Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-Eleven –A Defense Of One’s Own

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-Eleven –A Defense Of One’s Own

Click below to listen to Stanley Nelson speak about his latest documentary –The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution on the Terry Gross show Fresh Air on NPR (Sept 24, 2015)  

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/23/442801731/director-chronicles-the-black-panthers-rise-new-tactics-were-needed

 

 

All hell was breaking loose in Mississippi in 1964 after they found those boys, those civil rights worker boys over in some ditch in Philadelphia (hell was breaking out before and after too but that year got everybody’s attention North and South, abolitionist and redneck, because a showdown was coming no question). Even Jacob Block knew some hard-ass stuff was coming down as isolated as he was from white folks (and other black folk too) on his poor excuse of a share crop farm about fifty miles outside of Hattiesburg. As he thought about it afterwards, after all hell had broken loose in his little world and its environs, he should have known it would come to that, come to a confrontation with Mister, or Mister’s rednecks acting in his name. Hell, his great-grandfather on his mother’s side, Ezra Bond, had jumped his plantation over near Savannah, Georgia, to walk down and join Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s 2^nd South Carolina Volunteers and raise some hell with the boys in grey. And later some cousin had been lynched right in broad daylight down near Biloxi, a big feisty rabid white crowd watching on, watching on with glee from what he had heard just because that cousin had tried, shotgun in hand, to defense his woman when some white rascal got his lust habits on. Yes, he should have known, known it was in the blood that when the deal went down he had to do something, had to defend his own, his sweet Martha, and the little ones.

Jacob did not know how he had first found out they were coming, about the redneck rampage, maybe something overheard in Otis Junction when he went to get his monthly provisions, maybe from somebody at the Lord’s Worship Baptist Church over in Oxbridge that time he went for Jim Jackson’s daughter’s wedding. But no question either that they were coming, coming to throw the worst fear into every last “nigger” (their term, always their term even when directly speaking to a negro, just one more way to put the black man behind the eight ball) within one hundred miles of Hattiesburg once they heard that some blacks were going right to the farms to get other blacks, farmers and small town dwellers alike, to register to vote, to exercise their American-given right to have a say in things. He had never voted, never cared if he voted, and never even really tried once he had gotten wise to Mister Jim Crow and his ways even though he could, mother taught, read and write as well as any white man in the county, hell, maybe in the state of Mississippi. He wanted no trouble, wanted no part of Mister, no part of confronting Mister Jim Crow and just wanted to be left alone. And that was that.

That was that until he heard about those Philadelphia boys, and until he had heard that they had, that white trash that had been put up to it by Mister and his damn White Citizens Councils, burned down Jack Lewis’ place, his beautiful little shack that he had spent half a life time trying to fix up, when he decided to lead his fellow church people to Hattiesburg to register to vote. Jacob still did not care whether he voted or not, registered or not, but since he was, the way things were going, to be targeted anyway just for being black, poor and nothing but a sharecropper well that was enough. Enough to get him and a few fellows, young bucks, sons of farmers he had met over the years although he did not know them or their sons well, and get ready to defend their land, come hell or high water, defend the land like some avenging angels arms in hand like they were heeding some ghost call from that old black abolitionist rabble-rouser Frederick Douglass with his call“to arms, sable warriors, to arms, the hour is at hand” to fight for freedom one more time.

Yah, it had come to that, come to simple black manhood time, time to either keep that lifetime head bent down, or walk on two black feet. And when it came to that showdown they were ready as Ebby Johnson’s son, William, a veteran of Korea, showed them how to use their shotguns to effect. And that knowledge came in handy one night, one night when they heard that a gang of whites was heading up Traversville Road about ten miles from Jacob’s land in three cars shooting and slowly setting fires at random and watching their handiwork. Probably drunk too Jacob (and William) figured. So they set an ambush around Tyler Road, dark, with high ground and easy escape. And that night, whether it ever got recorded, reported, or noted, a small cadre of black men, black avenging angels (no niggers, nigras, or even negroes now) sent a fusillade of shotgun fire down at the three cars coming up that black night Mississippi road. And, you know, no marauding rednecks ever came within twenty miles of Jacob Block’s land again. And while he never took the time to register to vote when that became easier later he was always at pains to tell everybody he knew that one sweaty fearful night he had done all the voting he needed to do…

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.

