Bobby Seale was chairman of the Black Panther Party during the most violent, tumultuous period of the black power movement. Beginning in late 1966, Seale helped expand the reach and influence of the Panthers from their home base of Oakland, California to more than 30 cities nationwide. The Panthers engaged in militant rallies, hair-raising confrontations with police, and community service programs aimed at helping the poor. They preached armed self-defense against police brutality and revolution against white power structures, quickly topping the FBI's list of national threats.1 For a time, Bobby Seale and the Black Panthers represented "the face of the new radicalism," historian Peniel Joseph writes. "Comprised of reformed troublemakers, college students and ex-cons, the Panthers brandished guns and law books in an effort – sometimes quixotic – to foment revolution from below."2
Bobby Seale was born in Dallas, Texas in 1936. He says he "grew up just like any other [black] brother," in a family that never had much money.3 The family eventually moved to Berkeley, California and lived in a housing project that Seale remembers as crowded and dirty. As a teenager, Seale joined the Air Force but was discharged for bad conduct.
The turning point in Seale's life came in 1962, when he met Huey Newton, a fellow student at Merritt College in Oakland. Seale was deeply impressed with Newton's intellect, his revolutionary views on politics and his willingness to use violence to change society. According to Seale, many left-wing activists he knew shied away from using weapons, but Newton said, "You must pick up guns because guns are key."4
Bobby Seale and Huey Newton formed the Black Panther Party on October 15, 1966. Fed up with police brutality and the tyranny of poverty in black America, they devised a 10-point program to empower African Americans and give them control of their own communities. As they started to organize, Seale said, "We began to understand the unwritten law of force. They, the police, have guns, and what the law actually says ain't worth a damn. We started to think of a program that defines and offsets this physical fact of the ghetto. I view black people in America as a colonial people. Therefore we have to arm ourselves and make the colonial power give us our freedom."5
Many of the Panthers' demands were similar to those of mainstream civil rights leaders, including full employment, decent housing and better schools. But other parts of the 10-point platform were far more radical. The Panthers wanted all African Americans released from jail because, they said, black people could not get fair and impartial trials in American courts. They also demanded an exemption of all black men from the draft. As Seale and Newton wrote, "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."6
Malcolm X was their greatest inspiration, but Seale and Newton were also influenced by the ideas of Marx, Lenin, and Mao Tse-tung's Little Red Book. They raised money to buy guns by selling Mao's book –a guide for political revolution - to Berkeley college students.7
The Panthers' early activities included audacious "defense patrols." Seale and Newton organized small bands of Panthers to intercept police radio calls and learn when an arrest was taking place. The band then "rushed to the scene of the arrest, and, armed with a law book, informed the person being arrested of his constitutional rights." Newton continues, "Party members also carried loaded weapons, publicly displayed but not pointed toward anyone, and dressed in leather jackets and berets."8 These patrols displayed a courage and bravado that earned the Panthers local street credibility.
Bolder tactics quickly earned them national attention. The first was a daring march to the California Capitol in Sacramento, where legislators were considering a bill to restrict carrying loaded weapons in public. Brandishing guns, Bobby Seale and more than 20 other Panthers filed into the Capitol building to protest the bill. "As they marched grimly down the immaculate halls," wrote journalist Sol Stern, "secretaries and tourists gaped and then moved quickly out of the way. By the time they were halfway down the corridor, every reporter and cameraman in the building had gathered; they stayed in front of the Panthers, moving backward, snapping pictures as they went."9 Confrontations like these, along with speeches that called for executing cops, led FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to describe the Panthers as the country's "most dangerous and violence-prone of all extremist groups."10
But within four years, the Panthers went into a steep and permanent decline. A combination of FBI sabotage, troubled finances and internecine battles sapped their energy. Along with scores of other Panthers, Seale and Newton faced dogged harassment by police.11 In late October 1967, Newton was arrested and charged with killing a white police officer during a traffic stop. He was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter. A massive "Free Huey" campaign brought the Panthers greater national attention and support, but Newton stayed in jail for almost three years until he was released pending a new trial. In his absence, Eldridge Cleaver helped lead the party in an even more militant and revolutionary direction.
