Original subtitles

There's an old story,

and it's used in various cultures, where

a group of blind men approach an elephant

and try to describe him.

The first man approaches the elephant, touches its side,

and says, it feels like a wall.

The next man touches a tusk and says,

the elephant must be like a spear.

Another blind man touches the trunk and says,

it feels like a snake.

And that is quite often what happens with our descriptions

of the Black Panther Party.

We know the party we were in and not the entire thing.

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

It wasn't easy.

It was complex.

From Chicago, Illinois, the mighty Chi-Lites.

For God's sake, you

got to give more power to the people.

There's some people up there hogging everything.

The thing that led to the Panthers

was what we were seeing on television every day...

attack dogs, fire hoses, bombings.

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

Now we have the emergence

of voices within the community that were saying,

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

You tell them white folk in Mississippi

that all the scared niggers are dead.

We want black power.

We want black power.

This was a revolutionary time.

50 countries in the world gained their independence

in the decade before the founding of the Black Panther

Party.

This was the time when people are getting drafted

to go and fight in Vietnam.

So if somebody's coming and saying well,

if you're going to fight, why not

fight right here in LA or Oakland, you know?

That made a lot of sense.

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

We couldn't unsee it.

I was a cocktail waitress in a white strip club

two years before I joined the Black Panther Party.

How did that happen?

The rage was in the streets.

It was everywhere.

We're not gonna get nothing.

Not by sitting around here and just doing

these sit-in demonstrations and nothing.

People are not going to do anything.

But how are we going to do it?

By violence.

Violence.

By uprising, having a revolution.

Just with blood, you know.

Let everybody bleed a little bit.

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Relations

between police and Negroes throughout the country

are getting worse.

One of the cities most troubled by animosity

between police and Negroes is Oakland, California.

People always talked about freedom and what that means

during that time period.

Being black in America meant that you didn't walk down

the street with the same sense of safety

and the same sense of privilege as a white person.

There was absolutely no difference

in the way the police treated us in Mississippi than they

did in California.

They may not have called you nigger everyday,

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

The police jump on you,

beat you up, put the gun at your head.

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

When I first met Huey and Bobby,

they were in the process of forming an organization

for primarily self-defense.

We didn't plan to have a nationwide organization

or anything like that.

We were organizing, dealing with the problems in Oakland.

We use the Black Panther as our symbol

because the nature of panther, panther doesn't strike anyone,

but when he's assailed upon that he'll back up first.

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

Huey had studied the law.

In Oakland at that particular time,

anyone could carry a firearm who did not have a felony

conviction at the time.

The firearm could not be concealed.

It had to be in the open.

The California Penal Code, section 12020 through 12027,

and also the Second Amendment of the Constitution,

guarantees the citizen a right to bear arms

on public property.

Huey said we're going to carry our guns

and we're going to follow the police.

And if they stop someone, we're going to stop.

We're going to maintain a legal distance

and we're going to observe the so-called law officers

in performance of their duties.

We were in the car and driving around,

having fun.

We would... we was looking at the pretty women

and chasing the sisters.

Then something might happen, and then all of a sudden the focus

would just become serious.

We're coming around the corner.

Stay facing where you are.

We would stop.

We would get out of the cars.

We would walk up to the scene.

Those who had rifles would carry them

in the open, clearly visible.

We would stand at a, a distance where

the police couldn't say that we were interfering

with their arrest or their detention of the individual

and, make sure that there was no brutality.

We stood back with our weapons, ready to throw down

if necessary.

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

and it would sweep... pass right over the officer.

No one would do anything

until a policeman ejected a round in the chamber.

Then we would all eject rounds in the chamber,

and all up and down the street you

could hear this clackity-clack, clack, clack, clack.

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

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

and get back in their car and drive off.

It was pretty intimidating.

We referred to ourselves as the vanguard,

and we were setting, by example, a new course that we wanted

the entire community to follow.

No one wants to touch the legitimate hunter,

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

When bands of armed people with loaded weapons

can move about our streets, intimidating and frightening

citizens, then I think we should act.

And we intend to act.

It's my intention to make it a misdemeanor to have, loaded

rifles and shotguns and weapons in public places.

The police department

had went to a local congressman to get a bill written.

So Huey called me up and says, we have to go to Sacramento.

It was conceived as a media event

that the press is always at the California state capitol.

No one really wanted Huey himself to go,

because Huey was kind of a quick-tempered firebrand.

Bobby was a little more cautious.

And it was like, look.

You know, you've been great so far,

but you might blow it up there, and bad things could happen.

We caravaned to Sacramento.

I think there were about 30 of us altogether, and most of us

had weapon.

We was on the state capitol on the lawn,

and Ronald Reagan... then the governor

of the state of California... was there about 10 feet away

from us holding a press conference

with these young, like, parochial school kids.

And what happened, as soon as the press seen us

they gravitated from Ronald Reagan

over to where the Panthers was.

The Black Panther Party for Self Defense

calls upon the American people in general,

and the black people in particular,

to take careful note of the racist California

legislature which is now considering legislation aimed

at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless

at the very same time racist police

agencies throughout the country are intensifying the terror,

brutality, murder, and repression of black people.

The state assembly was

in the midst of a heated debate when the young Negroes, armed

with loaded rifles, shotguns and pistols,

marched into the capital.

When we got in the halls, you have to imagine,

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

backing up.

And I'm saying, where is the spectator section?

And the press says this way, Bobby.

Some party members got ahead of me with shotguns, pistols

and wound up on the actual floor of the California State

legislature.

They're heavily armed.

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

The armed group, who said

they were members of the Black Panther Party,

retreated to a service station several blocks

from the capital.

I remember this one cop came down on a motorcycle,

and he's seen all these guns, and he

got on the... on the thing.

And that's when they started to swoop down

on us from everywhere.

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

You don't know the constitutional right?

Sure we do.

We're well aware of the constitutionality.

I would like to have my gun back.

Why do you believe the legislature is racist?

Because, you know, you're a part of it.

Isn't it obvious?

This is a white system.

The news got to everyone

in the black community who had a television, everyone

who had a radio.

It was in every newspaper across the nation.

It put us on center stage.

I don't think that loaded guns is the way

to solve a problem that should be solved

between people of good will.

And anyone who would approve of this kind of demonstration

must be out of their mind.

When I heard about Sacramento,

I was like, damn, these brothers are bad.

They're here up in Sacramento, in the capital, packing?

The boldness, the courageousness about it,

the arrogance of it... that put a whole new face on things.

I said man, I want to be part of this, whatever that is.

Yeah, I walked into the office

and told them I wanted to join the Black Panther Party,

and they kind of laughed.

I didn't know that there were any other women

in the party at that time.

But then I asked them, could I have a gun?

I was a student at Lincoln University

outside Philly when I first heard about the Black Panther

Party.

I found my friend, John Huggins, and I said,

we need to leave this stupid campus.

We have work to do.

We got in John Huggins' little hooptie car

and we drove across the country from New York,

and when we got to the west coast

we joined the Black Panther Party.

What we want, what we believe.

Point number one, we want freedom.

We want decent housing.

We want an an education for our people.

We want an immediate end

to police brutality.

People joined for all kinds of reasons,

but the Panthers have a 10 point platform or program that really

was sort of like the fundamental sort of organizing tool

and orientation tool.

The civil rights movement was basically

a southern movement.

So when you had an organization like the Panthers

who were taking on things like housing and welfare and health,

that was stuff that people in the north

could relate to and rally behind.

Our attack was not

only against white supremacy, but it was also

about capitalism.

We actually thought that the way in which capitalism created

a working class that was kept absolutely destitute...

was that was wrong.

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

that system had to be dismantled.

We could not be free in a system that had oppressed us

in the first place.

So you have to get rid of that system.

We were not after the church folks.

We were not after the Muslim folks.

We wanted the brother on the corner,

the brother who's getting his head banged in every weekend

by the police.

We wanted the brother who was going to jail... just

snatched out of this car for a traffic ticket

because he was black.