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-Sacramento, 1967

 

Click below to listen to Stanley Nelson speak about his latest documentary –The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution on the Terry Gross show Fresh Air on NPR (Sept 24, 2015)  

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/23/442801731/director-chronicles-the-black-panthers-rise-new-tactics-were-needed

  

…there is a famous picture of them, of the Black Panther core, Huey and the Bobbys, all black proud and black smart, not just street smart that day, but all the way smart, kind of “turn whitey’s rules back on him” smart, in May 1967 over in Sacramento at the State Capitol, arms in hand, shotguns, serious business shotguns if the occasion arose, arms and shotguns uplifted away from any thought of placing anyone in harm’s way like whitey’s law book said was okay, just fine out in the cool blue-pink American West night. It might not have worked in Cambridge or Peoria but out when the cowboy lands ended, real and faux cowboys, anything went, went with whatever small uplift proviso the local government attached to it.

That day though all black proud, armed, berets tilted slightly showing a sign of determination and not just show, black leather jackets, sharp, yah, uniform sharp and leaving that same uniform sharp impression any serious uniform brings up (soda jerks, McDonald ‘s burger flippers, and gas jockeys step back, step way backs serious uniforms are in town). That day too those brothers evoked, evoked proud black manhood, evoked memories of Africa slave-catcher revolts, evoked memories of maroon fights down in Caribe islands, evoked old Nat Turner come and gone plantation fires, evoked old Captain Brown and his brave band at Harpers Ferry fight, evoked the memory of those two hundred thousand blue-capped, blue-uniformed, yes, uniformed, sable warriors who made Johnny Reb cringe and wish he had never been born. Evoked too, Africa freedom struggles, and desperate fights to break the down presser man’s will, his fortitude, and his hunger to keep what was never his. And evoked no more turning the other cheek stuff, no more waiting on whitey, even leftie, and more, much more, the great white fear…negros with guns, jesus.

And they freaked, those whites guys freaked like they always did, like they always did when even the idea, no, even the thought of an idea of armed black men touched their radar. Hence death this and death that slave codes, hence Nat Turner brutal ashes, hence no quarter given, no respect, no black honor respect before Fort Wagner fight when black men bled red for freedom and on a hundred other battlefields, hence Robert F. Williams flights. So that day, that freaked-out day a sort of cold (soon to be hot) civil war was a-brewing. And whitey, maybe not so smart but afraid of armed black men and ready to act forthwith on that decided that maybe, just maybe, the wild west needed a little taming, just in case the brothers decided to aim those guns straight at someone.

************
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.

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-Three-The Sons Of Franz Fanon

Click below to listen to Stanley Nelson speak about his latest documentary –The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution on the Terry Gross show Fresh Air on NPR (Sept 24, 2015)  

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/23/442801731/director-chronicles-the-black-panthers-rise-new-tactics-were-needed

  

…he took the lashes, took the bitter lashes, the sable slave lashes in Pharaoh times, he took the ocean swells to the bottom unnoticed, Mister unnoticed, in Middle Passage times, he took the ebony lashes again in Mister Mississippi goddam plantation black code times, times to make him studied ignorant, or else, ignorant of his history, of his past, of his kin except for hot sun cotton fields, and more hot sun cotton fields, he took the rope, he took the no hope, he took the Mister walk here, not there, sit here, not there, stand here, not there in Jim Crow times, he took his down-turned head in “talented tenth” times when he was not of the better sort, hell, he even kept that head down in “new negro” times when they were separating out the small pie portions. He, hell, he had had enough, enough of broken down internal rages, enough of unchallenged Mister hurts, enough of okie/arkie nobodies jim, get backs, enough of every kind of glad hand indignity. Enough.

And then he found his way out, or a way out, then he remembered, if he remembered rightly, that all over the world in the old days Russia places, red guard arms in hand, when he was just a kid in China places, people’s army arms in hand, right now, right this minute now, in Vietnam places where they were raising holy hell with Mister, with arms in hand, some of Mister’s own too, and above all in great Mother Africa, arms in hand, they were shoving Mister to the sea, if they let him get that far. Above all he remembered Algeria struggle, Algeria which he knew about from some brother telling him that this West Indian guy, this doctor, this head doctor, said that in the end if you didn’t pick up the gun, if you did not make a sacrificial act, if you just waited around for Mister to give you bread and butter that you would never right Pharaoh wrongs, Middle Passage wrongs, Mister plantation wrongs, Mister James Crow wrongs, hell even talented tenth and new negro wrongs (who were they to decide anyway). That anything that he was given without a righteous cleansing struggle would turn to ashes in his black-skinned mouth.

