Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program

 

Two- A Job Of One’s Own  

Leon Coleman was worried, worried sick, when he heard rumors that due to the world oil situation, whatever that was, although as a practical matter he knew that meant higher gas prices at the pump and more shell out for ways to get around, get around in cars, the main way, including him, people got around in America.  The reason that Leon Coleman was worried, and rightly so, was that the world oil situation would determine whether he had a job or not, at least a good-paying union wage job or not. Whether people would still buy new cars every few years. See Leon worked the line, the assembly line, over at Dodge Main in Detroit (really Hamtramck, over in Polack town) yes, that famous Dodge Main from a few years back, around 1971, when some brothers, some righteous black brothers mainly, closed the place down over some cracker foreman’s racist slurs and stuff like hiring brothers in the skilled trades jobs to get them the hell off of the damn assembly line. And he had reason to worry as well because he had just come off of a short lay-off  about eight months back and since he was as they say “last hired”  (having only worked at the plant a couple of years altogether) he would again be among the “first fired.” An old story, an old black story as far as he knew but he didn’t have anything in particular to back that view up since most of his people had  come north from Mississippi a while back and they had always had plenty, too plenty, of back-breaking hot sun work to do on some Mister’s plantation. At least he never had to suffer that fate, tough as the line was, tough as it was when they kept speeding the damn thing up.  

All Leon Coleman knew was it was tough to be a black man, a young black man, trying to make something of himself. Maybe just being a man was tough, especially a man with family and a woman with wanting habits, he wouldn’t argue that, but the way the deal went down when things went wrong, anything from the world oil situation to get kicked off the job first a black man had a burden. Yah, the damn thing was stacked against a black man. Hell, he could understand why those brothers said enough a few years back (although as a “new hire” right after that time he was told to, and did, stay clear of any revolutionary brother stuff) and argued that the way workers were hired and fired (okay, laid-off but it felt like being fired) had to be changed, that black men (and women too since they were starting to hire more woman for some quota thing) should not have to be the “fall guy.” And just that minute he could see where they were right back then, although little good it would do him.       

Little good too it would do him with wifey, Alberta, sweet Alberta with her child-wanting ways, harping on him about starting a family. Jesus, lord. As he thought about what loomed ahead he thought back to the days before he got his first serious job at the auto plant (before then for real jobs as a teenager he had worked in a low-rent car wash and flipped a few burgers at different places but mainly he didn’t work) when he was “running the streets” with his corner boys, stealing stuff, midnight stealing stuff, a couple of armed robberies (never picked up for) and at the end, dealing dope (and sniffing to, bad stuff, dealing and sniffing too, because you take too many chances when you are dope-addled), dealing dope to high heaven (and picking up a couple of arrests in the pursuit). It was the last arrest, the last arrest when they were going to step him off for a few years at state prison that his mother (father, Leon too, long gone, a Mississippi rolling  stone, whereabouts unknown) stepped in, made some connection with a union rep relative to get the auto job, made a deal with the judge, and he walked, as long as he kept clean. And he had, and Alberta, whatever her wanting ways, had made sure of that, after they had met at some whiskey joint out on Six Mile Road. So he harnessed himself to the work, kept straight during that lay-off time and grabbed all the overtime he could when he got back. He just wished it wasn’t so tough being a black man, a young black man, and that he had a job that he could call his own … 




The Ten Point Program

 

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[39][40]

 

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

 

2. We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

 

3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

 

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

 

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

 

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

 

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

 

We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

 

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.

 

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

 

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

 

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.

 

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

 

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

 

We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.