Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's s
Speaker 1: Y s K Selects, I've chosen how the Black Panther
Speaker 1: Party worked, and I think you probably know why I did.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people listen to stuff you
Speaker 1: should Know as an escape from the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: from the terrible nous of news and politics and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff. And we get that, and we're actually
Speaker 1: grateful that we can provide that kind of distraction for
Speaker 1: people under normal circumstances. But these aren't normal circumstances, and
Speaker 1: right now is not a time to be distracted, and
Speaker 1: it's definitely not a time to be silent. And so
Speaker 1: I hope that you will listen to this episode about
Speaker 1: the history of the struggle for civil rights and human
Speaker 1: rights that black people in America have had to undertake,
Speaker 1: and then it helps you understand better the struggle that's
Speaker 1: going on in America right now. And I know that
Speaker 1: a lot of people who listen to stuff you should
Speaker 1: Know don't necessar fairly agree with us politically. That's fine,
Speaker 1: we get that, that's wonderful too, But we don't have
Speaker 1: to agree politically to agree that human rights matter for everybody,
Speaker 1: and right now every single one of us, every single
Speaker 1: one of you listening to my voice right this moment,
Speaker 1: has a once in a lifetime opportunity to do something
Speaker 1: about it, to stand up and to use your voice
Speaker 1: to help other people be treated equally and make this
Speaker 1: country a better place. You can't argue with that. More
Speaker 1: people having more human rights can only make America a
Speaker 1: better place. Just being a Stuff you Should Know listener
Speaker 1: means that you love to learn. Well, now is a really,
Speaker 1: really good time to learn about what life has been
Speaker 1: like all of these years for people of color in America.
Speaker 1: And I hope you will. I hope you'll open your
Speaker 1: hearts and your minds to all the people who are
Speaker 1: trying to teach us right now. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles
Speaker 1: W Chuck Bryant. It's just the two of us, no
Speaker 1: producer today. We're producer free, just the two of us.
Speaker 1: We can make it if we try, and let's try. Chuck.
Speaker 1: You and I right, I think we're both pretty excited
Speaker 1: about this one. Yeah, this, This is gonna be a
Speaker 1: good one. I love my history, as do you sure,
Speaker 1: especially contemporary history, and especially history that I didn't get
Speaker 1: taught in high school. I don't remember learning much about
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers in high school. None. So Charles, Uh,
Speaker 1: you didn't know much about the Black Panthers. I didn't
Speaker 1: either a little bit. Yeah, I would guess we were
Speaker 1: probably in about the same the same boat, you know,
Speaker 1: I went to college. Yeah, I don't recall learning much
Speaker 1: in college about them either, but I guess, I mean
Speaker 1: I knew a little bit here, there's some of the highlights.
Speaker 1: But it was it was in researching that I realized,
Speaker 1: like just how much if you if you don't actually
Speaker 1: go research it, just how how completely wrong a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff is, And not just in detail, but
Speaker 1: in like overall tone, you know, like you get the
Speaker 1: idea that, um, the Black Panthers were, um, nothing but
Speaker 1: like racist terrorists who basically wanted to kill all whites
Speaker 1: and take over the White House. No, no, not really.
Speaker 1: And and after further digging, it turns out that a
Speaker 1: lot of that image that that most people have today
Speaker 1: who don't really know much about the Black Panthers, um
Speaker 1: that idea comes from a misinformation and smear campaign carried
Speaker 1: out very purposefully by the FBI back in the sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies. Yes, by boy, I mean, let's just call
Speaker 1: him divisive at at the risk of smearing someone. But
Speaker 1: has there ever been a more divisive individual in this country?
Speaker 1: Perhaps well, who knows now, but j Edgar Hoover. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, my god, FBI director for life. I don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, I want to say, we should do a
Speaker 1: podcast on him, but it would definitely be a two
Speaker 1: parter because he worked for a hundred and eighty seven years.
Speaker 1: Well that we I should say, that smear campaign. And
Speaker 1: there was a lot of other stuff to that campaign
Speaker 1: as well, beyond just smearing um. But it had a
Speaker 1: name coin tel Pro counter intelligence program and um that
Speaker 1: in and of itself deserves its own one or two
Speaker 1: parter episode two. Yeah. I mean, at one point jed
Speaker 1: Ger Hoover came out in the news and said that
Speaker 1: the Black Panther Party was the single greatest threat to
Speaker 1: the United States of America. Uh right, And this was
Speaker 1: during the Vietnam War. Uh, I mean it for the uninformed, Uh,
Speaker 1: Like you said, people you know thought all right? Well,
Speaker 1: and it was not. Coincidentally, from that point forward is
Speaker 1: when the cops really were like, all right, we can
Speaker 1: we truly don't have to even respect civil liberties. Liberties
Speaker 1: at this point, we can go in and shoot people
Speaker 1: in their sleep, right exactly. And what's crazy, Chuck is
Speaker 1: when he said that it was less than three years
Speaker 1: after the Black Panther Party was formed. Yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning. Actually, we'll go back before
Speaker 1: even um, the founding of the Black Panthers, just to
Speaker 1: provide some context. Right, So this is the roughly the
Speaker 1: tail end of the Jim Crow era, right right before
Speaker 1: right at the New Deal era. And um, if you
Speaker 1: were black in America, your experience, whether it was in
Speaker 1: the South where it was just even more openly in
Speaker 1: eartly hostile um, or in the cities of the North,
Speaker 1: you were probably um just statistically speaking, it was likely
Speaker 1: that you were poor, that you um probably had routine
Speaker 1: especially if you were a black man, especially a black
Speaker 1: man under a certain age, that you were routinely mistreated, harassed, beaten,
Speaker 1: or possibly murdered by police. Um. And there was a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of racial tension as a result. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: not just up north. I mean we're talking pretty much
Speaker 1: any major city, right, and but especially in the South
Speaker 1: and the South. Actually, there was a guy whose name
Speaker 1: was Robert Williams, and he was an n double a
Speaker 1: CP leader in North Carolina, and he wrote a book
Speaker 1: back in I think nineteen sixty five, and he called
Speaker 1: it Negroes with Guns and advocated blacks arming themselves and
Speaker 1: carrying out violence in self defense, uh, in the face
Speaker 1: of this um racial mistreatment. Right. And he Williams actually
Speaker 1: kind of codified or enshrined into book form this idea
Speaker 1: that was pretty predominant among Southern blacks. It was like, look,
Speaker 1: this this is stuff is real, and we need to
Speaker 1: defend ourselves. And that idea spread a little bit to
Speaker 1: the cities here there, and um, it germinated in the
Speaker 1: minds of a couple of guys, a couple of college
Speaker 1: kids in Oakland named Bobby Seal and um Hughey Newton, Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: and they officially formed it was called the Black Panther
Speaker 1: Party for Self Defense. Initially it was eventually truncated, uh
Speaker 1: in Oakland in nine and there well, well you know,
Speaker 1: we'll go through there because they had like sort of
Speaker 1: a roller coaster ride of as far as what they
Speaker 1: did as a group and as a party, but um,
Speaker 1: initially kind of the whole whole thing was self defense.
Speaker 1: We need to defend ourselves against police brutality, right, And
Speaker 1: this non violent civil rights movement is is great. We
Speaker 1: love Martin Luther King Jr. And what he's doing, but
Speaker 1: it's going too slowly and in the meantime, we're getting
Speaker 1: beaten and killed in the streets by law enforcement. So
Speaker 1: we need to do something. We need to be proactive
Speaker 1: and do something about that, right exactly. Robert Williams may
Speaker 1: have written the book, but that the the the guys
Speaker 1: who formed the Black Panthers, Seal and Newton, they one
Speaker 1: of the first UM black rights group to advocate militancy,
Speaker 1: although again you have to point out like they advocated
Speaker 1: um violence and self defense, not aggression, right, yeah, which
Speaker 1: is why they specifically chose UM the Black Panther as
Speaker 1: their Uh, I guess you'd say mascot, but as their
Speaker 1: name mascot makes it sound like a baseball game or something.
