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Mao and the Black Panthers agree

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.