Oakland Museum of CA celebrates 50th anniversary of Black Panthers

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- Fifty years ago this month in Oakland, a revolutionary group was founded and now the city is honoring the Black Panthers with a week of activities and a museum exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California.

There were black supremacist anti-whiter racists among their top ranks.

Even their own core members call them out on that.

Black Panthers co-founder Bobby Seale talks barbecue and the Black Panthers:

Labor Day Bobby-que
By Ben White
September 1, 2007
https://www.vice.com/read/bobby-v14n9

...(Interviewer): Weren’t Bobby Hutton and Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver on their way to help out with a barbecue in ‘68 when they got into a shoot-out with police and Bobby Hutton and a policeman were killed?

Seale: That’s what Eldridge Cleaver said, that they were picking up stuff, because there was a barbecue fundraiser rally the next day or something like that. But I’ve since found out that was a lie. That was just his slick little way of saying that they didn’t ambush the cops, the cops shot at them. But in fact, I found out that they shot first at the cops. Martin Luther King had just gotten killed, so my problem there was trying to stop riots. In fact, I stopped all riots in the San Francisco Bay area. I didn’t believe in riots. That’s flat, straight out. I was supposed to be going to Martin Luther King’s funeral, and Eldridge Cleaver took David Hilliard and four or five guys out and in effect they ambushed the cops, I have since found out. That’s really what happened. They got in a shoot-out situation, they got dispersed, they couldn’t shoot, they weren’t trained, trying to run around and do some old guerilla b***s***. And you know, I always was p***ed off with them about that. I’d had military training, and I knew the difference between a domestic-style situation and a military situation. And Eldridge just turned out to be a g**d*** anarchist, you know what I mean? But at any rate... bang, bang.

(Interviewer): So Eldridge and Hutton and those guys were just p***ed, and wanted to go get some?

Seale: Yeah, because Martin Luther King was killed. And I’m saying all over the place, “No rioting, we’re not going to do anything,” blah blah blah. But they didn’t listen to me.

(Interviewer): Actually, I also read where Minister of Defense Huey Newton wrote somewhere that in 1967, when he got shot and shot a cop, he was on his way to get barbecue in Oakland.

Seale: That’s a lie. He wasn’t going to get no g**d*** barbecue. But Huey’s situation was different. Frey, the police officer, really did try to kill Huey. Frey had ordered Huey to walk to the police vehicle. And Huey always recited the law. That was his strongest articulate advocacy point. Anytime a police officer moves a person from one spot to another, technically that person is under arrest. I ask you, “Am I under arrest? I demand to know what I’m being arrested for.” So Huey stopped and turned around right in front of the police vehicle, and Frey had his gun out. Huey grabs at the gun, y’know-I had seen Huey do this before, when we got into a fight with police. So what happened is Frey pulls that trigger and shoots Huey right in the thigh. Now, Officer Heanes, the other police officer, the shot goes off, he’s looking at Huey grabbing Frey, and he’s trying to shoot Huey, but they’re rolling and moving. It was told in court that the first bullet that hit Officer Frey was from Heanes’s gun. This is the real situation. Huey hits the ground, and Huey pulls his own gun out and fires back at Heanes and wounds him. Huey shoots Frey more, because Frey is moving and not dead, and then falls down, because he’s shot. The other guy, Gene McKinney, who had got out of the car and ran, came back and helped Huey get away from there. Huey wound up in the hospital, and that’s where the police arrested him. Huey’s situation was different from Eldridge’s.

(Interviewer): What was Eldridge like?

Seale: Eldridge was just a pure anarchist. He wanted to pull that Bakunin b***s*** off, you know what I mean? I mean, to show you what I’m talking about, Eldridge put out a pamphlet called “Catechism of a Revolutionary”-this is after that shoot-out situation. This is a Black Panther Party Ministry of Information pamphlet. I had not read this ****, OK? I did not know it was all Bakunin, the 1800s anarchist. And Marlon Brando called me up, he said, “Bobby! I’m not going to send you any more money.” Because Brando would give me money. I guess he must have donated ten grand to me. But he says, “I’m not gonna work with you guys any more. You’re running around telling people to kill their mother and father for the revolution. That ain’t right.” I said, “We don’t do any such g**d*** thing, what the hell’s wrong with you, Marlon?” “Here on page so-and-so!” “Of what?” He says, “Your ‘Catechism of a Revolutionary’!” So I says, “Rosemary, hand me that out of my briefcase.” I had the thing in my briefcase for two months and never read the damn thing because I’m busy, I’m organizing too much. So I got on page so-and-so, and he’s reading, “Kill their mothers and...” and I says, “Damn, I’m sorry, man...” He says, “OK, I’ll see you, bye”-click. So I lost my funding source because of Eldridge Cleaver’s bull. Later in life, I’m really taking the time to look at this and put two and two together. When I go back to speaking with Eldridge in 1992, we got a chance to get in various conversations. So I’m asking Eldridge, you had “Catechism of a Revolutionary.” I remember you called Martin Luther King a nonviolent fool. Now you’re a born-again Christian on the other side of the fence. So when Little Bobby Hutton was killed, were you operating from the standpoint of “Catechism of a Revolutionary”? He said, yeah, I was just stupid, I just thought we had to do something, boom boom boom.

(Interviewer): What does “Catechism of a Revolutionary” say, exactly?

Seale: It’s based on Bakunin. He ran around and said kill officials of the government of all kinds, murder them, shoot them down in the street, blah blah blah. Kill the police and so on-anything that represents the state.

