The Japanese Student Left in the 1960s

Introduction: this is an undergraduate paper I wrote back in May of 2000 for a survey class on Asian Politics at Calvin College. I was very interested in the Japanese student movement, but I struggled to find decent sources. There is, unfortunately, a lack of accessible English sources available on the Japanese student movement in general, and perhaps in particular at the small Christian liberal arts college library where I was studying. By going through every book the library had on Japan, I was just barely able to scrap enough information together to make a decent paper. (If you look in the bibliography at the end of this paper, you can see just how thin a lot of my sources were.)
Also back in 2000, there was very little information available on the Internet about the Japanese Student Movement. This has changed for the better, so that now a simple search can turn up any number of sources. Obviously if I had written this paper now, it would read a lot differently. Also among the books I've read in the years since, I can recommend Fire Across the Sea: The Vietnam War and Japan by Thomas Havens and "Blood and Rage: the story of the Japanese Red Army” by William Farrell as being useful sources of information. Anyone who knows of any other useful books or articles on this topic, please feel free to add it to the comments section.
Nevertheless, for whatever it may be worth, here is my original paper.
Also, bonus, Youtube videos of me talking about this paper--video 1, video 2.  

May 10, 2000

The 1960s were a time of student revolution and discontent all over the globe, and Japan was no exception. The New Left in Japan began to be active in 1960, and would remain so until the 1970s. To understand the Japanese New Left, it is useful to look at student protests, various results of the new left, and a brief analysis of the character of the New Left.

Student Protesters

Massive student protests began in Japan in 1960. The movement wielded together two different causes. The first was opposition to the renewal of the Security Treaty with the United States. The left feared that this would draw Japan into the foreign wars of the United States. The second reason for protesting was Nobusuke Kishi becoming prime minister in 1957. Since Kishi had been the vice minister of munitions under Tojo, the left saw both of these events as signs that Japan was giving up on its post war ideals of democracy and demilitarization.1

When Kishi left Tokyo to sign the security treaty on January 16, 1960, the airport had to be cleared of 700 students, members of the All-Japan Federation of Student Self Government Associations (or Zengakuren for short, in Japanese), who had occupied and vandalized it the night before. The same group clashed with police four times that year as they attempted to enter the Diet Compound. They also succeeded twice in entering the Prime Minister’s residence and burning police cars. When the treaty was passed, left-wing demonstrations increased. On the night of June 15, 1960, a massive demonstration occurred in which 236 students along with 570 police were injured and one female student, Michiko Kamba, was killed. Although the demonstrators were never successful in overturning the treaty, they were able to force Kishi to resign from his post as prime minister.2

After these demonstrations Japan had relative quiet until the end of the 1960s, when the whole globe erupted in student movements. However the experience of that first year in 1960 was a radicalizing one for the Japanese students involved, and it would sow the seeds for many of them to become active again later. It is also believed that these first demonstrations in Japan had an influence on American student radicals. Clark Kerr, the administrator at Berkeley during the Free Speech Movement, is on record as saying that given what was happening in Japan, it was inevitable student unrest would eventually spread to America.

Japanese student protest in the late 60s, as in America, were largely fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War. Because of the security treaty between Japan and America, and because of the many US military bases on Japan, the Japanese students felt that Japan bore some responsibility for the Vietnam War. Also the Japanese government officially supported US policy in Vietnam. Thus in 1967, when Prime Minister Sato attempted to visit South Vietnam, rioters blockaded the approaches to Tokyo National Airport and burned police vehicles. They were ultimately unsuccessful in stopping the visit.3

Another issue of discontent in the late 1960s was the students' demand for campus reforms. In 1968 almost 100 incidents of protest occurred in Japanese Universities. At Tokyo University, medical students objected to the medical practitioners' law and began a year long strike. The police were finally called in on June 17 to evict students who were barricaded in the administration building. Students boycotted all classes in response, and ultimately the president, dean of the faculty of medicine, and the director of the university hospital were forced to resign. The following January 400 students were arrested at Tokyo University when they occupied Yasuda Hall. The police were able to clear the students out only after two days of “pitched battles.”4 In another Tokyo protest in 1968, to mark the anniversary of the death of a student protester the year before, 140 students were arrested and 110 policemen injured. Students also protested against tuition increases, and pressed the University to become more democratic, sometimes even asking for a vote in choosing the university president.

By 1969, United States occupation of Okinawa was becoming an issue in the student movement. The Vietnam War had made the United States military presence in Japan even more unpopular. 6000 people were arrested for protesting in the first half of 1969. On Okinawa Day, April 28, Students took over the trains in Tokyo and brought them to a halt. Student organizations such as the anti-war youth committee and the Peace-For-Vietnam Committee were active student groups that always had riot police surrounding their meetings. On International Antiwar Day, October 21, police arrested more than 1,400 students from these organizations.

Images of students battling riot police became increasingly common, and in some cases students even fire bombed university buildings. The government reacted to the increasing social unrest by legislating a bill to restore order. It included a greater concentration of power in the hands of the University administration, severe penalties for disruptive students, staff and faculty, and even a provision for dissolution of the universities in cases of prolonged trouble.

The Liberal Democratic Party was able to pass this bill through the Diet despite intense opposition. Once it passed, college presidents all over Japan resigned in protest. In Kyoto University, students reacted so adversely to this bill that 2,000 riot police were used to clear student barricades and arrest radical students. When classes finally began again, they did so under police guard. 5

The Results of the New Left

As in Europe, some of the more radical student groups of the 1960s turned to terrorism in Japan. The most famous of these was the Red Army Faction. The Red Army Faction was responsible for hijacking a Japan Airlines plane to North Korea in March of 1970. The Red Army also hijacked a Japan Airlines plane in Libya in 1973, and in 1974 blew up an oil storage tank in Singapore. Their most famous action was an attack on Lod Airport in Israel, in which 26 people were killed. Yet perhaps the greatest enemy the Red Army Faction ever had was itself. Factional fighting almost tore it apart, and in 1972 fourteen members of the group were killed by more radical elements. These fourteen included five women, and several of them were killed by being tied naked to trees and left to freeze to death.6

Another event at the end of the student movement was the Narita Airport incident. Although opposition to the proposed airport began as soon as it was announced in 1966, most of the fighting took place in the 1970s. The plans for the Narita Airport generated opposition from farmers who would lose their land. The student radicals were able to give ideological justification to the farmers' opposition, and at the same time enjoyed the public sympathy for the farmers. There was also fear among the left that, because of the size of the proposed airport, it could be used to land U.S. military planes. 7

