Showdown in Desire: The Black Panthers Take a Stand in New Orleans

Notes

NoTEs FoREWoRd 1. Clayborne Carson, foreword to The Black Panthers Speak, by Philip S. Foner (New York: Da Cap Press, 1995), ix. 2. Judson L. Jeffries, Huey P. Newton: The Radical Theorist (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002); Jeffery Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); Curtis Austin, Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panthers (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2006); and Andrew Witt, The Black Panthers in the Midwest (New York: Routledge, 2007). 3. Mumia Abu-Jamal, We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2004); Jasmine Guy, Afeni Shakur: Evolution of a Revolutionary (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005); Evans D. Hopkins, Life after Life: A Story of Rage and Redemption (New York: Free Press, 2005); Florence Forbes, Will You Die with Me? My Life and the Black Panther Party (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006); Elbert “Big Man” Howard, Panther on the Prowl (Published by the author, 2008); Charles E. Jones, “Recovering the Legacy of the Black Panther through the Photographs of Stephen,” in The Black Panther Photographs, by Stephen Shames, 138–45 (New York: Aperture, 2006). Edited collections include David Hilliard and David Weise, eds., The Huey P. Newton Reader (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002); Sam Durant, ed., Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas (New York: Rizzoli International, 2007); and Kathleen Cleaver, ed., Target Zero: A Life in Writing Eldridge Cleaver (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 4. Michael Newton, Bitter Grain: The Black Panther Story (Los Angeles: Holloway House, 1980). 5. Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana, 1915–1972 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 427. 6. Earl Anthony, Picking up the Gun: A Report on the Black Panthers (New York: Dial Press, 1970). PREFAcE 1. Robert King Wilkerson, interview with the author, tape recording, New Orleans, December 2002. Unless otherwise noted, subsequent Wilkerson quotes in the preface are from this interview. 2. See appendix B. 3. Brett Anderson, ”Sweet Freedom,” Times-Picayune, 5 March 2002. 229 4. Marion Brown, interview with the author, tape recording, New Orleans, Dec. 2002. 5. Malik Rahim, interview with author, tape recording, New Orleans, Dec. 2002. chAPTER 1 1. Malik Rahim, interview with author, tape recording, New Orleans, Dec. 2002. 2. Times-Picayune, 19 June, 1989. 3. Quoted in the Times-Picayune, 19 June 1989. 4. Times-Picayune, 19 June 1989. 5. Times-Picayune, 16 Sept. 1970. 6. Quoted in Gene Bourg, “Desire Project Incubator for Crime, Report Says,” States-Item, 15 Sept. 1970. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Times-Picayune, Sept. 1970. 10. Walter Rogers, “To the People of Desire,” flier distributed in Desire, 30 Sept. 1970, Mayor Moon Landrieu Records, 1970–78, Special Collections, Louisiana Division, New Orleans Public Library. 11. Ibid. This was a common misconception after Hurricane Betsy and after Hurricane Katrina; it arose in part because the levees had indeed been intentionally breached during the Mississippi River flood of 1927. See John M. Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997). 12. Rogers flier. 13. Rogers flier. 14. “Death in Desire,” Time Magazine, 28 Sept. 1970. 15. States-Item, 16 Sept. 1970 16. Superintendent Joseph I. Giarrusso, Department of Police, confidential interoffice correspondence, 17 July and 20 Aug. 1970, Mayor Moon Landrieu Records, 1970–78, Special Collections, Louisiana Division, New Orleans Public Library. 17. Ibid. 18. “The Press and the Panthers,” NOLA Express, [early Sept. 1970], clippings file, Special Collections, Louisiana Division, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans. 19. Times-Picayune, 17 Sept. 1970. The bulldozing of the St. Thomas Housing Development occurred in 2002. Judge Bagert’s grandson Brod Bagert Jr. details the wrongheadedness of the endeavor and the injustice to residents in his PhD dissertation, “Hope VI and St. Thomas: Smoke, Mirrors, and Urban Mercantilism” (PhD diss., London School of Economics, August 2002). 20. Joseph Giarrusso, memo to Moon Landrieu, 30 July 1970, Mayor Moon Landrieu Records, 1970–78, Special Collections, Louisiana Division, New Orleans Public Library. 21. Barbara Guyton, flier distributed in Desire, now in Mayor Moon Landrieu Records, 1970–78, Special Collections, Louisiana Division, New Orleans Public Library. NoTEs To PAgEs xxix–11 230 22. Joseph Giarrusso, memo to Moon Landrieu, 20 Aug. 1970, Mayor Moon Landrieu Records, 1970–78, Special Collections, Louisiana...