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SYSK Selects: How The Black Panther Party Worked · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's s
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Y s K Selects, I've chosen how the Black Panther
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Party worked, and I think you probably know why I did.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I know a lot of people listen to stuff you
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: should Know as an escape from the rest of the world,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: from the terrible nous of news and politics and all
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: of that stuff. And we get that, and we're actually
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: grateful that we can provide that kind of distraction for
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: people under normal circumstances. But these aren't normal circumstances, and
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: right now is not a time to be distracted, and
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: it's definitely not a time to be silent. And so
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: I hope that you will listen to this episode about
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: the history of the struggle for civil rights and human
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: rights that black people in America have had to undertake,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: and then it helps you understand better the struggle that's
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: going on in America right now. And I know that
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of people who listen to stuff you should
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Know don't necessar fairly agree with us politically. That's fine,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: we get that, that's wonderful too, But we don't have
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: to agree politically to agree that human rights matter for everybody,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: and right now every single one of us, every single
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: one of you listening to my voice right this moment,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: has a once in a lifetime opportunity to do something
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: about it, to stand up and to use your voice
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: to help other people be treated equally and make this
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: country a better place. You can't argue with that. More
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: people having more human rights can only make America a
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: better place. Just being a Stuff you Should Know listener
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: means that you love to learn. Well, now is a really,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: really good time to learn about what life has been
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: like all of these years for people of color in America.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: And I hope you will. I hope you'll open your
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  Speaker 1: hearts and your minds to all the people who are
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: trying to teach us right now. Thanks for listening, and
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: thanks for listening. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: W Chuck Bryant. It's just the two of us, no
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: producer today. We're producer free, just the two of us.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: We can make it if we try, and let's try. Chuck.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: You and I right, I think we're both pretty excited
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: about this one. Yeah, this, This is gonna be a
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: good one. I love my history, as do you sure,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: especially contemporary history, and especially history that I didn't get
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: taught in high school. I don't remember learning much about
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: the Black Panthers in high school. None. So Charles, Uh,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: you didn't know much about the Black Panthers. I didn't
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: either a little bit. Yeah, I would guess we were
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: probably in about the same the same boat, you know,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: I went to college. Yeah, I don't recall learning much
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: in college about them either, but I guess, I mean
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I knew a little bit here, there's some of the highlights.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: But it was it was in researching that I realized,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: like just how much if you if you don't actually
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: go research it, just how how completely wrong a lot
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: of this stuff is, And not just in detail, but
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: in like overall tone, you know, like you get the
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: idea that, um, the Black Panthers were, um, nothing but
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: like racist terrorists who basically wanted to kill all whites
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: and take over the White House. No, no, not really.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: And and after further digging, it turns out that a
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: lot of that image that that most people have today
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: who don't really know much about the Black Panthers, um
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: that idea comes from a misinformation and smear campaign carried
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: out very purposefully by the FBI back in the sixties
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: and seventies. Yes, by boy, I mean, let's just call
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: him divisive at at the risk of smearing someone. But
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: has there ever been a more divisive individual in this country?
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Perhaps well, who knows now, but j Edgar Hoover. Yeah,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, my god, FBI director for life. I don't.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, I want to say, we should do a
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: podcast on him, but it would definitely be a two
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: parter because he worked for a hundred and eighty seven years.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Well that we I should say, that smear campaign. And
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of other stuff to that campaign
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: as well, beyond just smearing um. But it had a
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: name coin tel Pro counter intelligence program and um that
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: in and of itself deserves its own one or two
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: parter episode two. Yeah. I mean, at one point jed
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Ger Hoover came out in the news and said that
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: the Black Panther Party was the single greatest threat to
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the United States of America. Uh right, And this was
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: during the Vietnam War. Uh, I mean it for the uninformed, Uh,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Like you said, people you know thought all right? Well,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: and it was not. Coincidentally, from that point forward is
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: when the cops really were like, all right, we can
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: we truly don't have to even respect civil liberties. Liberties
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: at this point, we can go in and shoot people
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: in their sleep, right exactly. And what's crazy, Chuck is
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: when he said that it was less than three years
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: after the Black Panther Party was formed. Yeah, so let's
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: go back to the beginning. Actually, we'll go back before
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: even um, the founding of the Black Panthers, just to
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: provide some context. Right, So this is the roughly the
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: tail end of the Jim Crow era, right right before
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: right at the New Deal era. And um, if you
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: were black in America, your experience, whether it was in
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: the South where it was just even more openly in
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: eartly hostile um, or in the cities of the North,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: you were probably um just statistically speaking, it was likely
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: that you were poor, that you um probably had routine
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: especially if you were a black man, especially a black
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: man under a certain age, that you were routinely mistreated, harassed, beaten,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: or possibly murdered by police. Um. And there was a
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: tremendous amount of racial tension as a result. Right, Yeah,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: not just up north. I mean we're talking pretty much
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: any major city, right, and but especially in the South
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: and the South. Actually, there was a guy whose name
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: was Robert Williams, and he was an n double a
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: CP leader in North Carolina, and he wrote a book
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: back in I think nineteen sixty five, and he called
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: it Negroes with Guns and advocated blacks arming themselves and
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: carrying out violence in self defense, uh, in the face
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: of this um racial mistreatment. Right. And he Williams actually
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: kind of codified or enshrined into book form this idea
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: that was pretty predominant among Southern blacks. It was like, look,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: this this is stuff is real, and we need to
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: defend ourselves. And that idea spread a little bit to
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: the cities here there, and um, it germinated in the
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: minds of a couple of guys, a couple of college
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  Speaker 1: kids in Oakland named Bobby Seal and um Hughey Newton, Yes, uh,
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  Speaker 1: and they officially formed it was called the Black Panther
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Party for Self Defense. Initially it was eventually truncated, uh
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: in Oakland in nine and there well, well you know,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: we'll go through there because they had like sort of
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: a roller coaster ride of as far as what they
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: did as a group and as a party, but um,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: initially kind of the whole whole thing was self defense.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: We need to defend ourselves against police brutality, right, And
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: this non violent civil rights movement is is great. We
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: love Martin Luther King Jr. And what he's doing, but
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: it's going too slowly and in the meantime, we're getting
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: beaten and killed in the streets by law enforcement. So
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: we need to do something. We need to be proactive
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: and do something about that, right exactly. Robert Williams may
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: have written the book, but that the the the guys
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: who formed the Black Panthers, Seal and Newton, they one
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: of the first UM black rights group to advocate militancy,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: although again you have to point out like they advocated
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: um violence and self defense, not aggression, right, yeah, which
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: is why they specifically chose UM the Black Panther as
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: their Uh, I guess you'd say mascot, but as their
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  Speaker 1: name mascot makes it sound like a baseball game or something.
