1969 Free John Sinclair Poem Alternative Press Bobby Seale Mao Marquette Prison

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Seller: memorabilia111 ✉️ (807) 100%, Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, Ships to: US & many other countries, Item: 176257077141 1969 FREE JOHN SINCLAIR POEM ALTERNATIVE PRESS BOBBY SEALE MAO MARQUETTE PRISON. A VERY RARE POEM WRITTEN IN MARGETTE PRISON BY JOHN SINCLAIR 11-7-69. IN FAIR SHAPE AND MEASURES OVERALL 8 1/2 X 12 1/2 INCHES. MENTIONS BLACK PANTHER LEADER BOBBY SEALS AND BROTHER MAO. A FREE POEM THE ALTERNATIVE PRESS 4339 AVERY DETROIT, MICHIGAN FREE JOHN SINCLAIR
John Sinclair (born October 2, 1941) is an American poet, writer, and political activist from Flint, Michigan. Sinclair's defining style is jazz poetry, and he has released most of his works in audio formats. Most of his pieces include musical accompaniment, usually by a varying group of collaborators dubbed Blues Scholars. As an emerging young poet in the mid-1960s, Sinclair took on the role of manager for the Detroit rock band MC5. The band's politically charged music and its Yippie core audience dovetailed with Sinclair's own radical development. In 1968, while still working with the band, he conspicuously served as a founding member of the White Panther Party, a militantly anti-racist socialist group and counterpart of the Black Panthers. Arrested for possession of marijuana in 1969, Sinclair was given ten years in prison. The sentence was criticized by many as unduly harsh, and it galvanized a noisy protest movement led by prominent figures of the 1960s counterculture. Sinclair was freed in December 1971, but he remained in litigation – his case against the government for illegal domestic surveillance was successfully pleaded to the US Supreme Court in United States v. U.S. District Court (1972). Sinclair eventually left the US and took up residency in Amsterdam. He continues to write and record and, since 2005, has hosted a regular radio program, The John Sinclair Radio Show, as well as produced a line-up of other shows on his own radio station, Radio Free Amsterdam. Sinclair was the first person to purchase recreational marijuana when it became legal in Michigan on December 1, 2019.[1] Contents 1 Early life and education 2 1960s activism 3 Involvement with the MC5 4 Imprisonment and public support 5 Writing, performances, and poetry 6 The John Sinclair Foundation 7 Discography 8 References 9 External links Early life and education Sinclair was a member of the Class of 1960 at Albion College in Albion, Michigan, but he dropped out after his first year.[2] Sinclair subsequently attended the Flint College of the University of Michigan, now the University of Michigan-Flint. During his time at UM-Flint he served on the university's Publications Board, school newspaper The Word, and was the president of the Cinema Guild. He graduated in 1964.[3] 1960s activism Born in Flint, Michigan, Sinclair was involved in the reorganization of the Detroit underground newspaper, Fifth Estate, during the paper's growth in the late 1960s. Fifth Estate continues to publish to this day, making it one of the longest continuously published alternative periodicals in the United States. Sinclair also contributed to the formation of Detroit Artists Workshop Press, which published five issues of Work Magazine. Sinclair worked as a jazz writer for Down Beat from 1964 to 1965, being an outspoken advocate for the newly emerging Free Jazz Avant Garde movement. Sinclair was one of the "New Poets" who read at the seminal Berkeley Poetry Conference in July 1965. In April 1967 he founded the Ann Arbor Sun, a biweekly underground newspaper, with his wife Leni Sinclair and artist Gary Grimshaw. Involvement with the MC5 Sinclair managed the proto-punk-band MC5 from 1966 though 1969.[4][5] Under his guidance the band embraced the counter-culture revolutionary politics of the White Panther Party, founded in answer to the Black Panthers' call for white people to support their movement.[6][7] During this period, Sinclair booked "The Five" as the regular house band at Detroit's famed Grande Ballroom in what came to be known as the "Kick out the Jams" shows. He was managing the MC5 at the time of their free concert outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The band was the only group to perform before police broke up the massive anti-Vietnam war rally because it was turning into a riot. Eventually, the MC5 came to find Sinclair's politics too heavy-handed. He and the band separated in 1969[8] In 2006, Sinclair joined MC5 bassist Michael Davis to launch the Music Is Revolution Foundation, serving as a general board member.[9] Imprisonment and public support After a series of convictions for possession of marijuana, Sinclair was sentenced to ten years in prison in 1969 after offering two joints to an undercover female narcotics officer.[10] The severity of his sentence sparked high-profile protests, including an infamous incident at the 1969 Woodstock Festival wherein Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman jumped on the stage and seized a microphone during a performance by The Who. Hoffman managed to shout only a few words about Sinclair's plight before he was forcibly ejected from the stage by guitarist Pete Townshend.[11][12] With a more successful protest, John Lennon performed his new song "John Sinclair" on television[13] and recorded it for his next album, Some Time in New York City (1972),[14] though by that time Sinclair had been released.[15] With "directness and simplicity", said one critic,[13] the lyrics lament Sinclair's intended harsh punishment: "They gave him ten for two – what else can the bastards do?"[13] Various public and private protests culminated in the "John Sinclair Freedom Rally" at Ann Arbor's Crisler Arena in December 1971. The event brought together celebrities including Lennon and Yoko Ono; musicians David Peel, Stevie Wonder, Phil Ochs and Bob Seger, Archie Shepp and Roswell Rudd; poets Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders; and countercultural speakers including Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale.[16][17][18] Three days after the rally, Sinclair was released from prison when the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the state's marijuana statutes were unconstitutional.[19] These events inspired the creation of Ann Arbor's annual pro-legalization Hash Bash rally. In 1972, Leonard Weinglass took on the defense of Sinclair in Detroit, Michigan after he was charged with conspiracy to destroy government property along with Larry 'Pun' Plamondon and John Forrest. The case became United States v. U.S. District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972), on appeal to the United States Supreme Court. The Court rendered a landmark decision prohibiting the US government's use of domestic electronic survelliance without a warrant, freeing Sinclair and his co-defendants.[20][21] Writing, performances, and poetry Sinclair has been writing a newspaper column on cannabis, "Free the Weed," since the mid-1980s. The primary focus of Sinclair's column has been the social history of cannabis use in the US; however, he often touches upon the global campaign for its legalisation. Since the mid-1990s Sinclair has performed and recorded his spoken word pieces with his band The Blues Scholars, which has included such musicians as Wayne Kramer, Brock Avery, Charles Moore, Doug Lunn, and Paul Ill, among many others. He also performed as a distinctive disc jockey for New Orleans' WWOZ Radio, the public jazz and heritage station.[22] On March 22, 2006, Sinclair joined The Black Crowes on stage at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, and read his poem "Monk in Orbit" during the instrumental break in the song "Nonfiction".[23] Two days later, he went back onstage at the Black Crowes show in the Paradiso, reading his poem "Fat Boy" during the long instrumental jam following the Black Crowes' song, "How Much for Your Wings?".[24] On January 20, 2009, to mark Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th President of the United States, Sinclair performed a series of his poems accompanied by a live band, featuring Elliott Levin, Tony Bianco and Jair-Rohm Parker Wells at Cafe OTO in Dalston, East London.[25][26] In 2011, Sinclair recorded spoken-word for the intro to the song “Best Lasts Forever” by Scottish band The View (band), produced by Youth (musician). The John Sinclair Foundation Logo for the John Sinclair Foundation Created in 2004, The John Sinclair Foundation is a non-profit organisation based out of Amsterdam, Netherlands.[27] Its mission is to ensure the preservation and proper presentation of the creative works via in poetry, music, performance, journalism, editing and publishing, broadcast and record production of John Sinclair. To date, the foundation has produced books, zines, records, and documentaries highlighting John Sinclair's contribution to the historic cannabis legalisation effort, rock music in Detroit, and psychedelic communitarianism. Discography John Sinclair has recorded several of his poems and essays. On these albums blues and jazz musicians provide psychedelic soundscapes to accompany his delivery: 01 John Sinclair: thelonious: a book of monk (1996) – New Alliance Records 02 John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars: Full Moon Night [live] (1994) – Alive/Total Energy Records 03 John Sinclair with Ed Moss Society Jazz Orchestra: If I Could Be With You [live] (1996) – SchoolKids Records 04 John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars: Full Circle (1997) – Alive Records [Choice Studio Album] 05 John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars: White Buffalo Prayer [live] (2000) – SpyBoy Records 06 John Sinclair: Underground Issues [compilations] (2000) – SpyBoy Records 07 John Sinclair & His Boston Blues Scholars: Steady Rollin' Man Live [live] (2001) – triPup Records [BOX-1] John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars: Fattening Frogs For Snakes, Volume One: The Delta Sound (2002) – Okra-Tone Records/Rooster Blues 08 John Sinclair: KnockOut (2002) – D-Men Records 09 John Sinclair & Monster Island: PeyoteMind (2002) – Future Is Now Records 10 John Sinclair: It's All Good [compilation] (2005) – Big Chief Records 11 John Sinclair: No Money Down: Greatest Hits, Volume 1 [compilation] (2005) – Big Chief Records 12 John Sinclair & Mark Ritsema: criss cross (2005) – Big Chief Records [Choice Studio Album] [BOX-2] John Sinclair: Fattening Frogs For Snakes, Volume Two: Country Blues (2005) – No Cover Records 13 John Sinclair: Guitar Army (2007)- Process Media [Album Inserted In Printing Of Book] 14 John Sinclair & Pinkeye: Tearing Down the Shrine of Truth & Beauty [live] (2008) – LocoGnosis Records 15 John Sinclair & His Motor City Blues Scholars: Detroit Life (2008)- No Cover Records [A Choice Studio Album] [BOX-3] John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars: Fattening Frogs For Snakes, Volume Three: Don't Start Me To Talking (2009) – Big Chief Records 16 John Sinclair & Planet D Nonet: Viper Madness (2010) – No Cover Records [A Choice Studio Album] 17 John Sinclair: It's All Good: A John Sinclair Reader (2010) – No Cover Records 18 John Sinclair & His International Blues Scholars: Let's Go Get 'Em (2011) – No Cover Records [A Choice Studio Album] 19 John Sinclair & Hollow Bones: Honoring The Local Gods [live] (2011) – Straw2Gold Records 20 John Sinclair: Song of Praise — Homage to John Coltrane [live] (2011) – Trembling Pillow Press 21 John Sinclair: Beatnik Youth (2012) – Track Records [Choice Studio Album] 22 John Sinclair: Conspiracy Theory [compilation] (2012) – Big Chief Records 23 John Sinclair: Viperism [compilation] (2012) – Big Chief Records [BOX-4] John Sinclair & His Blues Scholars: Fattening Frogs For Snakes, Volume Four: Natural From Our Hearts (unissued) 24 John Sinclair: Mohawk (2014) – Iron Man Records 25 John Sinclair: Beatnik Youth Ambient (2017) – Iron Man Records 26 John Sinclair: Mobile Homeland (2017) - Jett Plastic Recordings/Funky D Records 27 John Sinclair: Beatnik Youth (2017) – Iron Man Records JOHN SINCLAIR BEHIND BARS INTERVIEW WITH LENI SINCLAIR Sun; We'd like to know what life is like in prison for John; very few people know what it is like being in there every day, and we know that the conditions that he faces in prison forced John to file suit against the warden of Jackson Prison and the Michigan Department of Corrections. Leni: Well, really nobody knows except John himself, what it's like being in there, locked up 24 hours a day behind bars. Anybody who was with John a lot and visiting him 3 times a month I can give a little discription. John is at the present time being held in a place called "blue hole", which is a special block in Jackson that they call "administrative segregation. " It's not the hole, but it's not the regular prison population, either. Bluehole card prisoners get out on yard priveleges one hour a day, but it's a special yard, segregated for these special prisoners. John is especially watched by prison authorities. He can only correspond with ten people, and all of his incoming and outgoing mail gets censored and potocopied. Copies of his correspondence get sent to the State Attorney General's office and who knows where else; the FBI, state police, whoever is interested in what John is writing can get copies pretty easily. SUN: What indication do you have that his mail is sent to the attorney general's office or invaded? Leni: Well in his answer to the suit that we filed against the warden of Jackson and the Corrections Department, the assistant attorney general, Mullaney, cites references from John's correspondence that he could only have gotten by seeing it. Also, myself and Dave Sinclair went up to the Corections Department one time to complain about the treatment that John was getting and we were shown a file that contained some copies of letters that John had written to me that I had never received. And while John was in Marquette the prison officials left xerox copies of some of his letters in one of his books by mistake. All that is part of the evidence in the suit. SUN: So basically, John doesn't have contact with the other prisoners in Jackson. . . Leni: No. ln his special segregation ward there are 12 or 14 other prisoners, and all of them are locked up in their own cells like John, except for the one hour yard-time and during meals. John has reported that if he goes out in the yard and some other prisoners, young brothers who can hang out in the regular prison yard, try to have a conversation with him through the fence, they get arrested and put in the hole for trying to communicate with him. They're holding him in segregated confinement so he doesn't have any contact with the regular prison population, because they're afraid of him. SUN: What is the situation with visiting John? Leni: John gets three visits per month from family and three friends who are on his approved visiting list. These three friends are Gary Grimshaw, David Fenton, and Frank Bach. They finally let him have visitors other than his family only after he filed that suit. Legally, under the law, under their own prison regulations, they're supposed but they denied John that right for over a year and a half. The visits are ninety minutes long and they're horrible. They're just awful. Approaching Jackson prison is just a down; the place looks like a concentration camp from miles away. . . SUN: It looks like a school with barred up windows. Leni: Yeah, Jackson claims to be the largest walled prison in the world. It's surrounded by this huge wall with a huge gun tower right in the middle, and smaller towers spaced along the wall. In Jackson prison there are about five thousand inmates, all men. OK, we drive up to the gate and there's an officer who asks you the number of the person you are going to see - just the number - you don't even have to say the name. You just give the number and drive into this parking lot, park, and walk across their landscaped lawn and into the lobby. At the information desk you show your ID and say who you are and who you want to see. Then you sit down and wait until they call you, which sometimes takes a long time. When you're finally called you walk through two sets of sliding, electronic bars. . . after you walk through the first one you have to take out everything in your pockets for their inspection. Then they search the men. Nobody can take anything inside the prison, except if you have a baby you can take in one bottle and one diaper. You can't take any notes and you can't give the prisoner anything. If you're the wife of a prisoner you can kiss him at the beginning of a visit, but the guards are instructed to watch closely while you kiss so that no illegal substance gets passed through that act. Then you go into the visiting room, which consists of two long tables that are divided in the middle by a higher ledge. You always have to keep your hands on your side of the table. All the prisoners sit on the other. It's really awful to have kids in there. When Sunny and Celia visit there's nothing for them to do, and they sure don't like it in there. They pick up the vibes and just freak out. Celia won't stay in the room for more than five minutes. Sunny really loves being with John. She loves him so much that she just jumps up and down when she sees him on the other side of the bars. Then she just won't stop holding on to him. I know what they'll think about that place when they grow up, can you imatine?  