That's who we were after.

We get calls from Atlanta, Nashville,

Raleigh, North Carolina, from Washington, DC, Bridgeport,

Connecticut... every city, small or large, you could think

of wanted a chapter of the Black Panther Party.

We would send members of the organization

to help connect them to us.

But it was destabilizing in the sense

that it was somewhat chaotic, the way the party was growing.

And it was too fast and too big.

There was no screening process.

There was no, why are you here?

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

What are you trying to accomplish?

There was none of that.

Members came from whoever just came in off the street.

The downside, of course, was we had no idea who

any of these people were.

We didn't have time for a whole lot of, who are you?

What are you doing?

We need... you want to do this?

Fine.

Here.

Go.

This week on "Firing Line", my guest

is Mr. Eldridge Cleaver, the information minister

of the Black Panthers.

Eldridge Cleaver comes out with this book,

"Soul on Ice," a series of his essays from prison,

and the New York Times says that it's brilliant,

it gets on to the best seller list.

So when Eldridge joined the Panthers,

the Panthers had gotten themselves

a star, a literary star.

I've been called

by the National Review, the of the Black

Panther Party.

And all of this is an attempt to undermine the party

or to give it a bad presentation to the public.

Huey Newton always had this vision.

He was the visionary of the party.

Bobby Seale, he had the personality.

Eldridge Cleaver was the person who

made the party credible to black intellectuals,

to the white, left intellectuals.

You know, all of them loved Eldridge Cleaver.

They understood what he was talking about,

or at least they thought they did.

Eldridge had this incredible ability

to encapsulate a thought in a few sentences

and form it into an artistic statement that pointed right...

that stabbed right into the heart of the enemy,

and he did that all of the time.

Now, was he always correct?

No.

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

and I challenge him to a duel.

I challenge him.

I challenge him to a duel to the death or until he

says Uncle Eldridge.

Was he insane?

Fuck yeah.

That boy was crazy, and he got a lot of people hurt.

And I give him his choice of weapon.

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

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

That's how I feel about him, see?

Now see, they are not going

to be able to control Eldridge.

Eldridge was a Rottweiler, uncontrollable personality.

Who could be in an organization with Eldridge

and he not be the leader?

Nobody.

And that's basically how it ended up.

A pool of blood marks

the spot where 23-year-old officer John Frey was found

fatally wounded from four gunshots.

The shooting happened at 5:00 AM,

approximately where I'm standing, on 7th Street

in the heart of Oakland's Negro ghetto.

The suspect, charged with murder and attempted murder,

is Huey Newton, 25-year-old leader of the Black

Panthers for Self Defense.

Newton is hospitalized in serious condition

and under heavy guard.

We went up to Highland Hospital and it

looked like every police in America was there.

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

We didn't sleep that night.

Nobody slept that night, I don't think.

As he was handcuffed

to a gurney going into surgery, he was arrested for murder

and expected to face execution.

A lot of the other Panthers were

in jail because of the protests that they'd done in Sacramento,

so Eldridge was the only available spokesperson

for the Black Panther Party.

The Black Panther Party

demands that Huey P. Newton be set free,

and we wish to make it very clear

that if he is not set free, there

is little hope of avoiding open, armed war

on the streets of California and sweeping across this nation.

We said, well, Huey's in jail.

He's facing the death penalty.

What can we do?

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

Eventually it got shortened to free Huey.

Black is beautiful.

Free Huey!

Set our warrior free.

Free Huey!

Black is beautiful.

Free Huey!

Set our warrior free.

Free Huey!

It became a huge movement.

Free Huey!

Black is beautiful.

Free Huey!

Set our warrior free.

Free Huey!

Black is beautiful.

Free Huey!

Set our warrior free.

Free Huey!

Today there

were a number of free Huey Newton rallies

across the nation.

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

All you had to be was a human being.

People of all kinds took up that cry, Free Huey.

The Examiner made a report back here

in the last Sunday's paper that we were anti-white,

that we hold no bones... this is a quote... hold

no, pick no bones about being anti-white.

This is a bold faced lie.

We don't hate nobody because of their color.

We hate oppression.

We hate murder of black people in our communities.

The people just turned out.

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

they wanted us to come speak.

It was this gathering of connection

to the Black Panthers that was different to before.

We've got to free Huey.

We've got to free Huey.

We've got to free Huey.

We've got to free Huey.

Everybody!

We've got to free Huey.

We've got to free Huey.

We were a phenomenon... the way

that we walked and talked and dressed.

We had swagger.

It was a rhythm.

It was a rhythm to how we spoke.

It was a rhythm to how we walked,

and the people recognized it.

We stood out.

Outside of that, on the street, they'd... ooh that's a butt ugly

person.

Ooh, they ugly.

But in the Party it was just something that gave them

this tremendous sex appeal.

The Panthers didn't invent the idea of black

is beautiful.

People had started wearing afros and dashikis...

but one of the things the Panthers did

was that urban black is beautiful,

and that look just blew people away.

If you were a young black man living in the city

anywhere, you wanted to be like this.

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

you wanted to talk like this.

You wanted to be this.

It's a standard of aggressiveness, of militance,

of just forcefulness that's the sort of standard we

haven't had in the past.

But figuratively speaking, you're

not about to become a Panther.

No.

Not today or tomorrow, at any rate.

Maybe the day after.

This brother here, myself, all of us

were born with our hair like this,

and we just wear it like this.

The reason for it, you might say,

is like a new awareness among black people

that their own natural appearance...

physical appearance, is beautiful.

Black people are aware now.

They're proud of it.

It's pleasing to them.

Dig it?

Isn't it beautiful?

All right.

You're

talking about people who are teenagers... 17, 18, 19,

20... that's the bulk of the Panthers are teenagers.

So the fact that we were so young

and the fact that this hadn't happened before... I'm

not certain that we recognized how startling it

looked to other people.

Dear Mr. Newton,

I'm a 13-year-old black girl and I want to be a Black Panther.

I wish you would fill me in.

Does it matter what your religion is?

What are some qualifications to be a Black Panther?

PS... write me back personally.

I was taught

to be proper... behave yourself.

You're going out in public, to always know

that the white man was listening.

With the Black Panthers coming to the scene,

it was just a completely different message.

As a 12-year-old, you know... what?

You had this whole other portrayal of self,

and just digging it.

Photographers took advantage.

I mean, they took our pictures.

They put them on newspapers.

They put them on magazines.

And that look that we projected... you know,

the big Afro, the leather jacket,

the shades... that became a hit.

And obviously, photographers were drawn to the Panthers.

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

Black Panthers.

Black Panthers.

The Black Panthers.

The Black Panthers were absolutely unique.

The Black Panthers.

The Black Panthers.

Black Panthers.

The Black Panther Party.

Black Panther movement.

Black Panther Party.

Black Panthers.

I think the Black Panthers really understood the media.

They knew what we were after.

They knew what we were focusing on.

The Panthers has amounted to...

The Black Panther Party.

Many people know of the Panthers.

You might say that we exploited the Black

Panthers.

But I think there's a lot of evidence

that they used us to their advantage.

They were able to establish their legitimacy

as a voice of protest.

The Chairman of the Black Panther Party.

And here he is.

We have a film of your breakfast program.

Is this without sound also?

Yeah.

I think so.

All right.

Would you... would you comment on this?

Yes.

Yeah, this

is a free breakfast for children program,

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

It's about two hours work in the morning.

These party members primarily set this whole program up,

and then we get involved as many of the community people

as we can.

Who all wants tea?

Put more tea in, little brother.

Come on it, little sister.

Y'all can sit down and get something to eat.

Studies came out saying

that children that didn't have a good breakfast in the morning

were less attentive at school and less inclined to do well

and suffered from fatigue.

I mean, there was all sorts of scientific reasons

to have a good breakfast in the morning.

And we just simply took that information,

and a program was developed serving breakfast to children.

After my father came home from Vietnam

and was discharged from the army and couldn't get work,

we were going through a very hard time.