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  Speaker 1: But uh, there's a quote here from Bobby Seal, co founder,
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  Speaker 1: and he said that Hughey Newton said, you know, the
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  Speaker 1: nature or a panther. I looked it up. If you
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: push it into a corner, that panther is going to
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  Speaker 1: try and move left or right to get you to
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  Speaker 1: get out of the way. But if you keep pushing
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  Speaker 1: back into that corner, sooner or later, that panther is
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  Speaker 1: going to come out of that corner and try and
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  Speaker 1: wipe out who keeps oppressing in that corner. And that
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  Speaker 1: was sort of the idea, like, hey, listen, we're trying
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: to sidestep, we're trying to do the right thing, but
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  Speaker 1: if you keep coming at us, then we're going to
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  Speaker 1: defend ourselves. Yeah, exactly. And and again they were the
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  Speaker 1: first people to come up with this, and they looked
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: around and kind of surveyed the black rights movements that
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: were around. There were um and they kind of said,
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  Speaker 1: this one works a little bit, but um, that part
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  Speaker 1: of it doesn't work, or this this one we we
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: don't agree with, but it's a nice sentiment. Like the
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  Speaker 1: MLK nonviolent UM civil rights movement, they like you said,
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  Speaker 1: they said, this isn't working. It's not happening fast enough
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  Speaker 1: for it's not happening at all. UM. And some other
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: groups and people like Stokely Car Michael and H. Ratt Brown,
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  Speaker 1: who were the heads of the Non Violent Student Coordinating Committee,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: were some of the first Black leaders to to publicly
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  Speaker 1: break with mlk's non violent theory and say, no, we
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: need to meet violence with violence. Um. Malcolm X was
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: another one, and Malcolm X probably had the biggest influence
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  Speaker 1: on the Black Panther ideology than anybody else. He advocated
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  Speaker 1: black militancy that included violence. He advocated um black self
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  Speaker 1: sufficiency and dignity, but he didn't necessarily say, um, you
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: you were only going to advance with the helps of
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: other blacks. We need to exclude whites or other um
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: races from our struggle. And the Black Panthers is specifically
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Huey Newton and Bobby Seal really identified with that, and
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: that was actually that became one of the hallmarks of
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: the Black Panthers that they were willing to work with
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: other like minded groups regardless of race. So that's a
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: that was kind of a big one that I wasn't
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: aware of that I learned from this um And then
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: the other aspect of Malcolm X that really formed like
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: one of the foundation keystones of the Black Panther ideology
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: is that it wasn't race that was the problem, It
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: was um class. They were basically avowed Marxists right that
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: the central, the the central issue that created the struggle
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: UM was was class was capitalism, and that the white
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: establishment and the police and the government were keepers of
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: the capitalist structure, and that same capitalist structure was keeping
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: the black pants, the black people in America down, and
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: so to get to to rise up, to become self sufficient,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: to get that chance that they needed to grow and
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: advance themselves, they had to get rid of the capitalist
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: structure itself. Yeah, they were very much into the socialist ideal,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: and um one of the first things they did was
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: they realized they needed sort of a foundation on which
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: to build upon, something easily adjustable, that people could could
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: look at and could read and understand what they're all about.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: So very smartly, early on they came up with a
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: very specific what they call their tin point program, what
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: we want and what we believe, and uh, they wrote
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: this out. We're going to read them in a second,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: but they wrote them out and then immediately printed them
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: on a thousand sheets of paper, and uh set up
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: an office and started passing these things around. This office
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: was in Oakland, which is where you know, I think
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: we already said where they founded and um, you know,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: they basically quit their jobs. Every member of the Black
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Panther Party was a full time I guess you could
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: say employee, but full time worker. Yeah. Remember, And um
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: they gathered their paychecks, the few guys at the very
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: beginning and rented an old shop storefront base and started
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: handing out this ten point program. Yeah they did. And um,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: you want to go over the program first, Yeah, we
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: might as well just go ahead and read all ten Uh,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: so everybody knows what we're talking about, right. Uh. Number one,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: we want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: of our black community. We believe that black people will
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: not be free until we are able to determine our destiny. Yep.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Number two, we want full employment for our people. We
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: give every man employment or guaranteed income. We believe that
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: if the white American businessmen will not give full employment,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: then the means of production should be taken from the
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: business men and placed in the community so that the
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: people of the community can organize and employ all of
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: its people and give it a high standard of living.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Uh number three, we want an end to the robbery
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: by the white man of our black community. We believe
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: that this racist government has robbed us and now we
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres. In two mules.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Number four, we want decent housing fit for shelter of
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: human beings. We believe that if white landlords will not
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: give decent housing to our black community, then the housing
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: and the land should be made into cooperatives of their
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: community with government aid, can build and make decent housing
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: for its people. Yeah, and this that was a big one.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: And as you'll see, a lot of what they were
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: after was just like the ability to live in a
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: neighborhood where you could have a decent school and a
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: decent place to live and a chance at work. Like
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: it wasn't some radical thing that they were after, you know,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: they just wanted the same opportunities basically. Yeah. And I
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: mean I said earlier that if if you were living
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: and you were black and living in America in the sixties,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: the chances are you were poor. Of all black people,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: all black people in the United States were living below
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: the poverty line in nineteen sixty six of the poor
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: living in metropolitan areas were black, and in nineteen sixty eight,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: two thirds of the black population lived in ghettos. So yeah, like,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: of course, it makes sense that their agenda is we
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: wanted to just get to get to basic normal and
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: then we'll go from air alright. Number five, We want
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: education for our people that exposes the true nature of
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: our true history and our role in present day society.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: H Uh. Number six, we want all black men to
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: be exempt from military service. This is a big one.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: We believe that black people should not be forced to
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: fight in the military service to defend a racist government
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: that does not protect us. We will not fight and
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: kill other people of color in the world who, like
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: black people, are being victimized by the white, racist government
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: of America. Yeah, and you know later on in there,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: during the Vietnam War, they actually, uh, some of them
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: travel to Vietnam and um kind of found a common
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: ground with the North Vietnamese. Right, It's very interesting. Uh,
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: is it my turn? It is? Number seven. We want
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Pretty much speaks for itself. Yeah, but part of that
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: was that they they they point out that the Second
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed the right to bear arms,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: and that's gonna be a big, big part of the
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Black Panther Party. They were they're credited historically as being
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: basically the ones who pointed to the Second Amendment and said, hey,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: we were advocates of gun rights. Yeah, well, we'll get
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: to all that. It gets pretty juicy. Number eight, we