And so he picked up the gun, picked it up easily, laughingly (Mister laugh) held it barrel to the blue sky in public, learned to shoot the damn thing, and felt himself purified, slave purified for once in his down presser man life, and walked with a certain swagger, an angel swagger, and when some Johnny Reb okie transplant tried to take his measure he just showed “the colors.” Beautiful to see that white ass turned, turned way around. And funny too others also picked up the gun to avenge ancient hurts and they formed a brotherhood, solid, and declared, declared among themselves at first, until Mister heard it through the grapevine, that stinking new negro grapevine, war on that foreign country that he lived in, that Algeria in America country, like that head doctor talked about. And then things, thing started to get interesting, and bloody…
**********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.

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor Louis- Auguste Blanqui

Click on the title to link to a Marxist Internet Archive biography of 19th revolutionary, Louis Auguste Blanqui.

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

For Hugo- On The Anniversary Of The Death Of Black Panther George Jackson-From San Quentin To Attica To Pelican Bay- Never Forget!

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the black liberation fighter and Black Panther Party leader, George Jackson.

Click below to listen to Stanley Nelson speak about his latest documentary –The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution on the Terry Gross show Fresh Air on NPR (Sept 24, 2015)  

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/23/442801731/director-chronicles-the-black-panthers-rise-new-tactics-were-needed

Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated August 23, 2011, for February Is Black History Month.

Bob Dylan- George Jackson Lyrics

I woke up this morning
There were tears in my bed
They killed a man I really loved
Shot him through the head

Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground

Sent him off to prison
For a seventy dollar robbery
Closed the door behind him
And they threw away the key

Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/bob+dylan/george+jackson_20207841.html ]
He wouldn't take shit from no one
He wouldn't bow down or kneel
Authorities, they hated him
Because he was just too real

Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground

Prison guards, they cursed him
As they watched him from above
But they were frightened of his power
They were scared of his love

Lord, Lord, so they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground

Sometimes I think this whole world
Is one big prison yard
Some of us are prisoners
The rest of us are guards

Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-Twelve –One Too Many Jail Cells

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-Twelve –One Too Many Jail Cells

 

Click below to listen to Stanley Nelson speak about his latest documentary –The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution on the Terry Gross show Fresh Air on NPR (Sept 24, 2015)  

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/23/442801731/director-chronicles-the-black-panthers-rise-new-tactics-were-needed

 

Jesus, how did he, let’s leave him nameless at his request but his story is legion, legion in black ghetto America and brown Latino barrio America too ever since Mister and his damn cop justice system decided to go after drugs, small change drugs really, get caught up in the dragnet this time, just as he was starting to get things in his life under control, a little. His teenage years had been one hell after another once his father left, left rolling stone left with some woman not his mother and was down south somewhere according to his paternal grandmother and his mother had taken up, undivided attention taken up, with some Johnny Blade (not a bad guy really but not his father, no way).

First thing was that first “clip” bust at thirteen (laughable when he thought about it now, some damn onyx ring, snagged under his shirt so cool from over at Mister Earl’s junk jewelry two bit joint, a two bit joint though with a big old monitor cruising the premises, that he just had to have for Shana’ s Valentine present, long gone and now forgotten Shana), then a couple more small robbery, burglary things (stealthy midnight creeps through back alleys and shimmied windows in the neighborhood apartments, close to home stealing ), then dropping out of school (that too to spent time with some Shana, although that was not her name, name now not remembered), then a “go to jail or go to the army, or else” thing from the that old whitebread judge who thought he was doing him a favor when he and two other confederates (nice, huh) did one too many midnight creeps. The favor being that he had two little purple hearts from two- tour Iraq courtesy of Saddam Hussein’s boys, or somebody nasty in Baghdad. Then back to the streets the down streets of Boston, really Roxbury, you know around Washington Street and Geneva his old home turf and its change from just a neighborhood, the ‘hood of child remembrance to something else, a free-fire zone of a different kind.

And you know too that a guy, a black guy, even a purple heart black guy, without any real education, without some serviceable skill (nothing but a damn 11-Bravo to tout, nothing), and without some luck, real luck was up against it, up against it when the cops were always looking you up and down for just walking (he had been eye-balled and stopped twice right after he got back from Iraq and hell he was in uniform one time and they could see the damn purple hearts) since he got back. So, you know, he took up “the life” again, the life this time meaning no small time Mr. Earl cheap jack jewel clips and midnight creep robberies (kid’s stuff) but working his way up the chain in the burgeoning local drug scene.