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

were hard.

I was embarrassed to go, but when you went,

you know, kids are all laughing, and then all of a sudden

the stigma... or whatever you thought

was the stigma... went away, and you really

got to see that yes, this is what the Black Panthers are.

We were showing love for our people.

You know, if you have a child, if you'd know that hey,

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

that's a big deal.

The breakfast program actually really caught

on.

It served about 20,000 meals a week

to young people in 19 different communities.

So it wasn't a fly by night thing.

It really, actually was making a difference.

Just at the moment that the Panthers are turning

toward survival programs... towards free breakfast

programs, free clinics, and free food programs that

will help them reconnect with the black community

and build their membership, and repudiating this earlier

advocacy of armed self defense and police patrols...

J Edgar Hoover attacks the Panthers.

Hoover saw any form of black organizing as a threat

to the status quo as he saw it.

Change that would have involved equality,

that would have put power in black people's hands,

was very much a threat to Hoover.

He started something called COINTELPRO,

directed against what he called black nationalist hate groups.

COINTELPRO was the abbreviation of Counter

Intelligence Program.

The purpose of this new

counterintelligence endeavour is to expose, disrupt, misdirect,

discredit or otherwise neutralize the activities

of black nationalists.

Neutralize could

mean making somebody an informant

or putting somebody in jail or having somebody killed.

Hoover was sending letters to various offices

almost on a weekly basis to come up with new ideas

to go after members of the Black Panther Party.

245 of the 290 COINTELPRO actions

were against the Black Panthers.

One of the mandates was do not make this program public.

Do not tell anybody that it exists.

FBI has a memo that states

the objectives of counterintelligence operations.

One is to prevent the rise of what

they call the black messiah... a single charismatic leader that

could unify the movement.

They want to prevent the appeal of radical political movement

to black youth, and they wanted to isolate

these groups to prevent them from gaining respectability

in the black community.

And they were very explicit in stating these goals.

We were followed every day.

We were harassed.

Our phones were tapped.

Our families were harassed.

My parents were both visited by the FBI.

We must create suspicion

with respect to their respective spouses,

and your imagination and resourcefulness

must be employed in order for the Bureau to be successful.

They would send letters to my wife,

and the letters would say that Landon

is sleeping with this woman or sleeping with that woman

or sleeping with the other women.

Then when I got arrested, the FBI came to me and said,

ha, look.

We've got all this evidence.

All these people are gonna flip and turn on you.

We're gonna execute you, because we got you now.

We're going to execute you.

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

My recruitment by the FBI

was very efficient... very simple, really.

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

and they had a potential case against me,

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

And a couple of months later that opportunity

came when the FBI agent Roy Mitchell asked me to,

go down to the local office of the Black Panther Party

and try to, gain membership.

The FBI wanted to destroy the Panthers.

They absolutely saw the Panthers as the vanguard

of a very, very threatening and violent revolutionary movement.

They absolutely wanted this organization to be destroyed.

The FBI was coming around my mother-in-law and my wife,

and for me to stop that kind of activity,

I stopped going home, and a lot of other people

did also, to protect their families.

You could kind of in a sense say that we abandoned our families

for the Panther Party.

You might have a three bedroom apartment

that might have 10 Panthers staying there and sharing

bedrooms.

The living room was basically also a bedroom.

We called them Panther pads.

Somebody would be on 24 hour security.

Somebody was responsible for cleaning the place.

Often it was a rotating list of responsibilities.

It was a sense of community that we created.

The rank and file was the every day members

that did the daily work of the Party.

They the ones that made the Party,

the back breakers, the ones you put all the work on.

Panthers realized we have to live together

to protect one another, and we have

to also be committed to this thing, to this cause,

to this movement, 24 hours a day.

The rank and file...

whatever orders that came down from our captains

and lieutenants, we did that, because that spirit was

in us to stay in this movement to our death,

or if it meant going to jail.

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

I was in labor, cooking breakfast

for the breakfast program.

So I was between contractions flipping pancakes.

I would spend all the day

answering the phones, even after I had my son, when I came back

to work.

I used to have to jump him up and down really heavy,

because it just wouldn't stop crying

as I'm answering the phone.

You name it.

I cleaned freezers with a toothpick.

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

Party national headquarters.

Black Panther Party central headquarters.

Can I help you?

Dear Huey, when

I joined the party I was thrilled about becoming part

of an organization that believes in the quality of men

and women.

It bothers me that there are brothers who still view women

as sexual objects.

We should have no men in the Black Panther Party

who feel this way... or women, for that matter.

One of the ironies of the Black Panther

Party is that the image is the black male with the jacket

and the gun, but the reality is the majority of the rank

and file at, by the end of the '60s are women.

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

all the people don't have freedom,

all the people don't have justice,

and all the people don't have power, so that means none of us

do.

The Black Panther Party certainly

had a chauvinist tone, and so we tried

to change some of the clear gender roles

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

Did we overcome it?

Of course we didn't.

As I like to say, we didn't get these brothers

from revolutionary heaven.

"Black Panther Newspaper"?

Panther paper!

The paper was the lifeblood of the Party.

That's why we survived.

We sold the papers at $0.25 back then.

It cost maybe $0.12 to print it.

The other 12 and 1/2 cent went to the various chapters

and branches.

That's how we basically survived.

The Party paper went

places Party members would never get to go to, and be reaching

people we would never see.

But the paper get there some kind of way or other.

So it was very important to get the paper out.

Los Angeles, 2,850.

New Haven, 3,000.

When we were loading boxes or bundling

papers or whatever we were doing,

we did it in an assembly line fashion,

and we would just start singing, you know it.

Ain't no mountain high enough.

Ain't no valley low enough to keep me

from getting this paper to you... or whatever we would do.

We would change the lyric just a little bit.

You know... It's your thing.

Do what you want to do.

Why do you keep tell me what the... and then

we'd say what to do.

Panther paper!

This man needs some help with human beings.

In the paper everything came together.

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

You know, it was the first thing you

see when you open up the paper.

We want an end to the robbery by the white man

of our black community.

That's what we talking about, like number 3.

Number 4, we want decent housing fit to shelter human beings.

You dig?

I can dig that.

And it explained who we were and what... what we were about,

what our goals were.

Tell me, ma'am.

Do you read the Black Panther Party newspaper?

Yes I do.

Why?

Because I'm black and I'm proud.

What do you like best about the paper?

Because they're a proud people and I love them.

For me there was only one reason

to read the Panther newspaper, and that was

to see Emory's illustrations.

His paintings, his caricatures, his illustrations

literally gave us the story.

Well to me, you would respond to the artwork

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

because you were putting them on the stage as the characters

and the heroes in the images.

They could see their brother, or they could see their uncle

in the images.

Through the breakfast programs, through the other programs

that we had, the health clinics, people

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

or they need child care... that teardrop symbolized that pain

that I observed.

Even through their pain there was

this strength and determination and conviction

to still battle on.

So we're trying to put that into the artwork itself.

Emory was our social realism.

He gave you a sense of bravery, resilience, courage,

and most of all, beauty.

That was what I loved about Emory.

It was Huey and Bobby's idea to draw a pig drawing that

would symbolize the police.

So the first pig I did was one on the four hoofs.

It just came to me one night, why don't I

stand it up on two hoofs?

I'll put a bandolier... a gun bandolier

on with the holster and a badge and the flies around it,

and that became the symbol... icon of the pig.

It took on a life of its own.

Revolution has come.

Off the pigs!

Time to pick up the guns.

Off the pigs!

That rhetoric didn't bother us when

it was spoken by the Panthers.

Power to the people.

Off the pigs!

Power to the people.

Off the pigs!

But when it was picked up by college students,

them saying it, that definitely bothered us.

Power to the people Off the pigs!

Power to the people.

Off the pigs!

I was a sergeant patrolling in the projects,

and there was the cutest little girl.

So I stopped to say hello, and I said hi, honey.

How are you doing today.

And she looked at me and she said, fuck you, pig.