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: and city prisons and jails. They it says that they
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: believe that all black people should be released from prison
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Number nine, we want all black people, when brought to trial,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: to be tried in court by a jury of their
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: peer group or people from their black communities, as defined
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: by the Constitution of the United States. Number ten, we
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: want land, bred, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace. And
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: as our major political objective a United Nations. You provised
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: plebiscite to be held throughout the Black colony in which
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the purpose of determining the will of black people as
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: to their national destiny. They're basically saying, we believe that
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: black should have the power to separate from the United
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: States from the white establishment and form their own self
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: sufficient and um respected, self governing body basically right. So
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: they took these uh tin this tin Point program. They
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: founded a newspaper called The Black Panther and they sold
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: that for cents. Uh. It got to be a very
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: popular newspaper. Um had a really wide circulation, and it
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: wasn't just uh, you know, black communities that there were.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: There were all kinds of people reading this a newspaper
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: and it kind of aside from donations and stuff from
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: various groups, it really kind of funded the organization was
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: to sale this paper and every single issue I believe
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: featured this tin Point program on the inside I'd cover
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: and uh quick shout out to the artwork of Emery Douglas. Uh,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: if you've ever I saw this great documentary called The
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Black Panthers Vanguard of a Revolution. Yeah, I watched that too.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: And this artwork from this you know, artist and graphic
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: designer Emery Douglas that was kind of the hallmark of
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: the paper was just gorgeous stuff. And um, I think
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: he's one of those has sort of not been lost
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: to history. But you know, I had never heard of
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: him before. I think he did it cover for one
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: of the editions of Native Sun because I was looking
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: at I was like, that looks really familiar. That's where
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I saw it before. It's really good stuff. Yeah, So, Chuck,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: they we've got the ten Point Plan, uh, and the
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: original headquarters in Oakland, and all of a sudden, the
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Panthers starts spreading like wildfire, like their ideas because the
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: experience was so similar as far as poverty and being
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: harassed and brutalized by police and just Joe really being
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: held down by the white establishment. Since that experience was
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: so similar throughout all the all the major cities and
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: even smaller cities in the United States, the Black Panther
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Party spread pretty quick and eventually they had something like
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: five thousand members. And remember that doesn't sound that much
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: like that many people, but like you said, to be
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: a member, you were committed to the Black Panther Party
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: seven you had to quit your job, you had to
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: quit school, and your your life was the Black Panther Party.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: So the fact that they had five thousand people doing
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: that around the country is pretty nuts. But they had many,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: many more supporters, and the Black Panther newspaper eventually grew
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: to a circulation of about two fifty thousand. It's amazing,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: it really is. And UM, well, I guess we'll we'll
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: get back to their history after this. Sorry, alright, So, uh,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: if you want to start, if you want to start
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: anything that you want to grow and be noticed, then
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: it sounds kind of silly to talk about, but you
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: need to be good at branding. And uh, I don't
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: know that they specifically thought about it as branding initially,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: but they quickly realized that the media really ate this
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: stuff up. When these black men in in leather, black
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: leather car coats and black turtlenecks and black berets donning shotguns,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: uh with the you know, the ammunition draped around their shoulder. Uh,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: the press ate it up. It was it was a
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: cool look, and young black men wanted to look like this. Um.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Black women started growing out their afros. It was all
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: kind of sort of tied into the Black is Beautiful
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: movement um, which was sort of just the notion of
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: embrace your blackness, don't try to fit in and look
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: you know, don't straighten your hair, don't try and look
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: like white people like where you're hiki uh, grow your
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: afro out, be proud of who you are as a
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: black person. Embrace your roots. And the Black Panther Party
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: was really tied into this and it became a really
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: big part of their branding and recruitment. Yeah, if you
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: were hip at this time, like you were definitely hip
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: to the Black Panther look, even if you hadn't adopted
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: it yourself, you were like, there's a cool cat walking
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: down the street with a bandalier bullets in the shock. Right. So, Um,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: the Panthers they had the look, they had the offices, now,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: they had the newspaper. And one of the first things
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: they started doing even before they really started to but
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: those first Panther members Um Hueie Newton, Bobby Seal, and
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: then a guy named Um Bobby Hutton was their first recruit. Um.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: One of the first things they started doing was patrolling
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: the neighborhoods of Oakland and looking for police who had
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: stopped um black motorists. Right, it's almost like a a
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: guardian angels that protected citizens from cops, right exactly. That's
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: a really good way to put it right. So they
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: would stand there, um at a reasonable distance and just
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: openly and obviously observe the traffic stop, and they would shout,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: you know, at the cop anytime he started to violate
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: the civil rights of the black driver. UM. And they
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: were armed. They were holding shotguns, oftentimes not necessarily pointed
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: at the cops. But in that UM in that documentary
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: we mentioned, they would talk about how like the they
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: would kind of bring it is, move it from side
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: to side, kind of shifting position, and as it did
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: it slowly was aimed for a moment at the cop,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: and the cops got the point like, yeah, I get it.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: You have a loaded shotgun and it's right there and
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: you could shoot me. And some of the first um,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: some of the first traffic stop monitoring that happened just
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: scared the Bejesus out of the cops. They had never
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: experienced anything like this before. All of a sudden, there
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: were a group of young black men standing there in
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: black berets and shades at night, holding shotguns trained on
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: them from time to time, and UM, the cops actually
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: responded and exactly the way the black panthers did. They
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: were much more hesitant to um brutalize or violate the
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: civil rights of the drivers, and a lot of times
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: they just get in their cars and leave, especially if
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: they were on patrol alone. So that was one of
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the huge early foundational hallmarks of of UM the Black
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Panther Party, that they were, oh the leap and armoredly
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: protecting their UM fellow blacks from police brutality. That was
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: that was one of their major roles. Yeah. And uh,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: the reason that they were allowed to have these guns
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: is because one of their one of their leaders, Eldridge Cleaver,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: UM found in the California law books that I mean,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: they call it a loophole, but it wasn't really a loophole.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: It's kind of right there in black and White as
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: you are allowed to carry a gun in public, on
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: public property as long as it's not concealed open car.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: And so they were like, all right, well we have
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: these guns. It says right here we're allowed to. They
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: would carry a gun in one hand a lot of times,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: and then this California legal handbook in the other and
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: they knew it by heart. They could quote exactly the code. Uh.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: And then you know, obviously the cops caught on the
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: word got around what was going on, and it developed