I was one for programmatic organizing. All those free breakfast programs, I created those programs. Huey Newton didn’t create them, he was in jail when these programs were created. Huey did not start that. I started that ****, you know what I mean? I did that ****. Because to me, you cannot go around here just standing on the street corner, talking a bunch of quote-unquote militant talk if you’re not gonna organize the people. “We need unity in the black community,” that’s what the phrase was. I said, well, you’ve got to unify people around something. That’s what I used to say to some of these guys way before the party ever started. A bunch of armchair revolutionaries, never did anything. And ultimately I created, got Huey to help me create, the Black Panther Party. I’m the one that got the office, I’m the one that painted the sign on the window, I’m the one that laid out the application to join. I did all of that ****. I was an engineer, I made good money, then I was in city government and I made good money as the director of the youth-jobs program. I invested my money and time. I wasn’t married or anything. You have to do real things. I was a carpenter and a builder. That’s what I was about, moving to build the house, a political house, a political, electoral framework to unify people around grassroots programs.

You got any more questions on barbecue?

(Interviewer): Back then, was there ever any problem with the Muslims and Nation of Islam people who were around about people eating pork?

Seale: Please, I didn’t even relate to the Muslims at all. You don’t even come around to me, talking about “You can’t eat pork.” Like Nipsey Russell, the comedian, used to say: “Man, I thought you had a grudge against the white man oppressing you. I’ll organize against that, but I ain’t got no grudge against a ham hock.” I got no time for that. That’s ritualistic b***s***. I’m an engineer. I worked in the Gemini missile program, two years in the engineering department. I did electromagnetic-fueled black-light nondestruct testing on all engine frames for the Gemini missile program. I placed myself in the high-tech world before I even got interested in the civil rights protests. I base things on good proven scientific evidentiary fact, I don’t base things on some mythical b***s***. Nation of Islam at the time was running around calling all white folks devils. Well, that’s just b***s***. That’s some old metaphorical mythical misrepresentation. You don’t call white folks devils. You’re part of this biologically existing Homo sapiens humanity. I mean, I liked Malcolm X, you know, because he didn’t bite his tongue. But I had no time for the Nation of Islam. You don’t wanna come around my organization. I got big pork. I got pork chops, pork roast, pork ribs, and beef, chicken, and everything else.

And I know that nowadays, an excessive amount of fat in the food-not the food itself, but the fat-blocks arteries. I don’t deal with no marbleized fat of rib steaks and stuff, because they’re too fatty. But anyway, the Nation of Islam was around this college that I went to, but I wasn’t even interested in them. I would never have joined them, even though I liked Malcolm, because I didn’t believe in religious doctrine being at the helm of the human-liberation struggle. That’s the way I saw it.

(Interviewer): Do black people make the best barbecue?

Seale: Well, anybody can make good barbecue. When I was a judge at the National Rib Cookoff in 1988, I tasted barbecue from all over the world. Hawaii, Japan, you name it. And most of it has some good flavorful fact about it, you know? I met some guys from Texas one time, at the Rib Cookoff, they said “Hey, man, we here for the money, but you the one that can make the barbecue.” I said, “Why you say that?” He says, “Black people make the best barbecue.” This is some old white guy, explaining to me... I said, well, that’s your opinion. Anyone can make good barbecue.

(Interviewer): I heard that some former Black Panthers are marketing hot sauce?

Seale: That’s David Hilliard. It’s called Burn Baby Burn Hot Sauce.

(Interviewer): Are you involved with that?

Seale: No, I ain’t got nothing to do with it. Absolutely nothing to do with it.

(Interviewer): Have you tried it?

Seale: No.

(Interviewer): How have you responded when people have said that you’re selling out by doing this barbecue stuff?

Seale: Revolutionaries eat, too. I was on national television about 15 years ago, when Spike Lee’s Malcom X film came out. They had a panel of eight people up there. So one little chubby, fat white guy, says, “That Bobby Seale, well, he just sold out.” I said, “Man, what the hell are you talking about?” “Yes, he sold out, because he wrote a barbecue book.” I says, “What about the jazz album I put out? I’m an architect, if I did a book of space-saving architectural designs, would that be ‘selling out’? Here’s my barbecue book.” And I held it up, and I said, “This is the only down-home, hickory-smoked, Southern-style barbecue book in America, and for your information, revolutionaries eat, too.” I shot him down, this silly idiot, I said, man, later for you. And I’ve had people say, “What’s he doing writing a cookbook?” What is that, not manly enough for you? Get out of my face. They don’t even know what manhood is. I have a big long philosophical argument with idiots who come up here with some mythical misrepresentations of what manhood is, or-the whole s***, what a revolutionary is, you know what I mean? You got guys that have a two-dimensional method of thinking or maybe a one-dimensional level of thinking. They’ve either got their penis in front of their ego or their ego in front of their penis, and one idea ain’t too much better than the other. If you gonna revolve things around some penis relationship... I remember Eldridge Cleaver in his book, talking about the gun was an extension of his penis. I mean, get outta here. I look back on that stuff and I say, man, this brother here, he tried to say he was justified in raping white females because of what the white race had done in the past. So I say, well, then he’s stooping to their level, you know what I mean? We were never racists. The FBI and COINTELPRO tried to put it out that the Black Panther Party was racist, but we weren’t. It was not about discriminating against people because of the color of their skin. We were about all power to all the people, as opposed to any power to the racists and the avaricious who work with the racists to exploit and oppress us. That’s what I stood for, and I don’t care what J. Edgar Hoover and anybody else tried to say I was about. They’re wrong. I know what I was about...

May not have been what Bobby Seale was about but certainly by his own admission Cleaver and some other fellow travelers were racists.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.