Meanwhile, Seale faced his own legal battles. Seale had played a small role in the protests that rocked the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, yet he was indicted – along with seven white radicals – for conspiring to incite a riot. At his trial in Chicago in the fall of 1969, Seale refused to use the lawyer appointed to him by Judge Julius Hoffman. In a series of daily courtroom stand-offs, Seale repeatedly disrupted court proceedings, demanding the right to represent himself and declaring Judge Hoffman a racist. Judge Hoffman finally ordered Seale to be "bound, shackled, and gagged for future courtroom proceedings."12 On November 5, 1969, the judge declared a mistrial and then cited Seale on 16 counts of contempt of court. He sentenced him to four years in prison. As Seale was hauled away by marshals, the audience in the courtroom shouted "Free Bobby! Free Bobby!"13 In May 1971, Bobby Seale was acquitted when a new conspiracy trial ended in a hung jury. In 1970-71, Seale and a co-defendant also faced a first-degree murder charge in the case of a Panther operative that was tortured and killed for allegedly working as government spy. That trial also ended in a hung jury.
By the time Seale got out of jail, the Black Panther Party had been crippled by killings, arrests, and ugly turf battles. Seale himself was battle weary. He eventually turned to local politics, running for mayor of Oakland in 1973 and nearly defeating the white Republican incumbent. Seale went on to lecture about his involvement in the Panthers and to sell his own cookbook, Barbeque'n with Bobby.
The violent showdowns and dramatic trials that defined the Black Panthers on the national stage overshadowed the urban "survival programs" they ran to help the poor. These included a free breakfast program that offered meals to as many as 200,000 children, free health clinics, clothing give-aways and numerous other community-based initiatives. "What is often forgotten," Peniel Joseph argues, "is that cofounders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale were college students and fledgling community organizers who cared deeply about the survival of the black community."14
When Seale delivered this speech at the Kaleidoscope Theater in Los Angeles, he was mourning the death of one of the people who had come from that community, a young man named Bobby Hutton. Seale had become a mentor to Hutton in 1966, when Seale was running a youth-oriented anti-poverty program in Oakland. At the age of 16, Hutton was the first person to officially join the Black Panther Party. Hutton was shot during a gunfight with police in Oakland on April 6, 1968, just two days after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
The event at the Kaleidoscope was sponsored by the Peace and Freedom Party. It featured the party's candidate for U.S. Senate from California, social critic Paul Jacobs, as well as comedian Dick Gregory. Six hundred people, many of them white, crammed into the theater to listen and to grieve.15
Listen to the speech
The memorial that we just left – or had – the other day in Oakland, California, in racist USA, was proceeded by a funeral that was held for brother Bobby Hutton. And at this funeral, one of the preachers there began to get himself uptight and began to check the situation out, doing his best not to do anymore Tomming, stated that there was a man, a little story he's told.
A man who was wandering in the hills and in the woods and he was looking for a spring that was supposed to have clear water where he could get a drink because he was thirsty, he was very very thirsty.
And he found a spring that was very very muddy and dirty and filthy, the water wasn't clear so he began to sit down and try to get in some clear clean water by trying to clear the spring out. He went through all kind of hassles and changes trying to clear the spring out, so he can get him a clear drink of water from the spring.
And another man came along and said, "What are you trying to do?" He said, "I am trying to get a clear drink of water here, I've been thirsty for a long long time and I can't seem to get the dirt and the filth and the mud and the dirt that's here in this spring cleared out to get me a clear drink of water."
The man said, "Well the reason you can't do that," he says "is because on top of the hill about a mile or two back where you haven't checked out yet," he says "there's a hog in the spring." He says "there's a hog in the spring, and a lot of those pigs are running around too in the spring." All we want is a little freedom, all we want is a clear drink of water, but there's a hog in the spring!
[applause, cheering]
Look, how should we try and how should we work to get the hog out of the spring? Now the spring has been running dirty for a long long time for peoples in Vietnam, for peoples in Africa, our black brothers, for our black brothers and colored brothers and sisters in South America and Asia and the Caribbeans etc., throughout this world.
Where three-quarters of the world who are non-white who've been brutalized and beaten and exploited and colonialized etc., by this racist power structure here in America. The hog has got to be removed from the spring.
