"If Huey goes, the sky's the limit." For almost a year now, the black and white communities of Oakland, Calif., arrayed against each other in uneasy enmity, have heard the words with grim fascination. The threat was made by the friends of Huey P. Newton, the 26-year-old ex-convict who heads the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. And the Black Panthers have caught the public eye as the most extreme of the black extremists.
Newton was accused of killing a cop in a gunfight, for which he could have gone to the gas chamber. Last week, instead, he was found guilty of manslaughter, and now he faces two to 15 years in prison. Though there were only a few racial outbursts to mark the court's finding, no one in Oakland was taking threats by Black Panthers with anything but seriousness.
In the two years since the first tiny pack of Panthers emerged in Oakland, they have seized pre-eminence in the Black Power movement. They are not only militant but also militaristic. They have guns, determination, discipline and the makings of a nationwide organization. In a dozen black ghettos, Panthers prowl in uniform: black jackets, black berets, tight black trousers. They proclaim their right to bear arms, and they have an affinity for violence. Committed to revolution, devoted to some hard-line Chinese Communist doubletalk, they are gathering notoriety as an American Mao-Mao.
State of War. The Panthers are the largest and fastest growing of the ultraradical Negro groups. Lately, Panthers have been opening dingy storefront headquarters in Los Angeles, Seattle, Newark and Washington, D.C. Chapters are rapidly being established by Stokely Carmichael, who, along with some other former members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, has switched to the Panthers. Estimates of their national membership run from just under 1,000 to upwards of 5,000.
Their appeal is to bravado. A state of war exists between them and the police, whom the Panthers always call "pigs." In Seattle and Brooklyn, police have been ambushed by snipers close to Panther hangouts. A pair of Panthers are being held as suspects in the fire bombing of a McCarthy-for-President center in San Francisco. Two weeks ago, Panthers cradling rifles invaded a Seattle high school where Negro students were terrorizing whites. Other Seattle Panthers shook down students for protection money in another school. Federal law officers have a strong hunch that some Panthers augment their membership dues with burglaries.
Not surprisingly, police get tough with Panthers. In April, the group's 17-year-old treasurer was shot dead by Oakland police after a gun battle. In August, three other members were killed in a shooting match with Los Angeles police. Shortly after Newton was convicted, two Oakland policemen drove a patrol car past the Panthers' local headquarters and riddled the front window with bullets. The men, on duty but obviously drunk, were immediately suspended from the force and charged with a felony.
The Convincer. In the group's hierarchy, Newton is flanked by his minister of information, Eldridge Cleaver, the ex-convict author of Soul on Ice (TIME, April 5), who is the presidential candidate of the multiracial Peace and Freedom Party. The code of the Panthers is a ten-point manifesto, written by Newton in 1966, that calls for complete black control of the businesses, police and courts in Negro areas. Newton also demands freedom for all Negroes in prison and draft exemption for Negroes. Last week Herman B. Ferguson, who is under indictment for a conspiracy to assassinate moderate Negro leaders, advised an audience of 200 Brooklyn slum dwellers on how to handle arguments with white merchants about overdue bills. His admonition: take a Panther along as a convincer.
Sometimes there is more menace than reality to the Panthers' bloodthirsty bluster. Leaders justifiably claim that they helped cool the summer by arguing against riots that pit blacks against an overwhelming white force. Yet they cry for an ultimate bloody upheaval at some future time when blacks will have a tactical advantage. A heavy majority of Negroes reject this sort of thing as ridiculous mumbo jumbo. But many moderates are too intimidated by the Panthers to speak out, and quite a few like the way they stand up to white authority and foster black pride. But unless the white community reaches out in a more meaningful spirit of brotherhood, desperate and embittered young Negroes will continue to answer the Panthers' call.
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