And he was doing okay for a while until one night they, and you know who they was, came smashing down the door at the safe house over on Norfolk (somebody had snitched, somebody not alive right now) and he was taken in. He did a year at South Bay for that one. It was there that he got“religion.” No, not some damn Black Moslem thing, or god holy roller thing, jesus, no, but, you know, wise to the hard fact that if he was going to make thirty (a milestone for a young black man according to some stuff he read from some report some foundation did while he was in) his life flow was going against that prospect. And so he changed, changed a little, got a job through the VA, not much of a job, but steady, a short order cook and was moving along. Then this night of all nights he decided that he wanted to see a friend, not being exactly sure why but maybe a little wobbly on that straight and narrow, from the old neighborhood, yes, bad move, a guy related to the drug trade and he was present when they came storming in. Thirty ain’t looking so good tonight…


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.

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The 1960s Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-The Complete Stories

Out In The Black Liberation Night- The 1960s Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-The Complete Stories

 

 

Click below to listen to Stanley Nelson speak about his latest documentary –The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution on the Terry Gross show Fresh Air on NPR (Sept 24, 2015)  

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/23/442801731/director-chronicles-the-black-panthers-rise-new-tactics-were-needed

Six – A Peace Treaty Of One's Own

Jamal Pratt, Boys' English High School Class of 1965 in Boston, was crazy to go into the military right after high school come June, a plan that he had been mulling in the back of his mind for the previous couple of years. In addition to that intense desire to prove his manhood, his righteous black manhood, to prove that he had what it took to step off with the tough guys, the tough guys when and where it counted, he was having troubles with Ma at home (rolling stone Pa, a blur when young, was long gone, gone with some other woman in some other town as far as his mother and his paternal grandmother knew).

You know the steady drumbeat of what are you going to do with your life (he had only vaguely alluded to that service career which she might have freaked at if he explained it in too much detail), why were you hanging out with who you were hanging out with, don't you know those corner boys of yours will just get you in trouble (in fact she was only about half right about that since Junior was headed for college and Roy the Boy had military ideas too, although Jesse and Preston were slated to do time, black time, for some cheap-jack robberies) , the universal mother drill. Moreover he had no steady girlfriend since Sheila had moved back down south with her grandmother after her parents split up and he was just keeping his head above water when it came to that corner boy midnight shifter stuff his mother kept harping on (he was under Jesse’s spell in particular just then). He was desperately in need of a change of scenery, no question.

Besides he wanted, English High proud wanted (the glass case in the front lobby exhibited many of the servicemen and others who had distinguished themselves in service to the country in the long line of campaigns this country has conducted as befitted the oldest public high school in the country, both fact drummed in the boys from day one of grade nine), to do his duty for his country against the communist menace that it was facing, besides big dog Red Russia, from a place called Vietnam, a place where, from all the reports, the citizenry was growing wild, and getting wilder and would take down the whole region with it.

That, of course was part of it, part of what any red-blooded American, black or white, feared and Jamal thought rightfully so, although he was loose, pretty loose, on exactly what the hell was happening there. The big part though was that Jamal Pratt was smitten by a John Wayne Army Special Forces action film, The Green Berets, having seen it several times and having bored, bored there was no other word for it, his corner boys as they hung around nights in front of his apartment house over on the corner of Washington Street and Geneva Avenue in the high Roxbury neighborhood of Boston.

What got to Jamal was how smooth these guys were, these Special Forces guys (and how they he heard also got plenty of action from the girls around North Carolina and places like that who were ready to do just about anything to get their kicks with a Green Beret), how they were able to take on about ten gooks (yes, that was the term he used for them and a term of common usage, Charlie only came later when the deal went down in–country, and the more respectful Mr. Charlie even later) and whip their sorry asses before they knew what hit them, about how they saved little rice-growing peasant village after little rice-growing peasant village when those crummy cowardly commie bastards tried to stake out their claim, and about how cool their weapons were that made quick victories possible (especially that quick-action M-16 that every guy got to carry, later he would pray, pray to high heaven for a sweet AK-47 that Mr. Charlie had at his disposal when his goddam M-16 would jam at the wrong freaking time ).

He wanted in, wanted in bad on that action, and since he had not planned to go to college anyway for lack of money and interest he figured that when he signed up down at the recruiting station on Tremont Street he would try his luck as a Green Beret recruit even though his physical aspect (thin and short) was just inside the stiff Special Forces regulations. He figured if that didn’t work out, although he was pretty sure he had the stuff that the Green Berets were made of, he would pick a skill school, maybe carpentry or plumbing like his uncle, and be all set for when after he got out.

