Title: Survival Pending Revolution: The History of the Black Panther Party

Author: Paul Alkebulan

Year of Publication: 2007

Thesis:

Alkebulan's argument is tied into his periodization of the BPP into three major eras: 1966-1971, characterized by revolutionary violence; 1971-1974, in which community action (survival programs) is a response to both the violence meted out by the FBI and local police. 1974-1982, in which he chronicles the ideological split between Cleaver (East Coast, more internationally-based faction) and Newton (centered in the West Coast). The former embraced revolutionary violence while the latter sought to parlay gains into reform. While state violence resulted in jailings and assassinations, women were able to influence the party and gain positions of leadership.

Time: 1966-1982

Geography: U.S.

Organization:

1. Change in BPP Ideology - influence in various public spheres.
2. How and why community programs work.
3. Exploration of regional offices - CA, PNW, MW, South, Algiers, East Coast - focuses on development from local to international
4. Revolutionary violence & COINTELPRO. The double-edged sword of violence
5. Women’s roles
6. BP decline & legacy

Intro:

- Goals:
- appeal
- Goals of the group
- Achievements
- Obstacles
- Legacy

BPP periodization: 3 eras

1. 1966-1971

- promoted political autonomy
- Started community programs
- “Intercommunalism” - essentially like black world nationalism/marxism together
- Community service begins in 1969
- Community control of police & social services
- Free breakfast
- Liberation schools
- Free medical clinics
- *1967 - COINTELPRO begins
- Huey - jailed in 1967-1970 - shifts to community organizing
- party fractions

2. Survival programs - 1971-1974

- Oakland becomes central fight for political power - Elaine Brown & Bobby Seale lose bids for election.
- Simultaneously, Newton w/drugs and retribution within membership

3. 1974-1982

- 1977 - Newton tried for murder of prostitute / assassination attempt on witness.
- 1982 - newspaper closes.

Prologue:

- Epigraph - military power only way to represent power as a Black person. - Newton
- Battle for CR tied up in cold-war politics - don’t critique system too hard.
- Breakthroughs in BvBoard, CR act etc. didn’t result in improvement for many - especially urban A.
- DuBois - 2 camps - political/social integration & separatists (Garvey, for example / Sierra Leone)
- DuBois - also partially segregated economy etc. - self-sufficiency
- Malcom X - internal political economy develops DuBois
- Seale & Newton form BPP to stop police brutality, but also 10-pt program
- Shows how demands changed over time (especially in 1972)
- 1967 - Mulford Act (storming the Sacramento building)
- 1967 - police stop & police death - Free Huey campaign begins

- SNCC way more famous at the time (HR Brown & Carmichael)

CHAPTER 1 - The Heirs of Malcom

- Idea of dual identity or separate colony
- Self-help the only option for Blacks as integration fought by whites.
- Influences of Malcom
- #1 - Use of arms, but unclear as to self defense or larger political strategy
- #2 - “Renewal through struggle” Fanon has influence here

- **See Earl Ofari - concerned with economic and civil issues vs. fearless, organized underclass (ofari doesn’t see them as loyal) - redemption through revolutionary action is something both Fanon & Panthers see as a possibility (14)

- Panthers - see internal colony & national liberation struggle
- Paradox: reformist demands with guns (15)

- #3 - ALLIANCES WITH OTHER GROUPS
- Works with Young Lords, Young Patriots, etc.
- Develops into class struggle
- House/field a myth, but useful analogy
- BPP begins to include middle-upper-class Blacks in struggle (1971 - 18)
- Long time developing skill to work with other groups
- Disagreement over fascism & armed struggle -21
- *Look up RPCC (Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention)
- Revolutionary vs. reactionary intercommunalism (23)
- Urban rebellion not the beginning of revolution, as some though it might be -24
- Ultimately the 10-pt program is what attracted folks -26
- Brief Williams story (helps white family not get killed then charged with abduction - goes to Cuba)

Chapter 2 - Survival Pending Revolution

- BPP calculates they won't win an armed rebellion b/c all Black people would not fight/support it
- Suggests that survival programs arise as a need to deal with a PR problem - also come with purging members who aren't following a strict conduct code.
- FBI concerned about breakfast program "spreading hate" 32
- Police actually attacks caches of food
- Liberation schools - did these come out of the Southern schools?
- initially for ideology & AA hist, but then they realized they could leverage its academic potential (takes two years) (34)
- Medical training (basic) but also sickle cell anemia testing
- Political education was complicated as students had varying degrees of preparedness.
- Newton, Seale, Hilliard are the political bureau (40)