And I thought, we have lost it, man.

We have flat lost it.

Anybody that criticized

the police, especially that didn't have fear of saying it,

probably made the police angry.

It was us against them.

That became the theme.

We have seen the pig on the scene.

We know what he's like.

We know what he's capable of... just being a damn pig,

oinking and beating and walking the street.

The police must be brought under control

by any means necessary, including

through force of arms.

These racist, gestapo pigs have to stop

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

we're going to drive them out.

That tendency to keep

escalating the rhetoric... that was

a major part of the growth of the party,

but it was also a destructive force,

because you were always upping the ante.

I say guns, pick up the guns,

pick up the guns and put the pigs on the run.

Pick up the guns.

Boom, boom,

It brought all the repression down on them

before they were prepared to handle it.

I just want to deal with black, and black liberation.

My sin is picking up my damn gun...

and I'm a mother... having my baby

in one hand, my gun in the other,

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

The voice that called

for justice and brotherhood has been stilled.

Men of all races now must join together in this hour

to deny violence its victory and to fulfill

the vision of brotherhood.

The effect of the death of Martin Luther

King on the Panthers was overwhelming in the sense

that once King was assassinated, and the way

he was assassinated so publicly, it shattered many, many people.

They'd killed their last chance for me

to be peaceful with them.

They'd killed their last chance for negotiation.

They killed the man who walked through hell

to try to get along with you, and you kill him?

That was our champion.

You killed whatever hope I had in you,

and I have no more use for you... none.

I believe that there

was a decision made that some response on the part

of the Black Panther Party has to be

made to what happened to King.

Eldridge Cleaver was

worried that if the Panthers didn't take decisive action

they would cease to be the vanguard.

So we had this idea of actually actively attacking the police.

He goes and he approaches members of the Party

in Oakland, and all of the older people refused to participate.

They knew that this would be suicide.

But the youngest member of the party, little Bobby Hutton,

decides to follow Eldridge into battle.

Little Bobby called me... Big Man,

I need a weapon.

I gave him a Winchester 12-gauge pump shotgun that I had,

and I told him, well, be careful out there, you know.

Watch yourself.

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

And then first thing in the morning, I,

have the radio on.

The Oakland police stated

that they were fired upon during a routine investigation

into a suspicious person, and after a short search cornered

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

A tear gas canister blew up,

and the basement they were hiding in caught on fire.

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

They would rather surrender.

Eldridge told Bobby Hutton to take off all your clothes

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

When you surrender, take off everything.

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

and he kept on his pants.

Bobby Hutton came out with his hands

in the air... first member who walked out of the house

and was gunned down.

My heart sank.

He was only 17 years old, and one of the first people

to get killed in the party, and so young.

In essence, I felt that I went out and got

my little brother killed.

What if I'd not given him the weapon?

Those are some of the demons that, were in my closet.

Shot down like a common animal, he died a warrior

for black liberation.

In the name of brotherhood and survival, remember Bobby.

That could have been my son lying there,

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

I'm going to start right now to inform white people of what

they don't know.

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

because this was the first time that this had ever happened.

There had been no Panther murdered by police.

We want non-violence,

just like Martin Luther King... but non-violence on the part

of who?

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

We must defend ourselves, as Malcolm X said,

by any means necessary.

After the loss of Bobby Hutton,

Eldridge was ordered to surrender to San Francisco

police to go back to prison, but on November 28, 1968,

he didn't turn himself in, and he was not to be found.

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

No.

When was the last time you saw him?

Sunday night.

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

Do you think this is possible?

No, I don't think so.

And so the mystery remains...

where is Eldridge Cleaver?

It's entirely possible that his wife and lawyer really

do not know.

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

He had gone to Algeria.

There's nothing the United States government

can do to us in Algeria.

They don't have diplomatic relations with Algeria.

We could function openly, politically, in Algeria,

so we opened our international section of the Black Panther

Party.

The Black Panthers

were welcomed by all sorts of liberation movements.

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

gave their old embassy to the Panthers.

And the Black Panthers, of course,

loved being accepted like this.

In Eldridge Cleaver's successful attempt

to establish an international wing,

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

Malcolm X and other black nationalists

had talked about forging those types of alliances.

The Panthers actually did it.

We wish you victory in your struggle.

Thank you.

And we hope to receive you

in liberated Saigon.

And tell them that I hope to receive them in Washington, DC.

At that time America

was being demonized considerably because of the war in Vietnam.

So here we are, black Americans who are opposed to all of this.

We're the counter to the United States.

We were able to connect with North Koreans,

with Vietnamese, with the Chinese,

and with also many African liberation movements.

And many people came to see us there.

We came over here

to do what we can to communicate to you

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

I think a lot of what draws these groups together

is a kind of anti-American sentiment.

If you want to really shake the American establishment,

you want them to think that they are in danger,

that a revolutionary new world is on its way.

The Panthers are certainly the people

you're going to support.

Since the United States of America

is the backbone of oppression in the world,

the blows that we strike against the empire there will also

aid the liberation struggles in Africa, Asia, and Latin

America as we aid ourselves.

Face the Nation... a spontaneous and unrehearsed

news interview with the chief of staff of the Black Panther

Party, David Hilliard.

Your minister of information is now

in exile... Eldridge Cleaver.

You speak with him often on the phone.

Is that correct?

Well, you know I do.

They tap the phones.

The phone is probably hooked up through the White House.

The leaders of the party, its national leadership,

sits with David Hilliard.

Bobby Seale is in and out of prison,

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

and Eldridge Cleaver is in Algeria.

David was someone who was considered

a... you can say he was a sound storekeeper.

He kept the shop in order.

Richard Nixon is the chief spokesman

of the American people, and if the man is not

responsible for the people in government

like the FBI agencies or the local police,

then he should stand up and, let the American people know

that they do not endorse the kind of campaigns that's been

waged against black America.

Nixon is elected with a sense of a mandate

to crack down, and he feels that it

is his personal charge after the '68 election to repress.

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

no one is above the law, no one is below the law,

and we're going to enforce the law.

And Americans should remember that if we're

going to have law and order.

The Nixon administration

gives J. Edgar Hoover even more of a sense that he can

repress without restriction.

Do you feel the nation is in trouble?

I think very definitely it is.

But what is the answer?

The answer is vigorous law enforcement.

That's the only answer.

That's the only answer.

How about justice?

You hear a lot about justice with law enforcement.

Justice is merely incidental to law and order.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover today

asserted that the Black Panthers represent the greatest

internal threat to the nation.

Hoover said the Panthers have perpetrated numerous assaults

on police and have engaged in violent confrontations

throughout the country.

When Hoover identified the Black Panther

Party as the number one threat to the national security

of the United States at a time when

they're fighting in Vietnam, you know, of course that was crazy.

But it was politically very effective,

and it says to law enforcement at the local level,

we can take the gloves off now.

We don't have to respect the civil liberties

and we can go after them with everything we got.

One of the executive orders of the Panther

Party was that we was to defend ourselves

from unwanted attacks, and not allow the police

to just forcibly come in.

If the tear gas is thrown, here's

your water and your eye mask.

Keep this on you.

OK.

Nobody's coming in the front door... nobody.

No gas.

Nobody gets on the roof,.

Well, I just wish they would come tonight.

Yeah, well, I want them to come.

The Panthers were a criminal organization,

were violent, and they wanted to kill cops.

That's all I needed to know.

About 40 policemen arrived on the scene

and began surrounding the Black Panther headquarters.

They were trying to change government as we know it

to terrorist activity.

We took a very proactive stance in combating what we considered

a terrorist organization.

I think the FBI manipulated the police,

and the FBI arranged for the Black Panthers

to get guns through informants.

They would convince the police that the Panthers had weapons.

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

so the police went in and shot at them first.

You'd hear about raids taking place

against Black Panther offices.

They were coming to kill us.

Police say there

was sniper fire throughout the early morning hours,

so they moved in cautiously and then began shooting.

The Black Panther police shootout

lasted 30 minutes.