[applause]
You can sit by and many times you might say, "Well the spring is really not that dirty." But if you are so close to the hog and have a tendency to sit by and think it's a game that's going on while the hogs and the pigs dirty the spring while you enjoy yourself, looking at the hogs and the pigs dirty the spring where the clear water is, where the freedom is that we want? And you think it's a game, you're jiving and you're shucking, you're shucking yourselves, and these young Black Panthers here and many others and many many other thousands of people who are joining the party now are concerned with removing that hog from the spring.
Now how do we do it? For a long long time we struggle. Brother Martin Luther King gave us a tactic and this tactic, the tactic that he used was exhausted. And it was exhausted with a racist bullet taking his life.
Brother Bobby Hutton, a member of the Black Panther Party hasn't yet exhausted his means but yet he was killed by the same kind of racist bullet. Pigs. Hungry, exploiting, robbing, thuggish pigs. A whole power structure and all its racism.
We have to fight it, we have to deal with this hog, we have to deal with this pig, we have to deal with and understand the situation. We have to understand that when Huey P. Newton says that power is the ability to define phenomena and make it act in a desired manner, that when Huey P. Newton gives this functional definition of power he's talking about power in the real sense. He's not talking about green power which is a shuck.
Green power? Just ask the question. Green power? As Huey P. Newton teaches he says the North had Yankee money and the South had Confederate money, both had green power. The North also had organized guns and force and the South also had organized guns and force. But the North uses many many black men and many many slaves, ex-slaves, or slaves, out-maneuvered the South and had all the guns and force.
Power is the ability to define phenomena and make it act in the desired manner. The North defined the South's money as not being money anymore and they're burned it in the streets. The only power that was there was the organized guns and force.
It was the organized guns and force, money is only a tool by which power is manipulated. We've seen this happen with the racist white power structure and what it's done to the world.
Racist America, the Congo and oppressed people of South Africa. Africa, Liberia, Ghana, Guinea, South America, Cuba where a valiant revolutionary struggle went down. China where a most valiant revolutionary struggle went down against all forms of exploitation and is still going down in relation to the world's struggle. Of black people and people [who want] to be free. All across this world we can see what racism is doing and all across this world right here in America, you can see what black people are getting ready to do.
To begin to stop racism. Do I have to talk about the fact that Rockefeller's subsidiaries in banking industries takes out 27 percent of the net profits out of South Africa? Do I have to talk about the fact that 55 percent of the surplus uranium that came to the United States from 1955-1962 come from South Africa while a black man works in a mine making $265 a year and a white man doing the same damn job makes $3,360 a year? Do we have to go through these facts that are scattered throughout the world these type of examples to get you to understand what's going down?
[applause]
Do I have to lay out to you again the platform of the program of the Black Panther Party? Do I have to get you to understand what we mean by black liberation in this country? Do we have to get you to understand the necessity of black people taking up arms to defend themselves against racist attack in this country? Well damn it if I have to do it, we're going to do it. Here we are, alright, come on now!
[applause, cheering]
Listen, in our program it states, if you haven't read it you begin to read it you begin to understand it. This program is not outlined for the white community, it's outlined for the black community. Now, number one: we want power to determine our own destiny in our own black communities. Number two: we want full employment for our people. Number three: we want decent housing fit for shelter of human beings. Number four: we want an end to the robbery by the white men to the black people in the black communities. Number five: we want decent education that teaches us about the true nature of this racist decadent system and education that teaches us about our true history and our role in society in the world. Number six: we want all black men to be exempt from military service. [applause] Number seven: we want immediate end of police brutality and murder of black people. [applause] Number eight: we want all black men and women to be released from county jails, prisons, federal, state, what-have-you because they have not had fair trial, they have been tried by all white juries. [applause] Number nine: we want all people when brought to trial to be tried in a court by their peer groups or people from their black community as defined by your jive Constitution of the United States. [applause] Number ten: and in summarization, we want some land, we want some bread, we want some clothing, we want some education, we want some justice, and we want some damn peace.
[applause]
If I say I want peace, then you say, "You should put down your gun." But hasn't it occurred to you by now after 400 years of being brutalized and murdered and lynched and maimed by guns and force on the part of racists and the racist power structure in this country; it's damn near time we picked up the gun to try to begin to get some peace, to defend ourselves and our community from racist attacks by the pigs, to defend ourselves against racist attacks by bird giant saw, Minuteman or Ku Klux Klansman or what have you?