Well Jamal’s dream, like a lot of things, and not just black things, in this wicked old world, didn’t pan out, the Green Beret part (strangely he couldn't pass the hearing test, although, strangely too it did not disqualify him from the military as a whole), although he did gain a skill school, not exactly the one he had planned on, partly any way. He was assigned to be 11-Bravo, a grunt, a foot soldier, cannon fodder (although that thought term only came later, grunt was the word his used to his friends back on the block when he came home on leave the first time). He did take advantage of an opportunity to go to jump school, paratrooper school, down at Fort Benning in Georgia and was thereafter sent to Fort Bragg (where the Special Forces units were also located) down in North Carolina to be part of the 82^nd Airborne Division.

As luck would have it 1966 was a year that the action was getting hot and heavy in Vietnam and so units, including his unit, of the 82^nd were ordered to that hot spot as President Johnson acceded to every request from the general in charge, General Westmoreland, for more and more troops (that’s when he first heard the term cannon fodder but he did not connect it with himself then). As stories started coming back in about the actual fighting situation in Vietnam and as he gathered from the training he had received in how to kill gooks by the score (although that Mr. Charlie designation and constant rumors about how the night belonged to him was becoming more and more the term of usage among his fellow soldiers whatever term was being used on the streets or in the barrooms) Jamal started getting more anxious, anxious for a very good reason since he had met a girl, Tonya, from Fayetteville, the town outside the fort, and they had plans to marry and all. (Apparently girls, girls around Fayetteville anyway, were just as happy to get their kicks with airborne guys as with Green Berets or any other elite military units but that attraction is a question for another time).

Jamal did his time in 'Nam, did his rotation (a year and a month’s R&R in Hawaii where Tonya met him on the quiet since she wasn’t supposed to do so), although he never did want to talk about it that much, about the killing (the constant firing part, the fields of fire part, although he would go on and on about that damn jamming M-16 and when he complained about it being told by the sergeant that he must not have cleaned it properly, Jesus, he could have cleaned it in his sleep), about the burning down of villages to save them (although he never asked the reason for doing so he just heard that some colonel from his brigade had said that was the reason), about having black sweats every night every single fucking night on the perimeter waiting for Mr. Charlie to come back and take his back (and some black sweat nights later in the “real world” too, for a while), and a few things he swore he would never tell anybody about what he had done there, about what he had seen done there, and about who these peasants really were anyway.

What he did want to talk about was the sea-change in his own attitude, him and some of the brothers (a few white guys too but not from the 82^nd they, the white guys anyway, were still gung-ho), about how Cassius Clay turned Mohammed Ali was right-“that no Viet Cong ever called him nigger,” that he had no quarrel with those yellow-skinned people, that this red scare thing was a white man’s idea, a white man’s war, taking down poor black, brown, yellow-skinned peoples and making them like it, or trying to make them like it. He read some stuff given to him by a guy, a fellow soldier, whose brother was what he called a Black Panther, a black hell-raiser out on the streets of Oakland in California, some stuff by a guy named Fanon, a West Indian guy, a doctor who had been all wrapped up helping bring down the French in Algeria (the same French had been kicked out of Vietnam by Mr. Charlie he found out when he started looking into stuff. Some of it made sense, some just flat-out didn’t (like the hokey black nation thing, he already knew about what that looked like, just walk down Washington Street and Geneva, Jesus.

Well, when he got back to the "real world" he and a few brothers decided, after hearing their unit might be going back to take on Mr. Charlie again , that they didn’t like it, didn’t like it enough to say something about it, say it out loud, and say it in public. At that point, that 1968 point, especially after Charlie went wild during his Tet earlier in the year, a number of guys, dog soldiers like him, were raising hell, white guys too, but mainly brothers because wouldn't you know the brothers were taking an immense amount of the burden in all those hellish fire-fights that was burning up the dreaded Vietnamese countryside. And so they wound up, fistfuls of service combat decorations and all, in that dreaded Fort Bragg stockade for a while before some publicity-conscious general decided that the best thing to do was to get him and the brothers out, give them undesirable discharges and be done with it. He didn’t like the deal but he took it (he would later fight to change it, get it upgraded when that was possible). He had had enough of Mister’s war, enough of killing, and enough of losing everything he held dear (his Fayetteville girl heeding her army father left him in the lurch too) but he had made his peace, his personal peace treaty with the world…

Ten Point Program[edit]

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[43][44]
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.