Speaker 1: But uh, there's a quote here from Bobby Seal, co founder,
Speaker 1: and he said that Hughey Newton said, you know, the
Speaker 1: nature or a panther. I looked it up. If you
Speaker 1: push it into a corner, that panther is going to
Speaker 1: try and move left or right to get you to
Speaker 1: get out of the way. But if you keep pushing
Speaker 1: back into that corner, sooner or later, that panther is
Speaker 1: going to come out of that corner and try and
Speaker 1: wipe out who keeps oppressing in that corner. And that
Speaker 1: was sort of the idea, like, hey, listen, we're trying
Speaker 1: to sidestep, we're trying to do the right thing, but
Speaker 1: if you keep coming at us, then we're going to
Speaker 1: defend ourselves. Yeah, exactly. And and again they were the
Speaker 1: first people to come up with this, and they looked
Speaker 1: around and kind of surveyed the black rights movements that
Speaker 1: were around. There were um and they kind of said,
Speaker 1: this one works a little bit, but um, that part
Speaker 1: of it doesn't work, or this this one we we
Speaker 1: don't agree with, but it's a nice sentiment. Like the
Speaker 1: MLK nonviolent UM civil rights movement, they like you said,
Speaker 1: they said, this isn't working. It's not happening fast enough
Speaker 1: for it's not happening at all. UM. And some other
Speaker 1: groups and people like Stokely Car Michael and H. Ratt Brown,
Speaker 1: who were the heads of the Non Violent Student Coordinating Committee,
Speaker 1: were some of the first Black leaders to to publicly
Speaker 1: break with mlk's non violent theory and say, no, we
Speaker 1: need to meet violence with violence. Um. Malcolm X was
Speaker 1: another one, and Malcolm X probably had the biggest influence
Speaker 1: on the Black Panther ideology than anybody else. He advocated
Speaker 1: black militancy that included violence. He advocated um black self
Speaker 1: sufficiency and dignity, but he didn't necessarily say, um, you
Speaker 1: you were only going to advance with the helps of
Speaker 1: other blacks. We need to exclude whites or other um
Speaker 1: races from our struggle. And the Black Panthers is specifically
Speaker 1: Huey Newton and Bobby Seal really identified with that, and
Speaker 1: that was actually that became one of the hallmarks of
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers that they were willing to work with
Speaker 1: other like minded groups regardless of race. So that's a
Speaker 1: that was kind of a big one that I wasn't
Speaker 1: aware of that I learned from this um And then
Speaker 1: the other aspect of Malcolm X that really formed like
Speaker 1: one of the foundation keystones of the Black Panther ideology
Speaker 1: is that it wasn't race that was the problem, It
Speaker 1: was um class. They were basically avowed Marxists right that
Speaker 1: the central, the the central issue that created the struggle
Speaker 1: UM was was class was capitalism, and that the white
Speaker 1: establishment and the police and the government were keepers of
Speaker 1: the capitalist structure, and that same capitalist structure was keeping
Speaker 1: the black pants, the black people in America down, and
Speaker 1: so to get to to rise up, to become self sufficient,
Speaker 1: to get that chance that they needed to grow and
Speaker 1: advance themselves, they had to get rid of the capitalist
Speaker 1: structure itself. Yeah, they were very much into the socialist ideal,
Speaker 1: and um one of the first things they did was
Speaker 1: they realized they needed sort of a foundation on which
Speaker 1: to build upon, something easily adjustable, that people could could
Speaker 1: look at and could read and understand what they're all about.
Speaker 1: So very smartly, early on they came up with a
Speaker 1: very specific what they call their tin point program, what
Speaker 1: we want and what we believe, and uh, they wrote
Speaker 1: this out. We're going to read them in a second,
Speaker 1: but they wrote them out and then immediately printed them
Speaker 1: on a thousand sheets of paper, and uh set up
Speaker 1: an office and started passing these things around. This office
Speaker 1: was in Oakland, which is where you know, I think
Speaker 1: we already said where they founded and um, you know,
Speaker 1: they basically quit their jobs. Every member of the Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party was a full time I guess you could
Speaker 1: say employee, but full time worker. Yeah. Remember, And um
Speaker 1: they gathered their paychecks, the few guys at the very
Speaker 1: beginning and rented an old shop storefront base and started
Speaker 1: handing out this ten point program. Yeah they did. And um,
Speaker 1: you want to go over the program first, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: might as well just go ahead and read all ten Uh,
Speaker 1: so everybody knows what we're talking about, right. Uh. Number one,
Speaker 1: we want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny
Speaker 1: of our black community. We believe that black people will
Speaker 1: not be free until we are able to determine our destiny. Yep.
Speaker 1: Number two, we want full employment for our people. We
Speaker 1: believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to
Speaker 1: give every man employment or guaranteed income. We believe that
Speaker 1: if the white American businessmen will not give full employment,
Speaker 1: then the means of production should be taken from the
Speaker 1: business men and placed in the community so that the
Speaker 1: people of the community can organize and employ all of
Speaker 1: its people and give it a high standard of living.
Speaker 1: Uh number three, we want an end to the robbery
Speaker 1: by the white man of our black community. We believe
Speaker 1: that this racist government has robbed us and now we
Speaker 1: are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres. In two mules.
Speaker 1: Number four, we want decent housing fit for shelter of
Speaker 1: human beings. We believe that if white landlords will not
Speaker 1: give decent housing to our black community, then the housing
Speaker 1: and the land should be made into cooperatives of their
Speaker 1: community with government aid, can build and make decent housing
Speaker 1: for its people. Yeah, and this that was a big one.
Speaker 1: And as you'll see, a lot of what they were
Speaker 1: after was just like the ability to live in a
Speaker 1: neighborhood where you could have a decent school and a
Speaker 1: decent place to live and a chance at work. Like
Speaker 1: it wasn't some radical thing that they were after, you know,
Speaker 1: they just wanted the same opportunities basically. Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: mean I said earlier that if if you were living
Speaker 1: and you were black and living in America in the sixties,
Speaker 1: the chances are you were poor. Of all black people,
Speaker 1: all black people in the United States were living below
Speaker 1: the poverty line in nineteen sixty six of the poor
Speaker 1: living in metropolitan areas were black, and in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: two thirds of the black population lived in ghettos. So yeah, like,
Speaker 1: of course, it makes sense that their agenda is we
Speaker 1: wanted to just get to get to basic normal and
Speaker 1: then we'll go from air alright. Number five, We want
Speaker 1: education for our people that exposes the true nature of
Speaker 1: this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us
Speaker 1: our true history and our role in present day society.
Speaker 1: H Uh. Number six, we want all black men to
Speaker 1: be exempt from military service. This is a big one.
Speaker 1: We believe that black people should not be forced to
Speaker 1: fight in the military service to defend a racist government
Speaker 1: that does not protect us. We will not fight and
Speaker 1: kill other people of color in the world who, like
Speaker 1: black people, are being victimized by the white, racist government
Speaker 1: of America. Yeah, and you know later on in there,
Speaker 1: during the Vietnam War, they actually, uh, some of them
Speaker 1: travel to Vietnam and um kind of found a common
Speaker 1: ground with the North Vietnamese. Right, It's very interesting. Uh,
Speaker 1: is it my turn? It is? Number seven. We want
Speaker 1: an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people.
