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