Especially when thinking about when Sunny asks "Why is John in jail" and you say "for smoking dope" and she sees people smoking dope every day--you might say that's a contradiction she can't figure out. There just must be some evil people who thought that one up. When John comes to visit they call him out of his cell and before he comes into the visiting room he gets searched, often stripped. He sits down and we talk for 90 minutes and barely get started with all there is to discuss. Then the guard comes and takes him away, and he gets searched again on the way back to his cell. SUN: When do you go to see John? Leni: Usually we go as soon as the new month comes; the next visit will be November 1, and there will be two visits left after that. We try to space the visits out so there isn't a whole long period between two visits, but usually John gets so frustrated not being able to talk to anybody that he'll want us to come all in the first week. SUN: Could you tell us more about the prison suit? Leni: Oh, yeah. They've treated John differently than most of the other prisoners every since he was sentenced, and they are still doing that. In some areas they've lightened up a little bit, like on who could visit, but only after we filed the suit. John brought the suit against Warden Perry Johnson of Jackson and against the Michigan Department of Corrections for violation of his civil and constitutional rights. The assistant attorney general to Frank Kelley in the state of Michigan, Mullaney, filed three separate motions to dismiss the suit. These motions to dismiss are really incredible because they're not even written in standard legal language; the dude is making fun of John. As legal documents they are terrible, they are a disgrace to the state of Michigan. We printed some excerpts from them in one of our issues of the SUN and some people in Lansing who saw them thought that it couldn't possible be true--they thought that we made up these fictititous motions to make a joke. The motions have to be seen to be believed. Anyway, the Judge in Federal district court in Detroit who is handling the case is John Feiken. I was at one of the hearings where the state filed a motion to dismiss in front of the judge. It was just incredible. Mullaney had a stack of newspapers and books this high, all the stuff I sent John in the last two years that they would not let through. There was a copy of Abbie Hoffman's Woodstock Nation, a copy of Count-Down One, a copy of the History of America by Bill Hutton, copies of the Ann Arbor Argus, the Berkeley Tribe. Mullaney went through these things page by page and told the judge why the prison couldn't allow them in. Some of the pages had things about marijuana in it, you know. Mullaney said they couldn't let in a recipe for marijuana cookies, because that's advocating an illegal act. The state says that they have a right to keep literature out of the prison that is of a revolutionary nature, what-ever they mean by that. For instance, in Jackson prison they let books in by Lenin, Marx, Engels and a whole bunch of other people, but they have totally banned any works by Mao, so they are making apolitical decisions that they have no right to make. Judge Feiken refused to throw out our suit, and there will definitely be a trial. So right now the prison officials have been following their own rules a bit more. In the past they've denied lawyers the right to go visit him. John sends emergency letters to his lawyers and the prison keeps the letters laying around their office for about two weeks before they finally send them. Things are somewhat better now, but much of this weird stuff still goes on. About a month ago, out of nowhere, out of the clear blue sky all my letters started coming back saying "Violation of prison regulations -- enclosures not permitted." Well, I usually sent John clippings that he would be interested in, just general stuff that he has to know. Sometimes it's about music, about what's going on out here, or about similar court cases. Then all of a sudden they just decided well, we've had enough, and they started sending all my letters back. You can imagine what happens to John when this happens. He's just sitting in his cell and he's used to getting a letter from me every day or so, and he just flips out. He doesn't know what is happening -- he thought thought maybe I stopped writing to him or something. He just doesn't have any information about what's happening (other than his AM-FM radio which it took us months of red tape to get to him) on the outside other than through these letters, cause the visits three times a month are just enough to start talking. He's really dependent on his letters, and they know this. We think they do this kind of thing on purpose, for harassment. They say that John can get a subscription to the SUN, but when we sent it in to him they didn't allow it -- because it had stories about George Jackson and Angela Davis in it. Here's a funny thing that happened a while back. In the prison newspaper, the SPECTATOR, they reported they were changing the dress regulations due to the changing nature of fashions in society and would now allow prisoners to wear bellbottoms. So I bought him a pair of levi bellbottom pants and sent them to the prison. They came back with a note saying "bellbottoms not allowed. " So I called up the mail department first and asked how come these pants were returned. They said the regulations say bellbottoms are not allowed. So I said I just read in the Spectator today that they allow tator that they allow bellbottoms now, and the guy said lady, you don't believe everything you read in the newspapers, do you? So I talked to the assistant warden and he said well, a rule is a rule and that was a misprint and bellbottoms are not allowed. So I said cool and I got the pants back and took them to the lawyer to use as evidence of special treatment in the suit. John said he saw about 5 or 6 other prisoners inside the prison walking around in bellbottoms. So I talked to the warden and he said well, you know, we don't allow bellbottoms here but prisoners can wear flairs. I said what are flairs? He said well, they're like bellbottoms but we don't call them that, we call them flairs. So if you bring bellbottoms in and leave them at the desk and call them flairs John can get them. This is how incredible things get there, and John HAS TO LIVE WITH THESE PEOPLE and be constantly under their control. SUN: Could you run through a chronology of what's happened at the various prisons John's been held at in this state? Leni: Well, the judge sentenced John to 9 1/2 - 10 years to be served in the southern Michigan prison at Jackson or at any other institution that the corrections department sees fit. After he was sentenced John was shipped off to Jackson and put in quarantine. Prisoners are supposed to stay in quarantine for about six weeks where all kinds of tests are run on them to see where they would fit best, what kind of job they should be assigned to as prisoners, etc. Well, John was in there for a couple of days when he heard rumors that he was going to be shipped to Marquette. Usually Marquette is reserved for prisoners who have gotten into trouble in other institutions or have to serve a long time, like 50 years to life. They don't usually send people right after they're sentenced to Marquette, so it was really surprising that after 3 weeks, before he was even done with quarantine, they shipped him up to Marquette. We couldn't figure it out except the warden said in the newspapers that John had started to organize and pass around a petition and that he was a threat to the institution, so they were shipping him to Marquette. That was a total lie and Perry Johnson has admitted to us that it was. He claimed he never said that and the newspapers made it up, but he has never publicly apologized for it. That petition he was talking about was started by some other inmates. John never saw a copy and didn't even know of its existence. It was passed around by all the brothers and said Free John Sinclair! Everybody knew about John and really sympathized with him for getting such a rotten deal. So they shipped him up to Marquette, 750 miles away. In Marquette he was OK, he was up there for about a year. He had to work in the laundry eight hours a day sorting dirty under wear and that was a drag, they wouldn't give him a job as a clerk because they didn't want him to have access to a typewriter, because they said they didn't like the kind of stuff that he was writing. So he studied a lot and talked to other prisoners in there, most of whom were black. The black inmates started an organization called the Society for the Advancement of Educational and Rehabilitative Opportunities, which was started with the purpose of asking the prison administration to institute a black studies program at Marquette, along with all the other programs they had which didn't teach anything but white man's history. The prison just denied that request without saying anything so the prisoners just got mad and planned a strike. John was never a part of their organization and did not take part in making the decision to strike in any way. He knew some of the people involved and talked with them in the yard once in a while. The prison guards rounded up all of the leaders of the Society and locked them up in the hole. They figured these black prisoners couldn't possibly do all this organizing by themselves, they must have somebody white to lead them! ! So they claimed John was the leader of this planned sit-down strike to get the black studies program, and put him in the hole, too. A couple days later the Marquette 11, as they call themselves, were shipped to different institutions all over the state. John and three other other brothers were sent to Jackson; the three brothers were put in Jackson's general population almost immediately, but John was kept in segregated confinement, where he remains today. They've never brought any criminal charges against John for this activity -- they're acting totally arbitrarily and illegally. Now Marquette Prison has a black studies program that was started by the administration, but it seems that anytime some progressive changes go down in any prison the first people that advocate it have to go to the hole for it and have to suffer. John remained at Jackson for quite a while, until December when he was transferred to the Wayne County Jail awaiting the CIA Conspiracy trial. The trial hasn't happened because it got tied up in the US Supreme Court since the government admitted tapping phones without a court order. When the trial was supposed to start Federal Judge Damon Keith in Detroit ordered Pun and John not to cut their anymore until after the trial, so that they would have the same appearance as they did when this alleged crime was supposedly committed. So John and Pun had to let their hair grow. It really drives the Jackson prison administration crazy cause John's hair is just getting longer and longer now , and he's even growing a beard. His hair is down to his shoulders, and when he walks into the visiting room it's not like an inmate walking in -- he looks like a visitor. They've tried to cut John's hair on numerous occasions. Once he went to the hole for it. They said we'll give you an ultimatum, by Friday you have got to get your hair cut. John argued that he couldn't cut his hair, because he was under a court order by a federal judge not to, and if he did it could mean that his identity couldn't be established and he could get wrongly convicted and serve five years in the federal penitentiary. The prison officials tried to cut it anyway, and John refused to let them. So they put him in the hole for not obeying their orders. Then a lawyer went up there to verify it to the prison administration that there was a court order that prevented them from cutting his hair, and if they didn't follow that then they could be held in contempt of court and fined. So they left John's hair alone, but they're using that now as another excuse to keep John in segregated confinement. They say now that he's not in there for any other reason except having long hair. If it wasn't for his long hair he could go to the trustee division. But John can't cut his hair because there's a court order against it, so actually they're punishing him by being in segregation because he has a court order from a federal judge -- it really gets bizarre. They're uptight because there are a lot of other young brothers in Jackson who are asking them everyday well, if Sinclair has long hair, why can't we. There is a real movement going on to liberalize the hair rules which is just a reflection of the changes going down in the whole culture. When John got back to Jackson he complained of having backaches all the time because of the old mattress he was sleeping on. They took him to the hospital ward, which is one isolated cell where he couldn't talk to anybody for 5 days and no doctor came to see him. He didn't know what was happening -- he was locked up without any contact with reality or the outside. During these five days there was a big strike in Jackson almost all of the inmates took part in it, it was beautifully organized, totally non-violent. The strikers were asking for higher wages. The prisoners still get 15 or 25 cents a day for making license plates, the same as they made 35 years ago. That's hardly enough to buy cigarettes or anything, and they work hard for it. They demanded a minimum $1.00 a day for the work. The strike fell apart eventually, but while it was going on John was in the hospital and he heard on the prison radio-earphones about this strike. Then he heard Perry Johnson on the news talking about who caused the strike, and he said the main troublemaker is John Sinclair, leader of the White Panther Party. John just flipped out -- he didn't know anything about it. The only violation of prison rules that they ever charged John with officially was at Jackson, and that was for typing up copies of the Black Panther Party 10-point program and ideology for some brothers. During the disciplinary hearing they admitted that they never enforced this rule against anybody else, and that the material John typed up was legally admitted into the prison. They were just looking for another excuse to keep John locked up and away from everyone else. SUN: What is a disciplinary hearing? Leni: It's a kangaroo court inside the prison and the people who are present at it are the Deputy Warden and prison guards; they're the judges. John doesn't have any right to have an attorney to defend him. That's how they punish people who they regard as "troublemakers." SUN: How does the warden at Jackson treat you when you talk to him. Leni: Well, he's weird. He appears very nice, simple and cordial but then behind your back he does things just really to mess with John and try to make it as hard for him as possible. Some really perverted people are running these prisons. They're overcrowded, everybody in jail is talking about a riot. In every prison in this country it's just a matter of time before something breaks out because the conditions are just intolerable and dehumanizing. People inside prison have been going along with it because they know any kind of rebellion or any kind of attempt to organize for better conditions would just be brutally repressed, and nobody is into self-destruction. But now that a lot of people on the outside are becoming aware of the medieval conditions that still exist in prison the prisoners will start moving for better conditions themselves. They are installing special sharp-shooters at Jackson in case anything breaks out, and it's really really scary and it's really scary to think about what just happened to George Jackson and at Attica, and then to think about John and how much they hate him.  