Throughout the 1970s, students opposed to the airport constructed forts, towers, tunnels and underground bunkers as they battled the police. In the end two students were killed as well as four riot police. (Three of the riot police were killed by the Red Army Faction, which used Bamboo spears). The airport was completed in 1978. 8

Comments on the Students

Many of the same remarks that have been made on the 1960s movement in Europe and in the United States can also be made about Japan. There was a generation gap between the old left in Japan and the new left. The old communist left had focused on sacrifice and misery, enduring torture and imprisonment in the 1930s. The new student left focused on joy, hedonism, excitement and happiness. The old left was dogmatically Marxist, while the new left showed a high interest in Marx, but also borrowed heavily from humanist and existentialist thinkers. In fact the student protests in 1960 were significant because they were the first leftist protests in Japan not controlled by the Communist party. 10

Also similar to Europe and America, many of the student organizations resisted the urge to organize themselves into well structured hierarchies despite large public support. A minimalist approach to structure was adopted, with an egalitarian emphasis. Visible leaders were discouraged. The Peace-in-Vietnam committee is an excellent example of this. 11

However despite all the efforts of the students, the movement had little success in affecting the firmly entrenched power of the Liberal Democratic Party. The student movement died out due to the end of an American presence in Vietnam, continuing national prosperity, and a negative public reaction as the student radicals turned violent. 12

Bibliography

Burks, Adrath. Japan. New York: Americana Corporation. 1969

–. Japan. New York: Americana Corporation. 1970.

Dower, John. Peace and Democracy in Two Systems: External Policy and Internal Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1993.

Hayes, Louis. Introduction to Japanese Politics. Missoula: University of Montana. 1992

Koschmann, Victor. Intellectuals and Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1993.

Kublin, Hyman. Japan. New York: Americana Corporation. 1968.

Milieu, Its and Kazuko Tsurumi. “The Japanese Student Movement.” Japan Quarterly: Oct-Dec. 1968.

Seligmann, Albert. Japan. New York: Americana Corporation. 1968.

Tsurumi, Kazuko. Student Movements in 1960 and 1969: Continuity and Change. Tokyo: tokyo Press. 1975.

White, James. Dynamics of Political Opposition. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1993.

Footnotes
1. John Dower, Peace and Democracy in Two Systems: External Policy and Internal Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 21

2. Albert Seligmann, Japan (New York: Americana Corporation, 1968) 396

3. Hyman Kublin, Japan (New York: Americana Corporation, 1968) 378

4. Adrath Burks, Japan (New York: Americana Corporation, 1969) 384

5. Adrath Burks, Japan (Americana Corporation: New York, 1970) 389

6. Louis D. Hayes, Introduction to Japanese Politics (Missoula: University of Montana, 1992) 120

7. James White, Dynamics of Political Opposition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 440

8. Hayes 120

9. Kazuko Tsurumi, Student Movements in 1960 and 1969: Continuity and Change (Tokyo: Tokyo Press 1975) 202

10. Its Milieu and Kazuko Tsurumi, The Japanese Student Movement (Japan Quarterly: Oct-Dec 1968) 431

11. J Victor Koschmann, Intellectuals and Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 414

12. Hayes 120.

Professor's Comments: Well done. A good summary and Evaluation
Grade: A-

The Conditions Leading Up to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement

May 10, 1999

The Berkeley Free Speech movement was one of the most important events of the 1960s. It represented the birth of the New Left. Student support for the movement was overwhelming, and the movement’s victory was total. Never again would students be as successful as they had been at Berkeley. Columbia was a stunning example of the defeat of the New Left. What was it about Berkeley that inspired the Free Speech Movement and what were the conditions that caused it to be so successful?

The Free Speech Movement occurred when Clark Kerr attempted to ban all political activity on campus. When political activity continued, the police arrested Jack Weinberg. Thousands of students surrounded the police car, and refused to let it drive off. A Free Speech Committee was formed, which included representatives from all of the affected organizations. An agreement was worked out with the administration, but when the administration attempted to go back on its part of the deal, enraged students occupied a University building. When they were forcibly cleared by policeman, students used tactics of non-violent resistance that they had learned during the civil rights movement. Faculty, student, and public sympathy for the Free Speech Movement became overwhelming, and the administration had no choice but to concede to the students demands.

When writing about the Free Speech Movement, Alexander Worst asserts, "If there was going to be a student rebellion, then certainly Berkeley, California was a logical place for it to start" (Worst 276). Clark Kerr, the administrator unfortunate enough to be in charge during this turbulent time, later said

As an avant-garde campus, Berkeley was going to be in trouble at
some point. It didn't have to be at that time over this issue. But given the
nature of San Francisco and the tradition of the Berkeley campus and what was
going on around the world, in Japan in 1960 and the movement of the blacks,
Berkeley was going to be in trouble at some time (Kerr in Worst).

What was it about San Francisco and Berkeley that caused this attitude?

Mario Savio, one of the leaders of the Free Speech Movement, wrote:

The Berkeley campus is very close to the urban problems of Oakland
and San Francisco, but not in either city. On campus it is virtually impossible
for the thoughtful to banish social problems from active consideration. Many
students find it impossible not to be in some sense engage. The shame of urban
America (just south of campus or across the bay) forces itself upon the
conscience of the community (Savio 2).

Berkeley was located right on the San Francisco Bay, only a short distance away from San Francisco (Worst 276). San Francisco had long been a haven of radicalism: "From the time of Jack London, the Bay Area has tolerated all shades of political radicalism" (Bacciocco 149). Compared to the rest of the nation, San Francisco had a relatively strong Communist presence (Unger 82). Mario Savio, called the Bay Area "one of the few places left in the United States where a history of personal involvement in radical politics was not a form of leprosy" (Savio 2).

Both Berkeley and San Francisco had been favorite hangouts of the Beat poets. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady all lived in Berkeley for a period (Gitlin 46). David Steigerwald described Berkeley as the "mecca of the Beats" (Steigerwald 132). When Allen Ginsberg arrived in Berkeley, he encountered, "a kaleidoscope of poets, dedicated feverishly to their work" (Worst 68). Ginsberg wrote back to New York that in Berkeley "there are a few hidden and excellent poets -- a kind of buddhist influenced post Pound post Williams classicism full of independence and humor AND gift of gab, native word-slinging" (Ginsberg in Worst 68).

