or if it meant going to jail.

So whatever they told us to do, we did it.

# Live together

# Love each other

# Stay together... #

I was in labour, cooking breakfast for the breakfast programme.

So I was, between contractions, flipping pancakes.

I would spend all the day answering the phones, even after I had my son.

When I came back to work I used to have to

jump him up and down really heavy,

cos he just wouldn't stop crying as I'm answering the phone.

You name it. I cleaned freezers with a toothpick.

And that's how I'd answer the phone.

"Black Panther Party national headquarters.

"Black Panther Party central headquarters, can I help you?"

One of the ironies of the Black Panther Party is that

the image is the black male with the jacket and the gun,

but the reality is that the majority of the rank and file

by the end of the '60s are women.

Everybody knows that all the people don't have liberties,

all the people don't have freedom,

all the people don't have justice and all the people don't have power.

So that means none of us do!

The Black Panther Party certainly had a chauvinist tone,

and so we tried to change some of the clear gender roles,

so that women had guns and men cooked breakfast for children.

Did we ever overcome it? Of course we didn't.

As I liked to say,

we didn't get these brothers from revolutionary heaven.

Black Panther Paper.

The paper was the lifeblood of the party.

That's how we survived.

We sold the papers, 25 cents back then,

it cost maybe 12 cents to print it, the other 12.5 cents went to the

various chapters and branches, and that's how we basically survived.

The party paper went places party members would never get to go to,

and reaching people we would never see.

But the paper got there, some kind of way or other.

So it was very important to get the paper out.

Los Angeles, 2,850.

New Haven, 3,000.

When we were loading boxes and bundling papers or whatever

we were doing, we did it in an assembly-line fashion.

And we would just start singing.

# Ain't no mountain high enough

# Ain't no valley low enough

# To keep me from getting this paper to you. #

Or whatever we would do.

We would change the lyrics just a little bit.

# It's your thing

# Do what you wanna do

# Whitey can't tell me what the... #

And then we'd...what to do.

Decent housing fit for shelter of human beings.

In the paper everything came together.

We had the platform, the ten point platform was in there.

It was the first thing you see when you open up the paper.

We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black community.

That's what we're talking about, like number three.

Number four, "We want decent housing fit to shelter human beings."

You dig? And then we got...

It explained who we were and what we were about, what our goals were.

-Tell me, ma'am, do you read the Black Panther Party newspaper?

-Yes, I do.

-Why?

-Because I'm black and I'm proud.

What do you like best about the paper?

Because they are a proud people and I love them.

# Black is you, black is me, black is us, black is free

# Black is me, black is me, black is us, black is free

# Black is us, black is me, black is us, black is free

# Black is free, black is me, black is us, black is free... #

For me there was only one reason to read the Panther newspaper

and that was to see Emory's illustrations.

His paintings, his caricatures,

his illustrations literally gave us the story.

# Black is you, black is me, black is us, black is free

# Black is me, black is me, black is us, black is free

# Black is us, black is me, black is us, black is free... #

The community would respond to the artwork

because it was a reflection of them in the artwork itself.

Because you're putting them on the stage as the characters

and heroes in the images.

They could see their brother,

or they could see their uncle, in the images.

Through the breakfast programmes,

through the other programmes that we had to help black youth,

people come in and talk about how they can't pay their bills,

or they need childcare.

That teardrop symbolised that pain that I observed.

Even through that pain, there was the strength and determination

and conviction to still battle on.

So, I was trying to put that into the artwork itself.

Emory was our social realism.

He gave you a sense of bravery, resilience, courage

and, most of all, beauty.

That was what I loved about Emory.

It was Huey and Bobby's ideal to draw a pig, uh, drawing

that would symbolise the police,

so the first pig I did was one on the four hooves.

It just came to me one night, "Why don't I stand it up on two hooves?"

I put a bandolier gun,

bandolier with a holster and a badge, and the flies

around it, and that became the symbol, the icon of the pig.

It took on a life of its own.