Speaker 1: Pretty much speaks for itself. Yeah, but part of that
Speaker 1: was that they they they point out that the Second
Speaker 1: Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed the right to bear arms,
Speaker 1: and that's gonna be a big, big part of the
Speaker 1: Black Panther Party. They were they're credited historically as being
Speaker 1: basically the ones who pointed to the Second Amendment and said, hey,
Speaker 1: we were advocates of gun rights. Yeah, well, we'll get
Speaker 1: to all that. It gets pretty juicy. Number eight, we
Speaker 1: want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county,
Speaker 1: and city prisons and jails. They it says that they
Speaker 1: believe that all black people should be released from prison
Speaker 1: because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
Speaker 1: Number nine, we want all black people, when brought to trial,
Speaker 1: to be tried in court by a jury of their
Speaker 1: peer group or people from their black communities, as defined
Speaker 1: by the Constitution of the United States. Number ten, we
Speaker 1: want land, bred, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace. And
Speaker 1: as our major political objective a United Nations. You provised
Speaker 1: plebiscite to be held throughout the Black colony in which
Speaker 1: only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for
Speaker 1: the purpose of determining the will of black people as
Speaker 1: to their national destiny. They're basically saying, we believe that
Speaker 1: black should have the power to separate from the United
Speaker 1: States from the white establishment and form their own self
Speaker 1: sufficient and um respected, self governing body basically right. So
Speaker 1: they took these uh tin this tin Point program. They
Speaker 1: founded a newspaper called The Black Panther and they sold
Speaker 1: that for cents. Uh. It got to be a very
Speaker 1: popular newspaper. Um had a really wide circulation, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't just uh, you know, black communities that there were.
Speaker 1: There were all kinds of people reading this a newspaper
Speaker 1: and it kind of aside from donations and stuff from
Speaker 1: various groups, it really kind of funded the organization was
Speaker 1: to sale this paper and every single issue I believe
Speaker 1: featured this tin Point program on the inside I'd cover
Speaker 1: and uh quick shout out to the artwork of Emery Douglas. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you've ever I saw this great documentary called The
Speaker 1: Black Panthers Vanguard of a Revolution. Yeah, I watched that too.
Speaker 1: And this artwork from this you know, artist and graphic
Speaker 1: designer Emery Douglas that was kind of the hallmark of
Speaker 1: the paper was just gorgeous stuff. And um, I think
Speaker 1: he's one of those has sort of not been lost
Speaker 1: to history. But you know, I had never heard of
Speaker 1: him before. I think he did it cover for one
Speaker 1: of the editions of Native Sun because I was looking
Speaker 1: at I was like, that looks really familiar. That's where
Speaker 1: I saw it before. It's really good stuff. Yeah, So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: they we've got the ten Point Plan, uh, and the
Speaker 1: original headquarters in Oakland, and all of a sudden, the
Speaker 1: Panthers starts spreading like wildfire, like their ideas because the
Speaker 1: experience was so similar as far as poverty and being
Speaker 1: harassed and brutalized by police and just Joe really being
Speaker 1: held down by the white establishment. Since that experience was
Speaker 1: so similar throughout all the all the major cities and
Speaker 1: even smaller cities in the United States, the Black Panther
Speaker 1: Party spread pretty quick and eventually they had something like
Speaker 1: five thousand members. And remember that doesn't sound that much
Speaker 1: like that many people, but like you said, to be
Speaker 1: a member, you were committed to the Black Panther Party
Speaker 1: seven you had to quit your job, you had to
Speaker 1: quit school, and your your life was the Black Panther Party.
Speaker 1: So the fact that they had five thousand people doing
Speaker 1: that around the country is pretty nuts. But they had many,
Speaker 1: many more supporters, and the Black Panther newspaper eventually grew
Speaker 1: to a circulation of about two fifty thousand. It's amazing,
Speaker 1: it really is. And UM, well, I guess we'll we'll
Speaker 1: get back to their history after this. Sorry, alright, So, uh,
Speaker 1: if you want to start, if you want to start
Speaker 1: anything that you want to grow and be noticed, then
Speaker 1: it sounds kind of silly to talk about, but you
Speaker 1: need to be good at branding. And uh, I don't
Speaker 1: know that they specifically thought about it as branding initially,
Speaker 1: but they quickly realized that the media really ate this
Speaker 1: stuff up. When these black men in in leather, black
Speaker 1: leather car coats and black turtlenecks and black berets donning shotguns,
Speaker 1: uh with the you know, the ammunition draped around their shoulder. Uh,
Speaker 1: the press ate it up. It was it was a
Speaker 1: cool look, and young black men wanted to look like this. Um.
Speaker 1: Black women started growing out their afros. It was all
Speaker 1: kind of sort of tied into the Black is Beautiful
Speaker 1: movement um, which was sort of just the notion of
Speaker 1: embrace your blackness, don't try to fit in and look
Speaker 1: you know, don't straighten your hair, don't try and look
Speaker 1: like white people like where you're hiki uh, grow your
Speaker 1: afro out, be proud of who you are as a
Speaker 1: black person. Embrace your roots. And the Black Panther Party
Speaker 1: was really tied into this and it became a really
Speaker 1: big part of their branding and recruitment. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: were hip at this time, like you were definitely hip
Speaker 1: to the Black Panther look, even if you hadn't adopted
Speaker 1: it yourself, you were like, there's a cool cat walking
Speaker 1: down the street with a bandalier bullets in the shock. Right. So, Um,
Speaker 1: the Panthers they had the look, they had the offices, now,
Speaker 1: they had the newspaper. And one of the first things
Speaker 1: they started doing even before they really started to but
Speaker 1: those first Panther members Um Hueie Newton, Bobby Seal, and
Speaker 1: then a guy named Um Bobby Hutton was their first recruit. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the first things they started doing was patrolling
Speaker 1: the neighborhoods of Oakland and looking for police who had
Speaker 1: stopped um black motorists. Right, it's almost like a a
Speaker 1: guardian angels that protected citizens from cops, right exactly. That's
Speaker 1: a really good way to put it right. So they
Speaker 1: would stand there, um at a reasonable distance and just
Speaker 1: openly and obviously observe the traffic stop, and they would shout,
Speaker 1: you know, at the cop anytime he started to violate
Speaker 1: the civil rights of the black driver. UM. And they
Speaker 1: were armed. They were holding shotguns, oftentimes not necessarily pointed
Speaker 1: at the cops. But in that UM in that documentary
Speaker 1: we mentioned, they would talk about how like the they
Speaker 1: would kind of bring it is, move it from side
Speaker 1: to side, kind of shifting position, and as it did
Speaker 1: it slowly was aimed for a moment at the cop,
Speaker 1: and the cops got the point like, yeah, I get it.
Speaker 1: You have a loaded shotgun and it's right there and
Speaker 1: you could shoot me. And some of the first um,
Speaker 1: some of the first traffic stop monitoring that happened just
Speaker 1: scared the Bejesus out of the cops. They had never
Speaker 1: experienced anything like this before. All of a sudden, there
Speaker 1: were a group of young black men standing there in
Speaker 1: black berets and shades at night, holding shotguns trained on
Speaker 1: them from time to time, and UM, the cops actually
Speaker 1: responded and exactly the way the black panthers did. They
Speaker 1: were much more hesitant to um brutalize or violate the
Speaker 1: civil rights of the drivers, and a lot of times
Speaker 1: they just get in their cars and leave, especially if
Speaker 1: they were on patrol alone. So that was one of
Speaker 1: the huge early foundational hallmarks of of UM the Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party, that they were, oh the leap and armoredly
Speaker 1: protecting their UM fellow blacks from police brutality. That was
Speaker 1: that was one of their major roles. Yeah. And uh,
Speaker 1: the reason that they were allowed to have these guns
Speaker 1: is because one of their one of their leaders, Eldridge Cleaver,
Speaker 1: UM found in the California law books that I mean,
Speaker 1: they call it a loophole, but it wasn't really a loophole.
Speaker 1: It's kind of right there in black and White as
Speaker 1: you are allowed to carry a gun in public, on
Speaker 1: public property as long as it's not concealed open car.
