Latest / The Real News Podcast / The Black Panthers at 60: A through line of resistance from the South to California

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The Black Panthers at 60: A through line of resistance from the South to California · The Real News Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars, I'm your host,
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Manson Mooson. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: founding of the Black Panther Party, which started in Oakland
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: in 1966. Today, I'm honored to be joined by Billy Jennings, a.k.a.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Billy X, well-known archivist in Oakland, member of the Black
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Panther Party, a photographer who runs the official Black Panther
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Party alumni website called It's About Time.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Thank you for joining me, Bill.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: Hey, thanks for having me. Good morning to everyone.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: And as we talked earlier, I was in different spaces
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and hoping I had met you while I was in Oakland.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: So this would more or less be like a reunion,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: but this is my first time meeting you.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: I'm really honored. I heard a lot about you. I
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: know a lot about your work.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: And it's an honor to be able to interview you
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: about the party and some of the things and some
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: of your experiences.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Please introduce yourself to our audience, who you are and
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: how you came to be involved in the Black Panther Party.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: Well, my name is Billy X. Jennings. I'm a member
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: of the Black Panther Party.
• 1:11
  Speaker 4: I joined in 1968 when I was 17 years old.
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: And I came about joining the party because I'm from
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: a historical town in Alabama in the South. where most
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: original members came from the South and migrated to California.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: So I came from a place called Hobson City, Alabama.
• 1:36
  Speaker 4: And the tradition there, Hobson City have had the right
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: to vote since 1890. And we were like one of
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: the only Black municipal cities, little towns that could vote
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: and had that right to do that, right? And so
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: I came from a very strong area that had embedded
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: that kind of thought into my mind. And when I
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: traveled to California and I saw the Black Panther Party
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: on TV for the first time in 1967, when he
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: went to Sacramento, California, it blew my mind. I was
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: in high school at the time and I immediately changed
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: our social. We had a social club called the Buccaneers.
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: I changed it to the Panthers the next day. You know,
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: I didn't know anything about the party with just that
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: symbolism and how they stood up to the police and
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: read their demands and so forth.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: It made a change happen in me. Right.
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: And it wasn't until I graduated from high school, I
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: decided to move to Oakland.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: And when I moved to Oakland, I.
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: It was during the time that Huey Newton's trial had
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: just started, and I was going to a college that's
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: two blocks away from where Huey was going to go
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: on trial at, at the courthouse. And when the trial started,
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: we would hear them saying, free Huey, off the field,
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: free Huey. And I went over there one day, and
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: I was reading a book simultaneously at the same time
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: called The Art of I Can Feel Malcolm X.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: So what I.
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: I had read in the book already, but I heard
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: Bobby Steele speak at a rally for Huey, and they
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: were saying the same thing, so it got me really
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: interested in the party. And so I started going to
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: the rallies for Huey. I met some Panthers, and then
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: they said their Panther office was going to open in
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: my area. And when it did, I went down and joined,
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: became a Panther in training, and I've been working with
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: the party ever since.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: And.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Take us back to the party's founding, because you came
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: in two years after its founding.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, so, and also you came in to your own observation,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: to what we know to be a fact. You came
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: in at a point where they had just started to
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: become on the radar of the feds, but more importantly,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: they was definitely on the radar of the Oakland feds.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Police, LA police.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: And so talk about what was it like to be
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: able to be in that space and ultimately find yourself
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: in a position to be the bodyguard for Huey Newton
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: once he got out.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: Well, my process started at the very beginning.
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: In 1968, there was a certain method the party employed.
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: Before you became a Panther, you had to become a
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: Panther in training, which requires six to eight week training, right?
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: They gave you a list of books that has about
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: 35 different books, books by Frantz Fanon, Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, Pruma,
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: and other revolutionaries to read, right? And he had to
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: attend political education class on a weekly basis. Panthers at
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: that time were required to read two hours a day.
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: A Panther had to secure and have a what we
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: call technical equipment. Technical equipment was a firearm of some type, right?
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: Because at that time, I joined the Black Panther Party.
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: It was called Black Panther Party for self-defense. Later on,
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: we dropped off the self-defense, but at that particular time,
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: the party was engaged into patrolling police officers in the community,
• 5:28
  Speaker 4: observing them and making sure they don't beat and brutalize people.
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: So The first six weeks is reading and studying and learning.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: The rules of the Black Panther Party. And then you're
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: given a section, right?
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: You're like, like the city is divided into different sections.
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: I worked in the section four in East Oakland, right?
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: Section four had a section leader. They had a geographical
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: area that they were responsible for. And so I was
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: in section four, right? At that very beginning, when I
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: first started, we were theorizing.
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: About the breakfast program.
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: It hadn't came about, but we were still looking for
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: geographical locations to have these breakfast programs in the future, right?
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: So we did that.
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: And every Panther is required to sell the Black Panther
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: Party newspaper, which is the voice of the party. And
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: at that time, the party was growing tremendously by leaps
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: and bounds. We had people flying in to California, from
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: Kansas City, Chicago, New York, all to get this education.