THEY CHANT

-# Off the pigs

-Time to pick up the gun

# Off the pigs... #

That rhetoric didn't bother us

when it was spoken by the Panthers.

# Power to the people Off the pigs

# Power to the people Off the pigs... #

But when it was picked up by college students,

them saying it, that definitely bothered us.

# Off the pigs Off the pigs

# Power to the people Off the pigs

# Power to the people

# Off the pigs... #

I was a sergeant, patrolling in the projects,

and there was a...cutest little girl,

so I stopped to say hello,

and I said, "Hi, honey, how are you doing today?"

And she looked at me and she said, "Fuck you, pig."

And I thought, "We have lost it, man, we have flat lost it."

Anybody that criticised the police, especially that didn't have

fear of saying it publicly, made the police angry.

It was us against them. That became the theme.

We have seen the pig on the scene. We know what he's like.

We know what he's capable of.

Just being a damn pig, oinking and beating,

and walking the street.

The police must be brought under control by any means necessary,

including through force of arms.

These racist, Gestapo pigs have to stop brutalising

our community, or we're going to take up guns,

we're going to drive them out.

That tendency to keep escalating the rhetoric,

that was a major part of the growth of the party,

but it was also a destructive force,

because you were always upping the ante.

# I said gun, pick up the gun

# Pick up the gun and put the pigs on the ground

# Pick up the gun... #

It brought all the repression down on them

before they were prepared to handle it.

I just want to deal with black and black liberation.

My scene is picking up my damn gun and I'm a mother.

Have my baby in one hand, my gun in the other,

and then I'm here, motherfucker, to get what's mine.

The voice that called for justice and brotherhood has been stilled.

Men of all races now must join together

in this hour to deny violence its victory,

and to fulfil the vision of brotherhood.

The effect of the death of Martin Luther King on the Panthers

was overwhelming, in the sense that...

..once King was assassinated,

and the way he was assassinated so publicly,

it shattered many, many people.

They'd killed their last chance for me to be peaceful with them.

They had killed their last chance for negotiation.

They killed the man who walked through hell to try to

get along with you - and you kill him?

That was our champion.

You killed whatever hope I had in you.

And I have no more use for you. None.

SIREN BLARES

I believe that there was a decision made that some response on the

part of the Black Panther Party has to be made to what happened to King.

Eldridge Cleaver was worried that if the Panthers didn't take

decisive action, they would cease to be the vanguard,

so he had this idea of actually actively attacking the police.

He goes and he approaches members of the party in Oakland,

and all of the older people refused to participate.

They knew that this would be suicide, but the youngest member of

the party, Little Bobby Hutton,

decides to follow Eldridge into battle.

Little Bobby called me. "Big man, I need a weapon."

I gave him a Winchester 12-gauge pump shotgun

that I had and I told him,

"Well, be careful out there, you know? Watch yourself."

And he said, "OK, I will." And he left.

And then, first thing in the morning,

I have the radio on.

The Oakland Police stated that they were fired upon during a routine

investigation of a suspicious person, and after a short search,

cornered Hutton and Eldridge Cleaver in the basement of a nearby house.

A tear gas canister blew up and the basement

they were hiding in caught on fire.

They decided they didn't want to burn to death -

they would rather surrender.

Eldridge told Bobby Hutton to take off all your clothes,

so they can't say you're concealing a weapon.

When you surrender, take off everything.

But Bobby was embarrassed and he just took off his shirt.

And he kept on his pants.

Bobby Hutton came out with his hands in the air.

First member who walked out of the house and was gunned down.

My heart sank.

He's only 17 years old,

and one of the first people

to get killed in the party, and so young.

In essence, I felt that, man, I got my little brother killed.

What if I had not given him the weapon?

Those are some of the demons that, uh...

..were in my closet.

Shot down like a common animal, he died a warrior for black liberation.

In the name of brotherhood and survival, remember Bobby.

That could have been my son lying there.

And I'm going to do as much as I can.

I'm going to start right now...