Speaker 1: And so they were like, all right, well we have
Speaker 1: these guns. It says right here we're allowed to. They
Speaker 1: would carry a gun in one hand a lot of times,
Speaker 1: and then this California legal handbook in the other and
Speaker 1: they knew it by heart. They could quote exactly the code. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you know, obviously the cops caught on the
Speaker 1: word got around what was going on, and it developed
Speaker 1: all the way to the California in General Assembly. And
Speaker 1: when you see this documentary, it's it's amazing, man, these
Speaker 1: these black the Black Panther party marches through the building
Speaker 1: onto the floor of the California General is simply wielding shotguns,
Speaker 1: loaded shotguns, and you know you see all the all
Speaker 1: the obviously the white legislature just sitting there like what
Speaker 1: in the world is going on, including Ronald Reagan. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the governor, right, And so Ronald Reagan was
Speaker 1: the governor at the time, and he is in that
Speaker 1: documentary quoted as saying, like anybody who thinks, you know,
Speaker 1: carrying open loaded guns in public is okay is out
Speaker 1: of his mind, and ultimately signed a anti open carry
Speaker 1: law that closed that loophole, the Mulford Act. Right, So
Speaker 1: Reagan signed some um gun control legislation, big gun control legislation,
Speaker 1: in an effort occurb those patrols by the black panthers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not so obviously you hear, all right, Ronald Reagan
Speaker 1: does this? You think, where's the n r A. And
Speaker 1: so I looked up, I was like, all right, what
Speaker 1: was just the climate at the time. Apparently in the
Speaker 1: late sixties n r A. It wasn't until the late seventies,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies seven, when a guy named Harlan Carter took
Speaker 1: over the n r A is when they really stepped
Speaker 1: it up with the Second Amendment rights. It was really
Speaker 1: more strict version of the Second Amendment. And uh so
Speaker 1: the n r A was silent, and obviously Reagan being
Speaker 1: very tough on guns, he had a I guess you
Speaker 1: could call it a conversion in the nineteen eighties as well.
Speaker 1: Uh and then he and the n r A teamed
Speaker 1: up together and started saying things like, well, no, it's
Speaker 1: it's okay, you can totally have guns. Right. This also
Speaker 1: happened to coincide with the breakup of the Black Panther Party. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when the when the n r A and Reagan changed
Speaker 1: their stance on gun rights. Um one thing you said
Speaker 1: was that it was Eldridge Cleaver who noticed loophole. It
Speaker 1: was Hughey Newton. He was the one who who like
Speaker 1: really had that mind for law. Eldridge Clever was much
Speaker 1: more the militant revolutionary and he was already a bit
Speaker 1: of a darling in the intellectual circles for a book
Speaker 1: of essays he'd written in prison called Soul on Ice.
Speaker 1: And so he joined the Black Panther Party pretty early
Speaker 1: on as their Minister of Information, in large part their
Speaker 1: official spokesman um. And he brought an air of real
Speaker 1: credibility and legitimacy and got a lot of um, left
Speaker 1: leaning intellectuals and um, you know, entertainment types like Brando
Speaker 1: was a big one who was in favor of the
Speaker 1: party and supporter. But they they really started to pay
Speaker 1: attention to the Black Panthers when Eldridge Clever joined. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and his wife, Kathleen Cleaver was also one of the Uh,
Speaker 1: well we might as well go ahead and talk about
Speaker 1: women in the Black Panther Party. Uh, you know, like
Speaker 1: most organizations at the time, that it was, um it
Speaker 1: was sort of from the top down down, a male
Speaker 1: driven organization. And uh they did have Kathleen Cleaver, and
Speaker 1: they had Elaine Brown who was also sort of one
Speaker 1: of the higher ups. But it was still and even
Speaker 1: they admitted it was still somewhat of a chauvinistic organization
Speaker 1: and most of the women were uh didn't make it pass.
Speaker 1: What they called the rank and file um sort of
Speaker 1: operating the nuts and bolts, secretary or secretarial work and
Speaker 1: UM just kind of making the thing go. So it
Speaker 1: was you know, on one hand, they did give women
Speaker 1: some positions of power, but never kind of at the top. Well,
Speaker 1: now there were I mean, like you said, you name
Speaker 1: two of the big, big exceptions that rule. But they
Speaker 1: were big exceptions, like UM Kathleen Cleaver was the first
Speaker 1: woman who was a member of the decision making body,
Speaker 1: and Elaine Brown took over as chair party chair like
Speaker 1: the the top official after Hughey Newton UM split for
Speaker 1: Cuba in nineteen three. But like you said, most of
Speaker 1: the women in the Black Panther Party we were ranked
Speaker 1: and file. But it doesn't mean that gender roles were
Speaker 1: totally rigid in the party, Like for example, you would
Speaker 1: just as often or frequently see women out armed doing
Speaker 1: UM patrols of the neighborhood, while men were the ones
Speaker 1: responsible for some of the survival programs, the community programs
Speaker 1: that we'll talk about. Yeah. Well Brown said they tried
Speaker 1: that and had minor successes, was right, Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: documentary she said that was sort of what she tried
Speaker 1: to do is reverse some of the roles. And she
Speaker 1: said there was still kind of largely a sexist attitude,
Speaker 1: and which was a problem within the organization, because you
Speaker 1: can't be that true community organization if you have that
Speaker 1: oppression going on within your own group in a gender sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and especially if you know women are the ones who
Speaker 1: are doing a lot of the actual work, Like something
Speaker 1: like fifty of Panther membership was female at one point.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you gotta respect that people who are actually
Speaker 1: doing the work, or else you got an arrogance problem
Speaker 1: at the top. Yeah. And we should mention too that
Speaker 1: Kathleen Cleaver is a professor right here in Atlanta at
Speaker 1: our own Emory University. Uh what law professor? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she wanted to get a law degree from Yale and
Speaker 1: uh after years of living in exile, which we'll get to.
Speaker 1: All right, So you mentioned the survival programs, and um,
Speaker 1: if you don't know what that is, you might be saying, like,
Speaker 1: what in the world is Josh talking about. They had
Speaker 1: their police brutality program, so that's kind of what made
Speaker 1: the news, was patrolling the streets with these guns, keeping
Speaker 1: the cops in check. And by the way, we should
Speaker 1: mention that they're the ones who came up with the
Speaker 1: term pigs as a dragatory term for police officers. Yeah
Speaker 1: from there. It first appeared in their newspaper and it
Speaker 1: caught him pretty quick. Yeah, so that was that was
Speaker 1: kind of what they made the news for it first.
Speaker 1: But um, I think especially Huey Newton realized early on
Speaker 1: that they can make a real difference in the community
Speaker 1: if they get these social programs going that you know,
Speaker 1: they're not being taken care of. Their schools are bad.
Speaker 1: These kids don't have access to like good food even
Speaker 1: and they they read that, you know, science scientifically speaking,
Speaker 1: that a good breakfast is has a big impact on
Speaker 1: how a child learned throughout the day. So they started
Speaker 1: this breakfast program where they would give I mean, I
Speaker 1: think at one point they were feeding like twenty thousand
Speaker 1: children free breakfasts around the country every day, every day,
Speaker 1: every morning, twenty thousand children around the country who otherwise
Speaker 1: would have gone to school hungry and stayed hungry the
Speaker 1: whole day eight breakfast because the Black Panther Party fed
Speaker 1: them every day, every school day around the country. That's insane. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They started medical clinics, free clinics called the People's Free
Speaker 1: Medical Center. Uh. They offered vaccines, testing for diseases, UH, treated,
Speaker 1: basic illnesses, cancer screenings, basically the social services that white
Speaker 1: America fully enjoyed, or i should say wide a man
Speaker 1: of a certain class fully enjoyed. And UM started offering
Speaker 1: up these programs which kind of became one of the
Speaker 1: hallmarks of the party. Yeah, they weren't just this militant
Speaker 1: group trying to you know, keep cops in check any longer. No. No,
Speaker 1: then that was a huge huge UM. I mean, that
Speaker 1: was as big, if not bigger than their their militant
Speaker 1: objectives is serving the community through these survival programs to right.