Hasn't it occurred to you that it's damn near time we organize ourselves in some fashion to have some ability to begin to make racists and the racist power structure act in a desired manner as we define the functional definition of what power is? The ability to define the situation and we have been defining it, now we must organize our black communities to also make the power structure of racism act in a desired manner.
And what is that desired manner? Politics, what is politics? What is politics? You think politics start with a seat in the assembly, no it doesn't. It's related to it but it doesn't start there. Politics starts with a hungry stomach. Politics starts with a pig crushing us across our skull and murdering our people. Politics starts with the fact that we get a rotten education and we get brainwashed and fooled in a trick notion and trick knowledge and everything else that goes on in terms of the exploitation that goes down.
Politics starts with the fact that you want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings, now this is where politics starts. And black people now understand with the Black Panther Party that we are going to relate to politics in a real fashion. We are not going for no more jive verbal sincerity – at all. Don't give me Robert F. Kennedy your jive shuck, "I think it is necessary here, that we come forth." I don't want to hear it.
[applause, laughter]
I'm tired of my black brother being brainwashed too. "Kane Fisher, what did you think about John F. Kennedy or Robert Kennedy?" "Well Andy you know go there boy, I think the boy is going to do something there." Look, we are not going for that thing anymore, Robert F. Kennedy was well related to Robert Williams being put in a situation where he had to bent from his country and split because he is being prosecuted by Robert F. Kennedy.
John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy did not sent troops into Birmingham in 1963 until black people decided it was necessary for them to defend themselves. When Martin Luther King's motel was bombed and the racists have been attacking us constantly in that particular area and all over this country, why didn't John F. Kennedy send some troops in there? And he didn't sent troops until after black people decide we're going to defend ourselves from racists attacks and went to the streets and whooped up a few racists' heads then Robert – John F. Kennedy decide to send it troops.
See all that verbal sincerity – we learn from the past, we learned so we are going to guide our feet by the lamps of the past and we are going to make sure we are going to follow no bags so peace and freedom if you want to do something get down the nitty gritty and don't miss no nits and grits. No more shucking and no more jiving with the Macarthy's with the lynching bag Johnsons with the Governor Reagans and the Robert F. Kennedys right on down the line. No more shucking and jiving!
[applause]
You want to support black liberation you support the ten-part program of the Black Panther Party, that's what you support.
[applause]
Freedom, we are not going to sit around and superficially and abstractly trying to define freedom anymore. Black people, the mothers and the scrub nurse since the kitchens that brought the shopping bags home with the leftover ends. The black brothers who try to do their best who struggle in the system, who build railroads to the court system etc. The black brothers and the black young kids coming up, the crap that we get in the context of this racist system.
We are going to define our freedom and we are going to define it by comparing with what we get in the future against what we don't have now. That's the way we are going to define our freedom. [applause] So, you are thrown in a position where you don't sit up to me and talking no more, "I really feel for your situation."
"Uh you know, really now, John, negroes shouldn't be ... but I really feel for your situation." I don't want to hear that crap. I shouldn't be violent. OK, I shouldn't be violent. Some of you are so miseducated. Have we went into your communities and lynched you and murder you? No. Racists have come into our communities throughout this country and lynched and murdered and brutalized us.
Have we went into your neighborhood and intimidated you with any guns? No. Racists, pigs, cops and racists have come in and intimidated and brutalized and murdered us. Did we design this racist power structure system here that exploits and maims black people? No. They designed this to put it against us; we didn't put it on you.
Now the next time you accuse us of racist, you'd better check yourselves and see what the hell you are accusing. The Black Panther Party does not hate anybody because of the color of their skin. That's the game of the Ku Klux Klansman, you check it out.
[applause]
We will not, we will not stoop to the level of hating a person because of the color of their skin because we understand where racism is manifested. It's not just manifested in some white man sitting in his community and saying, "You know, I don't like black people because of the color of their skin." Racism is manifested in the racist brutal murder and the racist bullet that killed Martin Luther King. The racist bullet that killed Bobby Hutton, the racist bullet that killed Medgar Evers, the racist bullet that has killed and maimed and murdered black people across this country. The lynchings, this is where racism is manifested and you want to know what we hate? That's what we hate with a passion!