..to inform white people of what they don't know.

For the Black Panther Party, it was crisis and chaos,

because this was the first time

that this had ever happened.

There had been no Panther murdered by police.

We want non-violence, just like Martin Luther King.

But non-violence on the part of who?

To sit and watch ourselves be slaughtered, like our brother?

We must defend ourselves.

As Malcolm X said, "by any means necessary".

After the loss of Bobby Hutton, Eldridge was ordered to

surrender to the San Francisco police

to go back to prison.

But on November 28, 1968,

he didn't turn himself in and...he was...

..not to be found.

-Mrs Cleaver, do you know where your husband is?

-No.

-When was the last time you saw him?

-Sunday night.

It's rumoured that Eldridge is out of the country.

-Do you think this is possible?

-No, I don't think so.

And so the mystery remains. Where is Eldridge Cleaver?

It's entirely possible that his wife and lawyer really do not know.

For the law, he is simply a fugitive from justice.

He had gone to Algeria.

There's nothing the United States government can do to us in Algeria.

They don't have diplomatic relations with Algeria.

We could function openly, politically, in Algeria,

so we opened our international section of the Black Panther Party.

The Black Panthers were welcomed by

all sorts of liberation movements.

The North Vietnamese, who were moving into a newer embassy,

gave their old embassy to the Panthers, and the Black Panthers,

of course, loved being accepted like this.

In Eldridge Cleaver's successful attempt to establish an

international wing, he's able to do some things that are very important.

Malcolm X and other black nationalists had talked about

forging those types of alliances.

The Panthers actually did it.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

He wishes you victory in your struggle.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

And we hope to receive you in liberated Saigon.

Tell him I hope to receive them in Washington DC.

At that time, America was being demonised considerably

because of the war in Vietnam,

so here we are, black Americans

who are opposed to all of this,

we're the counter to the United States.

We were able to connect with North Koreans,

with Vietnamese, with the Chinese,

and with also many African liberation movements,

and many people came to see us there.

We came over here to do what we can to communicate to you

what's happening in our struggle in the United States.

I think a lot of what draws these groups together is

a kind of anti-American sentiment.

If you want to really shake the American establishment,

you want them to think that they are in danger,

that a revolutionary new world is on its way.

The Panthers are certainly the people you're going to support.

Since the United States of America

is the backbone of oppression in the world,

the blows that we strike against the empire there

will also aid the liberation struggles in Africa,

Asia, North America, as we aid ourselves.

APPLAUSE

Face The Nation, a spontaneous and unrehearsed news interview

with the chief of staff of the Black Panther Party, David Hillier.

Your Minister Of Information is now in exile, Eldridge Cleaver.

You speak with him often on the phone, is that correct?

Well, you know I do. They tapped the phones.

The phone is probably hooked-up through the White House.

The leaders of the party, its national leadership,

sits with David Hillier.

Bobby Seale is in and out of prison,

Huey Newton is in jail, at this point for a number of years,

and Eldridge Cleaver is in Algeria.

David was someone who was considered,

a, um...

..you could say he was a sound storekeeper.

He kept the shop in order.

Richard Nixon is the chief spokesman of the American people,

and if the man is not responsible for the people

in government, like the FBI agencies or the local police,

then he should stand up

and let the American people know that he does not endorse

-the kind of campaigns that have been waged against black...

-THE INTERVIEWER INTERRUPTS

Nixon is elected with a sense of a mandate

to crack down, and he feels that

it is his personal charge,

after the '68 election,

to repress.

This is a nation of law, and as Abraham Lincoln has said,

"No-one is above the law, no-one is below the law",

and we're going to enforce the law, and Americans should remember

that if we're going to have law and order.

The Nixon administration gives J Edgar Hoover

even more of a sense

that he can repress without restriction.

Do you feel the nation is in trouble?

-I think very definitely it is.

-What is the answer?

The answer is vigorous law enforcement.

-That's the only answer?

-That's the only answer.

-How about justice?

