Regards, Ivan
Posted on 11/25/2002 5:25:51 PM PST by MadIvan
More than 30 years after they first went into battle, the leaders of America's Black Panther movement are mobilising again.
This time their enemy is not the white establishment but a black radical group they claim is tarnishing their name.
Surviving members of America's first armed black revolutionary group, led by one of its founders, Bobby Seale, now 65, are suing a Texan group called the New Black Panther Party on the grounds that its politics are too extreme.
On television, the party's leader described the September 11 attacks as revenge for America's "sins against the people of the Earth".
David Hilliard, the original Panthers' former chief of staff, said: "By using our brand name, this group is getting instant validation for its racial hatred and anti-semitism. This dishonours our history."
The Panthers, who numbered 5,000 at their height, seem an unlikely group to accuse another organisation of being too radical. In the 1960s, while Martin Luther King preached pacifism, Seale and Hilliard called on black people to overthrow the government.
Twenty-eight Panthers and 14 policemen died before the group disbanded in the 1970s. Eight are still in prison. Hilliard was jailed for four years after a gunfight that left one Panther dead and two policemen injured.
He insists that the violence was necessary to defend black people against "the racists attacking civil rights marchers". The group did not preach hatred but "championed coalition politics", he said.
The New Black Panthers were formed in 1989, but under their new leader, Malik Z Shabazz, they have been working hard at publicity. In the past year Shabazz has been interviewed on Fox news 10 times. He says America is a terrorist state controlled by Zionists.
In answer to a lawyer's letter threatening court action, he said no one had the right to dictate how the Panther identity was used, claiming that it was originally applied to a black party in Alabama.
Regards, Ivan
An absolute lie. The Black Panthers despised MLK and the civil rights movement. They were never practioners of "coalition politics." They were a group of murderous thugs responsible for way more than just the deaths of 14 police officers. The Black Panthers were a criminal outfit involved in narcotics, prostitution, gambling, protection, and murder for hire. They were the toast of white radicals who saw their criminal behavior as legitiamte activities for the "vanguard" of the "revolution" to come. That the Panthers and the Left have largely suceeded in cleaning up their image over the past decades is sad testimoney on the state of journalism in this country.
Only one? Oh, that's right. The rest are all dead.
"Tarnishing their name". The Black Panthers have to defend their good name.
This is way too funny.
"Bobby Rush, former Panther and now 2nd Ward alderman known for pushing environmental reforms through the Chicago City Council,..."
Eldridge Cleaver is dead, can't say exactly when, but he passed on a while back. You are correct that Cleaver traveled extensively while in exile; the end result of this was his realization that the US was the best country on earth (read "Soul on Ice".)
I read parts of "Soul on Ice" (I got it from my sister's first black husband) and found it to be one of the most racist, stupid and ignorant books I ever picked up.
I threw it in freakin trash can where it belonged.
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