Berkeley, along with Greenwich Village, had become the nation’s post-bohemian center. Described as "quick to the point of faddishness in responding to the times" (Worst 276), in the years following the Free Speech Movement, Berkeley would become home to hippies, psychedelics and acid rock. Like its neighboring San Francisco, Berkeley was no stranger to leftist movements. "FSM's [Free Speech Movement’s] appearance at Berkeley, though spontaneous, was not accidental. Leftist students had been organizing there for years" ( Steigerwald 132).

Even though Berkeley had a strong leftist presence, it was no stranger to communist repression. In an effort to squash campus communists, who were organizing at Berkeley in the 1930s, the administration banned all forms of politics (Steigerwald 132). This was the issue over which the Free Speech Movement would be fought. During the height of McCarthyism, Berkeley joined in the fray. It required a loyalty oath of its entire faculty that they were not, nor ever had been, members of the Communist party. Twenty-six members of the faculty were terminated for refusing to take the oath, an additional thirty-seven members resigned in protest; forty-seven outside scholars turned down job offers, causing fifty-five courses to be eliminated. Although the court later reinstated the faculty dismissed, the episode caused a tremendous amount of bitterness. Also put in place was a ban on Communist speakers on Berkeley’s campus. This was removed in 1963 after "a long series of student protests, rallies, polls, ASUC [student government] and club petitions, and other pressures organized against the ban after 1960 in Berkeley" (Draper 8). The ban had proven to be counter-productive, causing sympathy for the communists and increasing their off-campus audiences. The most publicized example occurred in 1963 when Communist party writer Herbert Aptheker was denied permission to speak at Berkeley after being invited by the history department to give a strictly academic talk on African-American history.

One of the first student organizations to refuse to subscribe to anti-communism was SLATE. The pre-cursor to the Berkeley New Left, SLATE was formed in 1958 and originally named Toward an Active Student Community. SLATE was a loosely structured organization of leftists which won the first student election the following year in 1959. SLATE fiercely championed Civil Rights and academic freedom, but what antagonized the administration the most was its refusal to add an anticommunist disclaimer to its charter.

The school year of 1959/1960 proved to be chaotic for Berkeley. It began when a 17 year-old student, the son of an Air Force colonel, was expelled for conducting a seven-day fast in protest of compulsory ROTC (Worst 168). Another event of consequence was the execution of Caryl Chessman on May 2, 1960. Chessman was young, came from an impoverished family, and had been in jail since 1948 for a 20 day crime spree which included 17 felonies (eight counts of robbery, four counts of kidnapping, two counts of sex perversion, one attempted robbery, one attempted rape, and one auto theft) but no murder victim. Chessman had taken advantage of his prison time to study law and generally educate himself, as well as write an autobiography. Students believed the Chessman case represented how little the courts cared for the life of a poor man. On the eve of his execution, students from all over the bay area gathered at San Quentin to hold a silent vigil through the hour of his death. It was a radicalizing experience for many (Bacciocco 25). Controversy also arouse when the Board of Regents apologized to right-wing organizations for allowing a mild criticism of the FBI in a university document. The student newspaper, the Daily Californian, wrote an editorial comparing the FBI to the Gestapo (Worst 168).

Then in May of 1960, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) came to San Francisco to question witnesses about alleged Communist party activities in the Bay Area. The traditional adult opponents of HUAC were there to emphasize the damage HUAC had done in the past, but there was also a group of student protestors. Although many of the older adult radicals were surprised to see such a large student population, they should not have been. Berkeley students were affected by HUAC since twenty-five percent of those subpoenaed by HUAC were Berkeley faculty, and even one Berkeley student was subpoenaed. Leaders of the Bay Area’s civil rights organizations were also summoned. Carl Wertherman, a reporter, classified the students who protested into four major groups: former leaders of the now inactive Student Civil Liberties Union, SLATE, Young Peoples Socialist League, and unorganized graduate students who had previously been apolitical. The changing attitudes in the graduate students showed that politics was becoming increasingly important for Berkeley students.

A picket line formed outside of city hall, but students were not allowed at the hearings. Wheeler, the Committee investigator, said, "there were about 150 passes. I issued them to individuals – to keep the Commies from stacking the meeting. We wanted some decent people in there" (Wheeler in Huberman and Prickett). After student leaders met with Berkeley Sheriff William Carberry, he agreed to let people in on a first-come first serve basis. The next day, however, the pass system was again in effect. Police Inspector Michael McGuire was admitting white-card holders (those with a pass), when he noticed a number of students filing in. He grabbed one roughly, but when the student angrily shouted, "I’ve got a white card!" McGuire let him go. McGuire seized another student, who shoved a camera into his face and hit the flash. While McGuire recovered, several students slipped into the Chambers.

The rest of the students attempted to climb the barricades and gain entrance into the hearings while those already inside disrupted the hearings by singing "The Star Spangled Banner." McGuire opened the fire hose on the demonstrators inside city hall. Witness and reporter Fred Haines described the scene:

The singing broke up into one gigantic horrified scream. People
fled past me as I ran forward, trying to see what was going on; … For the first
time I had a moment to think, to take stock of the situation … during the past
few minutes they’d dumped thousands of gallons of water inside a public
building, causing several thousand dollars worthy of damage (not counting
whatever human injury there had been). And they had accomplished nothing.
Perhaps 50 people of the 200 had fled … now they had 150 people wet, angry, and
injured, most of whom were rooted to the spot and determined to make as much
noise as ever before (Haines in Huberman and Prickett 4-5).

The students who had been knocked over by the hoses simply returned to their seats, singing "We Shall Not Be Moved." The police came in swinging their clubs wildly. Having cleared the area of most demonstrators, the police proceeded to throw those remaining down the stairs. "Bodies cascaded over the stone and blood mixed with the water" (Worst 170). Sixty-three students were arrested on May 13, 1960, a day that became known as "Black Friday" in Berkeley legend. The students were beaten, but not defeated. As a result of the publicity Black Friday received, they returned eight thousand strong the following day.

That summer, HUAC released Operation Abolition, a movie that documented the demonstrations. Operation Abolition "scrambled footage and invented facts to present the committee as the victim of a Communist-run campaign" (Gitlin 82). The film was clumsily done (including obviously fake backgrounds), overly melodramatic, and filled with verbal cliches. The film was shown on college campuses throughout the nation, but did not have the intended effect. Young people saw other young people being clubbed by policemen as they non-violently protested. Former Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) President Todd Gitlin called it "a recruiting film for a New Left that barely existed." Young people eager to become more radical came to Berkeley, and the political climate of the city went even further to the left.