[applause]
So where do you go from there? You look at the Black Panther Party. "Oh, they are going to attack me tomorrow." If you bring a gun down in a black community and started shooting at some black man, the brothers are going to shoot back. I'm sorry, you are going to get buck shots, 120, 00 buck 357 magnums; we're going to vote with what we know.
[applause, cheering]
Now you say we shouldn't, I say we're going to do it whether you like it or not. Now the rest of you that want to start dealing with the power structure on a level where you want to try to change the system get on your gig. You'd better get on your gig because you are jiving. Before Watts, before the black rebellion in Watts that were 1,300 cops. There's a little over 6,000 pigs in this county now. And some 70 percent of them are directly concentrated in black communities controlling black people.
Oakland's pig force has been tripled since three and a half years ago from 350 pigs to over 1,000 pigs. San Francisco doubling, every major metropolis across this country, where black people live the pig forces have been tripled, the national guards have been doubled. Now you check it out – now who are they putting it out there for?
For those of you out in Santa Monica? Don't be foolish. [laughter] They are there for black people with stunner guns and new equipment! You understand politics enough to know that you've got to change that system. When Ronald Reagan sits up and chops up the little chicken fee or welfare programs at the same time, do you remember when he was doing that he increased his highway patrolmen some 1,500? You start thinking about $700 or $800 a month for a highway patrolmen salary a month, add that by 12 and you start thinking about the new cars and the new equipment etc.
And when Los Angeles County asked for 45 or 50 or 200 million dollars for the black communities so they can organize themselves, you know where it went to. It went to the increase of the Gestapo force that Reagan and the rest of these racist bastards and Linden Banes Johnson are putting all over this country.
[applause]
So this is what we're dealing with. We're dealing with the reality. There's no more time to sit down and continue discussing as to whether or not the racist white wall that black people are chained against is real or not. There's no more time to do that, it's time for you white people to get off in your white communities and begin to end racism and we will deal with it in our communities.
[applause]
That's where you are going to work at. Don't come down in our communities trying to grow philodendrons and poppies and don't come down in our communities talking about "the basic socioeconomic structure as it's related to the adverse condition that the black people subjected to." Black brothers say, "I don't want to hear this crap, the best thing that you can do is get had because I am thinking about robbing you."
[laughter]
[Because] he don't want to hear it and I don't blame him, so you stay in your own community. 'Cause one of them brothers down there get to seeing you down there, he don't know, some of them ain't running to the Panther Party, and they haven't been instructed yet not to rob you just yet.
[laughter]
The brother hasn't been instructed on the political relationship between you whites and the peace and freedom parties, etc. So don't come down there, we'll take care of our community 'cause we want our power in our community to determine our own destiny [in] our black communities. We want our own black police force chosen by black people, controlled [applause starts] wait a minute, wait a minute, controlled by black people and we're going to make one specific rule that while he's going be a member of the police department chosen from our black community, he's going to have to live in our black community in the areas that he patrols because of this here.
If he have to live there, he ain't going to be murdering and committing no police brutality 'cause he's got to come back home and sleep that night.
[applause, cheering]
If that ain't giving a significant symbolic understanding of having power determine your own destiny in your own black community, I don't know what the hell is. That's a very significant point to start with. Point number seven of the program of the Black Panther Party deals specifically with the fact that black people should and do and are forming black self defense groups to defend themselves against racist attacks on the part of the pig department and any other racists who come in our community.
So you see organize black brothers here, ready to do what they have to do to defend themselves against all forms of racists attacks and this is where it's going. This is political. Power comes out of a barrel of a gun and if you don't believe it you're jiving. You see that power structure up there? Where their power come from?
Every time they make a political decision upon any group of people's hair throughout this world or any local country or any local community and the people disagree with that political decision that's been made by the power structure, the power structure sends their guns and force to see to that the political decisions that they've made is carried out.
Black people revolted in Watts, they revolted in Newark, they revolted in Detroit, they revolted all across this country. Rebellions, rebellions rebellions, 150 rebellions before our black brothers death – King – and over 100 some odd rebellions after his death. Those rebellions is the heart and the voice of the people saying that we disagree with the present condition that we are in and these oppressive conditions are caused by the political decisions that have been made on the part of the power structure and each time the power structure mobilizes guns and forces to descend on the people. So what should we do?