Speaker 1: And they funded these programs largely through donations UM, which
Speaker 1: they would go out and solicit from the community around
Speaker 1: the city's right. And apparently if you at least didn't
Speaker 1: give something, if you were like, no, I'm not giving
Speaker 1: you a dime, the Panthers would UM would out you
Speaker 1: in their newspaper and call for a boycott of your
Speaker 1: business that, you know, saying like you're these guys care
Speaker 1: so little that they won't even chip in a dollar
Speaker 1: for kids to have a free breakfast. UM. So they
Speaker 1: had like a real they had a pretty serious organization
Speaker 1: going by this time that was directed again not just
Speaker 1: that patrolling police and fighting police brutality, but also at
Speaker 1: serving the community. Yeah. One of the cool things they
Speaker 1: did was they started the Oakland Community School. Yeah. That
Speaker 1: was Elaine Brown. Yeah, and it was kind of her
Speaker 1: passion project, and it was it was pretty much free
Speaker 1: to students and they had UM they had small classes,
Speaker 1: They taught poetry, they taught foreign language, uh, in current events,
Speaker 1: they taught yoga like all these things that the black
Speaker 1: community had never you know, had access to. Black history
Speaker 1: is obviously a big part of it. They had my
Speaker 1: Angelou and Rosa Parks and other civil rights leaders come
Speaker 1: in and speak at the school and it operated for
Speaker 1: nine nine years from seventy to eighty two. And uh,
Speaker 1: Kathyne Cleaver has this one great story that she told
Speaker 1: on CNN about one young man who came to join
Speaker 1: the party because you know, he wanted to get a
Speaker 1: gun and be on the patrol. They handed him a
Speaker 1: stack of books and he looked at him and said,
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to army and they said
Speaker 1: back to him, I just did pretty good. Yeah. She
Speaker 1: dropped the mic right after that. But that, I mean
Speaker 1: that directly relates to UM. I think point number five
Speaker 1: on the ten point Agenda, where it says that they
Speaker 1: want education for people that um, that teaches them about themselves,
Speaker 1: that gives them a knowledge of self. It said that, um,
Speaker 1: if a man doesn't have knowledge of himself in his
Speaker 1: position in society in the world, then he has little
Speaker 1: chance to relate to anything else, which is exceptionally true.
Speaker 1: So you've got all these programs. I think they had
Speaker 1: like sixty five programs what they called survival programs in
Speaker 1: in place. Um. And it wasn't until apparently these programs, uh,
Speaker 1: we're starting to really roll and get the attention of
Speaker 1: and support of a lot of people outside of the communities.
Speaker 1: Even that the FBI, led by Jager Hoover, gave its
Speaker 1: full attention to the Black Panthers and they set about
Speaker 1: trying to destroy the Black Panther Party. Well yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean Hoover, ironically, these social programs are what scared him
Speaker 1: the most because he knew that that's how you're going
Speaker 1: to get white liberals on board on this cause, which
Speaker 1: is exactly what happened. I mean, like you said, they weren't.
Speaker 1: They didn't shun the help of the white man by
Speaker 1: any means. They like went arm in arm with these
Speaker 1: uh white lefties. Uh basically watch the documentaries. It looks
Speaker 1: like today they're you know, these college dudes with beards.
Speaker 1: They look like modern hipsters and uh worked arm in
Speaker 1: arm and at one point they even got together who
Speaker 1: was the Appalachian group, the Young Patriots. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: like you see this video of these black militants like
Speaker 1: giving handshakes and hugs to these Appalachian white Appalachian i
Speaker 1: mean rural white people who all seemed like they were like,
Speaker 1: we have the same problems and we can just get together.
Speaker 1: And it was just just crazy. It's specially in today's climate,
Speaker 1: all these years later to see that happening back then. Yeah, they,
Speaker 1: I mean they they were in favor of anybody regardless
Speaker 1: as long as they shared, you know, kind of the
Speaker 1: same sentiments or the same struggle. Um. In nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: Hugh Newton became the first black leader to ever publicly
Speaker 1: support gays and lesbians. Yeah that was a huge deal too, Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean the point was, like, you know, the problem
Speaker 1: wasn't race, The problem was this class struggle. And you know,
Speaker 1: everybody of a certain socioeconomic status or who was a
Speaker 1: worker was being held back. You know. So, Um, you
Speaker 1: were saying Hoover was worried about those social programs. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a quote from a letter that he wrote to
Speaker 1: an FBI agent who objected to targeting the survival programs
Speaker 1: as part of cointel pro Hoover said, you state, the
Speaker 1: Bureau should not interfere in programs such as the Breakfast
Speaker 1: for Children because many prominent humanitarians, both why and black,
Speaker 1: are interested in the program, as well as churches which
Speaker 1: are actively supporting it. You obviously have missed the point.
Speaker 1: And his point was that you don't leave those programs
Speaker 1: alone because they have support outside of the community. You
Speaker 1: target them because they have support outside of the community.
Speaker 1: That that was the real threat, way more than black
Speaker 1: men patrolling the streets with shotguns. That was a problem
Speaker 1: for local law enforcement, and the FBI was worried about it.
Speaker 1: But more of the point, they saw that as such
Speaker 1: a uh flash point, a potential flashpoint that they could
Speaker 1: get the police to shoot and kill armed black men
Speaker 1: on the street with with impunity. They that they could
Speaker 1: deal with. That is what they understood was meeting violence
Speaker 1: with violence. What they didn't know how to deal with,
Speaker 1: aside from completely subverting it and sabotaging it. Was generating
Speaker 1: goodwill throughout the community through these social programs. So that
Speaker 1: was the real threat to Hoover and his eyes amazing.
Speaker 1: So at this point, um, the party at the top
Speaker 1: had gotten a little uh, the foundation had gotten a
Speaker 1: little loose, um due to a couple of things going
Speaker 1: back in time a little bit. A few years before um,
Speaker 1: Huey Newton was arrested and convicted of killing a police officer, which,
Speaker 1: um it. On one hand, it's sort of um removed
Speaker 1: one of the one of the pieces of the foundation,
Speaker 1: which made a little bit weaker at the top. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, it really got people around this free
Speaker 1: Huey Newton campaign. Yeah that's phrase, Yeah, free Huey. And
Speaker 1: again the white liberals got on board and it kind
Speaker 1: of swept the nation that basically Huey Newton was involved
Speaker 1: in a shootout with the cops and was they thought
Speaker 1: wrongfully imprisoned and kind of railroaded through the system. And
Speaker 1: um so in one since it sort of galvanized the movement.
Speaker 1: And another, anytime one of the leaders is is operating
Speaker 1: out of jail, then that's that's not good. And he
Speaker 1: wasn't the only one. Um. Actually, I think all three
Speaker 1: of the original Bobby Seal was in and out of
Speaker 1: jail a couple of times, and I think by this
Speaker 1: point to Clever had fled the country to avoid jail
Speaker 1: and ended up in Algeria. He did so back in
Speaker 1: Um as part of a patrol. Clever and Bobby Hutton,
Speaker 1: who was the first recruit of the Black Panthers and
Speaker 1: by this time was the treasurer of the Oakland Chapter. UM.
Speaker 1: They were part of a patrol that ended up. Um
Speaker 1: was pulled over by two cops and those two cops
Speaker 1: ended up dead, and everybody in the car fled, and Um,
Speaker 1: Hutton and Clever fled to a basement where they got
Speaker 1: in a shootout for ninety minutes with police, and the
Speaker 1: police threw in tear gas and Um the tear gas,
Speaker 1: I guess exploded and caught the basement on fire. So
Speaker 1: Um Eldridge, Clever, and Bobby Hutton decided that they were
Speaker 1: going to surrender, so they came out with their hands up,
Speaker 1: Um unarmed, and the cops surrounded him and shot Hutton
Speaker 1: in the head, just executed him right there on the sidewalk,
Speaker 1: and Clever Um was taken to jail. He made bail,
Speaker 1: and right when he made bail, he's like, see you split.
Speaker 1: He went to Cuba because Fidel Castro was a long
Speaker 1: time and big supporter of the Black Panther Party. There's
Speaker 1: apparently still one of them. Um A Mada Shakur I
Speaker 1: believe who is living still in exile in Cuba today.