The film Operation Abolition was also shown on Berkeley’s campus. After the film, SLATE turned on a record, "Sounds of Protests" as a reply. Because this violated Berkeley’s strict laws on political activity, SLATE eventually lost its status as an on-campus organization (Draper 7).

Student radicals were increasingly attracted to Berkeley and student radicalism had one important issue in the early 60s: civil rights. Civil rights had been the dominant issue on the left in northern California for some time before this, but it spread quickly to Berkeley following 1960. Students actively raised money and recruited workers for the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). There were not many African-Americans in Berkeley (although Oakland was not far away), however the students had no lack of racist targets.

In 1960, the civil rights movement hit the Bay Area when the National Student Association began picketing Woolworth and Kress, imitating the style of Southern sit-ins. At the time, NAACP and CORE numbered just over 100 people on Berkeley’s campus.

During the academic school year of 1963-64, hundreds of students picketed the racist hiring policies of local businesses. Many of these students had spent the summer in the South working as volunteers for SNCC or CORE and they returned to Berkeley energized. The first target ws the restaurant chain Mel’s Drive –In. Campus CORE refused to participate on the grounds that it was politically motivated since one of Mel’s owners was a candidate for Mayor of San Francisco, and it lacked monitors to prevent violence. Ninety-three demonstrators were arrested, 37 of whom were students at Berkeley. By November Mel’s gave in to the students’ demands and they moved on to other targets (Bacciocco 150).

By this time there were several student groups working for civil rights in Berkeley including SLATE and the recently organized W.E.B. Du Bois club which was affiliated with the Young Communists. All of these groups combined their forces in the Direct Action Committee which coordinated civil rights protests. Of these groups, only campus CORE and Friends of SNCC were technically university clubs, but the members of almost all of them were predominately students. At Lucky food stores they held "shop-ins." Students filled carts with food, unloaded them at the checkout line and left in front of shocked clerks. Lucky food stores were told the "shop-ins" would continue until African-Americans were employed at the store. The company soon gave in. The protests reached a peak in March as students picketed the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Thousands of students showed up on three successive nights. Before the hotel signed a minority hiring agreement, 767 students were arrested (Worst 283).

Intoxicated by success, the Direct Action Committee allied itself with CORE and the NAACP. Their next attack was on car dealers along San Francisco’s "Automobile Row." Three hundred students were arrested in the protests that followed. The tactics that the Berkeley students had learned in these civil rights campaign would later be used in the Free Speech Movement.

It was during the civil rights campaign that the students made a powerful enemy: William P. Knowland. Knowland was a right-wing former supporter of Joe McCarthy. "Knowland’s redeeming quality was that, like most American right-wingers, he was a blunderer. Even when the wind is blowing their way, right-wing politicians manage to turn around when they have to spit" (Conlin 115). Knowland had a secure seat in the Senate when he bullied incumbent Republican Governor Goodwin Knight, into swapping nominations. Knowland ran for Governor while Knight ran for the Senate. It was too much for California voters and both were defeated, sweeping liberal democrats into power two years before Kennedy became president. Knowland was the editor of the Oakland Tribune and

took to railing against subversives in every corner. He was a
dependable screamer in the HUAC fracas and took one of the frankest
prosegregationist stands to be found outside the South. He smeared King and
other civil rights leaders as, at best, dupes of the Kremlin" (Conlin
116).

Students picketed the Tribune’s office regularly.

The situation was not helped over the summer. While the student population moved increasingly Left, the California Republican Party shifted to the Right. Since World War II, California had been in the hands of liberal Republicans. The party had been gradually moving away from liberalism and in 1964 Barry Goldwater won the Republican Presidential Primary over the more liberal Nelson Rockefeller. At the same time, the control of the state party switched to conservative Republicans, followers of Ronald Reagan. "For the first time within man’s memory, the Berkeley campus became a hotbed of political activity not only by radicals but also by conservative students" (Draper 11). Various anti-Goldwater demonstrations took place, as conservative students championed the more moderate republicans: Lodge, Scranton, and Rockefeller.

At the Republican National Convention in San Francisco in July, party moderates desperately turned to Berkeley "to recruit an army of demonstrators" (Worst 284). Despite marches through San Francisco, Goldwater won, and the conservatives took power. The conservatives had always eyed Berkeley with suspicion, now after the anti-Goldwater protests, they were determined to do something about the campus.

The civil rights issue had not been dormant over the summer. The courts were still jammed with cases from the previous school year, and in June campus CORE sponsored a sit-in at the U.S. District Attorney’s office to protest inaction on the Mississippi murders. The demonstrators were removed by force. Bay Area CORE even began organizing against the Bank of America. It was during this time that the Direct Action Committee launched a picket line against Knowland’s Oakland Tribune. The timing could have been better. With the rising tide of conservatism, Knowland was not about to roll over and let the students win.

Knowland found his solution to the students. His reporters discovered that the Bancroft Strip (also known as Sproul Plaza) on which the civil rights groups did most of their recruiting, was technically on university property and therefor violated the campus-wide ban on political activity. "It was universally assumed, even by the U.C. administration, that Sproul Plaza was city property. … In fact this was not so. Sproul Plaza was university property. … But for reasons lost as irretrievably as Leviticus’s pork taboo, the university administration never interfered with political activity there" (Conlin 117).

The Oakland Tribune called for an end to political activity on Bancroft Strip. Under pressure from Knowland and the Oakland Tribune, as well as from the Bank of America, the Berkeley administration announced that the Bancroft Strip could no longer be used for political recruiting. The students had been energized in the civil rights movement and had learned the principles of non-violent confrontation, as well as how to win. And so, on October 1, 1964, when police arrested Jack Weinberg for recruiting for CORE, and two thousand students surrounded the police car, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement began.

Clark Kerr was right when he realized that Berkeley was bound to be trouble at some point given the nature of the campus. The rising radicalism within Berkeley and the growing conservatism in California was an explosive mix, and both factors provoked the Free Speech Movement. The Free Speech Movement was also a result of a radical tradition in Berkeley and the bay area, which both created and attracted student radicals. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement was a result of previously existing conditions in Berkeley and in the bay area.

Bibliography
Anderson, Terry. The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1995.