Should we go there and sit in and slide in, roll in, jump in, beg in, pray in, wait in, boogaloo in? [laugher] No, because while we are doing all that and while we are singing, "We shall overcome" some pig is keeping a beat on our head. "We [beat] shall [beat] overcome." See what I mean? Crushing our skulls and we sitting there saying, "No, no, no." King has already said that "We shall overcome," so we are going to do it for real – overcome.
[applause]
Now Mike is going to run for DA here. Mike says he's not a racist, as long as Mike doesn't act in a racist manner, we'll treat him as not acting like a racist, and that's that. We don't have to go through a long dissertation of bull crap, running around, concerning ourselves with whether or not the white wall, the white racist wall that we are chained against is real or not. We are not going to talk about the molecular structure of the wall. [imitating] "You know, the molecular structure of the wall really says you know, that it's really 90 percent space you know. Now is the wall really real or not?" And meanwhile these black men and all these black men up here with their arms chained against the wall saying, "You're damn right it's real. I want to get free from it!" So the brother breaks one of the chains on the right: Newark, Detroit, Watts. Black rebellions across the country every time a brother breaks the chain. Now you are still going to sit down and talking about whether or not the white racist wall is real or not? About the molecular and the atomic structure of it? No you are not going to do it anymore, if you are not going to be a racist you are not 'cause you and I are going to pick up a crowbar and you are going to start prying the rest of those spikes loose. Because we're coming off the wall, we're overcoming, we ain't jiving, it's going to be that way.
Every racist that comes into our community has to be driven out by one means or another, and if you want to aid black liberation you start working on some of them jive legislatures who supposedly represent you who are jiving and shucking. You start working on that. [Applause] And we come over here and say, "Look man, the special race is doing such and such and such and such" and we'll point it out 'cause we can define our situation. You come on down and get down the nitty gritty and don't miss any nits or grits. It's time for you to move. Black people are on the move, all they need is organizing. We're coming, we're coming, we're coming! We're not out-numbered, around this world black people and colored people are not out-numbered, we are out-organized by the racist white power structure.
You are out-organized, anti-draft demonstrators, don't tell me you don't know what police brutality is all about. When you were up there in Oakland in front of the anti-draft office, the draft office that you were demonstrating against it, what did that pig department do? They whoop your heads.
Right down here when they lobby LBJ come down here, they whoop your heads. And then you came to me, a black man that says, "You know what, all that stuff he's talking about police brutality is really real isn't it?" It's real as hell. We've been expressing it for 400 years.
[applause]
It's real. You disagree with the political decision that the power structure had made, the power structure sending violence and force upon your head. You see that, that it's basic political decision being carried out. You were there non-violently. I mean you weren't violent, you were sitting there, you were going to sit in front of the place real non-violent like and you were going to say, "Well, you just have to arrest me."
The pigs didn't do that, they come down there with force and hit you upside your head. I was sitting in jail looking reading the racist Oakland Tribune, checking you out. I said, "I wonder what they learned." I just wondered. The brothers know. You noticed how you've got them big demonstrations going across the country, you just talk about non-violent, you don't see that many black brothers in there did you.
We've been known for 400 years, we wasn't coming out there, we weren't coming out there at all. Besides the rebellions that we've had in our communities – who knows what them pigs do to us. Look, the platform of the program of the Black Panther Party only outlines the clear drink of water that we wanted freedom. That's all. And we're saying that it's time, that it's time that people move forward to begin to stop racism, begin to deal with it. Now, [imitating] "how do I deal with it?"
Well you've been closer to the racists than we have. Start dealing with it! Learn! How do we deal with the racism that comes up on our heads, we're learning. The other night we learn warfare through warfare from being attacked in Oakland. Our brothers did their best, they had floodlights on that place. They put tear gas in that place and they set a fire in the bottom of the basement, that's what they did. They force some brothers in there by attacking them and the brothers got off in there and went for what they knew.
And we learn warfare through warfare we learn warfare through our brother's death –who died for our freedom, because he stuck with it, he believed in it. [When] Bobby Hutton walked out of that house, slightly for it walked out of the house, Eldridge Cleaver told him to take off all his clothes man. Eldridge Cleaver's been in prison before and he was quite hip to the racist system in how they do things.