It was obvious that the government

had made a decision that this was all-out attack on the Black

Panther Party.

Every significant office is going to be raided.

It's going to be bombed.

It's going to be shot.

They're going to be mass arrests.

In the pre-dawn hours in Chicago

today, police and Negroes fought a...

Police and Black Panthers clash

in Houston, New Orleans, and other cities.

For the Black Panther Party it was a crisis situation,

because we didn't have the resources to handle

all these arrests and all these trials.

Contributions to Panther Defense Fund?

Contributions to the Panther Defense Fund?

They're trying to either wipe out the Panther Party

by jailing all the members and wiping them out economically,

financially, or violently, through killing them.

After all, they're just... they're just Negroes, you know.

In other cities the Panthers were under physical attack

from police departments.

But New York City, it was going to handle its Panther problem

differently.

They created a conspiracy case that

allowed them to arrest the entire leadership of the New

York City Black Panther Party.

A New York grand jury has indicted 21 alleged Black

Panthers on charges of plotting several bombings in the city

tomorrow.

On April 2, 1969,

in, pre-dawn raids, 21 Black Panthers

were charged with all kinds of terrorist activity.

These are some of the men the police are accusing

of being involved in the plot, which

could have wounded or killed scores of busy New Yorkers.

12 men were arrested today, two are already in jail,

and seven more are still at large.

And so the Panther 21 started.

I had just turned 16 years old,

but I had already become a section leader.

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

at 4 o'clock in the morning, I thought wow,

I'm important enough to be arrested.

I'm a real Panther now.

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

This

was the most important place in the nation

at that time for the Party.

It was spreading all over the east coast...

from New Haven, Baltimore, everywhere, it was spreading.

This group, 21 people, was the leadership

of the New York area, all tied up in court with $100,000 bails

which none of them could make.

We were facing 360 plus years in prison,

and I began to feel and accept the fact

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

The Black Panther Party

is riddled with informers who are

intent on creating situations in order

to bring forth such indictments in an attempt to destroy...

Are you saying that they try to frame them?

No question about it.

I mean, I told the jury that maybe the police

started the Party.

People who've come back to New York

are going to work full time until the Panther 21

and the people accused are allowed to get a fair trial.

We spent a lot of time building awareness

and doing fundraisers.

And then we had to have high profile fundraisers,

because this kind of money that we needed

couldn't come from the black community.

We would wind up doing fundraisers

at places like Jane Fonda's townhouse

so that we could raise money for the Legal Defense Fund.

We'd all be in our leather jackets.

We all would have our berets.

Some of us would be packing.

Some of us wouldn't.

The only people that would speak would be the two people

that was designated to speak.

They would speak.

The rest of us would just line the walls, fold our arms,

and look like Black Panthers... like, you know,

we was ready to kill somebody.

And them stars, they loved that shit.

They just ate that shit up, you know.

After a 13-month trial

where New York state spent millions of dollars

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

a jury deliberated for three hours.

The jury have considered all the counts

and charges against the defendants

and have found them not guilty.

There were 156 not guilty verdicts.

It was astonishing.

Courtroom erupted.

The city erupted.

There were people dancing in the streets as word spread.

Come on over.

Jury, defendants, everybody, we're all here... 640 Broadway.

Most of the defendants have been in jail

for more than two years, unable to raise

the high bail set for them.

The trial lasted eight months.

The jury reached its verdict

of innocent on all counts in less than four hours,

concluding the longest criminal proceeding in New York state

history.

What it was on the part of the jury to me...

I don't know how each individual juror feels... but together they

have rejected, once and for all, a society which

refuses to allow change.

They said, you must allow people to get together and think

about changing life and the way they live.

And it's a beautiful victory.

Even as the New York 21 are being acquitted,

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

all over the country.

Some of them result in acquittals, some of them

result in convictions, but this really

consumes most of the Party's energy.

People were afraid to join.

They knew that it was infiltrated.

They knew that they would be watched immediately.

They were afraid of being prosecuted unjustly.

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

I was part of planning

a demonstration against Vietnam at the 1968

Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Bobby Seale was invited to speak.

The revolution in this country at the time

is in fact people coming forth to demand freedom.

He then left and didn't have anything

to do with the demonstrations or riots or confrontations

in Chicago, but he was arrested on the advice of the FBI,

and he was later indicted for that speech.

Bobby Seale asked to have

his... to postpone the trial until his lawyer, Charles Gary,

could come to Chicago.

The judge refused, and then Bobby said well,

I'll represent myself.

It started when Seale demanded

to cross examine a prosecution witness,

accusing the judge of denying his constitutional rights

to defend himself.

The judge ordered him to sit down and be quiet,

but the fiery Black Panther leader continued to cry out.

The judge told the marshals to hold him down,

and that started several days of insanity.

This stuff is a lie.

We have a right to.

I'll represent myeslf.

He kept insisting on his right to represent himself,

and the judge's response to that was

to order the bailiffs to put gaffer tape over his mouth

and tie him to his chair.

I mean, it couldn't have been more definitive if they had

put a sign on him saying slave.

You know.

But it turned out Bobby could make noise and say

things through the gag.

Stop the trial.

Stop the trial.

Stop the trial.

Stop the trial.

Stop the trial.

Stop the trial.

Stop the trial.

Stop the trial.

Stop the trial.

One of the most amazing phenomena of that time

was outside the federal court building there was a plaza.

It was right in the heart of town,

right in the middle of the loop.

And these kids were coming down from the courtroom, and they...

with fire in their eyes, having just

seen that madness up there.

And all of a sudden, one day this black orator...

who at that time was 20 years old...

starts talking to these people, and all of a sudden

it's like a magnet.

The deputy chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party,

Fred Hampton.

And I just want to tell you that the chairman of the Black

Panther Party is going to be ungagged

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

Bobby Seale's going through all types

of physical and mental torture, but that's all right,

because we said even before this happened and we're

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

and after everyone's locked up, that you

can jail a revolutionary, but you can't jail a revolution.

Right.

You may run a liberator like Eldridge out the country,

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

You might murder a freedom fighter like Bobby Hutton,

but you can't murder freedom fighting.

Whatever It was, Fred had it.

When he got up in front of a group of people,

the words just flowed.

You were awash in the words, OK?

It was like that.

And I don't care how many people were there... it's

like he was talking to you.

That's a dangerous person.

He wasn't above us.

He was one of us.

I'm the deputy chairman of the State of Illinois Black Panther

Party, Fred Hampton.

By the time he was 17,

he was the head of the NAACP youth branch.

He was already experienced by the time the Illinois

chapter of the Panther Party was formed,

so he was a natural choice to lead it.

We say all power to all people.

Fred spoke in the People's Church

in August of 1969, and I was in the crowd.

Toward the end of his speech, he said, everybody stand up,

and we did.

And he says, now raise your right hand.

Say this... I am a revolutionary.

I am a revolutionary.

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

I'm a lawyer for the movement.

I'm not a revolutionary.

And then he said it again... I am a revolutionary.

And by the third or fourth time, I

was saying a revolutionary as loud

as anybody else in the room.

We say white power to white people.

White power to white people.

Brown power to brown people.

Brown power to brown people.

Yellow power to yellow people.

Yellow power to yellow people.

Black power to black people.

Black power to black people.

We say Panther power to defend our Party.

A lot of us thought

that we were on the eve of a revolutionary situation

here in the United States.

We used to call, the Panther Party

the vanguard of the movement, because they were out

in the forefront.

They were kind of setting the pathway.

The things that that we would

face some repression for, they would face it

10 times as great.

They were, sacrificing their... oftentimes

their lives in the struggle.

And these people, this class

have divided themselves.

They say I'm black and I hate white people.

I'm white and I hate black people.

I'm Latin American and I hate hillbillies.

I'm a hillbilly and I hate Indians.

So we're fighting amongst each other.

Fred Hampton, here in Chicago,

was the main voice for racial unity.

The Black Panther Party

stood up and said that we don't care what anybody said.