Bacciocco, Edward. The New Left in America: Reform to Revolution 1956-1970. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. 1974.

Conlin, Joseph. The Troubles: A Jaundiced Glance Back at the Movement of the Sixties. New York: Franklin Watts. 1982.

Draper, Hal. Berkeley: The New Student Revolt. Berkeley. The Center for Socialist Studies. 1965

Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York: Bantam Books. 1987.

Steigerwald, David. The Sixties and the End of Modern America. New York: St. Martin's Press. 1995.

Unger, Irwin, Debi Unger. Turning Point: 1968. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1988.

Savio, Mario. Introduction to Berkeley: the New Student Revolt. Berkeley. The Center for Socialist Studies. 1965

Worst, Milton. Fire in the Streets: America in the 1960s. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1979.

Professor's Comments: This is a solid description of events leading up to the Free Speech Movement. Can you put it in a larger context--especially can you indicate what it has to do with the West?
Grade: B+

A Panther is a Black Cat by Reginald Major: Book Review

Video Version: Video 1, Video 2

History 360 (African-American History)
November 24, 1998

A Panther is a Black Cat by Reginald Major is a thoughtful look at the Black Panther Party, written when the party was still alive. Major describes the book himself as "A study in depth of the Black Panther Party--its origins, its goals, its struggle for survival" (tittle page). Major provides interesting insight, and a unique perspective in the Black Panther Party.

The Booklist describes Major's book as "definitely pro-panther" and I agree. After having read several books that are decidedly anti-Panther, Major's outlook is a refreshing one. Although Major does have some organizational issues (his train of thought can be hard to follow), I enjoyed his book overall. There are three aspects of Major's book that I would like to examine: the issue of the Black Panthers and Communism, Black Panthers and their white allies, and Black Panthers and their conflicts with police.

One topic that Major handles poorly is the issue of the Black Panthers and communism. Major leaves the reader confused as to whether the Black Panthers are pro-communist or anti-communist. Giving contradictory quotes in his book, Major does not adequately reconcile them.

The first encounter the reader has with communism appears on pages 89-92, in which Major cites a speech made by Eldridge Cleaver in which he attacked white radicals and communists in particular. Cleaver "pointed out that the Communist Party supports Russia against the People's Republic of China, and was, therefore, a traitor to the best interests of non-white peoples throughout the world" (90). Cleaver is quoted as saying.

"From now on the Socialists Workers Party and the Communist Party should not be allowed to function in the black community at all....The Literature on Malcolm X which the bloodsucking Socialist Workers Party has grown fat on should not be allowed in the black community. Their newspapers and so forth should be banned from black communities. The black funkies who are members of these groups should also be barred from the back community" (90).

Later on Major quotes the Black Panthers as saying:

"Those black revolutionaries who understand the value of a coalition between white radicals and black radicals have had the ground cut out from under their feet by the nefarious activities of these white radicals.... They are nothing but hitch-hikers on the black revolution....The Socialist Workers Party went so far as to kill off the Black Panther Newspaper by refusing to allow the paper to be sent out of its various branches around the country. The Communist Party is nothing but a white NAACP" (92).

With such quotes, Major shows the apparent disdain the Panthers hold for Communism, however the next time the philosophy is mentioned, it is in regard to Stokely Carmichael's break with the Panthers in 1969, which he does by attacking Marxist-Leninism.

"I believe that people who talk about 'Marxist-Leninism' so hard, in such a hard line, are the people who are groping for an answer. They seize on 'Marxist-Leninism" as if it were some sort of a religion. Marx becomes in essence, Jesus Christ. Now anything you cannot answer you take over and bow to Marx. That, in my view, is absolutely absurd" (102).

Carmichael is portrayed as leaving the Panthers because he does not agree with Marxist-Leninism, which of course implies that the Panthers are Marxist-Leninists.

Major also quotes Huey Newton as saying:

"In the spirit of solidarity with the people of the world and the Third World or the developing world in particular, the Black Panther Party would like to extend the friendship and spirit of revolutionary solidarity. We will give a declaration to the Paris peace talks where we will commit an undisclosed number of troops to the National Liberation Front in order to show solidarity--in order to help the Vietnamese people fight the cowardly American aggressors" (103)."

This is hardly an anticommunist quote. Later on Cleaver is quoted on page 145 at a conference in North Korea. After scolding the Soviet Union for not doing enough to help Korea and Vietnam, Cleaver justified his right to speak "as a member of the world Communist movement which has made many sacrifices for the Soviet Union" (compare with his speech above). Later on Major mentions the Panther's adoption of Marxist-Leninist program, and the use of the Little Red Books, but only in passing (127). The Little Red Books also appear scattered in other parts of the book, as both Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver carry them around with them often, and will consult them at times to prove their opinion. Major however never explains the significance of the Little Red Book, or tells his reader if the Panthers were dependent on Mao's doctrine, or if it was just something they threw into an already established worldview.

Major also mentions Cleaver's insistence on having a portrait of Stalin in his apartment, despite criticism from other blacks. "Who the hell is that whitey on the wall?" (259). When his wife, Kathleen Cleaver, asks why Stalin's picture is in the room and not Mao's, Eldridge replies, "I just keep it there to remind you, Baby, that Mao is a Stalinist" (256). This is not consistent with the man who is earlier quoted as saying that the communist party betrayed black people by supporting the Soviet Union over China. (One could, I suppose, reconcile these two positions by recalling that China's feud with the Soviet Union did not begin until after Kruschev denounced Stalin, but Major never brings this point up in his book. Perhaps at the time he was writing (1971) it was obvious to his contemporaries. However, even if this was the case, the other discrepancies are still unaccounted for.)

In the end, Major does not explain the contradiction between the denunciation of communism by the Panthers and their embrace of it. Much of this may be because Major himself is definitely pro Black Panther, but appears to be against Communism. Much of this can be inferred by the type of quotes Major includes in his book. The anti-Communist quotes above are examples (Cleaver's and Carmichael's) as well as other quotes. Major includes a quote by Carleton Goodlett, one of the Panther's critics, which probably summarizes his views as well.

"Two hundred and fifty years of slavery and one hundred and seven years of crypto-freedom, out of the black experience, contain enough suffering, pathos, agony and sacrifice for liberty to have developed a rhetoric which would have communicated with and united black America, rather than by its very nature as a Marxist ideology separated us....Three and a half years of going it alone, setting yourself apart from ninety-nine plus percent of American blacks, has led to your present precarious position. No revolution can succeed without the indivisible support of a total people" (159).

