More Overlooked History: Black Violence

By Jeffrey Breinholt

If there was such a distinction as a Mainstream Journalism Award for Understatement, my nominee for 2007 would go to the Washington Post. On Friday, August 10, 2007, it published a front-page article by Karl Vick, entitled “For Some in Oakland, Editor’s Death Shows Subversion of Black Activism,” about the recent murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey. Bailey’s alleged killer is Devaughndre Broussard, a 19-year old foot soldier in a local institution known as Your Black Muslim Bakery, who pegged Bailey with a shotgun and then proceeded to pump a second blast into his face.

The Washington Post suggested that the murder symbolizes that Oakland’s radical black movement “had over the years gone awry, and that the violence that infused parts of that tradition had been tolerated too long.”

Gosh, do you really think so? For some, it did not take the murder of a prominent black journalist in 2007 to realize this point

Oakland was, after all, the birth place of the Black Panthers. According to a recent book Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party (University of Arkansas Press 2006), by University of Southern Mississippi historian Curtis J. Austin, the Panthers’ decision to embrace violence assured its destruction. Austin paints a rather obnoxious picture.

Panther Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver wrote about his history of raping women, claiming that rape was “an insurrectionary act.” Because his victims were white, he explained, rape was not only a way to get revenge but also to defile and trample upon “the white man’s law and his values.” After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., as liberals like Bobby Kennedy urged peace, Cleaver advocated a nationwide plan to ambush police officers. Bobby Seale recommended surprising cops on their coffee break “with righteous power ... shoot him down - voom, voom with a 12-gauge shotgun.” In Chicago, Fred Hampton said “If you kill a few, you get a little satisfaction. But when you kill them ALL you get complete satisfaction.” New York Panther leader Michael Tabor described how “the only good pig is a dead pig.” The official Panther newspaper advocated guerilla attacks in the U.S. The founder of the Panthers, Huey Newton, claimed. “Every time you go execute a white racist Gestapo cop, you are defending yourself,“

Were these guys serious? Newton assured a reporter in that he was, saying “when the time comes, it will be part of a whole national coordinated effort” designed to “force revolutionary changes in society.”

Of course, the Black Panthers were not an Islamic group. However, to legitimize their militancy, the Panthers needed an international cause. They found it in a weird mix of Chairman Mao, the Algerian independence movement, Castro’s Cuba, the Viet Cong, and Palestinian aspirations. Though not mentioned in Emilio Estevez’s recent film, the latter cause was responsible for the assassination of Bobby Kennedy - another inconvenient bit of overlooked history for anti-Zionist liberals.

Austin correctly takes the Panthers to task for this excess, crediting the concern that this strategy led to disavowal by American blacks, who were predominantly Christian and believed murder was immoral. He notes that the FBI and local law enforcement agencies were not trained to deal with such language and quite often took what the Panthers said literally.

How could they not? After all, this militant talk was not empty rhetoric. In 1967, assaults on police officers went up 41 percent. Newton went to jail for killing a cop, an event that the Panther leadership used to their political advantage. Thereafter, he jumped bail and fled to Cuba when faced with subsequent murder charges for killing a witness. Fred Hampton sought to incorporate the Chicago street gangs into the Panthers’ organization, though he died before accomplishing his dream. The imprisoned George Jackson, after being recruited to the Panther cause, described in his memoirs how the goal of blacks was “to destroy the U.S. as a modern nation-state, waste its huge power facilities, destroy its communications and transport facilities, stop all production and distribution, sabotage its sewer system and its harbor facilities and if it comes to it, subject its whole population to poison and germ warfare.” Twenty one Black Panthers were charged in New York with a plot to bomb department stores, New Haven railroad facilities, a police station and the botanical garden. The battle over which Panther faction had the right to distribute the party’s newsletter in New York led to gunfights in the streets, and to the gagging and mistreatment of children. In California, Panthers kidnapped and murdered a judge. Black Panthers in New Orleans captured police officers and beat them with nail-laden boards. All of this is in Austin's book.

What about the Black Muslims? Legal history is full of examples of them behaving badly. Malcolm X could not escape the Nation of Islam with his life. People v. Hagan, 24 N.Y.2d 395, 248 N.E.2d 588 (N.Y. 1969). Starting in 1959, Black Muslims assaulted several police officers who had the audacity to visit temples in their neighborhoods (State v. Cade, 244 La. 534, 153 So.2d 382 (La. 1963), People v. Buice, 230 Cal.App.2d 324, 40 Cal.Rptr. 877 (Cal. 1964)), or try to keep the peace at political demonstrations (State v. Eames, 365 So.2d 1361 (La. 1978)). Black Muslims engaged in armed robbery and murder (Jones v. State, 229 Md. 165, 182 A.2d 784 (Md. 1962), People v. Johnson, 70 Cal.2d 469, 74 Cal.Rptr., 889 (Cal. 1969), State v. Lee, 197 Kan. 463, 419 P.2d 927 (Kan. 1966), People v. Felder, 127 Ill.App.2d 404, 262 N.E.2d 289 (Ill. 1970), Com. v. Mahdi, 388 Mass. 679, 448 N.E.2d 704 (Mass. 1968), U.S. v. Bryant, 471 F.2d 1040 (D.C. Cir. 1972), Box v. Petstock, 697 F. Supp. 821 (M.D. Pa. 1987), U.S. v. Clark, 398 F. Supp. 341 (E.D. Pa. 1975), Russ v. Israel, 531 F. Supp. 490 (E.D. Wisc. 1982), Com. v. Lee, 394 Mass. 209, 475 N.E.2d 363 (Mass. 1985)). They raped woman (People v. Paxton, 255 Cal.App.2d. 62, 62 Cal.Rptr. 770 (Cal. 1967)). They dealt drugs (U.S. v. Spears, 443 F.2d 895 (5th Cir. 1971), U.S. v. Jackson, 549 F.2d 517 (8th Cir. 1977)). They randomly killed white victims in Oakland and San Francisco (People v. Cooks, 141 Cal. App.3d 224, 190 Cal.Rptr., 211 (1983)). They engaged in extortion schemes in urban neighborhoods (Abney v. U.S., 431 U.S. 651, 97 S. Ct. 2034 (1977), U.S. v. Starks, 515 F.2d 112 (3rd Cir. 1975)), and they held hostages in government buildings (Khaalis v. U.S., 408 A.2d 313 (D.C. 1979)).