You hear a lot about justice with law enforcement.

Justice is merely incidental to law and order.

FBI director J Edgar Hoover today asserted that the Black Panthers

represent the greatest internal threat to the nation.

Hoover said the Panthers have perpetrated numerous

assaults on police and have engaged in violent confrontations

throughout the country.

When Hoover identified the Black Panther Party as the number-one

threat to the national security of the United States

at a time when they're fighting in Vietnam, you know,

of course that was...crazy, but it was politically very effective.

And it says to law enforcement at the local level,

we can take the gloves off now.

We don't have to respect the civil liberties

and we can go after them with everything we got.

One of the executive orders of the Panther Party

was that we was to defend ourselves from unwarranted attacks.

To not allow the police to just forcibly come in.

Yes, tear gas is on. Here's your water and your, er, mask.

-Keep this on you.

-OK.

-Nobody coming in the front door. Nobody.

-Nobody getting on the roof,

-you hear?

-Sure enough.

-I just wish they WOULD come tonight.

-Yeah, I want them to come.

The Panthers were a criminal organisation, were violent,

and they wanted to kill cops.

That's all I needed to know.

-NEWSREEL:

-About 40 policemen arrived on the scene

and began surrounding the Black Panther headquarters.

They were trying to change government as we know it

to terrorist activity.

We took a very proactive stance in combating

what we considered a terrorist organisation.

I think the FBI manipulated the police.

The FBI arranged for the Black Panthers to get guns.

Through informants,

they would convince the police that the Panthers had weapons.

They had to go in and be ready to be shot at,

so the police went in and shot at them first.

You'd hear about raids taking place against Black Panther officers.

They were coming to kill us.

-NEWSREEL:

-Police say there was sniper fire throughout the early-morning hours

so they moved in cautiously and then began shooting.

The Black Panther/police shoot out lasted 30 minutes.

It was obvious that the Government had made a decision that

this was all-out attack on the Black Panther Party.

Every significant office is going to be raided, is going

to be bombed, is going to be shot, there are going to be mass arrests.

-NEWSREEL:

-In the predawn hours in Chicago today,

police and Negroes fought a...

Police and Black Panthers clash in Houston, New Orleans

and other cities.

For the Black Panther Party it was a crisis situation, because we didn't

have the resources to handle all these arrests and all these trials.

In other cities, er, the Panthers were under physical attack,

er, from police departments.

But New York City was going to handle

its Panther problem differently.

They created a conspiracy case that allowed them to arrest

the entire leadership of the New York City Black Panther Party.

A New York grand jury has indicted 21 alleged

Black Panthers on charges of plotting several bombings

in the city tomorrow.

On April 2nd, 1969, in predawn raids,

21 Black Panthers were charged with all kinds of terrorist activity.

-NEWSREEL:

-These are some of the men the police are accusing of being involved in the plot,

which could have wounded or killed scores of busy New Yorkers.

12 men were arrested today, two are already in jail

and seven more are still at large.

And so the Panther 21 started.

I had just turned 16 years old but I had already become a section leader.

When they first kicked in the door of my grandmother's house

at four o'clock in the morning I thought,

wow, I'm important enough to be arrested, I'm a real Panther now.

There was a feeling that it was a badge of honour.

This group, 21 people,

was the leadership of the New York area, all tied up in court

with 100,000 bails, which none of them could make.

We were facing 360-plus years in prison.

And I began to feel and accept the fact

that I was going to spend the rest of my life in prison.

The Black Panther Party is riddled with informers

who are intent on creating situations in order to bring forth

such indictments in an attempt to destroy...

-Are you saying that they tried to frame them?

-No question about it.

I mean, I told the jury that maybe the police started the party.

CROWD CHANT

People who come back to New York are going to work full-time

until the Panther 21 and the people accused

are allowed to get a fair trial.

We spent a lot of time building awareness and doing fundraisers,

and then we had to have high-profile fundraisers

because this kind of money that we needed

couldn't come from the black community.