We don't need to fight fire with fire.

Yes, we better fight fire with water.

Yes, we're going to fight racisim not with racism,

but we're going to fight with solidarity.

We worked with organizations such as the Young Lords...

a Puerto Rican street gang that had become political...

and the Young Patriots, hillbillies,

Appalachian white boys.

Bob Lee, who was our deputy field marshal,

had a meeting with them, and he was explaining

why we should work together.

The coalition that Fred

was building in Chicago represented

the Latinos, the poor whites and poor blacks.

But also, because he had been in the NAACP,

he had linkages with folks who in the congregations, or church

folks, and with working class folks.

So Fred was building a broad-based coalition

in Chicago, and that was the threat.

J. Edgar Hoover most feared young whites uniting

with the blacks' struggle.

And he was most afraid of, what

he called a black messiah, rising up out of this movement.

Fred Hampton was very good at running

an organization.

He could delegate responsibility.

He could spot talent.

The one thing that he failed to spot,

however, was the FBI plant... who was, of course,

his personal bodyguard.

I routinely supplied

whatever floor plans or diagrams I could, to the FBI.

I... that started in June, 1969.

I mean, they had a floor plan and keys to the Black Panther

headquarters.

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

on the west side of Chicago.

And it was one of those rallies where Fred

gave one of those speeches.

I don't believe I'm

going to die in a car wreck.

I don't believe I'm going to die from slipping

on a piece of ice.

I don't believe that I'm going to die

because I've got a bad heart.

Why don't you heal for the people?

Why don't you struggle for the people?

Why don't you die for the people?

Close to 12 midnight, William O'Neal

came and picked me up and brought me back

to our apartment.

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

so he fell asleep.

I was 8 and 1/2 months pregnant with our son,

so I fell asleep too.

Police attached to the Cook County State's

Attorney's office raided a Chicago apartment

shared by two high ranking members of the Black Panther

Party before dawn today.

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

was in the apartment.

The state's attorney recreated

the layout of the Panther apartment

and, made arrangements for them

to produce his version of what happened.

He stands up.

I stepped over and I put the machine...

In short bursts.

We realized that there are still some people remaining...

And before I could get past the threshold,

there were three shots fired from the rear bedroom.

The immediate, violent, criminal reaction

of the occupants in shooting at announced police officers

emphasizes the extreme viciousness

of the Black Panther Party.

So does their refusal to cease firing at the police officers

when urged to do so several times.

When the 15-minute gun battle was over,

two Black Panthers were dead.

Police and Panthers differ about what happened.

In the apartment, we received no warning,

no tear gas... nothing to offer us to surrender or come out.

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

Saw bullets coming, I mean, looked

like the front of the apartment, from the kitchen area.

They were... the police were just shooting.

This cop stepped to the door with a sub-machine gun

and you could see was a silhouette.

And the muzzle flash as he fired, you know,

a fully automatic weapon into, a room

that was barely six feet wide.

I laid on top of Chairman Fred,

and I could feel even through him the mattress vibrating.

You could feel the bullets gong into you.

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

Cop stepped back in and, fired off another round, hit me

in the hips.

Everything was like this, it was just going so fast.

We told them we were wounded, and they said

come out with your hands up.

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

what do you?

We got a broad here.

And then another one grabbed my hair

and slung me into the kitchen area.

I heard a voice say, he's barely alive.

He's... he'll barely make it.

They started shooting again.

I heard a sister scream and they stopped shooting.

Police said he's good and dead now.

The police made what must be a historic type of blunder

in leaving the apartment open.

So right away people went in there.

I stepped into the living room and there

was blood, Fred's blood, pouring from... all the way

from the bedroom in the very back of house,

out into... from the kitchen into the living room.

It was like a slaughterhouse

and there was blood all over the place.

When we lifted the mattress up to look underneath,

three 45-caliber machine gun slugs fell out of the mattress.

Only one shot came from a Panther weapon,

because Mark Clark, a young kid who

answered the door was shot in the heart

as he answered the door and the gun

dropped and went off through the ceiling.

All of the splinters were coming into the apartment.

So we said, this was a shoot-in.

It wasn't a shootout.

There's gas that the police department

uses as standard equipment that nobody can stand

to stay in the room with it.

They could have shot four canisters of gas

and then waited outside for everybody to come out.

Then this was, this was planned?

This was a plan to get Fred Hampton?

All indications to me personally

that this was, obviously a political assassination.

I don't think anybody would have expected the police

to commit just murder.

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

They lied about what happened that night.

Much of what they said happened couldn't

have happened the way they say that it happened.

Today many blacks came to the house

where Fred Hampton was killed to see for themselves.

Don't touch nothing.

Don't move nothing because we want to keep everything

just the way it is.

They fired through the door and hit the brother

through the door.

The brother was shot four or five times,

though after they came through the door,

they shot him again to make sure he was dead.

This is where our chairman had his brains blown out as he,

laying in bed sleeping at 4:30 in the morning.

I do not intend to quibble about that account.

Do you know that it's the truth?

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

It was a death squad that did this raid.

It was a police death squad, and the whole thing

was set up by the FBI.

The FBI gave William O'Neal a $300 bonus

because of his information being so valuable and not available

for any other source.

Internally, the FBI was bragging and taking credit for the raid.

Publicly they were denying any knowledge or participation.

The funeral of the slain Panther leader

was marked by angry eulogies, including

one from Ralph Abernathy, head of the non-violent Southern

Christian Leadership Conference.

Enjoy your peace, Freddie, because there

will be no peace in this land until freedom comes to all.

We are going to trample these streets with our feet.

The last message that I think that Fred would've,

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

I am.

A revolutionary.

A revolutionary.

I am.

I am a revolutionary.

I am a revolutionary.

I am...

We didn't know when it was going to happen,

but we felt there was something about to happen.

We were filling up sandbags, fortifying the headquarters,

putting sand in the walls, putting sandbags

around the entrance to the office.

Well, we were actually trying to build a tunnel to the sewer

line.

If the police attacked us, we were

going to escape into the sewers, and you know,

we were going to set charges on the building

and blow the building after we left.

It seemed like it was more... it was more,

police presence around.

We were getting stopped more.

We were getting harassed more.

I think they found out

that it was a different climate for them here.

We'd stop them, we'd search them, we'd shake them down.

And I think we did establish that we

were the dominating force.

The Special Weapons and Tactics concept

was formed in 1966.

The original SWAT team in the United States... or anywhere,

for that matter... was the LAPD SWAT team.

And in, this particular case, this was the first time,

the SWAT team was activated to serve a high risk warrant.

It was decided that a no-knock warrant would be utilized,

and surprise would be the element that you would use.

A very close friend was working intelligence, and he told me,

he said, Pat, these guys think they're going up

against some street hoodlums.

He said, they're not.

They're fighters and they're shooters.

Don't be at the door.

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

Everything is just still.

You don't hear anything.

The access to that roof on the other side... pow!

It breaks open.

By the time I was swinging around

I'm seeing the lights on me.

They had a big light, and I'm hearing

the whole... freeze, freeze!

Still, drop it!

And the front door blew open... went boom!

Well, Pat had went in the gun room.

We had a Thompson sub-machine gun,

put it down with that Thompson... wa wa wa wa wa wa wa.

And he sprays across the... across

the roof.

You could see it in the light from the street.

And I was seeing, it was like... at the time,

man, I'm going to tell you, that instance,

it was the best music I ever heard.

And then all of a sudden my gun just went off.

I don't know what happened.

The gun just went off, you know, so we had them

in flank in front.

And then Paul Redd got down.

He got busy, and we drove them out the front door.

Three officers were down and the gun fight

continued as the officers were drug out of the way

by other officers.

Peaches and Tommy were two sisters that were there.

They went into the communication,

which is, you know, start calling the news media

and calling national headquarters

and calling everybody they could call.

Five minutes after 10,

about four and 1/2 hours after the original raid this morning.

All right.

Running down the street now toward the building.

Going to see what's going on.