Robert George Seale (born October 22, 1936[1]) is an American political activist and author. In 1966, he co-founded the Black Panther Party with fellow activist Huey P. Newton.[2] Founded as the "Black Panther Party for Self-Defense", the Party's main practice was monitoring police activities and challenging police brutality in Black communities, first in Oakland, California, and later in cities throughout the United States.[3] Seale was one of the Chicago Eight charged by the US federal government with conspiracy charges related to anti-Vietnam War protests in Chicago, Illinois, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. In that trial, Seale was infamously ordered by the judge, Julius Hoffman, to appear in court bound and gagged. Bobby would stand up in court and yell "I Object" every day of the trial when they mentioned his name for the reason of his lawyer not being present during the trial. Bobby claimed he was denied his constitutional right to defend himself, then he was found in contempt. Bobby was then handcuffed, leg cuffed to a chair and tape placed around his mouth to stop him from talking during court.[4] More than a month into trial, Seale's case was severed from the other defendants, turning the "Chicago Eight" into the "Chicago Seven." After his case was severed, the government declined to retry him on the conspiracy charges. Though he was never convicted in the case, Seale was sentenced by Judge Hoffman to four years for criminal contempt of court. The contempt sentence was reversed on appeal.[5] In 1970, while in prison, Seale was charged and put on trial in the New Haven Black Panther trials over the torture and murder of Alex Rackley, whom the Black Panther Party suspected of being a police informer. Panther George Sams, Jr., testified that Seale had ordered him to kill Rackley. The jury was unable to reach a verdict in Seale's trial, and the charges were eventually dropped. Seale's books include A Lonely Rage: The Autobiography of Bobby Seale, Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton, and Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers (with Stephen Shames). Contents 1 Early life 2 Activism 2.1 Black Panthers 2.1.1 Writing 2.2 The Trial of the Chicago 8 2.3 New Haven Black Panther trials 2.4 Mayoral run 2.5 The Ten Point Platform 3 Other work 4 In popular culture 5 Publications 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links Early life Bobby Seale was born in Liberty, Texas to George Seale, a carpenter, and Thelma Seale (née Traylor), a homemaker.[6] The Seale family lived in poverty during most of his early life. After moving around Texas, first to Dallas, then to San Antonio, and Port Arthur, Seale's family relocated to Oakland, California during the Great Migration when he was eight years old.[7] Seale attended Berkeley High School, then dropped out and joined the United States Air Force in 1955.[8] Three years later, a court martial convicted him of fighting with a commanding officer[citation needed] at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota,[6] resulting in a bad conduct discharge.[9] Seale subsequently worked as a sheet metal mechanic for various aerospace plants while studying for his high school diploma at night. "I worked in every major aircraft plant and aircraft corporation, even those with government contracts. I was a top-flight sheet-metal mechanic".[10] After earning his high school diploma, Seale attended Merritt Community College where he studied engineering and politics until 1962.[11] While at college, Bobby Seale joined the Afro-American Association (AAA), a group on the campus devoted to advocating black separatism. "I wanted to be an engineer when I went to college, but I got shifted right away since I became interested in American Black History and trying to solve some of the problems."[12] Through the AAA group, Seale met Huey P. Newton. In June 1966, Seale began working at the North Oakland Neighborhood Anti-Poverty Center in their summer youth program. Seale's objective was to teach the youth in the program Black American History and teach them a degree of responsibility towards the people living in their communities. While working in the program, Seale met Bobby Hutton, who later became the first recruited member of the Black Panther Party.[13] He married Artie Seale, and had a son, Malik Nkrumah Stagolee Seale.[14] Activism Black Panthers Main article: Black Panthers Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton were heavily inspired by the teachings of activist Malcolm X, who was assassinated in 1965. The two joined together in October 1966 to create the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which adopted the late activist's slogan "freedom by any means necessary" as their own. Prior to starting the Black Panther Party, Seale and Newton created a group known as the Soul Students Advisory Council. The group was organized so to allow it to function through "ultra-democracy," defined as individualism manifesting itself as an aversion to discipline. "The goal was to develop a college campus group that would help develop leadership; to go back to the black community and serve the black community in a revolutionary fashion".[15] After the inception of Soul Students Advisory Council, Seale and Newton then went on to found the group they are most readily identified with, the Black Panther Party; the aim of which was to organize the black community and express their desires and needs in order to resist the racism and classism perpetuated by the system. Seale described the Panthers as "an organization that represents black people and many white radicals relate to this and understand that the Black Panther Party is a righteous revolutionary front against this racist decadent, capitalistic system."[16] Writing Seale and Newton together wrote the doctrines "What We Want Now!" which Seale said were intended to be "the practical, specific things we need and that should exist" and "What We Believe," which outlines the philosophical principles of the Black Panther Party in order to educate the people and disseminate information about the specifics of the party's platform.[17] These writings were part of the party's Ten-Point Program, also known as "The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense Ten-Point Platform and Program," a set of guidelines to the Black Panther Party's ideals and ways of operation. Seale and Newton decided to name Newton Minister of Defense and Seale became the Chairman of the party.[18] During his time with the Panthers, he underwent surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as part of its illegal COINTELPRO program.[19] In 1968, Seale wrote Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton, published in 1970.[20] The Trial of the Chicago 8 Seale on trial in 1970, State Attorney Arnold Markle in the background. Bobby Seale was one of the original "Chicago Eight" defendants charged with conspiracy and inciting a riot in the wake of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Bobby Seale, while in prison, stated, "To be a Revolutionary is to be an Enemy of the state. To be arrested for this struggle is to be a Political Prisoner."[21] The evidence against Seale was slim, as he was not a participant in the planning for the convention's protest activity and had gone to Chicago as a last-minute replacement for activist Eldridge Cleaver.[22][23] He had also been in Chicago for only two days of the convention.[23] During the trial, Judge Julius Hoffman had him bound and gagged,[24] as commemorated in the song "Chicago" written by Graham Nash[25] and mentioned in the poem and song "H2Ogate Blues" by Gil Scott-Heron.[26] On November 5, 1969, Judge Hoffman sentenced him to four years in prison for 16 counts of contempt, each count for three months of his imprisonment because of his outbursts during the trial, and eventually ordered Seale severed from the case, leading to the proceedings against the remaining defendants being renamed the "Chicago Seven".[citation needed] New Haven Black Panther trials Demonstration for Black Panther Bobby Seale in Amsterdam March 14, 1970 While serving his four-year sentence, Seale was put on trial again in 1970 in the New Haven Black Panther trials. Several officers of the Panther organization had murdered a fellow Panther, Alex Rackley, who had confessed under torture to being a police informant.[27] The leader of the murder plan, George W. Sams Jr., turned state's evidence and testified that Seale, who had visited New Haven only hours before the murder, had ordered him to kill Rackley. The trials were accompanied by a large demonstration in New Haven on May Day, 1970, which coincided with the beginning of the American college student strike of 1970. The jury was unable to reach a verdict in Seale's trial, and the charges were eventually dropped. The government suspended his convictions and Seale was released from prison in 1972.[6] While Seale was in prison, his wife, Artie, became pregnant, allegedly by fellow Panther Fred Bennett. Bennett's mutilated remains were found in a suspected Panther hideout in April 1971.[28] Seale was implicated in the murder, with police suspecting he had ordered it in retaliation for the affair, but no charges were pressed.[29] Seale wrote an article titled "One Less Oppressor" that shows appreciation of the murder of Bennett and stated, "The people have now come to realize that the only way to deal with the oppressor is to deal on our own terms and this was done."[30] Mayoral run Seale ran for Mayor of Oakland, California in 1973.[31] He received the second-most votes in a field of nine candidates[6] but ultimately lost in a run-off with incumbent Mayor John Reading.[31] In 1974, Seale and Huey Newton argued over a proposed movie about the Panthers that Newton wanted Bert Schneider to produce. According to several accounts, the argument escalated to a fight in which Newton, backed by his armed bodyguards, allegedly beat Seale with a bullwhip so badly that Seale required extensive medical treatment for his injuries. Afterwards, he went into hiding for nearly a year, and ended his affiliation with the Party in 1974.[32][33] Seale denied any such physical altercation took place, dismissing rumors that he and Newton were ever less than friends.[34] The Ten Point Platform Main article: Ten-Point Program Seale worked with Huey Newton to create the Ten Point platform. The platform was a political and social demand for the survival of the Black population in the United States. The two men formulated the Ten Point Platform in the late 1960s, and these ideologies grew into the Black Panther Party. The document encapsulated the economic exploitation of the black body, and addressed the mistreatment of the black race. This document was attractive to those suffering under the oppressive nature of white power. The document takes the position that a combination of racism and capitalism resulted in fascism in the United States. The Ten Point Platform lays out the need for full employment of black people, the need for their shelter, and decent education; decent education meaning the real history of the United States, the history including the murder of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans. The platform calls for the release of political prisoners. The points are as follows:[35] We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine The Destiny Of Our Black Community. We Want Full Employment For Our People. We Want An End To The Robbery By The Capitalists Of Our Black Community. We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings. We Want Education For Our People That Exposes The True Nature Of This Decadent American Society. We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History And Our Role In The Present-Day Society. We Want All Black Men To Be Exempt From Military Service. We Want An Immediate End To Police Brutality And Murder Of Black People. We Want Freedom For All Black Men Held In Federal, State, County And City Prisons And Jails. 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 Black Communities, As Defined By The Constitution Of The United States. We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace. Other work Bobby Seale at Binghamton University, February 25, 2006 In 1988, Bobby Seale wrote an autobiography titled A Lonely Rage. Also, in 1987, he wrote a cookbook called Barbeque'n with Bobby Seale: Hickory & Mesquite Recipes, the proceeds going to various non-profit social organizations.[36] Seale also advertised Ben & Jerry's ice cream.[37] In 1998, Seale appeared on the television documentary series Cold War, discussing the events of the 1960s. Bobby Seale was the central protagonist alongside Kathleen Cleaver, Jamal Joseph and Nile Rodgers in the 1999 theatrical documentary Public Enemy by Jens Meurer, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. In 2002, Seale began dedicating his time to Reach!, a group focused on youth education programs. He has also taught black studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. Seale appears in Roberto Bolaño's last novel, 2666, renamed as Barry Seaman. Also in 2002, Seale moved back to Oakland, working with young political advocates to influence social change.[1] In 2006, he appeared in the documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon to discuss his friendship with John Lennon. Seale has also visited over 500 colleges to share his personal experiences as a Black Panther and to give advice to students interested in community organizing and social justice.[citation needed] Since 2013, Seale has been seeking to produce a screenplay he wrote based on his autobiography, Seize the Time: The Eighth Defendant.[38][39] Seale co-authored Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers, a 2016 book with photographer Stephen Shames.[40] In popular culture In 1968, Seale was featured in Agnès Varda's documentary, Black Panthers. In 1987, Seale was portrayed by Carl Lumbly in the HBO television movie, Conspiracy: The Trial of the Chicago 8. In 1995, Seale was portrayed by Courtney B. Vance in the cinematic adaptation of Melvin Van Peebles's novel Panther, produced and directed by Mario Van Peebles In 2007, Seale was voiced by Jeffrey Wright in the animated documentary Chicago 10. In 2011, Seale was portrayed by Orlando Jones, in the television movie, The Chicago 8. In 2020, Seale was portrayed by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in Aaron Sorkin's Netflix film, The Trial of the Chicago 7. The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Black Power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California.[7][8][9] The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in numerous major cities, and international chapters in Britain and Algeria.