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: all the way to the California in General Assembly. And
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: when you see this documentary, it's it's amazing, man, these
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: these black the Black Panther party marches through the building
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: onto the floor of the California General is simply wielding shotguns,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: loaded shotguns, and you know you see all the all
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: the obviously the white legislature just sitting there like what
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: in the world is going on, including Ronald Reagan. Well, yeah,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: he was the governor, right, And so Ronald Reagan was
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: the governor at the time, and he is in that
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: documentary quoted as saying, like anybody who thinks, you know,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: carrying open loaded guns in public is okay is out
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: of his mind, and ultimately signed a anti open carry
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: law that closed that loophole, the Mulford Act. Right, So
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Reagan signed some um gun control legislation, big gun control legislation,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: in an effort occurb those patrols by the black panthers. Yeah,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: and not so obviously you hear, all right, Ronald Reagan
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: does this? You think, where's the n r A. And
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: so I looked up, I was like, all right, what
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: was just the climate at the time. Apparently in the
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: late sixties n r A. It wasn't until the late seventies,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventies seven, when a guy named Harlan Carter took
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: over the n r A is when they really stepped
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: it up with the Second Amendment rights. It was really
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: more strict version of the Second Amendment. And uh so
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: the n r A was silent, and obviously Reagan being
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: very tough on guns, he had a I guess you
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: could call it a conversion in the nineteen eighties as well.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Uh and then he and the n r A teamed
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: up together and started saying things like, well, no, it's
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: it's okay, you can totally have guns. Right. This also
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: happened to coincide with the breakup of the Black Panther Party. Yeah,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: when the when the n r A and Reagan changed
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: their stance on gun rights. Um one thing you said
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: was that it was Eldridge Cleaver who noticed loophole. It
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: was Hughey Newton. He was the one who who like
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: really had that mind for law. Eldridge Clever was much
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: more the militant revolutionary and he was already a bit
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: of a darling in the intellectual circles for a book
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: of essays he'd written in prison called Soul on Ice.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: And so he joined the Black Panther Party pretty early
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: on as their Minister of Information, in large part their
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: official spokesman um. And he brought an air of real
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: credibility and legitimacy and got a lot of um, left
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: leaning intellectuals and um, you know, entertainment types like Brando
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: was a big one who was in favor of the
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: party and supporter. But they they really started to pay
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: attention to the Black Panthers when Eldridge Clever joined. Yeah,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: and his wife, Kathleen Cleaver was also one of the Uh,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: well we might as well go ahead and talk about
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: women in the Black Panther Party. Uh, you know, like
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: most organizations at the time, that it was, um it
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: was sort of from the top down down, a male
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: driven organization. And uh they did have Kathleen Cleaver, and
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: they had Elaine Brown who was also sort of one
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: of the higher ups. But it was still and even
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: they admitted it was still somewhat of a chauvinistic organization
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: and most of the women were uh didn't make it pass.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: What they called the rank and file um sort of
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: operating the nuts and bolts, secretary or secretarial work and
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: UM just kind of making the thing go. So it
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: was you know, on one hand, they did give women
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: some positions of power, but never kind of at the top. Well,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: now there were I mean, like you said, you name
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: two of the big, big exceptions that rule. But they
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: were big exceptions, like UM Kathleen Cleaver was the first
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: woman who was a member of the decision making body,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: and Elaine Brown took over as chair party chair like
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: the the top official after Hughey Newton UM split for
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Cuba in nineteen three. But like you said, most of
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: the women in the Black Panther Party we were ranked
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: and file. But it doesn't mean that gender roles were
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: totally rigid in the party, Like for example, you would
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: just as often or frequently see women out armed doing
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: UM patrols of the neighborhood, while men were the ones
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: responsible for some of the survival programs, the community programs
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: that we'll talk about. Yeah. Well Brown said they tried
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: that and had minor successes, was right, Yeah, And the
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: documentary she said that was sort of what she tried
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: to do is reverse some of the roles. And she
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: said there was still kind of largely a sexist attitude,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: and which was a problem within the organization, because you
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: can't be that true community organization if you have that
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: oppression going on within your own group in a gender sense. Yeah,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: and especially if you know women are the ones who
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: are doing a lot of the actual work, Like something
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: like fifty of Panther membership was female at one point.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: So yeah, you gotta respect that people who are actually
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: doing the work, or else you got an arrogance problem
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: at the top. Yeah. And we should mention too that
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Kathleen Cleaver is a professor right here in Atlanta at
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: our own Emory University. Uh what law professor? Yeah, yeah,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: she wanted to get a law degree from Yale and
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: uh after years of living in exile, which we'll get to.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: All right, So you mentioned the survival programs, and um,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: if you don't know what that is, you might be saying, like,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: what in the world is Josh talking about. They had
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: their police brutality program, so that's kind of what made
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: the news, was patrolling the streets with these guns, keeping
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: the cops in check. And by the way, we should
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: mention that they're the ones who came up with the
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: term pigs as a dragatory term for police officers. Yeah
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: from there. It first appeared in their newspaper and it
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: caught him pretty quick. Yeah, so that was that was
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: kind of what they made the news for it first.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: But um, I think especially Huey Newton realized early on
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: that they can make a real difference in the community
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: if they get these social programs going that you know,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: they're not being taken care of. Their schools are bad.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: These kids don't have access to like good food even
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: and they they read that, you know, science scientifically speaking,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: that a good breakfast is has a big impact on
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: how a child learned throughout the day. So they started
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: this breakfast program where they would give I mean, I
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: think at one point they were feeding like twenty thousand
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: children free breakfasts around the country every day, every day,
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: every morning, twenty thousand children around the country who otherwise
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: would have gone to school hungry and stayed hungry the
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: whole day eight breakfast because the Black Panther Party fed
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: them every day, every school day around the country. That's insane. Yeah.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: They started medical clinics, free clinics called the People's Free
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Medical Center. Uh. They offered vaccines, testing for diseases, UH, treated,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: basic illnesses, cancer screenings, basically the social services that white
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: America fully enjoyed, or i should say wide a man
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: of a certain class fully enjoyed. And UM started offering
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: up these programs which kind of became one of the
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: hallmarks of the party. Yeah, they weren't just this militant
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: group trying to you know, keep cops in check any longer. No. No,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: then that was a huge huge UM. I mean, that
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: was as big, if not bigger than their their militant
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: objectives is serving the community through these survival programs to right.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: And they funded these programs largely through donations UM, which
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: they would go out and solicit from the community around