These incidents, which are described in published American court opinions, relate only to the incidents from the 1960s and 1970s, which is to say that have I have not even included the many cases from the 1980s to the present. Including incidents of Black Muslim violence from the last three decades would require several more paragraphs, and is not necessary for the relevant question: why did it take the brutal murder of Chauncey Bailey in 2007 to make the radical black community to realize that their political efforts are stained with too much blood?

This brings me back to Oakland, the Black Panthers, and one of the good observations in the recent Washington Post piece: that the type of ethos that killed Bailey may involve the belief that the black Muslim community should have the right to police their own, to the exclusion of American cops and the judicial system. This was, after all, the raison d’etre for the Nation of Islam, and the reason Black Muslims refused induction when drafted into the U.S. military: like the Palestinians in Israel, they wanted their own homeland in the U.S. , and did not want to fight for their country unless it was promised them.

The radical black community in Oakland came of age by organizing itself against the white power structure that recruited Southern whites for its police forces. One of the Black Panthers' first public acts was marching on the California State Capitol for the right to openly brandish weapons, a point not mentioned in Michael Moore's film about the gun lobby. The August 2 murder of Bailey – who was apparently poised to publish some critical pieces about the activities of the Black Muslim bakery – may have been an example of this type of non-official justice against one of their own, who they believed a turncoat.

It is not hard to find this ethos, even among the former Black Panthers who are around today who are starting to come out with their memoirs. Consider Florence Forbes’ Will You Die With Me? (BlackBookPlus, 2006).

Forbes grew up in San Diego, the product of a loving two-parent working family. His parents were active in the PTA. His mother was a Cub Scout den mother, and his father coached Little League. Church was the center of the family's life, and Forbes went to integrated schools. His older brother married and became a librarian. Forbes, however, moved to Oakland, and became - at the age of 20 - the Panther’s chief weapons procurer and enforcer. Near the end of his book, Forbes lets his guard down and expresses regret at the fact that his 1983 prosecution would jar his mother in the realization that her baby was a thug.

Forbes’ demise started when Newton, in a rage, killed a black prostitute. Not knowing Newton was planning to jump bail, Forbes agrees to be part of a plot to kill a witness to the incident. In his words, he decided "save the Servant's life by dustin' this snitching bitch off the planet."

Forbes acknowledges that he probably could have come up with another plan that did not involve killing a witness. However, that was not the Panther style.

Huey always had top-notch lawyers. I could have let him handle the situation, but that was not our nature....This (Black Panther) theater included the use of guns, rhetoric, bravado, and the willingness to use them even if we were wrong as two left shoes.

Forbes instead concocted a plan to kill the witness on the morning of Newton's preliminary hearing. The plan went awry, Forbes was shot in the hand, and he decided to go underground to avoid arrest. On the run, Forbes came to the realization about the Panthers: "the bigger picture of helping our people had been subordinated.” He assumed the name John Wesley Tate, and began selling marijuana. He eventually ran aground.

Forbes’ trial, for second-degree murder, began in 1983 in California. Convicted, Forbes was sentenced to an eight-year prison term. In Will You Die for Me, he seems to slip into a voice that suggests law enforcement was incompetent, rather than the hegemonic force that ruined the Panthers and is scorned by elderly Black Panthers who today travel the college speaking circuit complaining about J. Edgar Hoover and John Mitchell. For example, at his trial, the prosecution called a law enforcement officer who was familiar with Forbes’ role in the Panther's military activities.

As Orloff walked off the stand I followed him with my eyes, saying to myself, Jive-ass m_____f_____, fronting like they were really doing a top-flight job. It happens all the time after the fact they make everyone think they had your measure when they didn't even know your name.

The fact remains that the authorities clearly had Forbes' number, as did the jury. He served his time, and is now an urban planner in New York, free to brag about his militant past.

The right to set up their own jurisdictions and police their own people is arguably part of the political campaign of Muslim-American groups, and Zeyno Baran and I have noted on the Counterterrorism Blog (here) on the issue of whether the U.S. is showing signs that we may tolerate Shari’ah courts established to buy peace with the American-Muslim community. In addition to being un-American, it is simply a bad idea. It comes from well–heeled activists here who want us to overlook that political radicalism has real human costs, and that militant rhetoric is often followed by murder and mayhem. In America, ethnic balkanization and self-policing is radical. We need it about as much as the Palestinians need a government run by Hamas.

If some are going to claim that Chauncey Bailey’s murder should be tolerated as the black community establishing its right to police its own, they should be immediately condemned. Last night’s 60 Minutes included a segment on how the hip hop community is spreading the word that African-Americans should not cooperate with American law enforcement, yet – with the exception of a few courageous black educators – seemingly no one in the community is standing up to criticize this phenomenon. I hope that is short-lived.

Meanwhile, it remains amazing that it took this incident in 2007 Oakland to make news outlets like the Washington Post start to question whether Black Muslim violence might have gone too far.

(As always, the view expressed here are the author's own, and do not reflect those of the Department of Justice)

TrackBack