Emory Douglas & buZ blurr connect at my old store/gallery back in 2008. Photo by the homie Shaun Roberts

And, for those who care about such things, here’s an interview that I did with buZ around that same time:

2 Sides To Every Boxcar

I hired out in ‘62 and didn’t start marking the cars until November ‘71. So that nine-year interim I was working various night jobs, and I had given up my idea on any kind of art, and had started reading novels like Vonnegut’s; all his greatest novels featuring his Kilgore Trout character—a writer that didn’t have readers, but he continued writing compulsively. I was also reading ‘Understanding Media’ by McLuhan, RD Laing’s ‘Politics of Experience,’ and those other heavy thinkers like Skinner and the conditioned response of his experiments and all that. So during all this time I had been in an afternoon job—it was one of the first times I’d had a regular daylight job—and most times I was working at night on switch engines and locals. So on this job I was working what they call the long field position, and I was down in the yard—the rail yard was downhill—and I had to keep the tracks from rolling out the north end so I had to keep the head brakes tied down on all the rails. So after I had that done, I was just laying down in amongst the cars to make certain they didn’t roll out. I had some free time so I decided to be a vandal myself, you know?

Photo of Kathleen Cleaver by Gerhard Gscheidle for San Francisco Express Times (1968)

The Black Panther (1969). The artist, known only as ‘Blood Brother’, apparently was a worker at Howard Quinn Press where the Black Panther Party (and others, including the Berkeley Barb) had their newspaper printed. Funnily enough he is rumored to have been on the government payroll.

Rat Subterranean News (1970)

Seale was arrested in California in connection with the alleged New Haven, Connecticut torture-slaying of Alex Rackley, a Panther recruit from New York. Eleven other Panthers (mostly members of the New Haven BPP chapter) were indicted as well. The main witness against Seale and the others turned out to be one of the defendants, George Sams, a police infiltrator and former psychiatric patient who had worked his way into a position in the Panther security apparatus before being expelled from the party by Seale. As it turned out, Sams had accused Rackley of being an informer and had himself carried the bad-jacketing effort through a week-long interrogation during which the young recruit was chained to a bed and scalded with boiling water. Sams had then killed him, dumping the body in a swampy area where it was soon discovered by fishermen.

In the aftermath, one New Haven Panther, Warren Kimbro, pled guilty to second degree murder, not for having killed Rackley, but for not having prevented his death; he was sentenced to life in prison. A second, Lonnie McLucas, was tried alone, convicted of conspiracy to murder and sentenced to 15 years. Sams, the actual killer, was also eventually given a life sentence, despite his various police connections.

Although it was plain that the culprits in this ugly matter had been dealt with—even the New Haven Police Chief James F. Ahern stated publicly that there was no evidence that Bobby Seale had been involved in Rackley’s death—the state proceeded to bring Seale, along with Ericka Huggins (widow of assassinated LA Panther leader Jon), another “notable,” to trial. Apparently, the hope was that the earlier confession and convictions would have tempered public sentiment against the BPP to such an extent that these defendants would be found guilty on the basis of party membership alone. In this the government was disappointed when the “jury in the trial was ready to acquit Seale but…two jurors refused to vote for acquittal unless [Ericka Huggins] was convicted. [Judge Harold M. Mulveny then] ordered both cases dismissed [on May 24, 1971] when the jury reported it was hopelessly deadlocked.” State apologists promptly claimed “justice” had been served, but by then Seale had served more than two years in maximum security lockup without bail, much of it in solitary confinement, without ever having been convicted of anything at all, and was never really able to resume his former galvanizing role in the party. —The COINTELPRO Papers by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall

Yale students (including a young radical then known as Hillary Rodham) strike in solidarity with the New Haven Nine on May Day, 1970.

04/06/68 - Lil’ Bobby Hutton murdered in cold blood by Oakland police.

The first one out was Bobby Hutton.

He emerged, his hands in the air, from a burning tear-gassed basement where eight of his Black Panther brothers were still holed up. He stepped into the bright searchlight. Oakland police shot him dead.

Bobby James Hutton, Black Panther treasurer, is now a martyr of the fight for black freedom. If he had survived the seven shots that shattered his life, Bobby Hutton would have been 18 years old this month.

Click here for the coverage of the incident from the legendary Bay Area underground newspaper, Berkeley Barb.

Emory Grinds ‘Em Down

Emory Douglas

Washington Free Press (1968)

This is a complete transcript of Stokely Carmichael’s speech at the Oakland Auditorium February 17, 1968. The occasion was a benefit birthday party for Huey P. Newton, Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. Newton is awaiting trial on charges of killing a white Oakland policeman.

The speech as it appears in cold print lacks both the rhetorical devices and the genuine emotion of the speech as delivered—which was magnificent.

The general sentiment of the staff people who heard the tape in our office was “Too bad he’s so groovy.” We hope to have a more thorough critique in the near future.

Honky - READ THIS

Black Panther Party co-founder and Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton was born on this day (02/17) in 1942.