[10][11] Upon its inception the Black Panther Party's core practice was its open carry armed citizens' patrols ("copwatching") to monitor the behavior of officers of the Oakland Police Department and challenge police brutality in the city. In 1969, a variety of community social programs became a core activity.[12] The Party instituted the Free Breakfast for Children Programs to address food injustice, and community health clinics for education and treatment of diseases including sickle cell anemia, tuberculosis, and later HIV/AIDS.[13][14][15] It advocated for class struggle, with the party representing the proletarian vanguard.[16] Black Panther Party members were involved in many fatal firefights with police. Newton declared: Malcolm, implacable to the ultimate degree, held out to the Black masses ... liberation from the chains of the oppressor and the treacherous embrace of the endorsed [Black] spokesmen. Only with the gun were the black masses denied this victory. But they learned from Malcolm that with the gun, they can recapture their dreams and bring them into reality.[17] Huey Newton allegedly killed officer John Frey in 1967, and Eldridge Cleaver (Minister of Information) led an ambush in 1968 of Oakland police officers, in which two officers were wounded and Panther Bobby Hutton (Treasurer) was killed. FBI infiltrators caused the party to suffer many internal conflicts, resulting in the murders of Alex Rackley and Betty Van Patter.[citation needed] In 1967, the Mulford Act was passed by the California legislature and signed by governor Ronald Reagan. The bill was crafted in response to members of the Black Panther Party who were copwatching. The bill repealed a law that allowed the public carrying of loaded firearms. In 1969, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover described the party as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country."[18][19][20] He developed and supervised an extensive counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment, and many other tactics, designed to undermine Panther leadership, incriminate and assassinate party members, discredit and criminalize the Party, and drain organizational resources and manpower. The program was responsible for the assassination of Fred Hampton,[21][22] and is accused of assassinating other Black Panther members, including Mark Clark.[23][24][25][26] Government persecution initially contributed to the party's growth, as killings and arrests of Panthers increased its support among African Americans and the broad political left, who both valued the Panthers as a powerful force opposed to de facto segregation and the military draft. The party enrolled the most members and had the most influence in the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia.[27] There were active chapters in many prisons, at a time when an increasing number of young African-American men were being incarcerated. Black Panther Party membership reached a peak in 1970, with offices in 68 cities and thousands of members, but it began to decline over the following decade. After its leaders and members were vilified by the mainstream press, public support for the party waned, and the group became more isolated.[28] In-fighting among Party leadership, fomented largely by the FBI's COINTELPRO operation, led to expulsions and defections that decimated the membership.[29] Popular support for the Party declined further after reports of the group's alleged criminal activities, such as drug dealing and extortion of Oakland merchants.[30] By 1972 most Panther activity centered on the national headquarters and a school in Oakland, where the party continued to influence local politics. Though under constant police surveillance, the Chicago chapter also remained active and maintained their community programs until 1974.[27] The Seattle chapter persisted longer than most, with a breakfast program and medical clinics that continued even after the chapter disbanded in 1977.[27] The Party continued to dwindle throughout the 1970s, and by 1980 had just 27 members.[31] The Party's history is controversial. Scholars have characterized the Black Panther Party as the most influential black movement organization of the late 1960s, and "the strongest link between the domestic Black Liberation Struggle and global opponents of American imperialism".[32] Other commentators have described the Party as more criminal than political, characterized by "defiant posturing over substance".[33] Contents 1 History 1.1 Origins 1.2 Founding the Black Panther Party 1.3 Late 1966 to early 1967 1.3.1 Chronology 1.3.2 Oakland patrols of police 1.3.3 Rallies in Richmond, California 1.3.4 Protest at the Statehouse 1.3.5 Ten-point program 1.4 Late 1967 to early 1968 1.4.1 Chronology 1.4.2 United Front Against Fascism 1.4.3 COINTELPRO 1.4.4 Huey Newton charged with murdering John Frey 1.4.5 Free Huey! campaign 1.4.6 Founding of the L.A. Chapter 1.4.7 Killing of Bobby Hutton 1.5 Late 1968 1.5.1 Chronology 1.5.2 Survival programs 1.5.3 Political activities 1.6 1969 1.6.1 Chronology 1.6.2 Shoot-out with the US Organization 1.6.3 Black Panther Party Liberation Schools 1.6.4 Killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark 1.6.5 Torture-murder of Alex Rackley 1.6.6 International ties 1.7 1970 1.7.1 Chronology 1.8 1971 1.8.1 Chronology 1.8.2 Split 1.8.3 Delegation to China 1.9 1972–74 1.9.1 Chronology 1.9.2 Newton solidifies control and centralizes power in Oakland 1.9.3 Newton indicted for violent crimes 1.10 1974–77 1.10.1 The Panthers under Elaine Brown 1.10.2 Death of Betty van Patter 1.11 1977–82 1.11.1 Return of Huey Newton and the demise of the party 1.11.2 Panthers attempt to assassinate a witness against Newton 2 Women and womanism 2.1 Gender dynamics 2.2 Women's role 2.3 Elaine Brown 2.4 Gwen Robinson 3 Gay Liberation Movement 4 Aftermath and legacy 4.1 Groups and movements inspired and aided by the Black Panthers 4.2 New Black Panther Party 5 References 5.1 Bibliography 6 Further reading 7 External links History Origins Original six members of the Black Panther Party (1966) Top left to right: Elbert "Big Man" Howard, Huey P. Newton (Defense Minister), Sherwin Forte, Bobby Seale (Chairman) Bottom: Reggie Forte and Little Bobby Hutton (Treasurer). File:Black Panther 65-27 HD 2Mbps.webm Newsreel in which Kathleen Cleaver spoke at Hutton Memorial Park in Alameda County, California. The footage also shows a student protest demonstration at Alameda County Courthouse, Oakland, California. Black Panther Party leaders Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and Bobby Seale spoke on a 10-point program they wanted from the administration which was to include full employment, decent housing and education, an end to police brutality, and blacks to be exempt from the military. Black Panther Party members are shown as they marched in uniform. Students at the rally marched, sang, clapped hands, and carried protest signs. Police in riot gear controlled marchers. During World War II, tens of thousands of blacks left the Southern states during the Second Great Migration, moving to Oakland and other cities in the Bay Area to find work in the war industries such as Kaiser Shipyards. The sweeping migration transformed the Bay Area as well as cities throughout the West and North, altering the once white-dominated demographics.[34] A new generation of young blacks growing up in these cities faced new forms of poverty and racism unfamiliar to their parents, and they sought to develop new forms of politics to address them.[35] Black Panther Party membership "consisted of recent migrants whose families traveled north and west to escape the southern racial regime, only to be confronted with new forms of segregation and repression".[36] In the early 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement had dismantled the Jim Crow system of racial caste subordination in the South with tactics of non-violent civil disobedience, and demanding full citizenship rights for black people.[37] However, not much changed in the cities of the North and West. As the wartime and post-war jobs which drew much of the black migration "fled to the suburbs along with white residents", the black population was concentrated in poor "urban ghettos" with high unemployment and substandard housing and was mostly excluded from political representation, top universities, and the middle class.[38] Northern and Western police departments were almost all white.[39] In 1966, only 16 of Oakland's 661 police officers were African American (less than 2.5%).[40] Civil rights tactics proved incapable of redressing these conditions, and the organizations that had "led much of the nonviolent civil disobedience", such as SNCC and CORE, went into decline.[37] By 1966 a "Black Power ferment" emerged, consisting largely of young urban blacks, posing a question the Civil Rights Movement could not answer: "How would black people in America win not only formal citizenship rights, but actual economic and political power?"[39] Young black people in Oakland and other cities developed study groups and political organizations, and from this ferment the Black Panther Party emerged.[41] Founding the Black Panther Party In late October 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense). In formulating a new politics, they drew on their work with a variety of Black Power organizations.[42] Newton and Seale first met in 1962 when they were both students at Merritt College.[43] They joined Donald Warden's Afro-American Association, where they read widely, debated, and organized in an emergent black nationalist tradition inspired by Malcolm X and others.[44] Eventually dissatisfied with Warden's accommodationism, they developed a revolutionary anti-imperialist perspective working with more active and militant groups like the Soul Students Advisory Council and the Revolutionary Action Movement.[45][46] Their paid jobs running youth service programs at the North Oakland Neighborhood Anti-Poverty Center allowed them to develop a revolutionary nationalist approach to community service, later a key element in the Black Panther Party's "community survival programs."[47] Dissatisfied with the failure of these organizations to directly challenge police brutality and appeal to the "brothers on the block", Huey and Bobby took matters into their own hands. After the police killed Matthew Johnson, an unarmed young black man in San Francisco, Newton observed the violent insurrection that followed. He had an epiphany that would distinguish the Black Panther Party from the multitude of Black Power organizations. Newton saw the explosive rebellious anger of the ghetto as a social force and believed that if he could stand up to the police, he could organize that force into political power. Inspired by Robert F. Williams' armed resistance to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and Williams' book Negroes with Guns,[48] Newton studied gun laws in California extensively. Like the Community Alert Patrol in Los Angeles after the Watts Rebellion, he decided to organize patrols to follow the police around to monitor for incidents of brutality. But with a crucial difference: his patrols would carry loaded guns.[49] Huey and Bobby raised enough money to buy two shotguns by buying bulk quantities of the recently publicized Little Red Book and reselling them to leftists and liberals on the Berkeley campus at three times the price. According to Bobby Seale, they would "sell the books, make the money, buy the guns, and go on the streets with the guns. We'll protect a mother, protect a brother, and protect the community from the racist cops."[50] On October 29, 1966, Stokely Carmichael – a leader of SNCC – championed the call for "Black Power" and came to Berkeley to keynote a Black Power conference. At the time, he was promoting the armed organizing efforts of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) in Alabama and their use of the Black Panther symbol. Newton and Seale decided to adopt the Black Panther logo and form their own organization called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.[51] Newton and Seale decided on a uniform of blue shirts, black pants, black leather jackets, black berets.[52] Sixteen-year-old Bobby Hutton was their first recruit.[53] Late 1966 to early 1967 Chronology Black Panther Party founders Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton standing in the street, armed with a Colt .45 and a shotgun. October 15, 1966: The BPP is founded. A few months later, they begin their first police-watching patrols.[9] January 1967: The BPP opens its first official headquarters in an Oakland storefront, and publishes the first issue of The Black Panther: Black Community News Service. February 1967: BPP members serve as security escorts for Betty Shabazz. April 1967: Denzil Dowell protest in Richmond. May 2, 1967: Thirty people representing the BPP go to California state capitol with guns, attracting the Party's first national media attention. Oakland patrols of police The initial tactic of the party utilized contemporary open-carry gun laws to protect Party members when policing the police. This act was done to record incidents of police brutality by distantly following police cars around neighborhoods.[54] When confronted by a police officer, Party members cited laws proving they had done nothing wrong and threatened to take to court any officer that violated their constitutional rights.[55] Between the end of 1966 to the start of 1967, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense's armed police patrols in Oakland black communities attracted a small handful of members.[56] Numbers grew slightly starting in February 1967, when the party provided an armed escort at the San Francisco airport for Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X's widow and keynote speaker for a conference held in his honor.[57] The Black Panther Party's focus on militancy was often construed as open hostility,[58][59] feeding a reputation of violence even though early efforts by the Panthers focused primarily on promoting social issues and the exercise of their legal right to carry arms. The Panthers employed a California law that permitted carrying a loaded rifle or shotgun as long as it was publicly displayed and pointed at no one.[52] Generally this was done while monitoring and observing police behavior in their neighborhoods, with the Panthers arguing that this emphasis on active militancy and openly carrying their weapons was necessary to protect individuals from police violence. For example, chants like "The Revolution has come, it's time to pick up the gun. Off the pigs!",[60] helped create the Panthers' reputation as a violent organization. Rallies in Richmond, California The black community of Richmond, California, wanted protection against police brutality.[61] With only three main streets for entering and exiting the neighborhood, it was easy for police to control, contain, and suppress the population.[62] On April 1, 1967, a black unarmed twenty-two-year-old construction worker named Denzil Dowell was shot dead by police in North Richmond.[63] Dowell's family contacted the Black Panther Party for assistance after county officials refused to investigate the case.[64] The Party held rallies in North Richmond that educated the community on armed self-defense and the Denzil Dowell incident.[65] Police seldom interfered at these rallies because every Panther was armed and no laws were broken.[66] The Party's ideals resonated with several community members, who then brought their own guns to the next rallies.[67] Protest at the Statehouse Awareness of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense grew rapidly after their May 2, 1967 protest at the California State Assembly. On May 2, 1967, the California State Assembly Committee on Criminal Procedure was scheduled to convene to discuss what was known as the "Mulford Act", which would make the public carrying of loaded firearms illegal. Newton, with Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver, put together a plan to send a group of 26 armed Panthers led by Seale from Oakland to Sacramento to protest the bill. The group entered the assembly carrying their weapons, an incident which was widely publicized, and which prompted police to arrest Seale and five others. The group pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of disrupting a legislative session.