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: Before you can open up a chapter of the Black
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: Panther Party or a branch of the Black Panther Party,
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: you have to come to Oakland first and get educated.
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: And you have to meet the leadership. The leadership has
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: to eyeball you and find out your level of consciousness,
• 6:54
  Speaker 4: you know, what type of person you are before you
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: can go back and represent the party. So this whole
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: process was going on. People were flocking to the party.
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: The party got so big that in 1969, we had
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: put a stop on membership. And we call that particular
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: part of the party's history the Purge, because the party
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: had grown.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, the party was attractive. I mean, black coats
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: and leather coats. I mean.
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: sunglasses and afros at the same time. So this was
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: a big thing for our culture. At the same time,
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: our culture level was rising, even in music. James Brown
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: had a record out in 1968 that elevated people's social consciousness.
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: I'm black and I'm proud. It moved people from the
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: level of being a Negro, because that's what the newspapers
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: and other people were referring us to, But in our community,
• 7:51
  Speaker 4: we refer to ourselves as Black or African. And when
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: James Brown came out with I'm Black and I'm Proud,
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: Black and I'm Proud, you could never go back to
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: ever saying he was a Negro no more.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: There was different progress.
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: Being made, but James Brown couldn't say no song like that.
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: It wasn't for groups like the Black Panther Party. Groups
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: like the Shy Lights can't sing, got to give more
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: power to the people. It wasn't like the Black Panther Party.
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: Paving the way to educate people to lift up their consciousness.
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: And so my role in the party, I came up
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: as a panther in training. I became a officer of
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: the day, which is like the person who runs the office.
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: And from there, I was transferred to Central Headquarters. Now,
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: my name came about because my captain at that time
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: was a legendary panther called Robert Bates. Robert Bay ran
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: the East Oakland office. Robert Bay was also an agent
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: of the Central Committee. And when Robert Bay, when Huey
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: Newton got out of jail in 1970, the Central Committee
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: made Robert Bay his permanent bodyguard and assistant. Now, I
• 8:58
  Speaker 4: worked in that capacity as well after Huey got out
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: of jail. Mostly going to, I went to court with
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: Huey on a daily basis because he was let out
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: on appeals. He wasn't just let out. He had to
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: go back to court and, you know, defend himself. And
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: so my job became that. And also at the same time,
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: I became a member of the Newton family.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: Mr. Newton, Mrs. Newton. I lived like two or four
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: blocks from them. I would walk over to their house
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: around the corner.
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: Like mother-in-law, I'd be taken to the pharmacy, driving to doctors,
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: you know, because they're old people and they don't drive
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: so much.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: So that became my responsibility. And me and Huey's relationship
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: grew behind that, right? So we had a good personal relationship.
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: And my work central headquarters, working a central headquarters was
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: key to who I am today because I know pastors
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: from every because every Panther had to call the Central
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: Headquarters on a weekly basis, or if the office was needed,
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: or they need lawyers, resources, and stuff like that, I
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: pick up the phone, write them messages, or tell them
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: what they need to know, right? So I know chapters
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: from almost all the chapters and branches. And so I
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: worked at it for a while. Then I was drafted
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: into Bobby Seale's campaign when he ran for mayor of Oakland.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: I ran Bobby Seale's campaign office in East Oakland.
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: And it was an organizing event on the highest level
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: the parties had ever been.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, the party is known for.
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: Organizing, but to go into electoral politics and do what
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: we did for a first-time basis, it changed over. Even
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: though Bobby lost that election, it changed over because it
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: opened up so many doors. The party's job was to
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: kick down doors because we were in a vanguard. We
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: had to struggle. And there's other people who followed behind us.
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: I mean, our life was constantly in threat because we
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: were on the front line. You know, police department, COINTELPRO,
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: all those things aimed at members of the.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: Black Panther Party.
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: So not only did we have the burden of dealing
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: with the system, we had to deal with the authorities
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: as well.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: I talk about, and you're familiar with Eddie Conway, right?
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: And so Eddie Conway, when he got locked up, he
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: organized a chapter for the Black Panther Party in the prison,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: which I became a part of. And everything you outlined,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: as you were talking, I was reflecting on.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: We had to read at least two hours.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: We had every aspect of the thing that you outlined
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: as what the party was doing, Eddie had us doing
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: the same thing.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: We had political education classes.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: We had military classes.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: We had first aid classes.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: All our classes were structured around an environment that we
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: was in, right? And we had our technique class was
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: finding a hole to get out of prison by any
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: means necessary.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: So we had that type of mentality, right? So, Billy,
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: as an archivist, right, you have.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: A lot of distortions in terms of, like, the images
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: that's being projected of the party.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: And it's been dubbed Panther porn.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: And this denotes that it's images that's being perpetuated by
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: the federal government It's images that's become like more idolization
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: of the party versus the images as an archivist. What
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: would you say is the most positive or how would
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: you characterize the imagery of the party as from an
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: archivist in terms of educating people and raising their conscience?