We would wind up doing fundraisers

at places like Jane Fonda's townhouse

so that we could raise money for the legal defence fund.

After a 13-month trial,

where the New York state spent millions of dollars

and put dozens of witnesses and hundreds of pieces of evidence,

a jury deliberated for three hours.

The jury have considered all of the counts and charges

against the defendants and have found them not guilty.

CHEERING

Power to the people!

There were 156 not-guilty verdicts.

That is astonishing.

The courtroom erupted.

The city erupted.

There were people dancing in the streets as word spread.

Even as the New York 21 are being acquitted,

you're seeing smaller trials, other trials, pop up,

really, all over the country.

Some of them result in acquittals, some of them result in convictions,

but this really consumes most of the party's energy.

People were afraid to join.

They knew that it was infiltrated.

They knew that they would be watched immediately.

They were afraid of being prosecuted unjustly.

Nobody wants to go near such an organisation that's so hot.

CROWD MURMURS

CROWD CHANTS

I was part of planning a demonstration against Vietnam

at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Bobby Seale was invited to speak.

The revolution in this country at the time is, in fact,

people coming forth to demand freedom.

THEY CHEER AND SIRENS WAIL

He then left and didn't have anything to do with

the demonstrations or riots or confrontations in Chicago,

but he was arrested on the advice of the FBI

and he was later indicted for that speech.

Bobby Seale asked to have his...

to postpone the trial

until his lawyer Charles Garry

could come to Chicago.

The judge refused and then Bobby said, "Well, I'll present myself."

It started when Seale demanded to

cross-examine a prosecution witness,

accusing the judge of

denying his constitutional rights

to defend himself.

The judge ordered him to sit down and be quiet

but the fiery Black Panther leader continued to cry out.

The judge told the marshals to hold him there

and that started several days of insanity.

This judge is a liar, and we have a right to defend,

and if you attack me, I'll represent myself.

He kept insisting on his right to represent himself

and the judge's response to that was to order the bailiffs to

put gaffer tape over his mouth and tie him to his chair.

I mean, it couldn't have been more definitive

if they had put a sign on him saying "slave".

You know? The tape.

BOBBY GROANS AND STRUGGLES TO SPEAK

But it turned out Bobby could make noise

and say things through the gag.

BOBBY YELLS INDISTINCTLY

BOBBY KEEPS TRYING TO YELL

Stop the trial! Stop the trial!

Stop the trial! Stop the trial! Stop the trial!

Stop the trial! Stop the trial!

Stop the trial! Stop the trial! Stop the trial...

One of the most amazing phenomena of that time was

outside the federal court building there was a plaza.

It was right in the heart of town, right in the middle of the Loop,

and these kids were coming down from the court room and...

with fire in their eyes, having just seen that madness up there,

and, all of a sudden, one day, this black orator,

who at that time was 20 years old, starts talking to these people,

and all of a sudden it's like a magnet.

The Deputy Chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party - Fred Hampton.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And I just want to tell you that

the chairman of the Black Panther Party is going to be ungagged

and they're going to have to take those chains off of him.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Bobby Seale is going through

all kinds of physical and mental torture,

but that's all right, because we said it even before this happened,

and we're going to say it after this, and after I'm locked up,

and after everybody's locked up,

that you can jail a revolutionary,

but you can't jail a revolution.

-Right.

-CHEERING

You can run a liberator like Eldridge Cleaver out of the country

but you can't run a liberation out of the country.

You might murder a freedom fighter like Bobby Hutton

but you can't murder a freedom fight...

Whatever it was, Fred had it.

When he got up in front of a group of people, the words just flowed.

You were awash in the words, OK?

It was like that, and I don't care how many people were there,

it's like he was talking to you.

That's a dangerous person.

So, we're going to see about Bobby, regardless...

He wasn't above us.

He was one of us.

I'm the Deputy Chairman of

the State of Illinois Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton.

By the time he was 17,

he was the head of the NAACP youth branch.

You're going to have to do more than listen.