Speaker 1: Um who's a Black Panther? Uh? But Eldridge Clever, I
Speaker 1: guess didn't like the climate, ended up with Kathleen Clever
Speaker 1: in Algeria and formed the UH the International Chapter of
Speaker 1: the Black Panther Party, and that's where they would receive
Speaker 1: dignitaries from like the North Vietnamese government or from Cuba
Speaker 1: or any kind of left leaning revolutionary group would come
Speaker 1: meet them there. And that was enormous because all like
Speaker 1: basically no other black liberation or black rights movement group
Speaker 1: had genuine, legitimate international support. The Black Panthers did, and
Speaker 1: in the eyes of the world, that boosted their credibility
Speaker 1: just through the roof. Oh yeah, alright, So there's a
Speaker 1: bit of a UH I don't want to say power vacuum,
Speaker 1: but slight leadership vacuum because of the various UH top
Speaker 1: original founders being away from Oakland, either in jail or
Speaker 1: Algeria or in and out of jail, and uh, it
Speaker 1: could have potentially been filled by a young man out
Speaker 1: of Chicago named Fred Hampton. And we will get back
Speaker 1: to Fred's story right after this. All right, So Fred Hampton, um,
Speaker 1: by all accounts from this documentary in my research, seemed
Speaker 1: like he could have been the Bobby Kennedy of the
Speaker 1: Black Panther Party. He was vivacious, he was a great speaker.
Speaker 1: He was you know, he would he would give these
Speaker 1: speeches and uh, just galvanized people. He had a great
Speaker 1: personality and um, he was really getting kind of the
Speaker 1: movement back on track again in a big, big way
Speaker 1: when he was pretty much I'm not gonna say pretty
Speaker 1: much when he was uh politically assassinated by the FBI
Speaker 1: in Chicago Police department. Yeah, he was executed for sure. Um,
Speaker 1: so what was thee Yeah, December four is when the
Speaker 1: raid went down. So it's something like four am sometime
Speaker 1: in the wee hours. The cops kicked in the door
Speaker 1: Fred Hampton's house or the house where he was staying,
Speaker 1: and um, ninety bullets. I think I saw ninety also
Speaker 1: saw a hundred ninety bullets were shot fired from the
Speaker 1: Chicago Police Department and one bullet was shot by the
Speaker 1: Black Panthers, and that bullet was shot when the bodyguard
Speaker 1: to Fred Hampton, his name was Mark Clark, was shot
Speaker 1: and killed and dropped the shotgun he was holding in
Speaker 1: it went off. Yeah. Um, and we should mention too.
Speaker 1: This was one of many, many what they called raids.
Speaker 1: Um after hoover Is issued that edict that they were
Speaker 1: the the largest uh. And I'm sure there was an
Speaker 1: internal memo as well, which we don't know about. But
Speaker 1: when he issued that edict that they were the most
Speaker 1: threatening group to the United States eights democracy, it was
Speaker 1: pretty much open season and they carried out these raids
Speaker 1: all over the country where essentially cops would just kick indoors,
Speaker 1: guns blazing, shoot first, asked, don't even ask questions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this one was a little more, even even worse.
Speaker 1: It was even more pronounced because this was targeted this, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: and it was targeted specifically for Fred Hampton. And it
Speaker 1: kind of falls in line with this part of cointel
Speaker 1: Pro or coin tel pro. This one of the foundations
Speaker 1: of coin tel pro was that it sought to prevent
Speaker 1: the rise of a black messiah that could um consolidate
Speaker 1: the masses. And that was Fred Hampton, right, Well, he
Speaker 1: definitely fell in that. So was MLK, so was Malcolm X.
Speaker 1: Basically any black leader that was assassinated definitely fell within that.
Speaker 1: So and Fred Hampton did as well, for sure. So
Speaker 1: he was assassinated, Um, not by the FBI, but by
Speaker 1: the Chicago p D. But the Chicago p D were
Speaker 1: able to carry out a targeted raid because the FBI
Speaker 1: had supplied them with a map drawn by one of
Speaker 1: their informants of the apartment fred Hampton was staying. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was under the guise of they have a
Speaker 1: stash of guns in there, which they did have a
Speaker 1: stash of guns and ammunition in there, and that was
Speaker 1: the excuse they used to go in and shoot him
Speaker 1: in bed while he slept. Yeah. And if you are
Speaker 1: questioning whether this was actually an attempt on Fred Fred
Speaker 1: Hampton's life, those ninety bullets that were fired, most of
Speaker 1: them went into Fred Hampton. Uh, and three people who
Speaker 1: were sleeping in the same bed as Hampton where he
Speaker 1: was shot and killed. Um, we're not hit by bullets
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah, including his eight and a half month
Speaker 1: pregnant girlfriend. Yeah, who they grabbed by the hair and
Speaker 1: threw into the other room, tore her robe open, and um.
Speaker 1: You know, the story of the cops was was they
Speaker 1: knocked on the door, were denied entry. Uh, then they
Speaker 1: opened the door and there was a woman aiming a
Speaker 1: shotgun at them. Um. Later on ballistics tests, they did
Speaker 1: everything and basically figured out that was sham. All the
Speaker 1: bullets were found ballistically to have gone into the apartment,
Speaker 1: none going out of the apartment through the walls. And
Speaker 1: you know, in this documentary they interview a few of
Speaker 1: the people who are in there and they were just
Speaker 1: like it was mass murder. They basically just came in
Speaker 1: and shot the place up. Uh. They examined the angle
Speaker 1: of the wound that showed that Hampton was lying on
Speaker 1: his back in bed from somebody standing above him. And
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy a coroner's jury ruled the deaths justifiable.
Speaker 1: Everyone got away with it, but the city eventually and
Speaker 1: the federal judge approved at one point eight five million
Speaker 1: dollars settlement, but that wasn't until the nineties. Yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: thirteen years later. But the FBI apparently the agent who
Speaker 1: was handling the informant who produced the map, was so
Speaker 1: pleased with the results that after the after the raid
Speaker 1: that resulted in Hampton's ex acution, Um, he I guess
Speaker 1: male jager Hoover with the request for an extra three
Speaker 1: dollars because he wanted to give the informant a bonus.
Speaker 1: One of the bigger black eyes on American history, for sure.
Speaker 1: One of the other black eyes on the Chicago PD
Speaker 1: at this time was the one of these raids was
Speaker 1: on the Breakfast for Children program where the supplies for
Speaker 1: breakfast were burned, like the place was set on fire
Speaker 1: by the cops. So, I mean the Black Panthers are
Speaker 1: at like open war with with the FBI and with
Speaker 1: the police department. To the late sixties were crazy, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in large part because of this. Yeah, I mean for sure, Uh,
Speaker 1: there was another big shootout and this is all sort
Speaker 1: of coming to a head. If it feels that way,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what's going on. Um. In nine nine there
Speaker 1: was another big shootout and this was major and I
Speaker 1: think it was in Los Angeles, wasn't it. Yeah? Was
Speaker 1: It was the first time a swat team was ever used. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they employed the swat team, which was invented by the
Speaker 1: l A p D and two hundred l A Police uh.
Speaker 1: And I think it was like six or eight Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party members were involved in a full on, you know,
Speaker 1: hour long gun battle just right there in the streets.
Speaker 1: So things are coming to a head. The sort of
Speaker 1: the secret plan here by Hoover is working, which is
Speaker 1: he wants to fracture the party from within and so
Speaker 1: seeds of discontent and discord. So they had been through
Speaker 1: the years planting informants in the Black Panther Party, uh,
Speaker 1: in the party, and they knew it, the Black Panthers
Speaker 1: did so a lot of distrust, you know, when you know,
Speaker 1: like who can you trust? A lot of this this
Speaker 1: distrust happens even among you know, the higher ups that
Speaker 1: were formerly like a pretty strong union, right, And that
Speaker 1: happened for sure with the case of Eldridge Clever and
Speaker 1: Huey Newton. When Healey Newton got out of jail, he
Speaker 1: was eventually freed, and it was a big deal, and
Speaker 1: they thought this was going to be sort of the
Speaker 1: the rebirth of the Black Panther Party, uh, in the
Speaker 1: wake of the death of Fred Hampton. But he came
Speaker 1: out of jail, and he and Clever sort of had
Speaker 1: different Uh, they always sort of had different priorities, but
Speaker 1: they managed to come together. But they were truly fractured
Speaker 1: at this point. Yeah, they were. Um. Newton and Clever
Speaker 1: were like openly criticizing one another, with Clever still in exile,
Speaker 1: but Clever had the entire New York chapter dedicated to him. Uh.