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: the city's right. And apparently if you at least didn't
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: give something, if you were like, no, I'm not giving
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: you a dime, the Panthers would UM would out you
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: in their newspaper and call for a boycott of your
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: business that, you know, saying like you're these guys care
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: so little that they won't even chip in a dollar
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: for kids to have a free breakfast. UM. So they
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: had like a real they had a pretty serious organization
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: going by this time that was directed again not just
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: that patrolling police and fighting police brutality, but also at
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: serving the community. Yeah. One of the cool things they
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: did was they started the Oakland Community School. Yeah. That
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: was Elaine Brown. Yeah, and it was kind of her
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: passion project, and it was it was pretty much free
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: to students and they had UM they had small classes,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: They taught poetry, they taught foreign language, uh, in current events,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: they taught yoga like all these things that the black
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: community had never you know, had access to. Black history
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: is obviously a big part of it. They had my
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Angelou and Rosa Parks and other civil rights leaders come
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: in and speak at the school and it operated for
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: nine nine years from seventy to eighty two. And uh,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Kathyne Cleaver has this one great story that she told
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: on CNN about one young man who came to join
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: the party because you know, he wanted to get a
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: gun and be on the patrol. They handed him a
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: stack of books and he looked at him and said,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: I thought you were going to army and they said
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: back to him, I just did pretty good. Yeah. She
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: dropped the mic right after that. But that, I mean
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: that directly relates to UM. I think point number five
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: on the ten point Agenda, where it says that they
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: want education for people that um, that teaches them about themselves,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: that gives them a knowledge of self. It said that, um,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: if a man doesn't have knowledge of himself in his
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: position in society in the world, then he has little
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: chance to relate to anything else, which is exceptionally true.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: So you've got all these programs. I think they had
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: like sixty five programs what they called survival programs in
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: in place. Um. And it wasn't until apparently these programs, uh,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: we're starting to really roll and get the attention of
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: and support of a lot of people outside of the communities.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Even that the FBI, led by Jager Hoover, gave its
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: full attention to the Black Panthers and they set about
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: trying to destroy the Black Panther Party. Well yeah, I
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: mean Hoover, ironically, these social programs are what scared him
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: the most because he knew that that's how you're going
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: to get white liberals on board on this cause, which
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: is exactly what happened. I mean, like you said, they weren't.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: They didn't shun the help of the white man by
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: any means. They like went arm in arm with these
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: uh white lefties. Uh basically watch the documentaries. It looks
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: like today they're you know, these college dudes with beards.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: They look like modern hipsters and uh worked arm in
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: arm and at one point they even got together who
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: was the Appalachian group, the Young Patriots. Yeah, it's just
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: like you see this video of these black militants like
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: giving handshakes and hugs to these Appalachian white Appalachian i
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: mean rural white people who all seemed like they were like,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: we have the same problems and we can just get together.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: And it was just just crazy. It's specially in today's climate,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: all these years later to see that happening back then. Yeah, they,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: I mean they they were in favor of anybody regardless
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: as long as they shared, you know, kind of the
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: same sentiments or the same struggle. Um. In nineteen seventy,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Hugh Newton became the first black leader to ever publicly
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: support gays and lesbians. Yeah that was a huge deal too, Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. Well,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: I mean the point was, like, you know, the problem
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: wasn't race, The problem was this class struggle. And you know,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: everybody of a certain socioeconomic status or who was a
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: worker was being held back. You know. So, Um, you
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: were saying Hoover was worried about those social programs. Um.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: There's a quote from a letter that he wrote to
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: an FBI agent who objected to targeting the survival programs
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: as part of cointel pro Hoover said, you state, the
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Bureau should not interfere in programs such as the Breakfast
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: for Children because many prominent humanitarians, both why and black,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: are interested in the program, as well as churches which
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: are actively supporting it. You obviously have missed the point.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: And his point was that you don't leave those programs
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: alone because they have support outside of the community. You
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: target them because they have support outside of the community.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: That that was the real threat, way more than black
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: men patrolling the streets with shotguns. That was a problem
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: for local law enforcement, and the FBI was worried about it.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: But more of the point, they saw that as such
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: a uh flash point, a potential flashpoint that they could
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: get the police to shoot and kill armed black men
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: on the street with with impunity. They that they could
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: deal with. That is what they understood was meeting violence
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: with violence. What they didn't know how to deal with,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: aside from completely subverting it and sabotaging it. Was generating
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: goodwill throughout the community through these social programs. So that
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: was the real threat to Hoover and his eyes amazing.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: So at this point, um, the party at the top
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: had gotten a little uh, the foundation had gotten a
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: little loose, um due to a couple of things going
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: back in time a little bit. A few years before um,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Huey Newton was arrested and convicted of killing a police officer, which,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: um it. On one hand, it's sort of um removed
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: one of the one of the pieces of the foundation,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: which made a little bit weaker at the top. On
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: the other hand, it really got people around this free
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: Huey Newton campaign. Yeah that's phrase, Yeah, free Huey. And
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: again the white liberals got on board and it kind
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: of swept the nation that basically Huey Newton was involved
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: in a shootout with the cops and was they thought
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: wrongfully imprisoned and kind of railroaded through the system. And
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: um so in one since it sort of galvanized the movement.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: And another, anytime one of the leaders is is operating
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: out of jail, then that's that's not good. And he
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: wasn't the only one. Um. Actually, I think all three
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: of the original Bobby Seal was in and out of
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: jail a couple of times, and I think by this
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: point to Clever had fled the country to avoid jail
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: and ended up in Algeria. He did so back in
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Um as part of a patrol. Clever and Bobby Hutton,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: who was the first recruit of the Black Panthers and
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: by this time was the treasurer of the Oakland Chapter. UM.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: They were part of a patrol that ended up. Um
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: was pulled over by two cops and those two cops
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: ended up dead, and everybody in the car fled, and Um,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Hutton and Clever fled to a basement where they got
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: in a shootout for ninety minutes with police, and the
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: police threw in tear gas and Um the tear gas,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: I guess exploded and caught the basement on fire. So
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Um Eldridge, Clever, and Bobby Hutton decided that they were
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: going to surrender, so they came out with their hands up,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: Um unarmed, and the cops surrounded him and shot Hutton
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: in the head, just executed him right there on the sidewalk,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: and Clever Um was taken to jail. He made bail,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: and right when he made bail, he's like, see you split.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: He went to Cuba because Fidel Castro was a long
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: time and big supporter of the Black Panther Party. There's