Major's own quotes though are probably more of an insight into his mindset.

"The adoption of Marxist-Leninist political cant, along with the taking over of the Red Book, and their unspecific call for socialism, requires more development before it is actually applicable to the everyday black political situation. The Marxist approach to social stratification and class must be modified locally before it can be applied with any validity to black people. Recognizing that black people are in danger of genocide and that blacks are politically and economically powerless, the concept of class struggle--particularly that portion that condemns the bourgeoisie--needs drastic modification in order to satisfactorily describe the social class within the black community" (155-156).

Major goes on, describing how the Panthers condemning of the black middle class ended up dividing the black people when the Panthers should have been intent on uniting them. Major chides the Panthers for failing to make a distinction between the black middle class and white middle class. In particular, much of the blame is placed on Cleaver who Major says, "showed up on the scene fresh from prison, made a few connections, and then proceeded to judge the revolutionary aptness of the approaches of people who had been around the area for some time" (156). Major cannot resist taking one more poke at the Panther's ideology, which he does on page 164, saying "in the last analysis, [the Panthers] must return to the ghetto only to have shoved down their ideological throats the fact that Marx and Lenin where white."

I believe that because Major was pro-Panther, but disagreed with their Marxist ideologies, he allowed that to creep into his writing. He is eager to include anti-communist quotes from Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panther Party because they match his ideology, but fails to reconcile these to the rest of the book, leaving his reader confused about what the actual position of the Panthers was.

Another area where Major confuses the reader is on the issue of the Panther's relationships with whites. Here once again he includes various quotes in his book at various places that end up contradicting each other when they are compared.

Major mentions that early on the Panthers were hassled by white radicals, discovering that "the most vocal anticapitalist tended to believe that giving or raising money placed him in a policy-making position" (93). The Panthers decided in all their coalitions with whites to follow the rules of Stokely Carmichael:

"First, that the coalition be for a limited and clearly defined purpose; second, that the coalition last only so long as it is mutually beneficial; and third, that it be a union of equals, thus guaranteeing that one member of the coalition does not dominate the other" (93).

Major talks about the Black Panther's coalition with the Peace and Freedom Party, an organization that he describes as a "loose coalition of white radicals representing every spectrum of leftist thought" (92). However, despite the coalition, the Black Panther Party did not look favorably on blacks in the Peace and Freedom Party. Eldridge Cleaver is quoted as saying:

"The Black Panther Party looks upon the black members of the Peace and Freedom party as misguided political freaks who are trying to maintain their dual status in an incorrect manner; they have one foot in the mother country, and the other foot in the colony, and their political manhood gets strangled on the borders separating the two nations" (94).

Despite this strict view of the coalition, and Cleaver's disapproving view of blacks who worked too closely with white radicals, Major claims this treaty still frightened a number of blacks away from the Panthers, who saw this as a sign that the party was really run by whites. Particularly interesting is the quote from Sultan Nassar Ahmad Shabazz, head of the Black Guards, a Muslim group.

"Eldridge Cleaver did a good job of selling the Black Panther Party to the Communists and Socialists....The Black Panthers are becoming more red each day....When the Black Panthers say 'power to the people' they also mean power to the whites" (110).

Despite attacks from other black revolutionaries, the Panthers continued to work with white radicals. However, Major paints the Chicago eight trail as a disaster, and places the blame for it on the white radicals. "When Bobby Seale was indicted behind Yippie activity in Chicago there were a lot of black mouths sounding I-told-you-so's" (111).

Tom Hayden receives much of the blame for this, as Major seems rather to admire the childish antics of Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman.

“Judge Julius Hoffman is a Jew, a fact he was constantly reminded of by at least two of the defendants in the conspiracy trial in which Bobby Seale was one of the original eight defendants….Abbie Hoffman…and Jerry Rubin, two of the defendants, must have shook the judge right down to the roots of his juridical-christian (sic) ethic. They threw gibes at him in English, German, and Yiddish. Hoffman’s a ‘shonder for the goy’ they intoned, an expression which was decorously translated as a “front man for white supremacists”….Hoffman and Rubin could not help but get to the judge as they tore into him from the vantage point of 5000 years of Jewish history and culture” (245-246).

With these words and others Major attaches praise to the tactics of Hoffman and Rubin. Major rises elsewhere to the defense of Jerry Rubin.

"Eldridge Cleaver was chided by officials of the California Peace and Freedom party when he chose Jerry Rubin as his Vice-Presidential (sic) running mate, rather than one of the more doctrinaire leftists available to him. He was patronizingly described as ignorant of the significant trends in white radical politics. As it developed two years later, Rubin and his political orientation were closer to the center of white radical activity than any of the gaggle of respectable leftists made available to Cleaver” (163).

Hayden does not come out so well.

“Reportedly, Hayden’s ideas influenced the conduct of the Chicago trial. He had rejected the Rubin-Hoffman approach that would have turned the trial into a total display of guerrilla theater. Hayden had hope that the court would deal favorably with their case, a fantasy not shared by other defendants” (113).

As much as I admire both Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, I doubt the Panthers would have been more pleased had their approach won out over Hayden’s. The Panthers, with the seriousness in which they took their cause, would probably have been much more frustrated with the anything goes, “Revolution for the Hell of it”, tactics of Rubin and Hoffman.

Major describes a cocktail party as an example of how relationships between white radicals and Panthers deteriorated. Black Panther David Hillard was there, who had already “pointedly questioned [Stew] Albert’s and Hayden’s understanding of Marxist-Leninist principles” (112), and, Major implies, found them to be lacking. When Hayden was asked to speak, Hillard jumped up and asked: “Yeah, goddamnit, get up and explain why you’re out on the streets and Bobby is in jail” (114). Hayden sidestepped the question by attacking the racist nature of America’s courts. Major condemns him.

“The question actually was why Hayden was not in jail. Bobby had been indicted, tried, placed in chains, and was subsequently sentenced to four years in jail for contempt of court as the result of a casual speechmaking excursion into the scene of hippie-involved political mayhem. Hillard’s words implied that if Hayden and his fellow defendants were really the revolutionaries they claimed to be, they would have closed ranks and stood on their conspiratorial constitutional rights when Bobby Seale was denied the right to represent himself, and if necessary to force the court to chain them all. It didn’t happen” (114).