Speaker 1: And years prior, the Black Panthers had formed what was
Speaker 1: called the Black Liberation Army, but it was a army
Speaker 1: of defense until nine UM, when I believe he was
Speaker 1: still in absentia. But uh, Eldridge Clever said, Hey, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take this from defensive to offensive and basically create
Speaker 1: a new terrorist group out of the Black Liberation Army.
Speaker 1: And they started a campaign of violence against UM cops
Speaker 1: where they would ambush cops and just kill them. There
Speaker 1: wasn't any retaliation for police brutality. Um, it wasn't self defense,
Speaker 1: like they were ambushing and killing cops. And it happened
Speaker 1: in cities around the country. And the fracture between the
Speaker 1: Black Panthers itself was so deep that Cleaver's faction and
Speaker 1: Newton's faction were assassinating one another. They were taking out
Speaker 1: each other's people. Um so it was a big deal.
Speaker 1: And the Black Liberation Army officially split from the Black
Speaker 1: Panthers in nineteen seventy one. And of course, at this point,
Speaker 1: Herbert Hoover sitting back in his chair like choking on
Speaker 1: his cigar from laughter, because this is exactly what he wanted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: was this in fighting? And um So Newton gets out
Speaker 1: of jail, he's, uh, he's trying to get the social
Speaker 1: programs going again, but he also is, uh, becomes addicted
Speaker 1: to drugs and by all accounts is sort of losing
Speaker 1: his mind and has become power hungry and um his
Speaker 1: sort of lost the original calling that he had and
Speaker 1: has gotten sort of drunk with power and was not
Speaker 1: functioning mentally like he should have been due to the drugs. Right,
Speaker 1: So it was it was his big sort of the
Speaker 1: big beginning of the flame out for himself and the party. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, his his downfall. Definitely, it didn't exactly mirror
Speaker 1: the party, but you know it was it was a
Speaker 1: herald of one. You know, one of the founders was
Speaker 1: totally losing his his marbles because he was addicted to
Speaker 1: heroin and cocaine, you know. And he actually had a
Speaker 1: very sad end. Uh. He died during a drug deal
Speaker 1: on the street in n in Oakland. Um, but he
Speaker 1: said that he was committing revolutionary suicide by being addicted
Speaker 1: to drugs and basically killing himself that way. UM. Some
Speaker 1: of the other ones had not quite as tragic but
Speaker 1: strange ends, like Elder Clever. Right when he returned from
Speaker 1: Algeria with Kathleen Cleaver, um he became I think both
Speaker 1: of them might have become born again Christians, and um
Speaker 1: Aldrich Clever eventually became a registered Republican. I did not
Speaker 1: see that coming. I did not either, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: a lot of people didn't. Right. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that internal violence with one another, Right, there
Speaker 1: was a big turning point, um as far as public
Speaker 1: sympathy went. Um in nineteen sixty nine, I think maybe Yeah,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, there was a guy named Alex Rackley
Speaker 1: who was a member of the New York Chapter, and
Speaker 1: he was suspected to be an FBI informant. And it's
Speaker 1: still after all these years, never come to light whether
Speaker 1: he was or not. But the Panthers had the idea
Speaker 1: that he was so they took him to the New
Speaker 1: Haven chapter where he was tortured. They tied him up
Speaker 1: to a bed, poured boiling water on his body for days,
Speaker 1: and then eventually I guess he confessed, although if you
Speaker 1: ever listened to a torture episode, torture, Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: get a false confession pretty easy if you torture somebody. Um.
Speaker 1: They took him out to the woods and shot him
Speaker 1: in the head and chest and and left him. And
Speaker 1: when he when his body was discovered, Bobby Seal had
Speaker 1: been in New Haven speaking at Yale like just hours
Speaker 1: before the guy was killed. So he got charged with
Speaker 1: the murder. And this is one of the founders of
Speaker 1: the Black Panther Party on trial for murder. And during
Speaker 1: this trial, um, which he was acquitted, but he the
Speaker 1: a lot of the in fighting came out and the
Speaker 1: Panthers had managed to keep it out of the public
Speaker 1: eye and under wraps for for you know, up to
Speaker 1: this point. Now it came out in the trial, so
Speaker 1: people realize that there was a lot of m schisms
Speaker 1: and fractures within the leadership itself. They lost a lot
Speaker 1: of public sympathy when they found out that they would
Speaker 1: carry out you know, extra judicial justice on their own members. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and it just it was. It was a big thing.
Speaker 1: It was a big turning point for the party as
Speaker 1: far as the public was concerned. Yeah. And and like
Speaker 1: I said, they were sort of the two factions with
Speaker 1: with Clever in Newton. Some people went with Clever, some
Speaker 1: people went with Newton. A lot of people left the
Speaker 1: Black Panther Party period at this point because they either
Speaker 1: didn't know who to give their allegiance to or they
Speaker 1: just felt betrayed by this fracture and the party wasn't
Speaker 1: what they thought it was. So the numbers are declining,
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely in sort of free fall at this point.
Speaker 1: And uh, Bobby Seal decides, here's what we need to do.
Speaker 1: We need to close down as many chapters as we
Speaker 1: can and and pull the resources in the money and
Speaker 1: bring everyone out here to Oakland because I'm gonna run
Speaker 1: from mayor and we to go all in on this
Speaker 1: legit push for political candidacy because I think I can win.
Speaker 1: So they literally called up people on the East coast
Speaker 1: and the Baltimore office and New York offices and said
Speaker 1: shut him down, come out here to California and we
Speaker 1: need to go all in on not only running for mayor,
Speaker 1: but on a massive voter registration campaign to register, you know,
Speaker 1: people in in urban communities to vote. So I think
Speaker 1: in the end they got like fifty new people registered
Speaker 1: to vote, and out of eight or nine candidates, he
Speaker 1: finished close enough in second to get a runoff. He
Speaker 1: got like the vote, yeah, but ultimately lost in a
Speaker 1: runoff in a narrow runoff and did not win UM,
Speaker 1: which sort of was one of the final nails in
Speaker 1: the coffin for the party because they had committed so
Speaker 1: many resources to try and get behind Bobby Seal's run
Speaker 1: for mayor. And he incidentally still lives in the Bay
Speaker 1: Area and is very much still an activist. Yeah, Bobby
Speaker 1: Seal is. Yeah, he was. Also did you ever see
Speaker 1: that UM documentary on the Chicago Eight It was like animated, No,
Speaker 1: it was really It's very good. But he was one
Speaker 1: of the Chicago eight and steal. He actually went to prison.
Speaker 1: This is before mayoral run. UM, but he did like
Speaker 1: four years or at least was sentenced to four years
Speaker 1: strictly for um contempt of court because he rejected that
Speaker 1: he was getting a fair trial. Because I don't think
Speaker 1: there was a single black person on the jury, Um,
Speaker 1: and he rejected that he was being tried by a
Speaker 1: jury of his peers. And he kept protesting in the
Speaker 1: middle of court, and eventually at one point the judge
Speaker 1: had him gagged, but he got like four years for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: gagged as in literally chained to his seat with tape
Speaker 1: over his mouth. Yes, and uh, you know that that
Speaker 1: set off all sorts of protests in the streets. People
Speaker 1: wanted that judge removed. I thought that was that not
Speaker 1: during the Panther twenty one trial. Was that the other
Speaker 1: one in Chicago? Know? That was the Chicago eight trial? Um?