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: apparently still one of them. Um A Mada Shakur I
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: believe who is living still in exile in Cuba today.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: Um who's a Black Panther? Uh? But Eldridge Clever, I
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: guess didn't like the climate, ended up with Kathleen Clever
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: in Algeria and formed the UH the International Chapter of
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: the Black Panther Party, and that's where they would receive
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: dignitaries from like the North Vietnamese government or from Cuba
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: or any kind of left leaning revolutionary group would come
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: meet them there. And that was enormous because all like
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: basically no other black liberation or black rights movement group
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: had genuine, legitimate international support. The Black Panthers did, and
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: in the eyes of the world, that boosted their credibility
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: just through the roof. Oh yeah, alright, So there's a
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: bit of a UH I don't want to say power vacuum,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: but slight leadership vacuum because of the various UH top
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: original founders being away from Oakland, either in jail or
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Algeria or in and out of jail, and uh, it
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: could have potentially been filled by a young man out
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: of Chicago named Fred Hampton. And we will get back
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: to Fred's story right after this. All right, So Fred Hampton, um,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: by all accounts from this documentary in my research, seemed
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: like he could have been the Bobby Kennedy of the
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Black Panther Party. He was vivacious, he was a great speaker.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: He was you know, he would he would give these
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: speeches and uh, just galvanized people. He had a great
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: personality and um, he was really getting kind of the
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: movement back on track again in a big, big way
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: when he was pretty much I'm not gonna say pretty
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: much when he was uh politically assassinated by the FBI
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: in Chicago Police department. Yeah, he was executed for sure. Um,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: so what was thee Yeah, December four is when the
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: raid went down. So it's something like four am sometime
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: in the wee hours. The cops kicked in the door
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Fred Hampton's house or the house where he was staying,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: and um, ninety bullets. I think I saw ninety also
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: saw a hundred ninety bullets were shot fired from the
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Chicago Police Department and one bullet was shot by the
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Black Panthers, and that bullet was shot when the bodyguard
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: to Fred Hampton, his name was Mark Clark, was shot
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: and killed and dropped the shotgun he was holding in
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: it went off. Yeah. Um, and we should mention too.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: This was one of many, many what they called raids.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Um after hoover Is issued that edict that they were
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: the the largest uh. And I'm sure there was an
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: internal memo as well, which we don't know about. But
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: when he issued that edict that they were the most
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: threatening group to the United States eights democracy, it was
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: pretty much open season and they carried out these raids
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: all over the country where essentially cops would just kick indoors,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: guns blazing, shoot first, asked, don't even ask questions. Yeah,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: but this one was a little more, even even worse.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: It was even more pronounced because this was targeted this, yes, exactly,
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: and it was targeted specifically for Fred Hampton. And it
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: kind of falls in line with this part of cointel
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: Pro or coin tel pro. This one of the foundations
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: of coin tel pro was that it sought to prevent
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: the rise of a black messiah that could um consolidate
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: the masses. And that was Fred Hampton, right, Well, he
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: definitely fell in that. So was MLK, so was Malcolm X.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Basically any black leader that was assassinated definitely fell within that.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: So and Fred Hampton did as well, for sure. So
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: he was assassinated, Um, not by the FBI, but by
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: the Chicago p D. But the Chicago p D were
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: able to carry out a targeted raid because the FBI
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: had supplied them with a map drawn by one of
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: their informants of the apartment fred Hampton was staying. And yeah,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: and it was under the guise of they have a
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: stash of guns in there, which they did have a
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: stash of guns and ammunition in there, and that was
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: the excuse they used to go in and shoot him
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: in bed while he slept. Yeah. And if you are
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: questioning whether this was actually an attempt on Fred Fred
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: Hampton's life, those ninety bullets that were fired, most of
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: them went into Fred Hampton. Uh, and three people who
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: were sleeping in the same bed as Hampton where he
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: was shot and killed. Um, we're not hit by bullets
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: at all. Yeah, including his eight and a half month
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: pregnant girlfriend. Yeah, who they grabbed by the hair and
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: threw into the other room, tore her robe open, and um.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: You know, the story of the cops was was they
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: knocked on the door, were denied entry. Uh, then they
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: opened the door and there was a woman aiming a
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: shotgun at them. Um. Later on ballistics tests, they did
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: everything and basically figured out that was sham. All the
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: bullets were found ballistically to have gone into the apartment,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: none going out of the apartment through the walls. And
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: you know, in this documentary they interview a few of
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: the people who are in there and they were just
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: like it was mass murder. They basically just came in
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: and shot the place up. Uh. They examined the angle
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: of the wound that showed that Hampton was lying on
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: his back in bed from somebody standing above him. And
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy a coroner's jury ruled the deaths justifiable.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: Everyone got away with it, but the city eventually and
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: the federal judge approved at one point eight five million
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: dollars settlement, but that wasn't until the nineties. Yeah, oh yeah,
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: thirteen years later. But the FBI apparently the agent who
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: was handling the informant who produced the map, was so
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: pleased with the results that after the after the raid
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: that resulted in Hampton's ex acution, Um, he I guess
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: male jager Hoover with the request for an extra three
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: dollars because he wanted to give the informant a bonus.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: One of the bigger black eyes on American history, for sure.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: One of the other black eyes on the Chicago PD
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: at this time was the one of these raids was
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: on the Breakfast for Children program where the supplies for
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: breakfast were burned, like the place was set on fire
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: by the cops. So, I mean the Black Panthers are
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: at like open war with with the FBI and with
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: the police department. To the late sixties were crazy, you know, Yeah,
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: in large part because of this. Yeah, I mean for sure, Uh,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: there was another big shootout and this is all sort
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: of coming to a head. If it feels that way,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: that's exactly what's going on. Um. In nine nine there
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: was another big shootout and this was major and I
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: think it was in Los Angeles, wasn't it. Yeah? Was
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: It was the first time a swat team was ever used. Yeah,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: they employed the swat team, which was invented by the
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: l A p D and two hundred l A Police uh.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: And I think it was like six or eight Black
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: Panther Party members were involved in a full on, you know,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: hour long gun battle just right there in the streets.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: So things are coming to a head. The sort of
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: the secret plan here by Hoover is working, which is
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: he wants to fracture the party from within and so
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: seeds of discontent and discord. So they had been through
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: the years planting informants in the Black Panther Party, uh,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: in the party, and they knew it, the Black Panthers
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: did so a lot of distrust, you know, when you know,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: like who can you trust? A lot of this this
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: distrust happens even among you know, the higher ups that
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: were formerly like a pretty strong union, right, And that
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: happened for sure with the case of Eldridge Clever and
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Huey Newton. When Healey Newton got out of jail, he