There are police officers, look like Vietnam combat uniforms,

with automatic weapons, calling us back.

Shotguns everywhere you can look.

I looked at the TV.

Channel 5 had it on live.

So I'm feeling like I can sneak in the back

and join them some kind of way... it's crazy as I'm thinking.

There's a large group of people right now.

They're putting the pressure on the police

to allow us to stay so we can witness this.

When the police was

trying to creep up on the side, you

could see them, their reflection, through the windows

across the street.

When they got close enough, they would tell me,

OK, throw it now, throw it now.

Then they'd throw the damn bomb out the window and the police,

they'd blow up and they'd run back and shit.

We see this little cloud of smoke come, and it just moved.

And that's the tear gas.

Back in those days everybody smoked all the time.

So what we did was we put the cigarette butts in our nose

to filter out the fumes.

We're looking right at the Panther headquarters.

The devastation is astounding.

The whole front of the building has been shot up... bullet holes

all over the place, front door smashed down,

screens ripped out.

I got shot here, got shot in the arm,

missed... they missed my head here.

I got buckshot all in me.

They shot that room up, you know.

So this arm was dead.

So now I'm up there with just one arm,

bleeding all down the face and stuff.

But I'm alive.

I felt free.

I felt absolutely free.

And I was a free Negro, you know.

I was making my own rules.

You couldn't get in.

I couldn't get out.

But in my space, I was the king.

In that little space I had, I was the king.

And that's what I felt. You understand?

That's what I felt.

We had riflemen across the street... on the roofs

across the street.

They were shooting into the... well,

the shooting ports of the building

that the Panthers had created.

Panthers, on the other hand, were shooting back out.

Tommy had come downstairs and she was laying behind me,

like in a T.

You could see, a sunbeam went across her legs like that.

So like, you need to move.

And she... you know, she didn't, she just kept talking and shit.

Next thing, you hear a shot go off.

The bullet went through both her legs, like that.

So you know, at this time we had pretty much got shot out.

You know, we were saving enough bullets

that when they came in the door that we

would have some bullets to shoot back with, you know.

And I mean, it was like... it wasn't

like it took no brain scientist to figure out,

well, this shit is over with.

We were talking about giving up, and, you know,

all the brothers saying well, man, I'm ain't

going out there, man.

I'm not giving up.

And for like 30 minutes, it just want around.

I'm not going out first.

And I'm not going out first.

We'll die in this motherfucker.

I'm not going out first.

Peaches said I'll go out there.

And I said, Peaches.

She said, no, I'll go.

There's a white flag coming out the door.

It's a woman.

She's holding her hands up.

And she went outside and Peaches gave up.

And when they didn't shoot Peaches there,

we came out one at a time.

That's how that went.

It was a big glorious shootout, but after they raided us

they had all the players locked up.

All of the main players was in jail.

We want Huey out today.

We want Huey out today.

For about three years,

the Black Panthers have used Huey Newton's name

for a rallying cry, demanding that he

be freed from jail, where he is held on a charge of killing

a police officer.

The words "free Huey Newton" have been chalked

and spray painted on a thousand fences and walls.

This spring, the California Supreme Court

found some errors in his trial and ordered a new trial.

When the case was given to the jury,

they were sequestered for four days to deliberate.

It was extremely tense.

You could feel the energy and the tension in the air.

People were talking about doing all types of things, you know.

And Oakland could explode, you know.

Matter of fact, every city across America

could explode that day.

The Panthers had been getting ready for guerrilla warfare,

and they said the sky's the limit

if the jury convicted him.

We want Huey!

We want Huey!

We want Huey!

We want Huey!

We want Huey!

Shouting we want Huey now,

the crowd got their wish.

At this hour Huey Newton is a free man.

Everybody was just jubilant that day.

Finally he gets to walk out of that jail a free man.

The sky was the limit and the sky turned blue.

The image that was mobilized to create the Free Huey movement

gave Huey almost mythic status in the Party.

He had become an image and not a man,

and that gave him power that ultimately proved dangerous.

Come to the clinic

tomorrow for an appointment.

He came out focusing

on returning to the survival program, the breakfast

program, the free health clinics, free food

program, and the sickle cell anemia research program.

I remember Huey P. Newton saying the Black Panther Party

was not going to last.

He said the organization was going to get destroyed,

based on the way we were.

We were very aggressive, and we kind of

realized that this wasn't going to last long.

We know those are not revolutionary programs.

They are, at best, survival programs.

We know that the people are in jeopardy of genocide,

and that if they do not survive then

it won't be possible to bring about revolution.

We were really trying to connect more

with the people in the community.

And this was, this was a big push.

And there was probably some people who were not happy.

We have a breakfast for children program here.

But that's not what the Black Panther Party is all about,

you see.

I don't agree with saying that the Black Panther Party,

supports breakfast for children and that's

all that we're about, you know.

Don't talk about this other thing.

The Black Panther Party is for overthrowing the United States

government.

Those people who were on the other side of this issue

politically did not see the Black Panther Party

as a vehicle for social service.

We saw it as a vehicle for political transformation,

radical change... for revolution.

So we couldn't get excited about survival.

Eldridge Cleaver, who...

while sitting comfortably in Algeria...

was assailing the Black Panther Party as being weak,

and it didn't have any more muscle,

and it was a reform organization, a breakfast

for children club, and he denounced the Party

and he denounced the administrator... chief

administrator of the Party at that time, who

was David Hilliard.

He wanted to have even more blood shed, which was not

endearing us to the community.

There were also problems with the Panther 21

case.

There were legal fees.

And there became questions about how much of the money

that was raised for the Panther 21

was actually getting back to defend the Panther 21.

We wrote an open letter really criticizing national leadership

and Huey P. Newton.

And the response of national leadership...

and in particular Huey P. Newton...

was to kick out the Panther 21.

They were expelled from the Panther Party.

Eldridge came to the defense of the Panther 21.

The Black Panther

Party has split it into two factions, namely the Cleaver

and Newton supporters.

This dissension offers an exceptional opportunity

to aggravate and possibly neutralize

through counterintelligence.

The FBI was picking at Huey and picking at Eldridge.

And I don't know who else they were picking at

to create this sense of distrust.

In the future,

submit counterintelligence proposals against the Cleaver

faction in the Black Panther Party designed

to widen the existing rift, effectively

driving a wedge between Newton and Eldridge Cleaver.

Ensure this mailing cannot be traced to the Bureau.

What we thought the FBI wanted to do

was kill us, blow up our offices, shoot us.

I don't think we understood exactly how

insidious their project was.

They created a culture of paranoia

which was incredibly destructive.

In this sense, it was the ultimate intelligence success,

being able to pit the Party against itself.

And the Panthers internal conflict

would soon erupt in the mainstream media.

Good morning.

Yes, it's AM all right, and this is

Jim Dunbar with Nancy Fleming and Gary Bentley.

We had become aware of some sort

of a rift that had come to pass between Huey and Eldridge.

We had booked Huey and arranged the call from Eldridge

in Algeria to take advantage of that.

We've got lots of things coming up here on AM this morning...

lots of things that you'll like to see,

and we're looking forward to them too, right here on AM.

I'll not try to sugarcoat this.

We thought this is a wonderful opportunity to build audience,

and so we decided to go ahead and put the two of them

together.

Huey's goal in having Eldridge on the show

was to show people that he and Eldridge were on the same page.

And Eldridge sabotaged that, so Huey was livid.

He was embarrassed.

He was furious.

And so within 10 minutes or so he called back.

It was a split in the party, and within days we

began to feel just how bad it was.

Someone has to be disciplined, and my recommendation

is to discipline Eldridge Cleaver...

not for the criticism itself, but,

the way in which it was presented.

The word got back to us

that Eldridge had put out the edict that the streets were not

supposed to safe for Panthers.

Whether he said that or not... he was in Algeria, we were here.

Who knows?

It was chaos.

It was certain chapters that stayed with Huey.

Many of the people who followed Eldridge leave the party

and go underground.