Community Action Programs
- "ensure the party's survival through a broad base of community support" (41)
- Argument: getting donations helped but didn't address root problem of production of goods (43)
- Strong critique of the program for not being either revolutionary or reformist & pointing out "easy" adjustments that could have been made (not seeing how this works out myself). (45)

CHAPTER 3 - Regional Development of the Black Panther Party
- Indicts agent provocateurs for convincing BPP members to commit crimes, resulting in arrests (this seems a little blamey - didn't Black people get arrested for nothing anyway?)
- Rank & file used welfare but had to go to the central org. to get permission - goal was not to use any gov't support, but sometimes ended up doing so to support budget. Otherwise newspaper sales & student financial aid.
- People's Party II in Houston - police snipe & kill Carl Hampton, then rioting, then reforms.
- Lots of police infiltration & entrapment, but at least one court case won on not having a jury of peers.
- Calls people's courts useless & police retribution obvious - 54
- Calls charges avoidable - 54
- Midwest Chapters - Hampton, B. Brown, B. Rush
- rainbow coalition (working w/young lords, etc.)
- BPP warns SDS & etc. that their actions are increasing police brutality - 55
- **leaders prefer organized crime to organized BP (any oppositional organizing)
- Assassination of Fred Hampton (short) - 56
- Detroit siege - 58 (Few members)
- Washington - Aaron Dixon - had to cool down on paramilitary in public
- Bunchy Carter - SoCal
- Police attack, public helps make sure folks get out safely
- Reference to BPP-US issue
- San Quentin - Jackson & Davis story
- Prisoners - divided by BPP into regular & political - not all prisoners had same ideas. NOI appealed to convicts, so did BPP (see San Quentin organized by Jackson).
- Political prisoner vs. Prisoner of war designation important
- NY / Eastern Chapters angered about having to sell papers & not able to organize the way they wanted (this happens after arrests force some underground & others to jail while West coast folks come out to lead).
- Murder trial with Bobby Seale (who left)
- Robert F. Williams - goes to Cuba & produces Radio Free Dixie and newspaper Crusadr (1961-ish)
- Cubans don't push Black power politics & force Black folk to keep it on the DL while they are there (they don't want their own racial uprising to happen).

CHAPTER 4 - Enemies of the People

- 1971 - the Split
- BPP now a reform party vs. revolutionary violence
- Assata shakur offers critiques - afraid of Newton & critical of suspensions of NY 21
- COINTELPRO fosters feud with US & BPP
- See footnote #40 - 7,402 informants developed between 1967-1972
- Rank & file - they do the work, therefore important to understand their motivations - 87

CHAPTER 5 - Women and the Black Panther Party

- Women's role increasing as part of survival program initiatives and jailed or disgraced male leadership
- Contrasts early Panther philosophy that emphasized protection of women and concurrently stepping back from leadership.
- Gender seen as complementary, not equal. (101)
- This way of thinking turns out to be impractical and problematic, which BPP finds out through experience (103)
- Erica Huggins noted as an influential first chapter leader in 1969 (105)
- Women in the BPP leverage their experience in jail as reasoning for expanded leadership (105)
- Birth control/contraceptives a sticky issue (considered important to raise children), along with "sequential polygamy" (114)

Type:

Methods: Chronological

Sources:

Dissertations, Government documents, artiles, newspaper and magazines, speeches, letters, autobiographies, political advertising, secondary literature on the BP movement. Interviews (Lu Hudson, Doug Miranda, Eugene Williams, Joe Robertson, Carol Rucker, Tarika Lewis, Belva Butcher, Kiilu Nyasha). Offers bibliographic essay at the end.

Historiography:
Keywords: Community action, women in the BPP,

Themes: women, community action

Critiques:

Questions:

Alkebulan heavily attributes the decline of the party to the factionalism in leadership, but I also wonder if more attention had been placed on the FBI's role in exterminating BPP leadership/exacerbating tensions itself would his interpretation also change? We should further explore how women were able to acquire such a central role in both shifting internal politics and improving the outward image, yet what the demise of the BPP says about the portrayal of masculinity and the ability to fundraise and sustain a movement only when women recede to the background.

Quotes:

Notes: Does not include corporal punishment for discipline issues (48)