Speaker 1: And that was that was a different trial. Also where Um,
Speaker 1: did you ever hear the urban legend that Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: got Bobby Seal out of off of murder charges? That
Speaker 1: was that came out of that Alex Rackley trial where
Speaker 1: he was on trial for murder and he was acquitted. UM,
Speaker 1: and Hillary Rodham Clinton was nowhere near the actual trial
Speaker 1: as his attorney. She apparently um was a law student
Speaker 1: at Yale still and was coordinating with the a c
Speaker 1: l U to monitor of the trial. So she she
Speaker 1: was there but apparently had nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: defense but it was a an urban legend that came
Speaker 1: out of the two thousand senatorial campaign. Well, the Panther
Speaker 1: twenty one I mentioned, um just quickly. That was in
Speaker 1: New York, the New York Chapter twenty one. Leaders of
Speaker 1: the Black Panther Party were rounded up and arrested on
Speaker 1: conspiracy charges. And this is a really big deal because
Speaker 1: the New York Chapter was one of the biggest ones
Speaker 1: in the country after Oakland, and people got involved and
Speaker 1: tried to raise money, like celebrities got involved and donated money,
Speaker 1: and at one point, I don't know if it still is,
Speaker 1: but it was the longest criminal proceeding in New York
Speaker 1: state history. It was a thirteen month trial by jury
Speaker 1: and they're all found not guilty and released, so that
Speaker 1: all of them were found not guilty. Huh. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Panther twenty one. Uh, And that's you know, jumping back
Speaker 1: in time a little bit. I just wanted to mention that.
Speaker 1: So there's a distinct legacy beyond just the look or
Speaker 1: the image or black power and black power. We should
Speaker 1: also say, um, I think it was Stokely Carmichael who
Speaker 1: either coined that phrase or at least was the first
Speaker 1: really kind of pick it up and run with it
Speaker 1: um and Stokely Carmichael is non non violent student Coordinating Committee.
Speaker 1: They got together with the Black Panthers early on. But
Speaker 1: if you I mean just in the popular culture, the
Speaker 1: Black Panthers live on. But there there's even more of
Speaker 1: a legacy as well. Um. Before he died, Dredge Clever
Speaker 1: gave an interview I think back in and he said that, Um,
Speaker 1: he basically blamed the gang violence that plagued inner cities
Speaker 1: in the eighties. He traced that directly to the death
Speaker 1: of the Black Panthers. He said that as it was
Speaker 1: the U. S. Government chopped off the head of the
Speaker 1: Black liberation movement and left the body. They're armed. That's
Speaker 1: why all these young bloods are out there now. They've
Speaker 1: got the rhetoric but are without the political direction, and
Speaker 1: they've got the guns. So he basically traces that directly
Speaker 1: to the Black Panthers being taken down. Yeah, actually I do.
Speaker 1: So we were talking about how you know there there's
Speaker 1: a legacy. There's not just a legacy the Black Panthers
Speaker 1: is a legacy of um uh, brutality against black people
Speaker 1: that apparently is at least as bad if not worse
Speaker 1: today than it has been, Chuck. So, the Tuskegee un
Speaker 1: Niversity in Alabama has records of all the lynchings that
Speaker 1: took place in the Jim Crow era eighteen ninety and
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five and two thousand. Nine hundred and eleven
Speaker 1: Black Americans were lynched during those years, and the worst
Speaker 1: year of the Jim Crow era was eighteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: and a hundred and sixty one people were lynched. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and fifteen, two hundred and fifty eight black
Speaker 1: people were killed by police in the United States. So
Speaker 1: not a lot has changed, and it's possible that it's
Speaker 1: gotten worse. But if you look to the Black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter movement, they have chosen the way of King uh
Speaker 1: and and preaching non violent rhetoric for social change rather
Speaker 1: than the Black Panther rhetoric of militancy and violent self defense. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a bit of the Black Panther Party spirit
Speaker 1: that was alive in the Black Lives Matter movement for sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. So uh yeah, that's all I've got. That's
Speaker 1: all I got. Good one. Yeah, I thought so too. Man. Um,
Speaker 1: do you ever see the movie O, the one with
Speaker 1: like Mario van Peebles. Yeah he made it. He did,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't in I don't think Okay, no, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I heard it was not good. Yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: see Malcolm X. I've never seen that one. Oh that's great,
Speaker 1: is it? Yeah? Yeah, Spike Lea's movie. Sure, Yeah, really good. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll check that out. Yeah. The Um the Panther movie was.
Speaker 1: I just read a few reviews today and apparently the
Speaker 1: setup is pretty good with some of the history, but
Speaker 1: then it kind of goes off the rails and like
Speaker 1: and not just goes off the rails like bad movie,
Speaker 1: but bad movie and not historically accurate or honoring like
Speaker 1: the subject matter. Dance scenes keep breaking out. Uh, but
Speaker 1: I do think that. I was like, man, why hasn't
Speaker 1: there been a movie made about Fred Hampton? Yeah, he
Speaker 1: sounds like he was a a pretty inspiring figure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: seeing some of those speeches like he he had it
Speaker 1: going on. He said his one big quote was, uh,
Speaker 1: We're not gonna fight fire with fire, We're gonna fight
Speaker 1: fire with water. I thought that was a good one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great one. That's black Messiah talk right there exactly.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about the Black Panthers.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of stuff you can do. You can
Speaker 1: go on to the site at house stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and search those terms. You can go watch Black
Speaker 1: Panthers Vanguard of Revolution. You can watch Black Power mixtape
Speaker 1: that has a lot to do with the Black Panthers.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it yet though, of you know, you
Speaker 1: can go to Emory University, I bet and get in
Speaker 1: touch with Castl and Cleaver and maybe offered to buy
Speaker 1: her coffee. Yep, there's uh some just a lot of
Speaker 1: really good articles out there. Uh that it just searched
Speaker 1: Black Panthers in it'll there's a lot of eye opening
Speaker 1: history that you didn't learn in school. And since I
Speaker 1: said you didn't learn in school, it's time for a
Speaker 1: listener mail. I'm gonna call this addendum to rubber trade
Speaker 1: from the elastics episode. Hey, guys, just listen to the
Speaker 1: one on elastics. It was fun and informative as usual,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to call attention to a small important omission.
Speaker 1: You're discussing the rubber trade in Latin American you only
Speaker 1: mentioned Brazil, although it was indeed the largest exporter of
Speaker 1: rubber in the area. The Amazon Basin and the Putumayo
Speaker 1: River Valley region in Peru and Colombia were also important
Speaker 1: sites for the production of rubber trees. Sadly, when you
Speaker 1: combine global demand with a natural product, the result is
Speaker 1: usually some form of exploitation. In the case of rubber,
Speaker 1: it came to a horrible extreme with the Peruvian Amazon
Speaker 1: Rubber Company, or as it was known in Spanish, the
Speaker 1: Casa Arana, named for Julio cesar Arana, Peruvian businessman that
Speaker 1: set up shop in the region, enslaved, tortured, and mutilated
Speaker 1: indigenous populations to the brink of extinction in the pursuit
Speaker 1: of rubber. His crimes were documented and made public in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirteen, but his business and atrocities only stopped when
Speaker 1: rubber production moved to Asia and he couldn't compete. UH.
Speaker 1: This whole rubber Bonanza's chronicled in the x went Colombian
Speaker 1: novel The Whirlwind by J. E. Rivera. Today, the offices
Speaker 1: of the company, the Kasa Adana or Arana House, are
Speaker 1: being converted into a historic site. Members of local tribes
Speaker 1: can gather and remember those atrocities in their own way,
Speaker 1: telling their own stories and their own words. UH. This
Speaker 1: is one of those poorly documented, poorly discussed examples of
Speaker 1: genocide as a result of trade. At least in Columbia,
Speaker 1: every kind of economic bonanza is somehow tied to one
Speaker 1: massacre or another. So that's the downer I wanted to share.
Speaker 1: Nice Who is that best from Bogato? Santiago? Santiago is
Speaker 1: the person who wrote it in Yes, thanks a lot
Speaker 1: for writing that, Santiago. We appreciate it. Yep, that's a
Speaker 1: good one. And then this has been like an eye
Speaker 1: opening history lesson through and through. Huh. Absolutely, if you
Speaker 1: want to give us an eye opening history lesson, we
Speaker 1: love those. So get in touch with us. You can
Speaker 1: tweet to us at josh um Clark and at s
Speaker 1: y s K podcast. You can hang out with us
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Charles be Chuck Bryant and Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff
Speaker 1: Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has always
Speaker 1: joined us at our home on the web Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a
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