And then some people just were confused and frustrated

and walked away.

They don't know which faction of the Black Panther Party

to follow or if they should deal with Panthers at all.

The Party had leaders who at that point

were not worthy of the dedication of their followers.

And I think that that was probably

the worst aspect of the Party, is

that I think some of the followers

felt betrayed by their leaders.

And the split becomes so deep that it erupts, in some cases,

into violence, into fights and into shootings,

between Panthers.

This is exactly what the Bureau, in fact,

wanted to see happen in the first place.

This was part of what the COINTELPRO operations were

really all about.

J. Edgar Hoover, in particular, says

we've been pitting people against each other.

That's all worked out really well.

But you know, now we don't even have to worry about it anymore.

Now they're just going to keep it going on their own

and we can step back a little bit

and just let them play it out.

In the midst of all of this turmoil,

the Panthers decide to go in a really radically new direction.

Bobby Seale, the Black Panther leader,

has been in trouble with the law for many years.

He's been in prison on some charges, acquitted on others.

And now he's trying to make a new career for himself.

He wants to be mayor of Oakland, California,

where the Black Panther movement began.

It was nice meeting you.

OK, nice meeting you.

All right, then.

How you all doing?

The Panthers decide

to call members to Oakland in an effort

to run Bobby Seale for mayor of Oakland and Elaine Brown

for city council.

Don Seale, member of the central committee

of the Black Panther Party, called me

at the Baltimore chapter office and told

me to begin closing down all of our programs.

So we were instructed to cease and desist all Party operations

and to bring as many Party members

from Baltimore out to Oakland as possible.

Ultimately they roll the die.

They assume that if they're successful in this campaign,

this might help to transform one American city.

This might be the blueprint for the future.

But they do roll the die.

The numbers were dwindling, and therefore

the force of the Party was dwindling.

So it only made sense to consolidate everything

and to say, what can we do with what we have?

We laid down the guns two years ago.

We don't need guns, we said, because we

knew we had the ability to really organize and educate

the people and show them, really,

some of the concrete things we can do in the community.

Initially, the idea of Bobby running for mayor

seemed ridiculous.

Black Panther leader Bobby Seale

ran second in his race for mayor of Oakland, California,

but Seale polled just enough votes

to force a runoff with the conservative incumbent John

Reading.

I think we were shocked

when he ended up in a runoff.

But as we got into the campaign and as he

started doing his campaign runs, as Elaine started

doing her campaign speeches, as people started getting...

we started galvanizing people's enthusiasm,

it started looking like he might win.

Part of the strategy for the campaign

was to increase the number of black voters

on the rolls in Oakland.

We sent people out into the community going door to door,

walking the streets, registering people to vote en masse.

And we went to the churches,

and we went to the dope houses, and we went to the streets,

and we went everywhere where the people were,

trying to organize people to vote for Bobby and Elaine.

They run an amazing campaign.

Bobby Seale used to ride buses in Oakland

and do stump speaking on the bus.

And they really took it to the streets in a different way.

Bobby had made a promise

that he was going to give away 10,000 bags of groceries

with a chicken in every bag.

And that was a takeoff on FDR's a chicken in every pot.

We counted up and we found out

last night it was 6,882 bags we actually gave away last night.

And I think that the voter registration is

running neck and neck with it.

I'm sure of that, because of a lot of... it blew our minds,

so many black people in the black community's

unregistered to vote.

It was amazing, because they

were able to register between 20,000 and 50,000 people

to vote.

They basically turned their survival programs

into a get out the vote apparatus.

But in the end, it wasn't enough.

Mayor John Reading of Oakland, California

was reelected yesterday in a runoff against Bobby Seale,

the Black Panther leader.

Don Oliver has that story.

Looking at the mood in Bobby Seale's

headquarters, you would have thought he won.

You know what somebody told me?

What did they tell us, Bobby?

They say, we don't care how the election goes.

Bobby Seale is for.

And they told me this, it blew my mind.

You're still our mayor, and we're going to.

Power to the people.

Plan A was for Bobby to win, Elaine to win,

and our slate to win.

There wasn't... as far as I could remember... a plan B.

Once we lost the campaign there was kind of a...

there was a void.

It was in theory a great idea

that you could marshal this army of organizers

to come to Oakland.

But for the most part, when all the chapters come back

to Oakland, the Panthers as a national phenomena

really, cease.

After the elections in Oakland,

Huey Newton is known to have some erratic behavior.

People who were very close to him

would say that it depends on the day you meet him.

Some days Huey Newton could be a brilliant, thoughtful

political strategist and committed to the liberation

of the black people, and another day he

could be self-serving and thuggish.

I was one of the folks who oriented new Panther members,

and I oriented them by telling them

about what a wonderful person Huey was

and about how he was the leader of our party,

never knowing what the hell he was.

We had created the cult of the personality around a fucking

maniac.

He surrounded himself with former prisoners,

and they became his inner retinue.

Around 1973, we created a special unit

that would protect our leaders and do

other kinds of activities related

to what Huey Newton called the sterner stuff of politics.

We're going to take over the underworld,

the underground apparatus of the city of Oakland.

We were shaking down the drug dealers, pimps.

Some people were like, stick up men.

It was bringing in revenue.

As he became more and more addicted

to multiple substances, I don't think he wanted to live

and I don't think he wanted the Party to live anymore.

From there on, you know, he was less and less the Huey I knew,

and more and more listening to his demons.

If Huey wanted to see you

or you wanted to see Huey, you had

to come to his penthouse, which meant that you went up

in his elevator, which meant that you were searched

before you got up there.

And when you got up there then you

were confronted by this maniac in his penthouse

who did all kinds of things to people... physical assault,

sexual assault, pistol whipping, threatening to kill.

He also became very abusive to the people around him.

He abused people like Bobby.

There were changes in the organization.

Bobby Seale left.

There were a lot of people who had been in the organization

from the beginning, and, and they left.

Then there was a time

when he was violent with me, and that was why

I left the Black Panther Party.

I said goodbye as I left, but I left.

Dear Huey, I've been in the party

for 9 and 1/2 years, but I've come

to a crossroads in my life.

One path is the Party and the other path

is my personal happiness.

I know you're busy,

but I see our party falling apart

and nothing is being done to stop this from happening.

It was absolutely devastating

for me to leave the Black Panther Party.

I felt guilty that I hadn't, you know,

stayed to do something... I wasn't sure what.

There was no other life.

There was no other thing greater.

Then I learned to live in a world

where there was no Black Panther Party.

Our children are growing up.

Half the children don't know their parents,

or their parents don't know their children.

I want to spend more time with my son.

So many are on the verge of leaving because we

suffer from loneliness, lack of personal lives

and extreme poverty.

Everybody wanted this gun toting

image of the big black... big bad black Shaft guy

jumping through the window and then, you

know, beating everybody up.

I refute that as the image that was put upon us.

I'm not Shaft.

You know, as a black man, that's all I am.

I'm just a black man.

Dear Huey, you know

I trust that I have felt a virtually infinite respect for,

belief in, support of the Black Panther Party.

I meant well... God knows I meant well and tried... them too.

Haven't we all, one way or another?

The great strength of the Black Panther Party

was its ideals and its youthful vigor and enthusiasm.

The great weakness of the Party was

its ideals and its youthful vigor and its enthusiasm.

That sometimes can be very dangerous,

especially when you're up against the United States

government.

If there's anything

I can do that would truly progress the people,

let me know.

I may not be a member of the Black Panther Party,

but I will always be a Black Panther.

All power to the people.

Peace and freedom to the world.

We made mistakes.

We charged ahead too fast and were too arrogant sometimes.

We certainly underestimated the police and the government

in terms of their response to the Black Panther Party.

But I think what remains true, the central guiding principle,

was an undying love for the people.

The Black Panther Party platform

and program... what we want, what we believe.

We want decent housing fit for the shelter of human beings.

We want education for our people.

We want an immediate end

to police brutality and murder of black people.

We what land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice,

peace.

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