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: I see you with a shotgun. I know you in Sacramento.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: I know why you're in Sacramento and I know why
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: you're coming out like that. That's a good thing. But
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: then I turn around, I see somebody standing on the corner.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: They got a picture of somebody standing on the corner
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: with their mug broke and they got a bandolier on
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: and they not, it's nothing, had nothing to do with organizing,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: had nothing to do with raising people's conscience. It got
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: more to do with projecting the image of a thug,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: for lack of a better word. Talk about that if
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: you can.
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: Well, you know, the party was vilified on the highest
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: level from, from the government who lied on us continuously
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: to the media, you know, that use disinformation to scare people.
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: You know, the big image they had was, oh, these Negroes,
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: they have guns, they're angry, they hate white people.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: You know, that's their basic pitch on everything.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: Let it be Republican, New Africa, or any black group,
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: they're You know, they paint them as a very threatening group.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: And because we had guns, I mean, there was nothing.
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: It wasn't against the law in California to have guns,
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: to have them in public.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: Long as they was not loaded, which we knew that. Right.
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: So the images they printed of the Black Panther Party
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: was to vilify us and to scare white people and
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: to frighten black people.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: So it was all part of their method to control blackness.
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: who we were, you know? They were trying to identify
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: who we were. We could only define that. We defined
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: our own self, right? And so that's why we started
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: the Panther newspaper in 1967, to get our voices and
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: views out, right?
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: So even though we had Time, Newsweek.
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: Life magazine, you know, Black Panther Party was cranking out
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: close to 250,000 to 300,000 copies of papers per week.
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: into the community to combat this disinformation about the Black
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: Panther Party. The 10-point program outlines what the Black Panther
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: Party was all about, what we stood for. Only on
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: one aspect, which is point 97, we talk about defending
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: ourselves with guns. We're talking about social change in all levels,
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: in education, housing.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: And so forth.
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: That was a threat to them because they did not
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: want anyone to rock in the boat. And we are
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: rocking the boat. We are waking people up from their
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: deep sleep. I mean, we're telling people to read. We're
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: showing people what books to read. We are the vanguard.
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: People are following us. They didn't want that. We have
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: people in the white community. They want to join in
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: with us. We have people from the Latino community. They
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: want to join with us. We have people from around
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: the world reading the 10-point program and looking at the
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: positive aspects of the Black Panther Party. And that's how
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: we get the New Zealand Panthers and the Panthers from
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: Africa and Panthers from.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: India and the U.K., Because of our social programs, how.
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: We were dealing with the oppressor here. And so they
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: followed those same examples there. They started social programs. They
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: started demanding and fighting.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: For their rights. And that's what the oppressor hates. They
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: hate for people to wake up.
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: And we were waking up big time in the 60s
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: with the music, the culture, the back to Africa, who
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: we are. How could you be a Negro in 1970?
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: after all that's been presented before you. So those things
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: have changed, you know. The party was a part of
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: that change, you know.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: Right. Consciousness, you know.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Talk about, because to your point, right, the United, I
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: remember reading the paper, and when United Farm Workers, you know,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: the party was one of the first papers to, one,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: educate people on what their issues were, to organize like
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: the boycott, certain wines that they was taking and exploiting
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: their labor and not giving them equal pay. So talk
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: about the party's social contribution to raising people's conscience, but
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: more importantly, the elasticity of it, because can you see
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: some of the influences today?
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: Oh, definitely. Definitely.
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: I can see the influences of the Rainbow Coalition. You know,
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: and that was something that Fred Hampton talked about. You know,
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: I can see the coalition building of the Black Panther Party.
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: We're working with the Brown Beret, the Young Lords, the
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: Young Patriots. We're working with the welfare rights groups. We're
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: working with the BSU, the Black.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: Student Unions on campus. We're working with prison groups. There
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: was a number of prison groups throughout.
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: The country that started Black Panther Party off in San Quentin.
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: in Algeria, uh, uh, Broadway and other prisons, you know,
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: because the ideology of the Black Panther Party was strong.
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: You know, what we were talking about, um, There was
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: backbone to it. Everything we did was dialectic materialism, right?
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: We were dialectic people. We looked at things from all sides.
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: We just didn't look at things from one side. Black
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: Panther Party was an international group from the very start.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: Dewey and Bobby were international.
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: You can look at our reading list, those 35 books
• 18:47
  Speaker 4: that come from That's from Africa.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: Mao Zedong from China. So there was all kind of
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: influences in the party.
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: And so it was a big job just working to
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: educate and organize people on all levels.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: Because in our community, action speaks.
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: You know, people learn in various ways, but in our community,
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: people relate to action.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: They see something, they learn from it, right? Just like
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: the breakfast program.
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: You know, we started the breakfast program in California, and
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: within two weeks, it was a national program because people said, hey,
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: we can do that here.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: This is how they did it. We can do it here,
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: you know?
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: The party set examples that people could follow, you know,
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: in every aspect. We were on the forefront of fighting
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: racism on all levels.