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: was eventually freed, and it was a big deal, and
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: they thought this was going to be sort of the
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: the rebirth of the Black Panther Party, uh, in the
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: wake of the death of Fred Hampton. But he came
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: out of jail, and he and Clever sort of had
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: different Uh, they always sort of had different priorities, but
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: they managed to come together. But they were truly fractured
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: at this point. Yeah, they were. Um. Newton and Clever
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: were like openly criticizing one another, with Clever still in exile,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: but Clever had the entire New York chapter dedicated to him. Uh.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: And years prior, the Black Panthers had formed what was
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: called the Black Liberation Army, but it was a army
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: of defense until nine UM, when I believe he was
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: still in absentia. But uh, Eldridge Clever said, Hey, we're
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: gonna take this from defensive to offensive and basically create
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: a new terrorist group out of the Black Liberation Army.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: And they started a campaign of violence against UM cops
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: where they would ambush cops and just kill them. There
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: wasn't any retaliation for police brutality. Um, it wasn't self defense,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: like they were ambushing and killing cops. And it happened
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: in cities around the country. And the fracture between the
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: Black Panthers itself was so deep that Cleaver's faction and
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: Newton's faction were assassinating one another. They were taking out
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: each other's people. Um so it was a big deal.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: And the Black Liberation Army officially split from the Black
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: Panthers in nineteen seventy one. And of course, at this point,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: Herbert Hoover sitting back in his chair like choking on
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: his cigar from laughter, because this is exactly what he wanted. Yeah,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: was this in fighting? And um So Newton gets out
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: of jail, he's, uh, he's trying to get the social
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: programs going again, but he also is, uh, becomes addicted
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: to drugs and by all accounts is sort of losing
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: his mind and has become power hungry and um his
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: sort of lost the original calling that he had and
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: has gotten sort of drunk with power and was not
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: functioning mentally like he should have been due to the drugs. Right,
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: So it was it was his big sort of the
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: big beginning of the flame out for himself and the party. Yeah,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: for sure, his his downfall. Definitely, it didn't exactly mirror
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: the party, but you know it was it was a
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: herald of one. You know, one of the founders was
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: totally losing his his marbles because he was addicted to
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: heroin and cocaine, you know. And he actually had a
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: very sad end. Uh. He died during a drug deal
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: on the street in n in Oakland. Um, but he
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: said that he was committing revolutionary suicide by being addicted
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: to drugs and basically killing himself that way. UM. Some
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: of the other ones had not quite as tragic but
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: strange ends, like Elder Clever. Right when he returned from
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: Algeria with Kathleen Cleaver, um he became I think both
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: of them might have become born again Christians, and um
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: Aldrich Clever eventually became a registered Republican. I did not
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: see that coming. I did not either, and I'm sure
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of people didn't. Right. And then, you know,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: I mentioned that internal violence with one another, Right, there
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: was a big turning point, um as far as public
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: sympathy went. Um in nineteen sixty nine, I think maybe Yeah,
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, there was a guy named Alex Rackley
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: who was a member of the New York Chapter, and
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: he was suspected to be an FBI informant. And it's
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: still after all these years, never come to light whether
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: he was or not. But the Panthers had the idea
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: that he was so they took him to the New
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: Haven chapter where he was tortured. They tied him up
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: to a bed, poured boiling water on his body for days,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: and then eventually I guess he confessed, although if you
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: ever listened to a torture episode, torture, Yeah, you can
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: get a false confession pretty easy if you torture somebody. Um.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: They took him out to the woods and shot him
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: in the head and chest and and left him. And
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: when he when his body was discovered, Bobby Seal had
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: been in New Haven speaking at Yale like just hours
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: before the guy was killed. So he got charged with
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: the murder. And this is one of the founders of
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: the Black Panther Party on trial for murder. And during
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: this trial, um, which he was acquitted, but he the
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of the in fighting came out and the
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: Panthers had managed to keep it out of the public
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: eye and under wraps for for you know, up to
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: this point. Now it came out in the trial, so
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: people realize that there was a lot of m schisms
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: and fractures within the leadership itself. They lost a lot
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: of public sympathy when they found out that they would
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: carry out you know, extra judicial justice on their own members. Yeah. Um,
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: and it just it was. It was a big thing.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: It was a big turning point for the party as
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: far as the public was concerned. Yeah. And and like
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: I said, they were sort of the two factions with
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: with Clever in Newton. Some people went with Clever, some
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: people went with Newton. A lot of people left the
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: Black Panther Party period at this point because they either
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: didn't know who to give their allegiance to or they
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: just felt betrayed by this fracture and the party wasn't
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: what they thought it was. So the numbers are declining,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: it's it's definitely in sort of free fall at this point.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: And uh, Bobby Seal decides, here's what we need to do.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: We need to close down as many chapters as we
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: can and and pull the resources in the money and
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: bring everyone out here to Oakland because I'm gonna run
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: from mayor and we to go all in on this
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: legit push for political candidacy because I think I can win.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: So they literally called up people on the East coast
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: and the Baltimore office and New York offices and said
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: shut him down, come out here to California and we
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: need to go all in on not only running for mayor,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: but on a massive voter registration campaign to register, you know,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: people in in urban communities to vote. So I think
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: in the end they got like fifty new people registered
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: to vote, and out of eight or nine candidates, he
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: finished close enough in second to get a runoff. He
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: got like the vote, yeah, but ultimately lost in a
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: runoff in a narrow runoff and did not win UM,
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: which sort of was one of the final nails in
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: the coffin for the party because they had committed so
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: many resources to try and get behind Bobby Seal's run
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: for mayor. And he incidentally still lives in the Bay
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Area and is very much still an activist. Yeah, Bobby
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Seal is. Yeah, he was. Also did you ever see
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: that UM documentary on the Chicago Eight It was like animated, No,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: it was really It's very good. But he was one
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: of the Chicago eight and steal. He actually went to prison.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: This is before mayoral run. UM, but he did like
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: four years or at least was sentenced to four years
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: strictly for um contempt of court because he rejected that
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: he was getting a fair trial. Because I don't think
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: there was a single black person on the jury, Um,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: and he rejected that he was being tried by a
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: jury of his peers. And he kept protesting in the
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: middle of court, and eventually at one point the judge
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: had him gagged, but he got like four years for that. Yeah,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: gagged as in literally chained to his seat with tape
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: over his mouth. Yes, and uh, you know that that
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: set off all sorts of protests in the streets. People
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: wanted that judge removed. I thought that was that not
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: during the Panther twenty one trial. Was that the other
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: one in Chicago? Know? That was the Chicago eight trial? Um?