He was already experienced by the time the Illinois chapter of

the Panther Party was formed,

so he was the natural choice to lead it.

And we say all powers to all people.

CROWD: All powers to all people.

Fred spoke in the People's Church in August of 1969,

and I was in the crowd.

Towards the end of his speech, he said, "Everybody stand up."

And we did, and he says, "Now raise your right hand."

Say that, "I am a revolutionary."

-CROWD: I am a revolutionary.

-Say it...

And I couldn't say it because I thought to myself,

"I'm a lawyer for the movement. I'm not a revolutionary."

And then he said it again, "I am a revolutionary,"

and by the third or fourth time,

I was saying "a revolutionary" as loud as anybody else in the room.

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

We say white power to white people.

CROWD: White power to white people.

-Brown power to brown people.

-Brown power to brown people.

-Yellow power to yellow people.

-Yellow power to yellow people.

-Black power to black people.

-Black power to black people.

We say Panther power to the vanguard party.

A lot of us thought that we were on the eve of a revolutionary

situation here in the United States.

We used to call the Panther Party the vanguard of the movement,

because they were out in the forefront.

There were kind of... setting the pathway.

The things that we would face

some repression for,

they would face it ten times as great.

They were sacrificing their,

oftentimes, their lives in the struggle.

These people, if you ask, they'll divide themselves.

They'll say, "I'm black and I hate white people."

"I'm white and I hate black people."

"I'm Latin American and I hate hillbillies."

"I'm a hillbilly and I hate Indians."

So we're fighting amongst each other.

Fred Hampton here in Chicago was the main voice for racial unity.

The Black Panther Party stood up and said

that we don't care about what anybody says.

We don't think you fight fire with fire,

you fight fire with water, and we're going to fight racism,

not with racism, but fight it with solidarity.

We worked with organisations such as the Young Lords -

a Puerto Rican street gang that had become political -

and the Young Patriots - hillbillies, Appalachian whiteboys.

Bob Lee, who was our Deputy Field Marshal, had a meeting with them,

and he was explaining why we should work together.

The coalition that Fred was building in Chicago represented

the Latinos, the poor whites and poor blacks,

but also, because he had been in the NAACP,

he had linkages with folks

who were in the congregations -

you know, church folks -

and with working-class folks,

so Fred was building a broad-based coalition in Chicago

and that was the threat.

J Edgar Hoover most feared

young whites uniting with the blacks' struggle

and he was most afraid of what he called a "black messiah"

rising up out of this movement.

Fred Hampton was very good at running an organisation.

He could delegate responsibility. He could spot talent.

The one thing that he failed to spot, however,

was the FBI plant who was, of course, his personal bodyguard.

I routinely supplied whatever floor plans or diagrams

I could to the FBI.

I... That started in June of 1969.

I mean, they had a floor plan

and keys to the Black Panther headquarters.

December 3rd, 1969, there was a rally at the People's Church

on the west side of Chicago and it was one of those rallies

where Fred gave one of those speeches.

-FRED:

-I don't believe I'm going to die in a car wreck.

I don't believe I'm going to die from slipping on a piece of ice.

I don't believe I'm going to die because I've got a bad heart.

Why don't you live for the people?

Why don't you struggle for the people?

Why don't you die for the people?

Close to 12 midnight, William O'Neal came and picked me up

and brought me back to our apartment.

Chairman Fred had been running 24/7, trying to organise,

so he fell asleep.

I was eight and a half months pregnant with our son,

so I fell asleep too.

Police attached to the Cook County State's Attorney's office

raided a Chicago apartment shared by two high-ranking members

of the Black Panther Party before dawn today.

The police were acting on a tip that a supply of weapons

was in the apartment.

The State's Attorney recreated the layout of the Panther apartment

and made arrangements for them

to produce his version of what happened.

He stands up. I stand.

I stepped over and the machine... Foot out... In short bursts...

We realised that there were still some people remaining inside...

In, and before I could get past the threshold,

there were three shots fired from the rear bedroom.