[68] Black Panther convention, Lincoln Memorial, June 19, 1970. In May 1967, the Panthers invaded the State Assembly Chamber in Sacramento, guns in hand, in what appears to have been a publicity stunt. Still, they scared a lot of important people that day. At the time, the Panthers had almost no following. Now, (a year later) however, their leaders speak on invitation almost anywhere radicals gather, and many whites wear "Honkeys for Huey" buttons, supporting the fight to free Newton, who has been in jail since last Oct. 28 (1967) on the charge that he killed a policeman ...[69] Ten-point program Main article: Ten-Point Program The Black Panther Party first publicized its original "What We Want Now!" Ten-Point program on May 15, 1967, following the Sacramento action, in the second issue of The Black Panther newspaper.[57] We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community. We want full employment for our people. We want an end to the robbery by the Capitalists of our Black Community. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in present-day society. We want all Black men to be exempt from military service. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people. We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails. 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 Black Communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. Late 1967 to early 1968 Chronology July 1967: United Front Against Fascism conference held in Oakland. August 1967: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) initiates its program "COINTELPRO" to "neutralize . . . black nationalist hate groups". October 28, 1967: Huey Newton allegedly kills police officer John Frey. There are fewer than one hundred Party members. Early Spring 1968: Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice published. April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King assassinated. Riots break out nationwide. April 6, 1968: A team of Panthers led by Eldridge Cleaver ambushes Oakland police officers. Panther Bobby Hutton killed. United Front Against Fascism In July 1969 the BPP organized the United Front Against Fascism conference in Oakland, which was attended by around 5,000 people representing a number of groups.[70][71] COINTELPRO COINTELPRO document outlining the FBI's plans to 'neutralize' Jean Seberg for her support for the Black Panther Party, by attempting to publicly "cause her embarrassment" and "tarnish her image". In August 1967, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) instructed its program "COINTELPRO" to "neutralize ... black nationalist hate groups" and other dissident groups. In September 1968, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover described the Black Panthers as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country".[72] By 1969, the Black Panthers and their allies had become primary COINTELPRO targets, singled out in 233 of the 295 authorized "Black Nationalist" COINTELPRO actions.[73] The goals of the program were to prevent the unification of militant black nationalist groups and to weaken their leadership, as well as to discredit them to reduce their support and growth. The initial targets included the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Nation of Islam, as well as leaders including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Maxwell Stanford and Elijah Muhammad. As assistant FBI Director William Sullivan later testified in front of the Church Committee, the Bureau "did not differentiate" between Soviet spies and suspected Communists in black nationalist movements when deploying surveillance and neutralization tactics.[74] COINTELPRO attempted to create rivalries between black nationalist factions and to exploit existing ones. One such attempt was to "intensify the degree of animosity" between the Black Panthers and the Blackstone Rangers, a Chicago street gang. The FBI sent an anonymous letter to the Rangers' gang leader claiming that the Panthers were threatening his life, a letter whose intent was to provoke "preemptive" violence against Panther leadership. In Southern California, the FBI made similar efforts to exacerbate a "gang war" between the Black Panther Party and a black nationalist group called the US Organization, allegedly sending a provocative letter to the US Organization to increase existing antagonism.[75] COINTELPRO also aimed to dismantle the Black Panther Party by targeting their social/community programs, most prominently Free Breakfast for Children. The success of Free Breakfast served to "shed light on the government's failure to address child poverty and hunger—pointing to the limits of the nation's War on Poverty".[76] As the Party taught and provided for children more effectively than the government, the FBI denounced their efforts as a means of indoctrination. "Police and Federal Agents regularly harassed and intimidated program participants, supporters, and Party workers and sought to scare away donors and organizations that housed the programs like churches and community centers".[76][77] Huey Newton charged with murdering John Frey On October 28, 1967,[78] Oakland police officer John Frey was shot to death in an altercation with Huey P. Newton during a traffic stop in which Newton and backup officer Herbert Heanes also suffered gunshot wounds. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter at trial, but the conviction was later overturned. In his book Shadow of the Panther, writer Hugh Pearson alleges that Newton was intoxicated in the hours before the incident, and claimed to have willfully killed John Frey.[79] Free Huey! campaign At the time, Newton claimed that he had been falsely accused, leading to the Party's "Free Huey!" campaign. The police killing gained the party even wider recognition by the radical American left.[80] Newton was released after three years, when his conviction was reversed on appeal.[81] As Newton awaited trial, the "Free Huey" campaign developed alliances with numerous students and anti-war activists, "advancing an anti-imperialist political ideology that linked the oppression of antiwar protestors to the oppression of blacks and Vietnamese".[82] The "Free Huey" campaign attracted black power organizations, New Left groups, and other activist groups such as the Progressive Labor Party, Bob Avakian of the Community for New Politics, and the Red Guard.[83] For example, the Black Panther Party collaborated with the Peace and Freedom Party, which sought to promote a strong antiwar and antiracist politics in opposition to the establishment democratic party.[84] The Black Panther Party provided needed legitimacy to the Peace and Freedom Party's racial politics and in return received invaluable support for the "Free Huey" campaign.[85] Founding of the L.A. Chapter In 1968 the southern California chapter was founded by Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter in Los Angeles. Carter was the leader of the Slauson Street gang, and many of the LA chapter's early recruits were Slausons.[86] Killing of Bobby Hutton Bobby Hutton was born April 21, 1950, in Jefferson County Arkansas. At the age of three, he and his family moved to Oakland, California after being harassed by racist vigilante groups associated with the Ku Klux Klan. In December 1966, he became the first treasurer and recruit of the Black Panther Party at the age of just 16 years old. He became the first member of the party to be killed by police. On April 6, 1968, two days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and with riots raging across cities in the United States, the 17-year-old Hutton was traveling with Eldridge Cleaver and other BPP members in a car. The group confronted Oakland Police officers, then fled to an apartment building where they engaged in a 90-minute gun battle with the police. The standoff ended with Cleaver wounded and Hutton voluntarily surrendering. According to Cleaver, although Hutton had stripped down to his underwear and had his hands raised in the air to prove that he was unarmed, Oakland Police shot Hutton more than 12 times, killing him. Two police officers were also shot. Although at the time the BPP claimed that the police had ambushed them, several party members later admitted that Cleaver had led the Panther group on a deliberate ambush of the police officers, provoking the shoot-out.[87][88][89][90][91] Seven other Panthers, including Chief of Staff David Hilliard, were also arrested. Hutton's death became a rallying issue for Panther supporters.[92][93] Late 1968 Chronology April to mid-June 1968: Cleaver in jail. Mid-July 1968: Huey Newton's murder trial commences. Panthers hold daily "Free Huey" rallies outside the courthouse. August 5, 1968: Three Panthers killed in a gun battle with police at a Los Angeles gas station.[94] Early September 1968: Newton convicted of manslaughter. Late September 1968: Days before he is due to return to prison to serve out a rape conviction, Cleaver flees to Cuba and later Algeria. October 5, 1968: A Panther is killed in a gunfight with police in Los Angeles.[94] November 1968: The BPP finds numerous supporters, establishing relationships with the Peace and Freedom Party and SNCC. Money contributions flow in, and BPP leadership begins embezzlement.[95] November 6, 1968: Lauren Watson, head of the Denver chapter, is arrested by Denver Police for fleeing a police officer and resisting arrest. His trial will be filmed and televised in 1970 as "Trial: The City and County of Denver vs. Lauren R. Watson." November 20, 1968: William Lee Brent and two accomplices in a van marked "Black Panther Black Community News Service" allegedly rob a gas station in San Francisco's Bayview district of $80, resulting in a shootout with police.[96] In 1968, the group shortened its name to the Black Panther Party and sought to focus directly on political action. Members were encouraged to carry guns and to defend themselves against violence. An influx of college students joined the group, which had consisted chiefly of "brothers off the block". This created some tension in the group. Some members were more interested in supporting the Panthers' social programs, while others wanted to maintain their "street mentality".[97] By 1968, the Party had expanded into many U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Newark, New Orleans, New York City, Omaha, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Toledo, and Washington, D.C. Peak membership was near 5,000 by 1969, and their newspaper, under the editorial leadership of Eldridge Cleaver, had a circulation of 250,000.[98] The group created a Ten-Point Program, a document that called for "Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice and Peace", as well as exemption from conscription for black men, among other demands.[99] With the Ten-Point program, "What We Want, What We Believe", the Black Panther Party expressed its economic and political grievances.[100] Curtis Austin states that by late 1968, Black Panther ideology had evolved from black nationalism to become more a "revolutionary internationalist movement": [The Party] dropped its wholesale attacks against whites and began to emphasize more of a class analysis of society. Its emphasis on Marxist–Leninist doctrine and its repeated espousal of Maoist statements signaled the group's transition from a revolutionary nationalist to a revolutionary internationalist movement. Every Party member had to study Mao Tse-tung's "Little Red Book" to advance his or her knowledge of peoples' struggle and the revolutionary process.[101] Panther slogans and iconography spread. At the 1968 Summer Olympics, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, two American medalists, gave the black power salute during the American national anthem. The International Olympic Committee banned them from all future Olympic Games. Film star Jane Fonda publicly supported Huey Newton and the Black Panthers during the early 1970s. She actually ended up informally adopting the daughter of two Black Panther members, Mary Luana Williams. Fonda and other Hollywood celebrities became involved in the Panthers' leftist programs. The Panthers attracted a wide variety of left-wing revolutionaries and political activists, including writer Jean Genet, former Ramparts magazine editor David Horowitz (who later became a major critic of what he describes as Panther criminality)[citation needed] and left-wing lawyer Charles R. Garry, who acted as counsel in the Panthers' many legal battles. The BPP adopted a "Serve the People" program, which at first involved a free breakfast program for children. By the end of 1968, the BPP had established 38 chapters and branches, claiming more than five thousand members. Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver left the country days before Cleaver was to turn himself in to serve the remainder of a thirteen-year sentence for a 1958 rape conviction. They settled in Algeria.[102] By the end of the year, party membership peaked at around 2,000.[103] Party members engaged in criminal activities such as extortion, stealing, violent discipline of BPP members, and robberies. The BPP leadership took one-third of the proceeds from robberies committed by BPP members.[104] Survival programs "no kid should be running around hungry in school" Bobby Seale[105] The Black Panther Party's free breakfast program is "the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for." FBI director J. Edgar Hoover[105] Inspired by Mao Zedong's advice to revolutionaries in The Little Red Book, Newton called on the Panthers to "serve the people" and to make "survival programs" a priority within its branches. The most famous of their programs was the Free Breakfast for Children Program, initially run out of an Oakland church. The Free Breakfast For Children program was especially significant because it served as a space for educating youth about the current condition of the Black community, and the actions that the Party was taking to address that condition. "While the children ate their meal[s], members [of the Party] taught them liberation lessons consisting of Party messages and Black history."[76] Through this program, the Party was able to influence young minds, and strengthen their ties to communities as well as gain widespread support for their ideologies. The breakfast program became so popular that the Panthers Party claimed to have fed twenty thousand children in the 1968–69 school year.[106] Other survival programs[107] were free services such as clothing distribution, classes on politics and economics, free medical clinics, lessons on self-defense and first aid, transportation to upstate prisons for family members of inmates, an emergency-response ambulance program, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and testing for sickle-cell disease.[108] The free medical clinics were very significant because they modeled an idea of how the world might work with free medical care, eventually being established in 13 places across the country. These clinics were involved in community-based health care that had roots connected to the Civil Rights Movement, which made it possible to establish the Medical Committee for Human Rights.[109] Political activities In 1968, BPP Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver ran for Presidential office on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket.[110] They were a big influence on the White Panther Party, tied to the Detroit/Ann Arbor band MC5 and their manager John Sinclair (author of the book Guitar Army), which also promulgated a ten-point program. 