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: And that was that was a different trial. Also where Um,
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: did you ever hear the urban legend that Hillary Clinton
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: got Bobby Seal out of off of murder charges? That
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: was that came out of that Alex Rackley trial where
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: he was on trial for murder and he was acquitted. UM,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: and Hillary Rodham Clinton was nowhere near the actual trial
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: as his attorney. She apparently um was a law student
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: at Yale still and was coordinating with the a c
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: l U to monitor of the trial. So she she
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: was there but apparently had nothing to do with the
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: defense but it was a an urban legend that came
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: out of the two thousand senatorial campaign. Well, the Panther
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: twenty one I mentioned, um just quickly. That was in
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: New York, the New York Chapter twenty one. Leaders of
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: the Black Panther Party were rounded up and arrested on
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: conspiracy charges. And this is a really big deal because
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: the New York Chapter was one of the biggest ones
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: in the country after Oakland, and people got involved and
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: tried to raise money, like celebrities got involved and donated money,
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: and at one point, I don't know if it still is,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: but it was the longest criminal proceeding in New York
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: state history. It was a thirteen month trial by jury
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: and they're all found not guilty and released, so that
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: all of them were found not guilty. Huh. Yeah, the
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: Panther twenty one. Uh, And that's you know, jumping back
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: in time a little bit. I just wanted to mention that.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: So there's a distinct legacy beyond just the look or
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: the image or black power and black power. We should
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: also say, um, I think it was Stokely Carmichael who
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: either coined that phrase or at least was the first
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: really kind of pick it up and run with it
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: um and Stokely Carmichael is non non violent student Coordinating Committee.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: They got together with the Black Panthers early on. But
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: if you I mean just in the popular culture, the
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: Black Panthers live on. But there there's even more of
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: a legacy as well. Um. Before he died, Dredge Clever
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: gave an interview I think back in and he said that, Um,
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: he basically blamed the gang violence that plagued inner cities
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: in the eighties. He traced that directly to the death
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: of the Black Panthers. He said that as it was
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: the U. S. Government chopped off the head of the
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: Black liberation movement and left the body. They're armed. That's
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: why all these young bloods are out there now. They've
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: got the rhetoric but are without the political direction, and
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: they've got the guns. So he basically traces that directly
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: to the Black Panthers being taken down. Yeah, actually I do.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: So we were talking about how you know there there's
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: a legacy. There's not just a legacy the Black Panthers
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: is a legacy of um uh, brutality against black people
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: that apparently is at least as bad if not worse
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: today than it has been, Chuck. So, the Tuskegee un
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: Niversity in Alabama has records of all the lynchings that
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: took place in the Jim Crow era eighteen ninety and
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five and two thousand. Nine hundred and eleven
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: Black Americans were lynched during those years, and the worst
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: year of the Jim Crow era was eighteen ninety two,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: and a hundred and sixty one people were lynched. In
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: two thousand and fifteen, two hundred and fifty eight black
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: people were killed by police in the United States. So
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: not a lot has changed, and it's possible that it's
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: gotten worse. But if you look to the Black Lives
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Matter movement, they have chosen the way of King uh
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: and and preaching non violent rhetoric for social change rather
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: than the Black Panther rhetoric of militancy and violent self defense. Yeah.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: I think a bit of the Black Panther Party spirit
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: that was alive in the Black Lives Matter movement for sure, Yeah,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: for sure. So uh yeah, that's all I've got. That's
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: all I got. Good one. Yeah, I thought so too. Man. Um,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: do you ever see the movie O, the one with
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: like Mario van Peebles. Yeah he made it. He did,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: he wouldn't in I don't think Okay, no, I didn't.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: I heard it was not good. Yeah, I want to
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: see Malcolm X. I've never seen that one. Oh that's great,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: is it? Yeah? Yeah, Spike Lea's movie. Sure, Yeah, really good. Okay,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: I'll check that out. Yeah. The Um the Panther movie was.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: I just read a few reviews today and apparently the
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: setup is pretty good with some of the history, but
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: then it kind of goes off the rails and like
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: and not just goes off the rails like bad movie,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: but bad movie and not historically accurate or honoring like
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: the subject matter. Dance scenes keep breaking out. Uh, but
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: I do think that. I was like, man, why hasn't
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: there been a movie made about Fred Hampton? Yeah, he
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: sounds like he was a a pretty inspiring figure. Yeah,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: seeing some of those speeches like he he had it
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: going on. He said his one big quote was, uh,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: We're not gonna fight fire with fire, We're gonna fight
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: fire with water. I thought that was a good one. Yeah,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: that's a great one. That's black Messiah talk right there exactly.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: If you want to know more about the Black Panthers.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: There's a bunch of stuff you can do. You can
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: go on to the site at house stuff works dot
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: com and search those terms. You can go watch Black
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Panthers Vanguard of Revolution. You can watch Black Power mixtape
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: that has a lot to do with the Black Panthers.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen it yet though, of you know, you
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: can go to Emory University, I bet and get in
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: touch with Castl and Cleaver and maybe offered to buy
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: her coffee. Yep, there's uh some just a lot of
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: really good articles out there. Uh that it just searched
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: Black Panthers in it'll there's a lot of eye opening
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: history that you didn't learn in school. And since I
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: said you didn't learn in school, it's time for a
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: listener mail. I'm gonna call this addendum to rubber trade
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: from the elastics episode. Hey, guys, just listen to the
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: one on elastics. It was fun and informative as usual,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: but I wanted to call attention to a small important omission.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: You're discussing the rubber trade in Latin American you only
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: mentioned Brazil, although it was indeed the largest exporter of
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: rubber in the area. The Amazon Basin and the Putumayo
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: River Valley region in Peru and Colombia were also important
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: sites for the production of rubber trees. Sadly, when you
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: combine global demand with a natural product, the result is
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: usually some form of exploitation. In the case of rubber,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: it came to a horrible extreme with the Peruvian Amazon
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: Rubber Company, or as it was known in Spanish, the
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: Casa Arana, named for Julio cesar Arana, Peruvian businessman that
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: set up shop in the region, enslaved, tortured, and mutilated
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: indigenous populations to the brink of extinction in the pursuit
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: of rubber. His crimes were documented and made public in
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirteen, but his business and atrocities only stopped when
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: rubber production moved to Asia and he couldn't compete. UH.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: This whole rubber Bonanza's chronicled in the x went Colombian
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: novel The Whirlwind by J. E. Rivera. Today, the offices
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: of the company, the Kasa Adana or Arana House, are
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: being converted into a historic site. Members of local tribes
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: can gather and remember those atrocities in their own way,
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: telling their own stories and their own words. UH. This
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: is one of those poorly documented, poorly discussed examples of
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: genocide as a result of trade. At least in Columbia,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: every kind of economic bonanza is somehow tied to one
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: massacre or another. So that's the downer I wanted to share.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: Nice Who is that best from Bogato? Santiago? Santiago is
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: the person who wrote it in Yes, thanks a lot
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: for writing that, Santiago. We appreciate it. Yep, that's a
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: good one. And then this has been like an eye
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: opening history lesson through and through. Huh. Absolutely, if you
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: want to give us an eye opening history lesson, we
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: love those. So get in touch with us. You can
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: tweet to us at josh um Clark and at s
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: y s K podcast. You can hang out with us
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: on Facebook at Charles be Chuck Bryant and Stuff you
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has always
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: joined us at our home on the web Stuff you
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a
• 1:05:13
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• 1:05:17
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• 1:05:20
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