The immediate, violent, criminal reaction of the occupants

in shooting at announced police officers emphasises

the extreme viciousness of the Black Panther Party.

So does their refusal to cease firing

at the police officers when urged to do so several times.

When the 15-minute gun battle was over, two Black Panthers were dead.

Police and Panthers differ about what happened.

In the apartment, we received no warning, no tear gas,

nothing to offer us to surrender or come out.

Bullets start coming through the walls, plaster flying...

I saw a bullet coming from, it looked like,

the front of the apartment,

from the kitchen area.

And they were...

The pigs were just shooting.

I laid on top of chairman Fred and I could feel, even through him,

the mattress vibrating.

I could feel the bullet going into him.

I just knew we'd be dead, everybody in there.

We told them we were wounded,

and they said, "Come out with your hands up."

One of them grabbed my robe and they swung it open, and they say,

"Oh, what do you know? We've got a broad here."

And then another one grabbed my hair and slung me into the kitchen area.

I heard a voice say, "He's barely alive. He'll barely make it."

They started shooting again. BABY GROANS

I heard just a scream, and they stopped shooting.

The pigs said, "He's as good as dead now."

SIRENS WAIL

The police made what must be an historic type of blunder.

in leaving the apartment open,

so, right away, people went in there.

I stepped into the living room

and there was blood, Fred's blood,

pouring from all the way from the bedroom in the very

back of the house, out into,

from the kitchen, into the living room.

It was like a slaughterhouse and there was blood all over the place.

When we lifted the mattress up to look underneath,

three 45-calibre machinegun slugs fell out of the mattress.

Only one shot came from a Panther weapon, because Mark Clark,

the young kid who answered the door,

was shot in the heart as he answered the door,

and the gun dropped and went off through the ceiling.

All of the splinters were coming into the apartment,

so we said, "This was a shooting. It wasn't a shoot-out."

And this was... This was planned? This was a planned get for him?

All indications to me, personally, are that this was...

obviously a political assassination.

I don't think anybody would have expected the police to commit

just murder.

It takes a certain kind of guy to carry that out.

They laughed about what happened that night.

Much of what they said happened couldn't have happened the way

they said it happened.

I do not intend to quibble about that account, nor...

You're saying... Is it the truth?

The account that we gave of the events is the truth.

It was a death squad that did this raid.

It was a police death squad and the whole thing was set up by the FBI.

The funeral of the slain Panther leader was marked by angry eulogies,

including one from Ralph Abernathy,

head of the nonviolent Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Enjoy your peace, Freddy, because there will be no peace

in this land until freedom comes to roam.

We are going to trample these streets with our feet.

APPLAUSE

The last message that I think that Fred would have

wanted everybody to hear, and that is, "I am..."

CROWD: I am.

-"..a revolutionary."

-A revolutionary.

-"I am..."

I am a revolutionary.

I am...

I am...

-..a revolutionary!

-..a revolutionary!

I am a...

FAINT VOICE ON POLICE RADIO

We didn't know when it was going to happen

but we thought there was something about to happen.

We were filling up sandbags,

fortifying the headquarters,

putting sand in the walls,

putting sandbags around the entrance to the office.

We were actually trying to build a tunnel to the sewer line.

If the police attacked us,

we were going to escape into the sewers and, you know,

we were going to set charges on the building

and blow the building after we left.

It seemed like it was more...

There was more of a police presence around.

We were getting stopped more.

We were getting harassed more.

I think they found out that it was a different climate for them here.

We'd stop them. We'd search them.

We'd shake them down and I think we did establish that

we were the dominating force.

The Special Weapons And Tactics concept was formed in 1966.

The original SWAT team in the United States -

or anywhere, for that matter -

was the LAPD SWAT team,

and in this particular case,

this was the first time the SWAT team

was activated to serve a high-risk warrant.

It was decided that a no-knock warrant would be utilised

and surprise would be the element that you would use.

I'm on watch, on the roof, and it's a real quiet night.