1969 Chronology Early 1969: In late 1968 and January 1969, the BPP began to purge members due to fears about law enforcement infiltration and various petty disagreements. January 14, 1969: The Los Angeles chapter was involved in a shootout with members of the black nationalist US Organization, and two Panthers are killed. January 1969: The Oakland BPP begins the first free breakfast program for children. March 1969: There is a second purge of BPP members. April 1969: Members of the New York chapter, known as the Panther 21 are indicted and jailed for a bombing conspiracy. All would eventually be acquitted. May 1969: Two more southern California Panthers are killed in violent disputes with US Organization members.[94] May 1969: Members of the New Haven chapter torture and murder Alex Rackley, who they suspected of being an informant. July 17, 1969: Two policemen are shot and a Panther is killed in a gun battle in Chicago.[94] Late July 1969: The BPP ideology undergoes a shift, with a turn toward self-discipline and anti-racism. August 1969: Bobby Seale is indicted and imprisoned in relation to the Rackley murder. October 18, 1969: A Panther is killed in a gunfight with police outside a Los Angeles restaurant.[94] Mid-to-late 1969: COINTELPRO activity increases. November 13, 1969: A Panther is killed in a gunfight with police in Chicago.[94] December 4, 1969: Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are killed by law enforcement in Chicago.[27] Late 1969: David Hilliard, current BPP head, advocates violent revolution. Panther membership is down significantly from the late 1968 peak. Shoot-out with the US Organization Violent conflict between the Panther chapter in LA and the US Organization, a black nationalist group, resulted in shootings and beatings and led to the murders of at least four Black Panther Party members. On January 17, 1969, Los Angeles Panther Captain Bunchy Carter and Deputy Minister John Huggins were killed in Campbell Hall on the UCLA campus, in a gun battle with members of the US Organization. Another shootout between the two groups on March 17 led to further injuries. Two more Panthers died. Black Panther Party Liberation Schools Paramount to their beliefs regarding the need for individual agency to catalyze community change, the Black Panther Party (BPP) strongly supported the education of the masses. As part of their Ten-Point Program which set forth the ideals and goals of the party, they demanded an equitable education for all black people. Number 5 of the "What We Want Now!" section of the program reads: "We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in present-day society." To ensure that this occurred, the Black Panther Party took the education of their youth into their own hands by first establishing after-school programs and then opening up Liberation Schools in a variety of locations throughout the country which focused their curriculum on Black history, writing skills, and political science.[111] Intercommunal Youth Institute The first Liberation School was opened by the Richmond Black Panthers in July 1969 with brunch served and snacks provided to students. Another school was opened in Mt. Vernon New York on July 17 of the subsequent year.[111] These schools were informal in nature and more closely resembled after-school or summer programs.[112] While these campuses were the first to open, the first full-time and longest-running Liberation school was opened in January 1971 in Oakland in response to the inequitable conditions in the Oakland Unified School District which was ranked one of the lowest-scoring districts in California.[113] Named the Intercommunal Youth Institute (IYI), this school, under the directorship of Brenda Bay, and later, Ericka Huggins, enrolled twenty-eight students in its first year, with the majority being the children of Black Panther parents. This number grew to fifty by the 1973–1974 school year. To provide full support for Black Panther parents whose time was spent organizing, some of the students and faculty members lived together year around. The school itself was dissimilar to traditional schools in a variety of ways including the fact that students were separated by academic performance rather than age and students were often provided one on one support as the faculty to student ratio was 1:10.[113] The Panther's goal in opening Liberation Schools, and specifically the Intercommunal Youth Institute, was to provide students with an education that wasn't being provided in the "white" schools,[114] as the public schools in the district employed a eurocentric assimilationist curriculum with little to no attention to black history and culture. While students were provided with traditional courses such as English, Math, and Science, they were also exposed to activities focused on class structure and the prevalence of institutional racism.[115] The overall goal of the school was to instill a sense of revolutionary consciousness in the students.[112] With a strong belief in experiential learning, students had the opportunity to participate in community service projects as well as practice their writing skills by drafting letters to political prisoners associated with the Black Panther Party.[115] Huggins is noted as saying, "I think that the school's principles came from the socialist principles we tried to live in the Black Panther Party. One of them being critical thinking—that children should learn not what to think but how to think ... the school was an expression of the collective wisdom of the people who envisioned it. And it was ... a living thing [that] changed every year.[112] Joan Kelley oversaw funding for the Intercommunal Youth Institute which was provided through a combination of Black Panther fundraising and community support.[113] Oakland Community School In 1974, due to increased interest in enrolling in the school, school officials decided to move to a larger facility and subsequently changed the school's name to Oakland Community School. During this year, the school graduated its first class.[114] Although the student population continued to grow ranging between 50 and 150 between 1974–1977, the original core values of individualized instruction remained.[113] In September 1977, the school received a special award from Governor Edmund Brown Jr. and the California Legislature for "having set the standard for the highest level of elementary education in the state.[114] The school eventually closed in 1982 due to governmental pressure on party leadership which caused insufficient membership and funds to continue running the school.[113] Killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark In Chicago, on December 4, 1969, two Panthers were killed when the Chicago Police raided the home of Panther leader Fred Hampton. The raid had been orchestrated by the police in conjunction with the FBI. Hampton was shot and killed, as was Panther guard Mark Clark. A federal investigation reported that only one shot was fired by the Panthers, and police fired at least 80 shots.[116] The only shot fired by the Panthers was from Mark Clark, who appeared to fire a single round determined to be the result of a reflexive death convulsion after he was immediately struck in the chest by shots from the police at the start of the raid. Hampton was sleeping next to his pregnant fiancée and was subsequently shot twice in the head at point-blank range while unconscious. Coroner reports show that Hampton was drugged with a powerful barbiturate that night, and would have been unable to have been awoken by the sounds of the police raid.[117] His body was then dragged into the hallway. He was 21 years old and unarmed at the time of his death. Seven other Panthers sleeping at the house at the time of the raid were then beaten and seriously wounded, then arrested under charges of aggravated assault and attempted murder of the officers involved in the raid. These charges would later be dropped. Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan announced to the media later that the Panthers were first to shoot in the interaction and that they showed a "refusal to cease firing... when urged to do so several times." New York Times reporting would later demonstrate that this was not in fact the case and found a great deal of fake evidence being used by Chicago Police to assert their claims.[118] Former FBI agent Wesley Swearingen asserts that the Bureau was guilty of a "plot to murder" the Panthers.[119] Hampton had been slipped the barbiturates which had left him unconscious by William O'Neal, who had been working as an FBI informant. Hanrahan, his assistant and eight Chicago police officers were indicted by a federal grand jury over the raid, but the charges were later dismissed.[98][120] In 1979 civil action, Hampton's family won $1.85 million from the city of Chicago in a wrongful death settlement.[121] Torture-murder of Alex Rackley In May 1969, three members of the New Haven chapter tortured and murdered Alex Rackley, a 19-year-old member of the New York chapter, because they suspected him of being a police informant. Three party officers—Warren Kimbro, George Sams, Jr., and Lonnie McLucas—later admitted taking part. Sams, who gave the order to shoot Rackley at the murder scene, turned state's evidence and testified that he had received orders personally from Bobby Seale to carry out the execution. Party supporters responded that Sams was himself the informant and an agent provocateur employed by the FBI.[122] The case resulted in the New Haven Black Panther trials of 1970. Kimbro and Sams were convicted of the murder, but the trials of Seale and Ericka Huggins ended with a hung jury, and the prosecution chose not to seek another trial. International ties Activists from many countries around the globe supported the Panthers and their cause. In Scandinavian countries such as Norway and Finland, for example, left-wing activists organized a tour for Bobby Seale and Masai Hewitt in 1969. At each destination along the tour, the Panthers talked about their goals and the "Free Huey!" campaign. Seale and Hewitt made a stop in Germany as well, gaining support for the "Free Huey!" campaign.[123] 1970 Chronology January 1970: Leonard Bernstein holds a fundraiser for the BPP, which was notoriously mocked by Tom Wolfe in Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. Spring 1970: The Oakland BPP engages in another ambush of police officers with guns and fragmentation bombs. Two officers are wounded.[124] May 1970: Huey Newton's conviction is overturned, but he remains incarcerated. July 1970: Newton tells The New York Times that "we've never advocated violence". August 1970: Newton is released from prison. In 1970, a group of Panthers traveled through Asia and they were welcomed as guests of the governments of North Vietnam, North Korea, and China. The group's first stop was in North Korea, where the Panthers met with local officials to discuss ways in which they could help each other fight against American imperialism. Eldridge Cleaver traveled to Pyongyang twice in 1969 and 1970, and following these trips he made an effort to publicize the writings and works of North Korean leader Kim Il-sung in the United States.[125] After leaving North Korea, the group traveled to North Vietnam with the same agenda in mind: finding ways to put an end to American imperialism. Eldridge Cleaver was invited to speak to Black GIs by the North Vietnamese government. He encouraged them to join the Black Liberation Struggle by arguing that the United States government was only using them for its own purposes. Instead of risking their lives on the battlefield for a country that continued to oppress them, Cleaver believed that the black GIs should risk their lives in support of their own liberation. After leaving Vietnam, Cleaver met with the Chinese ambassador to Algeria to express their mutual animosity towards the American government.[126] When Algeria held its first Pan-African Cultural Festival, they invited many important figures from the United States. Among the important figures invited to the festival were Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver. The cultural festival allowed Black Panthers to network with representatives of various international anti-imperialist movements. This was a significant time, which led to the formation of the International Section of the Party.[127] It is at this festival that Cleaver met with the ambassador of North Korea, who later invited him to an International Conference of Revolutionary Journalists in Pyongyang. Eldridge also met with Yasser Arafat, and gave a speech supporting the Palestinians and their goal of achieving liberation.[128] 1971 Chronology January 1971: Newton expels Geronimo Pratt who, since 1970, had been in jail facing a pending murder charge. Newton also expels two of the New York 21 and his own secretary, Connie Matthews, who flee the country. February 1971: a fall-out between Newton and Cleaver ensues after they argue during a live broadcast link-up. Newton expels Cleaver and the entire international section from the party. Spring 1971: the Newton and Cleaver factions engage in retaliatory assassinations of each other's members, resulting in the deaths of four people.[129] May 1971: Bobby Seale is acquitted of ordering the Rackley murder, and returns to Oakland. Mid-to-late 1971: nationally, hundreds of Party members quit the BPP.[130] Late-September 1971: Newton visits and stays in China for 10 days.[131] Newton focuses the BPP on the Party's Oakland school and various other social service programs. In early 1971, the BPP founded the "Intercommunal Youth Institute" in January 1971,[132] with the intent of demonstrating how black youth ought to be educated. Ericka Huggins was the director of the school and Regina Davis was an administrator.[133] The school was unique in that it did not have grade levels but instead had different skill levels so an 11-year-old could be in second-level English and fifth-level science.[133] Elaine Brown taught reading and writing to a group of 10- to 11-year-olds deemed "uneducable" by the system.[134] The school children were given free busing; breakfast, lunch, and dinner; books and school supplies; children were taken to have medical checkups; many children were given free clothes.[135] Split Significant disagreements among the Party's leaders over how to confront ideological differences led to a split within the party. Certain members felt that the Black Panthers should participate in local government and social services, while others encouraged constant conflict with the police. For some of the Party's supporters, the separations among political action, criminal activity, social services, access to power, and grass-roots identity became confusing and contradictory as the Panthers' political momentum was bogged down in the criminal justice system. These (and other) disagreements led to a split. Some Panther leaders, such as Huey P. Newton and David Hilliard, favored a focus on community service coupled with self-defense; others, such as Eldridge Cleaver, embraced a more confrontational strategy. Eldridge Cleaver deepened the schism in the party when he publicly criticized the Party for adopting a "reformist" rather than "revolutionary" agenda and called for Hilliard's removal. Cleaver was expelled from the Central Committee but went on to lead a splinter group, the Black Liberation Army, which had previously existed as an underground paramilitary wing of the Party.[136] The split turned violent, as the Newton and Cleaver factions carried out retaliatory assassinations of each other's members, resulting in the deaths of four people.[129] Delegation to China In late September 1971, Huey P. Newton led a delegation to China and stayed for 10 days.[131] At every airport in China, Huey was greeted by thousands of people waving copies of the Little Red Book and displaying signs that said "we support the Black Panther Party, down with US imperialism" or "we support the American people but the Nixon imperialist regime must be overthrown". During the trip, the Chinese arranged for him to meet and have dinner with a DPRK ambassador, a Tanzanian ambassador, and delegations from both North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam.[137] Huey was under the impression he was going to meet Mao Zedong, but instead had two meetings with the first Premier of the People's Republic of China Zhou Enlai. One of these meetings also included Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing. Huey described China as "a free and liberated territory with a socialist government".[138] 1972–74 Chronology Early 1972: Newton shuts down chapters around the country, and calls the key members to Oakland. Mid-1972: BPP members or supporters win a number of minor offices in the Oakland city elections. 1973: The BPP focuses nearly all of its resources on winning political power in the Oakland city government. Seale runs for mayor; Elaine Brown runs for city council. Both lose, and many Party members resign after the losses. Early 1974: Newton embarks on a major purge, expelling Bobby and John Seale, David and June Hilliard, Robert Bay, and numerous other top party leaders. Dozens of other Panthers loyal to Seale resigned or deserted. August 1974: Newton murders Kathleen Smith, a teenage prostitute. He flees to Cuba. Elaine Brown takes over the leadership in his absence. December 1974: Accountant Betty van Patter is murdered, after threatening to disclose irregularities in the Party's finances. Newton solidifies control and centralizes power in Oakland In 1972, the party began closing down dozens of chapters and branches all over the country and bringing members and operations to Oakland. The political arm of the southern California chapter was shut down and its members moved to Oakland, although the underground military arm remained for a time.[139] The underground remnants of the LA chapter, which had emerged from the Slausons street gang, eventually re-emerged as the Crips, a street gang who at first advocated social reform before devolving into racketeering.[140] The party developed a five-year plan to take over the city of Oakland politically. Bobby Seale ran for mayor, Elaine Brown ran for city council, and other Panthers ran for minor offices. Neither Seale nor Brown were elected. A few Panthers won seats on local government commissions. Minister of Education Ray "Masai" Hewitt created the Buddha Samurai, the party's underground security cadre in Oakland. Newton expelled Hewitt from the party later in 1972, but the security cadre remained in operation under the leadership of Flores Forbes. One of the cadre's main functions was to extort and rob drug dealers and after-hours clubs.[139] Newton indicted for violent crimes In 1974, Huey Newton and eight other Panthers were arrested and charged with assault on police officers. Newton went into exile in Cuba to avoid prosecution for the murder of Kathleen Smith, an eighteen-year-old prostitute. Newton was also indicted for pistol-whipping his tailor, Preston Callins. Although Newton confided to friends that Kathleen Smith was his "first nonpolitical murder", he was ultimately acquitted, after one witness's testimony was impeached by her admission that she had been smoking marijuana on the night of the murder, and another prostitute witness recanted her testimony.[141][142] Newton was also acquitted of assaulting Preston Callins after Callins refused to press charges.[143][clarification needed] 1974–77 The Panthers under Elaine Brown In 1974, as Huey Newton prepared to go into exile in Cuba, he appointed Elaine Brown as the first Chairwoman of the Party. Under Brown's leadership, the Party became involved in organizing for more radical electoral campaigns, including Brown's 1975 unsuccessful run for Oakland City Council.[144] The Party supported Lionel Wilson in his successful election as the first black mayor of Oakland, in exchange for Wilson's assistance in having criminal charges dropped against Party member Flores Forbes, leader of the Buddha Samurai cadre.[139] In addition to changing the Party's direction towards more involvement in the electoral arena, Brown also increased the influence of women Panthers by placing them in more visible roles within the previously male-dominated organization. Death of Betty van Patter Panther leader Elaine Brown hired Betty Van Patter in 1974 as a bookkeeper. Van Patter had previously served as a bookkeeper for Ramparts magazine, and was introduced to the Panther leadership by David Horowitz, who had been the editor of Ramparts and a major fundraiser and board member for the Panther school.[145] Later that year, after a dispute with Brown over financial irregularities,[146] Van Patter went missing on December 13, 1974. Some weeks later, her severely beaten corpse was found on a San Francisco Bay beach. There was insufficient evidence for police to charge anyone with van Patter's murder, but the Black Panther Party leadership was "almost universally believed to be responsible".[147][148] Huey Newton later allegedly confessed to a friend that he had ordered Van Patter's murder, and that Van Patter had been tortured and raped before being killed.[142][149] 1977–82 Return of Huey Newton and the demise of the party In 1977, Newton returned from exile in Cuba, and received complaints from male members about the excessive power of women in the organization, who now outnumbered men. According to Elaine Brown, Newton authorized the physical punishment of school administrator Regina Davis for scolding a male coworker. Davis was hospitalized with a broken jaw.[150] Brown said "The beating of Regina would be taken as a clear signal that the words 'Panther' and 'comrade' had taken a gender on gender connotation, denoting an inferiority in the female half of us."[151][152][153] Brown resigned from the party and fled to LA.[154] Although many scholars and activists date the Party's downfall to the period before Brown's leadership, a shrinking cadre of Panthers struggled through the 1970s. By 1980, Panther membership had dwindled to 27, and the Panther-sponsored school closed in 1982 amid a scandal over Newton embezzling funds for his drug addiction.[144][155] Panthers attempt to assassinate a witness against Newton In October 1977 Flores Forbes, the party's assistant chief of staff, led a botched attempt to assassinate Crystal Gray, a key prosecution witness in Newton's upcoming trial, who had been present the day of Kathleen Smith's murder. After attacking the wrong house by mistake, the occupant returned fire and killed one of the Panthers, Louis Johnson, while the other two assailants escaped.[156] One of them, Flores Forbes, fled to Las Vegas, Nevada, with the help of Panther paramedic Nelson Malloy. Fearing that Malloy would discover the truth behind the botched assassination attempt, Newton allegedly ordered a "house cleaning", and Malloy was shot and buried alive in the desert. Although permanently paralyzed from the waist down, Malloy escaped and told police that fellow Panthers Rollin Reid and Allen Lewis were behind his attempted murder.[157] Newton denied any involvement or knowledge and said the events "might have been the result of overzealous party members".[158] Newton was ultimately acquitted of the murder of Kathleen Smith, after Crystal Gray's testimony was impeached by her admission that she had smoked marijuana on the night of the murder, and he was acquitted of assaulting Preston Callins after Callins refused to press charges. Women and womanism From its beginnings, the Black Panther Party championed black masculinity and traditional gender roles.[159]:6 A notice in the first issue of The Black Panther newspaper proclaimed the all-male organization as "the cream of Black Manhood ... there for the protection and defense of our Black community".[160] Scholars consider the Party's stance of armed resistance highly masculine, with guns and violence proving manhood.[161]:2 In 1968, several articles urged female Panthers to "stand behind black men" and be supportive.[159]:6 The first woman to join the party was Joan Tarika Lewis, in 1967.[162] Nevertheless, women were present in the party from the early days and expanded their roles throughout its life.[163] Women often joined to fight against unequal gender norms.[164] By 1969, the Party newspaper officially instructed male Panthers to treat female Party members as equals,[159]:2[159]:6 a drastic change from the idea of the female Panther as subordinate. The same year, Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton of the Illinois chapter conducted a meeting condemning sexism.[159]:2 After 1969, the Party considered sexism counter-revolutionary.[159]:6 The Black Panthers adopted a womanist ideology responding to the unique experiences of African-American women,[165] emphasizing racism as more oppressive than sexism.[166] Womanism was a mix of black nationalism and the vindication of women,[165]:20 putting race and community struggle before the gender issue.[165]:8 Womanism posited that traditional feminism failed to include race and class struggle in its denunciation of male sexism[165]:26 and was therefore part of white hegemony.[165]:21 In opposition to some feminist viewpoints, womanism promoted a vision of gender roles: that men are not above women, but hold a different position in the home and community,[165]:42 so men and women must work together for the preservation of African-American culture and community.[165]:27 Henceforth, the Party newspaper portrayed women as intelligent political revolutionaries, exemplified by members such as Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis and Erika Huggins.[159]:10 The Black Panther Party newspaper often showed women as active participants in the armed self-defense movement, picturing them with children and guns as protectors of home, family and community.[159]:2 Police killed or incarcerated many male leaders, but female Panthers were less targeted for much of the 1960s and 1970s. By 1968, women made up two-thirds of the party, while many male members were out of duty. In the absence of much of the original male leadership, women moved into all parts of the organization.[163][167] Roles included leadership positions, implementing community programs, and uplifting the black community. Women in the group called attention to sexism within the Party, and worked to make changes from within.[168] From 1968 to the end of its publication in 1982, the head editors of the Black Panther Party newspaper were all women.[159]:5 In 1970, approximately 40% to 70% of Party members were women,[159]:8 and several chapters, like the Des Moines, Iowa, and New Haven, Connecticut, were headed by women.[161]:7 During the 1970s, recognizing the limited access poor women had to abortion, the Party officially supported women's reproductive rights, including abortion.[159]:11 That same year, the Party condemned and opposed prostitution.[159]:12 Many women Panthers began to demand childcare to be able to fully participate in the organization. The Party responded by establishing on-site child development centers in multiple US chapters. "Childcare became largely a group activity", with children raised collectively, in accord with the Panther's commitment to collectivism and the African-American extended-family tradition. Childcare allowed women Panthers to embrace motherhood while fully participating in Party activism.[169] The Party experienced significant problems in several chapters with sexism and gender oppression, particularly in the Oakland chapter where cases of sexual harassment and gender conflict were common.[170]:5 When Oakland Panthers arrived to bolster the New York City Panther chapter after 21 New York leaders were incarcerated, they displayed such chauvinistic attitudes towards New York Panther women that they had to be fended off at gunpoint.[171] Some Party leaders thought the fight for gender equality was a threat to men and a distraction from the struggle for racial equality.[159]:5 In response, the Chicago and New York chapters, among others, established equal gender rights as a priority and tried to eradicate sexist attitudes.[161]:13 By the time the Black Panther Party disbanded, official policy was to reprimand men who violated the rules of gender equality.[161]:13 Gender dynamics In the beginning, recruiting women was a low priority for Newton and Seale.[172] Seale stated in an interview that Newton targeted "brothers who had been pimping, brothers who had been peddling dope, brothers who ain't gonna take no shit, brothers who had been fighting the pigs". Also, they didn't realize that women could help the fight until one came into an interest meeting asking about "female leadership".[173] Regina Jennings recalls that many male leaders had an "unchecked" sexism problem and her task was to "lift the bedroom out of their minds." She remembers overhearing members: "Some concluded that the FBI sent me, but the captain assured them with salty good humor that, 'She's too stupid to be from the FBI.' He thought my cover and my comments too honest, too loud, and too ridiculous to be serious." She recalls her days in Oakland, California as a teenager looking for something to do to add purpose to her life and her community. She grew up around police brutality, so it was nothing new. Her goal in joining was "smashing racism" because she viewed herself as Black before she was a woman. In her community, that identity is what she felt held her back the most.[173] Women's role The Black Panther Party was involved in many community projects as part of their organization. These projects included community outreach, like the breakfast program, education, and health programs.[163] In many cases women were the ones primarily involved with administering these types of programs. From the beginning of the Black Panther Party education was a fundamental goal of the organization. This was highlighted in the Ten Point Platform, the newspaper that was distributed by the party, and the public commentary shared by the Panthers.[163] The newspaper was one of the primary and original consciousness-raising and educational measures taken by the party.[163] Despite the fact that men were out distributing the newspaper, women like Elaine Brown and Kathleen Cleaver were behind the scenes working on those papers.[174] Elaine Brown Elaine Brown rose to power within the BPP as Minister of Information after Eldridge Cleaver fled abroad. In 1974, she became chair for the Oakland chapter. She was appointed by Huey Newton, the previous chair, while Newton and other leaders dealt with legal issues.[163][175] From the beginning of her tenure as chair, she faced opposition and feared a coup. She appointed many female officials, and faced backlash for her policies for equality within the organization. When Huey Newton returned from exile and approved of the beating of a female Panther school teacher, Brown left the organization.[175] Gwen Robinson In an interview with Judson Jeffries, Gwen Robinson reflects on her time in the Black Panther Party Detroit Division.[176] She explains that she joined in October 1969 with despite doubts from her mother, who had participated in a march with Martin Luther King Jr. in the early part of the decade. She chose the Black Panther Party (BBP) because "[She] felt a closeness and a bond with them" more than other organizations like the "SNCC, NAACP, the Urban League, the Nation of Islam, Shrines of Madonna, Eastside Voice of Independent Detroit (ESVID), the Republic of New Africa, and the Revolutionary Action Movement."[176] In 12th grade, she decided to work full-time with the Party, dropping out of chaotic Denby High School in Detroit. "There were some students who would use the N-word freely" and "a P.E. instructor accused [her] of stealing her keys." She was "shoved" into the pool when she refused to swim for fear of wetting her hair, while a White teacher who taught Afro-American history would kick people out "if you challenged his position on certain Black leaders."