Hillard was unimpressed by Hayden’s answer, and began to question him angrily. Stew Albert, a revolutionary writer who Major also dislikes, tried to smooth things over, but Hillard answered, “Fuck you, Albert, you jive-ass revolutionary. We can do without you and your shitty writing” (115). The conference finally ended with Hillard and the rest of the Panthers storming out.

Major asserts that:

“Hillard--in fact the Panthers generally—were very unhappy about this indictment, as it was a direct result of the Panthers association with white radicals. The indictment was a confirmation for a number of black people of their belief that a black-white radical alliance could only bring trouble to the Panthers” (109).

Major describes the whole affair as the Panthers being deserted by their white allies, and he implies that they learned their lesson and would never trust whites again. However, later in the book, Major writes about the Panther’s preferences for white lawyers. He gives a quote from Bobby Seale about John George, a black lawyer who had represented Seale, Newton, and others.

“I, Bobby Seale, know for a fact, when without my knowledge, John D. George, who was handling three misdemeanor cases for me, sold me out by waiving a jury trail for me where I would possibly be railroaded off into jail…. He has been one of the advocates and foolish black racists running around talking about we (sic) should have a black lawyer. HUEY P. NEWTON’S (sic) life is in danger and these ignorant, stupid, life sucking, petty minded fools, who call themselves black lawyers, have done nothing but harm the black community” (213).

Kathleen Cleaver also defends white lawyers.

“Black power would never be attained if the burden of achieving it were in the hands of black lawyers….During the non-violent stage of the resistance movement, black lawyers did not rush to defend the jailed students and freedom fighters….Thousands of people were jailed and beaten and denied their rights, but the bulk of the legal work was done by white lawyers, regardless of whether or not they could be paid….The vast bulk of legal service given to the struggle has come from white lawyers dedicated to the establishment of social justice, and the vast bulk of that legal service has gone unpaid….James Forman, Stokely Carmichael and Rap Brown of SNCC have all been indebted to the services of white lawyers—without too much complaint from the black lawyers or the black community....However, all of a sudden…an outcry has been raised about the fact that Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton has a white lawyer” (213-214).

Major goes on to lavish praise on the Panther’s own white lawyer, Charles Garry. Although not totally irreconcilable, the high praise given by Kathleen Cleaver, Bobby Seale, and Major himself to whites working for the white cause seems contradictory to the earlier assertion. Cleaver and Seale were not quoted by Major regarding the success of the Panther-white radical alliance in the Chicago eight trial, although Major gives the impression that all the Panthers were fed up with the unreliability of whites. Major himself is the most amazing reversal of opinions, going from condemning white radical-black alliances in the Chicago eight trail, to praising them later here. As a result, the reader is not left with a clear impression of where either Major stands or more importantly where the Black Panther Party stands. (Perhaps the Black Panther Party was itself unsure of what to do with this issue, as can be imagined by looking at these different quotes. However, even if this were the case, it still does not get Major off the hook for his own ambivalence.)

A third point of interest is Major’s consistent bias towards the Panthers whenever a Panther-police conflict is reported. After spending the first chapter describing the poor conditions that the blacks in the ghettos live in, the entire second chapter is spent giving example after example of police brutality against black people. In every example, the guilty policeman always ends up being found innocent by his colleagues, or by the courts. Even though I knew Major was writing about conditions almost thirty years ago, I was still left with a hatred of the police by the time I finished his second chapter.

It is well known that the Black Panthers and the police came into conflict more than once. Major consistently lays the blame at the feet of the police. Much of this is very well done, and he uses common sense to destroy the alibis of the police. When the Panther’s entire Illinois office was destroyed by the police, who claimed the Panthers were sniping at them from their offices, Major replies, “Imagine a group with enough sophistication and political know-how to build a nationwide organization in the period of a couple years could not develop a sense of tactic sufficiently refined to avoid shooting at policemen from their own headquarters” (179).

By showing holes in the testimony of police, Major eloquently shows how ridiculous it is to believe the charges that Huey Newton killed a policeman in cold blood, and how much more likely it is that Newton killed the officer in self-defense. Major also writes about the murder of Bobby Hutton and Fred Hampton, again showing how the story of the police did not match the evidence.

However, as I continued reading through the book, I began to doubt some of Major’s bias. Was every policeman the Panthers encountered racist, violent and dishonest? Could the police be at fault in every shoot out with the Panthers? What caused me to think particularly were the cases in which former Black Panthers testified against their comrades. One example is George Sams, Jr., a former Panther who claimed he was ordered to kill Alex Rackley (a member of the Harlem chapter of the Black Panthers) by Bobby Seale. Although Major points out holes in Sams’ testimony (he later changed his story to say he took orders from Stokely Carmichael), one wonders what would possess Sams to bring this testimony before his former comrades if it were not true. (Although Major scornfully rejects Sams’ testimony, he never answers this question.)

However, in light of what we now know about the FBI’s systematic attempts to destroy the Panthers, perhaps Major’s claims do not seem all that unlikely. Since we also know that the FBI infiltrated the Panthers with undercover agents, it is quite possible that these renegade Panthers were more than what they seem. Major goes to great lengths to explain in the second chapter of his book both the racist nature of the police force, and the solidarity which police show each other, to the point of protecting a comrade they know is in the wrong. In this respect, perhaps his consistent bias for the Panthers is not all that unbelievable. So, after being at first skeptical, following some consideration I am siding with Major on this one. The Panthers were probably more consistently the victims of police aggression, instead of the originators of the violence.

I wish to emphasize again that despite the critical nature of this review, I found Major’s book enjoyable and his perspectives refreshing, except where noted above. Major treats the Panthers with an open mind, and I find this admirable.

Bibliography

Reginald Major. A Panther is a Black Cat. William Morrow & Company, Inc. New York. 1971

Booklist. Volume 68. September 15, 1971. Page 74.

Professor’s Comments: Was this a history of the Panthers? Did you only find one review?

After re-reading this a couple of times, this is a decent paper. I wished you would have distanced yourself a little more.

Grade: A-

Video Versions

The Black Panthers

This was a paper I wrote for high school back in 1995. The assignment was to do something related to the civil rights movement. I wanted to do a paper on the Black Panthers, and the teacher reluctantly agreed. Although I was interested, I knew nothing about the Black Panthers at the time, and the Christian High library was not a lot of help. (This was in the days before the internet really took off).
There were no books on the Black Panthers in the library, so I looked over every book I could find on the 60s or the Civil rights movement and pulled out everything that was tangentially related to the Panthers, and then threw it all together in this paper. Which is why it reads so jumbled. Like my paper on The Japanese Student Movement, I've learned a lot more about this subject in the following years, and would undoubtedly write a different paper today if I had the opportunity.

