Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party

CHRONOLOGY OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY

CHRONOLOGY OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY 1961 Huey Newton meets Bobby Seale at Merritt College in Oakland, California. They later join activist/professor Donald Warden’s Afro-American Association. 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi. Californians Mario Savio and Tom Hayden, among the nearly one thousand volunteers, become radicalized at the refusal of local, state, and federal agencies to rectify egregious racial discrimination, voter disfranchisement , intimidation, and murder that ran rampant through the Magnolia State. On their return, they help to radicalize the Bay Area and solidify alliances with future members of the soon-to-be-formed Black Panther Party. 1965 Malcolm X is assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City. In August, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization is founded in Alabama by a coalition of local people and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee members. It adopts the image of a pouncing black panther as its symbol. 1966 Huey Newton and Bobby Seale form the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. 1967 Panthers carry out armed police patrols in Bay Area. They escort Betty Shabazz from San Francisco airport to Ramparts, where a major confrontation ending in a standoff between armed Panthers and police takes place. Eldridge Cleaver joins xxv the party and becomes minister of information. The COINTELPRO against black nationalists begin, with the BPP as primary target. Panthers enter the state capitol building in Sacramento and gain national notoriety. Newton is wounded after an altercation with Oakland police that left Officer John Frey dead and Officer Herbert Haines wounded. The California State Legislature passes the Mulford Act, an antigun law prohibiting the carrying of firearms in any public place or street. This law ends Panther police patrols in Oakland. 1968 Five thousand onlookers cheer the speeches of H. Rap Brown, Bobby Seale, Stokely Carmichael, and a host of others at an event where the BPP merger with SNCC is announced. Eldridge Cleaver and his wife, Kathleen, flee America, visit Cuba and Paris, then settle in Algiers. An FBI memo details the bureau’s plans to cause conflict between Los Angeles panthers and the US organization. J. Edgar Hoover instructs field agents to take action against the BPP on a national level and to consider how factionalism can be created between local and national leaders. He also instructs his men to neutralize BPP organizational efforts. 1969 The first BPP Free Breakfast for Children Program is initiated at St. Augustine’s Church in Oakland. Bunchy Carter and John Huggins, leaders of the Southern California BPP, are killed in a shoot-out on the campus of UCLA. District Attorney F. S. Hogan announces a twelve-count indictment against twenty-one Black Panther Party leaders in New York on charges of plotting to kill policemen and to bomb police stations, botanical gardens, and department stores. Bail is set at one hundred thousand dollars each. The Chicago chapter begins a free breakfast program that grows from eightythree to more than 1,100 children in just one week. xxvi Chronology J. Edgar Hoover declares “the Black Panther Party, without question, represents the greatest threat to internal security of the country.” Stokely Carmichael resigns from the BPP. Panthers implement Liberation Schools, based on the Freedom School model of Mississippi activists. Eight Panthers are arrested in New Haven, Connecticut, and charged with murder of New York City BPP member Alex Rackley. Newton is convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to two to fifteen years in prison. BPP opens international section in Algeria under the aegis of Eldridge Cleaver. Police raiders murder BPP leaders Fred Hampton, 21 (chairman of the Illinois BPP), and Mark Clark, 22 (minister of defense of the Peoria BPP). LAPD/SWAT and members of BPP fight a four-hour gun battle following a predawn police raid on Panther headquarters. 1970 Huey Newton is set free on a fifty thousand dollar bail after the state Supreme Court reverses his manslaughter conviction. The People’s Revolutionary Constitutional Convention is held in Philadelphia. A BPP rally in New Haven, Connecticut, draws twelve thousand to fifteen thousand. Speakers include Chicago Seven defendants Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, David Dellinger, and David Hilliard. Disorder began following a fiery speech by Rubin and a false report of the arrest of three African Americans. Yale students strike in support of Panthers (including Bobby Seale) on trial, causing class attendance to drop 50 percent to 75 percent. Jonathan Jackson, George Jackson’s seventeen-year-old brother, William Christmas, and Judge...