[176] In the BBP, she "was living as part of a collective" where all work was shared, and she enjoyed working all day selling newspapers. She climbed the ranks and became the branch's Communications Secretary in January 1971, after her predecessor left due to "some issues related to sexism". In this branch, unlike the average BBP divisions, the "brothers" never turned violent or physical: "That kind of thing didn't take place in Detroit." She left the organization in 1973, keeping a link through her husband, their circulation manager. Summing up the legacy of the Detroit branch, she says, "It's crucial that people realize that the strength of the organization was rooted in discipline, deep commitment, and a genuine love for the people."[177] Gay Liberation Movement Huey Newton expressed his support for the Women's Liberation Movement and the Gay Liberation Movement in a 1970 letter published in the newspaper The Black Panther titled "A Letter from Huey to the Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters About the Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements".[178] Written one year after the Stonewall Riots, Newton acknowledged women and homosexuals as oppressed groups and urged the Blank Panthers to "unite with them in a revolutionary fashion".[179] The Black Panther Party and the Gay Liberation Movement shared common ground in their fight against police brutality.[180] Aftermath and legacy New York City Councilman Charles Barron is one of the numerous former Panthers to have held elected office in the US There is considerable debate about the impact of the Black Panther Party on the wider society or even their local environments. Author Jama Lazerow writes: As inheritors of the discipline, pride, and calm self-assurance preached by Malcolm X, the Panthers became national heroes in black communities by infusing abstract nationalism with street toughness—by joining the rhythms of black working-class youth culture to the interracial élan and effervescence of Bay Area New Left politics ... In 1966, the Panthers defined Oakland's ghetto as a territory, the police as interlopers, and the Panther mission as the defense of community. The Panthers' famous "policing the police" drew attention to the spatial remove that White Americans enjoyed from the police brutality that had come to characterize life in black urban communities.[181] Professor Judson Jeffries of Purdue University calls the Panthers "the most effective black revolutionary organization in the 20th century".[182] The Los Angeles Times, in a 2013 review of Black Against Empire, an "authoritative" history of the BPP published by University of California Press, called the organization a "serious political and cultural force" and "a movement of intelligent, explosive dreamers".[183] The Black Panther Party is featured in exhibits[184] and curriculum[185][186] of the National Civil Rights Museum. Numerous former Panthers have held elected office in the United States, some into the 21st century; these include Charles Barron (New York City Council), Nelson Malloy (Winston-Salem City Council), and Bobby Rush (US House of Representatives). Most of them praise the BPP's contribution to black liberation and American democracy. In 1990, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution declaring "Fred Hampton Day" in honor of the slain leader.[121] In Winston-Salem in 2012, a large contingent of local officials and community leaders came together to install a historic marker of the local BPP headquarters; State Representative Earline Parmone declared "[The Black Panther Party] dared to stand up and say, 'We're fed up and we're not taking it anymore'. ... Because they had courage, today I stand as ... the first African American ever to represent Forsyth County in the state Senate".[187] In October 2006, the Black Panther Party held a 40-year reunion in Oakland.[188] Black Panther 40th Reunion, 2006. In January 2007, a joint California state and Federal task force charged eight men with the August 29, 1971, murder of California police officer Sgt. John Young.[189] The defendants have been identified as former members of the Black Liberation Army, with two linked to the Black Panthers.[190] In 1975, a similar case was dismissed when a judge ruled that police gathered evidence using torture.[191] On June 29, 2009, Herman Bell pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the death of Sgt. Young. In July 2009, charges were dropped against four of the accused: Ray Boudreaux, Henry W. Jones, Richard Brown and Harold Taylor. Also that month Jalil Muntaquim pleaded no contest to conspiracy to commit voluntary manslaughter, becoming the second person convicted in this case.[192] Since the 1990s, former Panther chief of staff David Hilliard has offered tours in Oakland of sites historically significant to the Black Panther Party.[193] Groups and movements inspired and aided by the Black Panthers Various groups and movements have picked names inspired by the Black Panthers: Assata's Daughters, an all-black activist group in Chicago, was founded in 2015 by Page May; the group is named after Black Panther Assata Shakur and has objectives similar to the Black Panther's 10-Point Program.[194] Gray Panthers often used to refer to advocates for the rights of seniors (Gray Panthers in the United States, The Grays – Gray Panthers in Germany). Polynesian Panthers, an advocacy group for Māori and Pacific Islander people in New Zealand. Black Panthers, a protest movement that advocates social justice and fights for the rights of Mizrahi Jews in Israel. White Panthers, used to refer to both the White Panther Party, a far-left, anti-racist, white American political party of the 1970s, as well as the White Panthers UK, an unaffiliated group started by Mick Farren. The Pink Panthers, used to refer to two LGBT rights organizations. Dalit Panthers, an Indian social reform movement, which fights against Caste Oppression in Indian Society. The British Black Panther movement, which flourished in London in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was not affiliated with the American organization although it fought for many of the same rights.[195][196] The French Black Dragons, a black antifascist group closely linked to the punk rock and rockabilly scene. The Young Lords Huey P. Newton Gun Club, named after the Black Panther Party's founder. Memphis Black Autonomy Federation In April 1977 Panthers were key supporters of the 504 Sit-Ins, the longest of which was the 25-day occupation of the San Francisco Federal Building by over 120 people with disabilities. Panthers provided daily home-cooked meals in support of the protest's eventual success, which eventually led to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) thirteen years later.[197] New Black Panther Party Main article: New Black Panther Party In 1989, a "New Black Panther Party" was formed in Dallas, Texas. Ten years later, the NBPP became home to many former Nation of Islam members when its chairmanship was taken by Khalid Abdul Muhammad. The Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center list the New Black Panthers as a black separatist hate group.[198] The Huey Newton Foundation, former chairman and co-founder Bobby Seale, and members of the original Black Panther Party have insisted that this New Black Panther Party is illegitimate and they have strongly objected to it, stating that there "is no new Black Panther Party".[199] The White Panthers were an anti-racist political collective founded in November 1968 by Pun Plamondon, Leni Sinclair, and John Sinclair.[1] It was started in response to an interview where Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, was asked what white people could do to support the Black Panthers. Newton replied that they could form a White Panther Party. The counterculture era group took the name and dedicated its energies to "cultural revolution". John Sinclair made every effort to ensure that the White Panthers were not mistaken for a white supremacist group, responding to such claims with "quite the contrary." The party worked with many ethnic minority rights groups in the Rainbow Coalition. Contents 1 Michigan years 2 Legal reforms 3 Portland 4 San Francisco 5 United Kingdom 6 White Panther Statement 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 External links Michigan years The group was most active in Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and included the proto-punk band MC5 which John Sinclair managed for several years before he was incarcerated. From a general ideological perspective, Plamondon and Sinclair[which?] defined the White Panthers as "fighting for a clean planet and the freeing of political prisoners." The White Panthers added other elements such as advocating "rock 'n roll, dope, sex in the streets and the abolishing of capitalism." Yippie co-founder Abbie Hoffman praised the WPP in Steal This Book and Woodstock Nation, and John Sinclair often referred to himself as a Yippie as well.[2][3] The group emerged from the Detroit Artists Workshop, a radical arts collective founded in 1964 near Wayne State University. Among its concerns was the legalization of marijuana; John Sinclair had several arrests for possession. It aligned itself with radical politics, claiming the 12th Street Riot was justifiable under political and economic conditions in Detroit. Plamondon was indicted with John Sinclair in connection to the bombing of a Central Intelligence Agency office in Ann Arbor on September 29, 1968,[4][5] a year after the founding of the group. Upon hearing on the left-wing alternative radio station WABX that he had been indicted, he fled the U.S. for Europe and Africa, spending time in Algeria with exiled Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver. After secretly re-entering the country, and on his way to a safe house in northern Michigan, he was arrested in a routine traffic stop, joining John Sinclair, who had been sentenced to nine and a half years in jail for violating Michigan's marijuana possession laws, in prison. Plamondon was convicted and was in prison when Sinclair was released on bond in 1971 while appeals were being heard on his case. Sinclair's unexpected release came two days after a large "Free John" benefit concert, with performances from John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Bob Seger, and Stevie Wonder, was held at the University of Michigan's Crisler Arena. Legal reforms The group had a direct role in two important legal decisions. A landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1972 quashed Plamondon's conviction and destroyed the case against John Sinclair. The court ruled warrantless wiretapping was unlawful under the U.S. Constitution, even in the case where national security, as defined by the executive branch, was in danger. The White Panthers had been charged with conspiring to destroy government property and evidence used to convict Plamondon was acquired through wiretaps not submitted to judicial approval. The case U.S. vs. U.S. District Court (Plamondon et al.), 407 U.S. 297, commonly known as the Keith Case, held that the Fourth Amendment shielded private speech from surveillance unless a warrant had been granted, and that the "warrant procedure would not frustrate the legitimate purposes of domestic security searches." The judgment freed Plamondon, yet John Sinclair was free only on bond fighting his possession conviction. In 1972, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled in the People v. Sinclair, 387 Mich. 91, 194 N.W.2d 878 (1972) that Michigan's classification of marijuana was unconstitutional, in effect decriminalizing possession until a new law conforming to the ruling was passed by the Michigan Legislature a week later. Sinclair was freed but the cumulative effects of the imprisonment had marked the end of the White Panther Party in Michigan, which renamed itself the Rainbow People's Party while John Sinclair and Plamondon were in prison. The Rainbow People's Party, headquartered in Ann Arbor, disbanded in 1973. Portland The headquarters of the White Panthers in Portland, Oregon were raided by the FBI on December 5, 1970. Two members of the group were arrested and accused of throwing a molotov cocktail through the window of a local Selective Service office. San Francisco White Panther Party[6][7][8] chapters[9] in San Francisco,[10][11][12][13] Marin[14][15] and Berkeley[16][17] remained active into the 1980s.[18][19] The WPP ran a successful 'Food Conspiracy'[11] that provided groceries to about 5,000 Bay Area residents at low cost, due to bulk buying and minimum markup.[20] The White Panther's People's Ballroom in the Park concerts in Golden Gate Park[21][22][23][24][25][26] In 1984, angry[27][28] because then-Mayor of San Francisco Dianne Feinstein proposed to ban handguns in the city, the San Francisco White Panthers mounted a successful petition drive that forced Feinstein[29][30] into a recall election,[31] which she won.[32] Within the next year, a WPP house in the Haight Ashbury district was burned down in the aftermath of a gun battle with San Francisco Police, and the leaders of the local chapter (Tom Stevens and Terry Phillips) had been jailed after their commune was raided without a warrant, effectively destroying the chapter.[citation needed] United Kingdom Author and anarchist Mick Farren, a leader of the United Kingdom Underground, later founded the White Panthers, UK. White Panther Statement In November 1968, Fifth Estate published the "White Panther State/meant". This manifesto, emulating the Black Panthers, ended with a ten-point program: We want freedom. We want the power for all people to determine our own destinies. We want justice. We want an immediate and total end to all cultural and political repression of the people by the vicious pig power structure and their mad dog lackies the police, courts and military. We want the end of all police and military violence against the people all over the world right now! We want a free world economy based on the free exchange of energy and materials and the end of money. We want free access to all information media and to all technology for all the people. We want a free educational system, utilizing the best procedures and machinery our modern technology can produce, that will teach each man, woman and child on earth exactly what each needs to know to survive and grow into his or her full human potential. We want to free all structures from corporate rule and turn the buildings over to the people at once! We want free time and space for all humans—dissolve all unnatural boundaries! We want the freedom of all prisoners held in federal, state, county or city jails and prisons since the so-called legal system in America makes it impossible for any man to obtain a fair and impartial trial by a jury of his peers. We want the freedom of all people who are held against their will in the conscripted armies of the oppressors throughout the world. We want free land, free food, free shelter, free clothing, free music, free medical care, free education, free media, EVERYTHING FREE FOR EVERYBODY![33] The ten-point program and "White Panther State/meant" were also published in the Ann Arbor Sun, which was a newspaper founded by John Sinclair in November 1968. The newspaper was originally called the Detroit Warren-Forrest Sun before it was changed to the Ann Arbor Sun when Trans-Love Energies moved to Ann Arbor in 1968.[34] The organization, founded by John Sinclair, his wife Leni Arndt Sinclair and artist Gary Grimshaw in 1967, set up shop at 1510 and 1520 Hill St, where the Ann Arbor Sun was produced and edited by the members of the group.[35] On July 28, 1969, the Ann Arbor Sun printed a revised copy of the White Panther's ten-point program.[33] The newspaper was considered to be the mouthpiece for the White Panther Party for quite some time before the newspaper transitioned to an independent publication spreading views on local issues, left-wing politics, music, and arts.[34] Finally in 1976, the publication of the Ann Arbor Sun was suspended indefinitely.

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