The Black Panther Party for Self Defense was organized in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby G. Seale in a ghetto in Oakland California, although the “self defense” part was eventually dropped. Its initial goal was to protect blacks from police brutality, but eventually it evolved into a communist group that combined both Marxist and Maoist ideals. The Black Panthers worked closely with white revolutionary and radical groups that shared their goals. In fact the Black Panthers worked more with white groups than any other black civil rights group at the time, which brought them into disagreements with some black groups. In particular, an alliance was formed with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the spearhead of counter-culture’s political movement. SDS hoped to benefit from the Panther’s publicity. The Panther’s claimed the biggest problem was “the economic exploitation of both blacks and whites by profit seeking capitalists.” The Panthers would also demand complete black control of ghettos, including business and the police, freedom for all blacks in prison, and draft exemption for Blacks from Vietnam, which they considered to be a racist war. The Panthers rejected white culture and instead chose Afro hair styles, dashiki robes, and black power handshakes. They also coined the slogan “Black is Beautiful.” Seale and Newton themselves took inspiration from Malcolm X.

The Panthers’s first challenge occured during the Chicago riots. During the hot days of July, police refused to turn on fire hydrants so black children could cool off in them. The riots ensued, and the national guard was called in. The guardsman were inexperienced and trigger happy. Several innocent blacks were killed just walking down the street. One boy was killed in his own yard bringing the garbage out. The Panthers said, “We want an immediate end to police brutality and the murder of innocent black people.”

In 1966, James H. Meredith, the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi, was killed by a sniper on a civil rights march. [Ed. Note: Actually I got this wrong. He was only wounded.] This incident caused outrage among blacks, and caused many to question if they would ever achieve their goals. John Lewis, the chairman of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) struggled to keep the group peaceful, but was unsuccessful. He was replaced by Stokley Carmichael, who supported Panther ideals. By the end of the decade, the words “Non-violent” would be dropped from SNCC’s name. Carmichael was born in Trinidad, but grew up in Harlem. He was one of SNCC’s founding members in 1960, and led several student protest activities throughout his college years.

Also in 1966, the Panthers were joined by Eldridge Cleaver, who was on parole after being sentenced to twelve to fourteen years in 1958 for assault with intent to kill. Cleaver’s gift for speaking captivated many people, and he proved a valuable asset to the Panthers.

In 1967, Huey Newton was found guilty of murdering an Oakland Police officer, but the decision was reversed on appeal.

Bobby Seale was one of the “Chicago Eight”, a group that was accused of crossing state lines to start an anti-war riot at the Democratic National Convention. Interestingly, he was the only black man among the group. Nixon was out to make an example of this group, and many of them were sentenced to five years in prison. [Ed. Note: overturned on appeal]. Seale was not sentenced to prison.


In Los Angeles, three Black Panthers were killed in a shoot out with police. This incident fueled hatred between the two groups, and further shoot outs between police and panthers throughout the nation caused deaths on both sides. Cleaver himself fled to Algeria after a shooting incident in 1968. He would not return until 1975, when he claimed he had undergone a religious conversion and renounced many of his earlier beliefs. He was arrested for parole violations, and not released until 1979.

The Police claimed the Panthers were arming themselves for an all-out attack. The Panthers claimed the police were trying to exterminate them, so the Panthers sandbagged their headquarters against police attack, and armed Panther followers. While the California Senate was deliberating a gun control law that would have forced the Panthers to disarm, the Senate was rushed by 26 heavily-armed Panthers. The Panthers were disarmed by the security at the door.

That same year, Carmichael left SNCC to become the Prime Minister of the Panthers. The following are two quotes by Carmichael that reveal his views:

“When you talk of black power, you talk of bringing the country to its knees, of building a movement that will smash everything Western Civilization has created.”
And
“We have to wage a psychological battle for the right of black people to define their own terms, define themselves as they see fit and organize themselves as they see fit. We are concerned with getting the things we want, the things that we have to have to be able to function. Will white people overcome their racism and allow for that to happen in this country?”

Carmichael was replaced at SNCC by H. Rap Brown, who, after Martin Luther King’s assassination, would shout, “We must move from resistance to aggression, from revolt to revolution!” Brown would eventually aggravate Congress to pass what would be known as “The Rap Brown Act.” This act allowed peaceful protesters to be legally arrested. While arguing about this act, a Louisiana congressmen told his colleagues to “forget about the first amendment.” The Rap Brown Act was used heavily against the Panther in the following years.

Seale and other Panther leaders were accused of torturing and murdering a former Panther whom they suspected of being a police informer. The jury failed to reach a verdict.

Despite all their problems, the Panthers won support in the ghettos by feeding free breakfast to poor black children. The children were also given a free coloring book from the Panthers, which glorified killing white policemen.

In 1969, 14 police officers made an early morning raid on the apartment of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, whom they suspected of having illegal weapons. Hampton and several other Panthers were sleeping in the apartment, when the police opened fire. Four Panthers were wounded, Hampton was killed in his bed. The police claimed they fired in self-defense, but an analysis of the area showed they had fired some 100 bullets in exchange for one from the Panthers. Panther Brenda Harris, who was in the apartment, testified in court: “They came in shooting. They shot me, they shot Mark Clark, and this other pig, he came in with a machine gun and he started shooting toward the back and they were yelling to each other, ‘There is some over there in the back. Get them’, and he would shoot over toward that direction, and he was just shooting with the machine gun, just going crazy.” Attorney General John Mitchell justified the police action, calling the Panthers a threat to National Security.

In 1969, Newton was charged with murder in a street brawl, and Carmichael resigned from the Panthers. The movement was hurting as its leaders were vanishing, and the remaining leaders quarreled constantly. Added to the decline of black radicalism, it spelled death for the Panthers.

So what happened to the leaders? Two former Panthers were implicated in the Brink Robbery incident in 1981. Newton spent three years in prison for shooting a police man, and afterwards was in and out of jail. He was last released in 1989, after serving time for a parole violation. Seale now studies and teaches at Temple University in Philadelphia. He has also published a book on barbecuing.

Teacher’s Comments: The Police used PIG, Pride Integrity Guts, to their advantage.