Above is a scan taken from the September 1967 issue of Ramparts magazine and below is an excerpt (it’s long, but well worth the read) from The Black Panthers (1969) by Gene Marine in which he relates a great anecdote that illustrates just how powerful the arrival of the Black Panther Party was. To set the scene just a little bit: It’s February 1967. Eldridge Cleaver, just two months out of prison, is working at Ramparts magazine, which began publishing his Soul on Ice essays while he was still locked up. Cleaver, not yet a Black Panther, is a part of an organization which is hosting Malcolm X’s widow Betty Shabazz for a series of Bay Area speaking engagements surrounding the second anniversary of Malcolm’s assassination.  The newly formed, but already notorious, Black Panther Party for Self Defense is hired to provide security for Mrs. Shabazz while she is in the Bay Area.

…it was at a meeting of the planning committee that Cleaver discovered the Black Panthers, only a few months after their formation. Newton and the others entered the storefront meeting place while Cleaver’s back was turned; he recalls the moment:

“From the tension showing on the faces of the people before me, I thought the cops were invading the meeting, but there was a deep female gleam leaping out of one of the women’s eyes that no cop who ever lived could elicit. I recognized that gleam out of the recesses of my soul, even though I had never seen it before in my life: the total admiration of a black woman for a black man. I spun ‘round in my seat and saw the most beautiful sight I had ever seen: four black men wearing black berets, powder-blue shirts, black leather jackets, black trousers, shiny black shoes—and each with a gun! In front was Huey P. Newton with a riot pump shotgun in his right hand, barrel pointed down to the floor. Beside him was Bobby Seale, the handle of a .45-caliber automatic showing from its holster on his right hip, just below the hem of his jacket. A few steps behind Seale was Bobby Hutton, the barrel of his shotgun at his feet. Next to him was Sherwin Forte, an M-1 carbine with a banana clip cradled in his arms…Where was my mind at? Blown!”

As it turned out, the Panthers accepted responsibility for Mrs. Shabazz’s security during her visit to the Bay Area (there was some fear that she, too, might be assassinated). It led to a scene in San Francisco as strange as the one that had taken place outside Panther headquarters in Oakland—stranger, perhaps, for it took place not in a ghetto but in busy North Beach, alongside a freeway onramp, with television cameras on hand and a startled audience of passing commuters.

Hakim Jamal, a cousin by marriage to Malcolm X, had called Eldridge Cleaver at Ramparts to say that Mrs. Shabazz had read and liked an article and that she wanted to visit him; they agreed that she would come to the Ramparts office. I was there the day she arrived, and once the fear passed (I was convinced that one of the angry policemen on the scene would do something stupid, despite the obvious discipline of the Panthers), my mind, too, was blown.

What had happened, simply, was that about twenty Panthers, all armed, had escorted Jamal and Mrs. Shabazz from the airport to Ramparts. Airport police had challenged the Panthers, but had agreed that there was nothing illegal about their carrying loaded weapons; they did, however, call the San Francisco police, who arrived at Ramparts a few minutes after the Panthers.

While Cleaver talked with Jamal and Mrs. Shabazz, most of the Panthers stayed outside or just inside the lobby. Panthers, cops, outside newsmen, and Ramparts staffers made for an enormous traffic jam, but editor Warren Hinckle III kept insisting to the lieutenant in charge of the police that nothing was wrong, which made the lieutenant furious, and there were no incidents while the visitors were there, except that two of the younger staffers tossed out a television cameraman who forced his way into the office and refused to leave.

When the visit was completed, Newton, who had been outside Cleaver’s office, appeared in the lobby, sent five Panthers to clear a path through the crowd, surrounded Mrs. Shabazz and Jamal with ten more Panthers in a knot and rushed them into a car, and then, with Seale and three others, brought up the rear. The same television cameraman was taking pictures, and Newton held an envelope over the lens; the cameraman called him a name and knocked the envelope away with his fist. Newton turned to the nearest policeman.

“Officer, I want you to arrest this man for assault.”

The cop gaped. “If I arrest anyone, it’ll be you,” he finally shouted. Huey put the envelope up again, the cameraman knocked it away again, and Huey grabbed the cameraman’s collar and shoved him fifteen feet down the hill.

The cops spread out and poised, but otherwise did not move as the Panthers started for their car. Huey instructed the others not to turn their backs on the policemen; the order made one of them even angrier, and I, at least, thought the moment I feared had come when I saw him snap the cover open on his holster, and saw Huey spin to face him.

They stood for a moment until the cop said huskily, “Don’t point that gun at me!”

Newton, the barrel of his shotgun pointed, as it had been, at the sidewalk, asked him, “You want to draw your gun?”

Those of us who might be in the way got out of the way, police included; another cop said, “Take it easy, take it easy”—to his partner, not to Newton.

“Okay, you big fat racist pig,” Newton said deliberately, “draw your gun.”

They stood for another moment, Seale calling to Newton to leave while the other police called to their fellow to let the moment go. Then the policeman dropped his hands carefully to his sides and lowered his head. Newton laughed, turned his back, and walked to the car.

“Goddamn,” said Eldridge Cleaver, who was standing on the steps outside the Ramparts office, “that nigger is crazy!”

Later he wrote:

“The quality in Huey P. Newton’s character which I had seen that morning in front of Ramparts and which I was to see demonstrated over and over again after I joined the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was courage. I had called it ‘crazy,’ as people often do to explain away things they do not understand. I don’t mean the courage to stand up and be counted, or even the courage it takes to face certain death. I speak of that revolutionary courage it takes to pick up a gun with which to oppose the oppressor of one’s people. That’s a different kind of courage.”