He says, "Because you going to get killed, if you take off all your clothes," and young Bobby Hutton was just a little too modest and said later for it man and didn't take off all his clothes. And the pigs say, "Now nigger run to the car, the squad car," and before he get there they gunned him down.
Eldridge took off all of his clothes, every stitch, because he said, "If they shoot me and kill me, cause we are being forced out, I don't see how they can shoot across the water in my eyes, I can't see how they can shoot with the floodlights, the tear gasses in here and the fire is burning the place down, I've got to come out."
He says, "So if they kill me, there won't be any bullet holes in my clothes." Eldridge is ready to leave that for that in case he did get murdered, you can understand racism in the real sense! Bobby Hutton left it for us.
Before Bobby Hutton died, before Bobby Hutton died, some five young brothers have been hit in Oakland, killed in Oakland. Young brothers – 16, 17, 18 three weeks prior to Bobby Hutton and Bobby Hutton made the 6th murder on the part of the pig department in a period of three, three and a half weeks. So this is the memorial for our black brother Bobby Hutton. Who is Bobby Hutton? Some of you probably might be thinking that we are saying that he's one of the first members that join just because he got killed, that's not true. Bobby Hutton is one of the first members that join. Even before the Black Panther Party was formed we got Bobby Hutton a job at the local poverty program that I was working in that I got fired at because I wouldn't go for the crap that they were putting down.
Bobby Hutton took his money out of his pocket from that $1.35 an hour gig for 30 hours a week and the gig is there to try to make him think that he shouldn't organize against the power structure but think the power structure is beautiful. Bobby Hutton took money out of his pocket to put the first officer.
Huey P. Newton. Look, you read in the paper about a man committing a robbery or something and there's a shootout and someone is killed, you pass it off. But Huey P. Newton was stopped for a traffic ticket! And then a shootout occurred and that's a hell of a large gap that has to be filled especially when he is a political leader in the local community there, especially when we oppose the pig department. We patrol those cops up there with guns and force to make sure no brutality was committed.
Huey P. Newton didn't murder anybody, if we wanted to murder a cop, we could have murdered it way back then, I'm talking about 1966 when we first started. They stopped Huey and held him up for 20 minutes and try to set him up for killing but they lost, the pigs lost.
[applause]
Twenty minutes for a traffic ticket? It doesn't take 20 minutes to stop a man to give him a traffic citation. So we're going to have a trial in Oakland May 6, that's Huey P. Newton's trial date, 9 a.m. We say we want Huey P. Newton free, May 6, 9 a.m., 12th and Fallon, in Oakland. The national day of black protest to free Huey P. Newton, to free Eldridge Cleaver, to free David Hilliard, to free all the black political prisoners, Rap Brown, all of them, rallied in Oakland, 50,000 in Oakland May the 6! Now how many of you coming up May 6?
Six days of trials, we are going to upset Oakland so bad, we're going to let the power structure know! Black people are going to be in the streets! Black people are going to demonstrate! We can easily tell black people in Oakland to go home, and you know what they do? They go home.
We need to tell black people to go to the streets and you know what they do? They go to the streets. They say all right, the Black Panther Party is where it's at and they want us to lead them politically, we're going to do that. So everybody should be in Oakland May 6, for black protest against the power structure to stand that we want Huey P. Newton to set free, support black liberation, and we want Eldridge Cleaver free etc., 50-100 thousand. Mayor Redding, Governor Reagan, Chief of Police Gaines in the City of Oakland, Cahill of San Francisco are all shook now because we announce the fact that 50 thousand people, 50-100 thousand people are going to be in Oakland.
Now is it so rough that you can't come there? What are you talking about? You demonstrated across this country a million strong. A million strong against the war in Vietnam. Now if you can't get up off your butts to come up there to demonstrate against the war against black people, well you're jiving and you're shucking me.
[applause]
How many people we going to have up there to say "We are going to stand for free Huey"? You want to stand up and say you're going to be there or you want to sit down and contemplate it? May 6, in the city of Oakland, be there.
[applause]
Now we want Huey free, we want to see where your money – where your mouth is at. You talk that talk, we'll get on up cause we say we're winner and we are going to move on up. You got it? I want to thank you.
[applause]
