ERICKA HUGGINS: There's an old story,
and it's used in various cultures, where
a group of blind men approach an elephant
and try to describe him.
The first man approaches the elephant, touches its side,
and says, it feels like a wall.
The next man touches a tusk and says,
the elephant must be like a spear.
Another blind man touches the trunk and says,
it feels like a snake.
And that is quite often what happens with our descriptions
of the Black Panther Party.
We know the party we were in and not the entire thing.
We were making history and it wasn't nice and clean.
It wasn't easy.
It was complex.
From Chicago, lilinois, the mighty Chi-Lites.
MUSIC THE CHI LITES, "POWER TO THE PEOPLE")
ALL: (SINGING) For God's sake, you
got to give more power to the people.
There's some people up there hogging everything.
JAMAL JOSEPH: The thing that led to the Panthers
was what we were seeing on television every day--
attack dogs, fire hoses, bombings.
We stand on the eve of a black revolution, brothers.
JAMAL JOSEPH: Now we have the emergence
of voices within the community that were saying,
we're not going to continue fo turn the other cheek.
You tell them white folk in Mississippi
that all the scared niggers are dead.
(crowd chanting)
We want black power.
MUSIC THE CHI LITES, "POWER TO THE PEOPLE")
WILLIAM CALHOUN: This was a revolutionary time.
50 countries in the world gained their independence
in the decade before the founding of the Black Panther
Party.
This was the time when people are getting drafted
to go and fight in Vietnam.
So if somebody's coming and saying well,
if you're going to fight, why not
fight right here in LA or Oakland, you know?
That made a lot of sense.
ELAINE BROWN: You couldn't be absent and see what we saw.
We couldn't unsee it.
I was a cocktail waitress in a white strip club
two years before I joined the Black Panther Party.
How did that happen?
The rage was in the streets.
It was everywhere.
MUSIC THE CHI LITES, "POWER TO THE PEOPLE")
HUEY NEWTON: We're not gonna get nothing.
Not by sitting around here and just doing
these sit-in demonstrations and nothing.
People are not going to do anything.
REPORTER: But how are we going te do it?
By violence.
Violence.
By uprising, having a revolution.
Just with blood, you know.
Let everybody bleed a little bit.
MUSIC THE CHI LITES, "POWER TO THE PEOPLE")
NEWSCASTER (VOICEOVER): Relations
between police and Negroes throughout the country
are getting worse.
(police siren}
One of the cities most troubled by animosity
between police and Negroes is Oakland, California.
People always talked about freedom and what that means
during that time period.
Being black in America meant that you didn’t walk down
the street with the same sense of safety
and the same sense of privilege as a white person.
There was absolutely no difference
in the way the police treated us in Mississippi than they
did in California.
They may not have called you nigger everyday,
but they treated you the same way they did in Mississippi.
WAYNE PHARR: The police jump on you,
beat you up, put the gun at your head.
This is what we were going through on a daily basis.
ELBERT HOWARD: When I first met Huey and Bobby,
they were in the process of forming an organization
for primarily self-defense.
We didn't plan to have a nationwide organization
or anything like that.
We were organizing, dealing with the problems in Oakland.
HUEY NEWTON: We use the Black Panther as our symbol
because the nature of panther, panther doesn't strike anyone,
but when he's assailed upon that he'll back up first.
But if the aggressor continues then he'll strike out.
SHERWIN FORTE: Huey had studied the law.
In Oakland at that particular time,
anyone could carry a firearm who did not have a felony
conviction at the time.
The firearm could not be concealed.
It had to be in the open.
The California Penal Code, section 12020 through 12027,
and also the Second Amendment of the Constitution,
guarantees the citizen a right to bear arms
‘on public property.
ELBERT HOWARD: Huey said we're going to carry our guns
and we're going to follow the police.
And if they stop someone, we're going to stop.
We're going to maintain a legal distance
and we're going to observe the so-called law officers
in performance of their duties.
{music playing}
EMORY DOUGLAS: We were in the car and driving around,
having fun.
We would-- we was looking at the pretty women
and chasing the sisters.
Then something might happen, and then all of a sudden the focus
would just become serious.
MAN (ON RADIO): We're coming around the corner.
Uh, stay facing where you are.
SHERWIN FORTE: We would stop.
We would get out of the cars.
We would walk up to the scene.
Those who had rifles would carry them
in the open, clearly visible.
We would stand at a, um, a distance where
the police couldn't say that we were interfering
with their arrest or their detention of the individual
and, um, make sure that there was no brutality.
We stood back with our weapons, ready to throw down
if necessary.
They would, uh, take the weapon and pass it across like this,
and it would sweep-- pass right over the officer.
SHERWIN FORTE: No one would do anything
until a policeman ejected a round in the chamber.
Then we would all eject rounds in the chamber,
and all up and down the street you
could hear this clackity-clack, clack, clack, clack.
And then when the traffic stop or the incident's over,
they'd bring the weapon down across by you like this
and get back in their car and drive off.
It was pretty intimidating.
We referred to ourselves as the vanguard,
and we were setting, by example, a new course that we wanted
the entire community to follow.
No one wants to touch the legitimate hunter,
but we've got to protect society from nuts with guns.
When bands of armed people with loaded weapons
can move about our streets, intimidating and frightening
citizens, then I think we should act.
And we intend to act.
It's my intention to make it a misdemeanor to have, uh, loaded
rifles and shotguns and weapons in public places.
BOBBY SEALE: The police department
had went to a local congressman to get a bill written.
So Huey called me up and says, we have to go to Sacramento.
It was conceived as a media event
that the press is always at the California state capitol.
SHERWIN FORTE: No one really wanted Huey himself to go,
because Huey was kind of a quick-tempered firebrand.
Bobby was a little more cautious.
And it was like, look.
You know, you've been great so far,
but you might blow it up there, and bad things could happen.
We caravaned to Sacramento.
I think there were about 30 of us altogether, and most of us
had weapon.
EMORY DOUGLAS: We was on the state capitol on the lawn,
and Ronald Reagan-- then the governor
of the state of California-- was there about 10 feet away
from us holding a press conference
with these young, like, parochial school kids.
And what happened, as soon as the press seen us
they gravitated from Ronald Reagan
over to where the Panthers was.
The Black Panther Party for Self Defense
calls upon the American people in general,
and the black people in particular,
to take careful note of the racist California
legislature which is now considering legislation aimed
at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless
at the very same time racist police
agencies throughout the country are intensifying the terror,
brutality, murder, and repression of black people.
NEWSCASTER: The state assembly was
in the midst of a heated debate when the young Negroes, armed
with loaded rifles, shotguns and pistols,
marched into the capital.
BOBBY SEALE: When we got in the halls, you have to imagine,
there's 100 cameras-- still cameras, print media pecple--
backing up.
And I'm saying, where is the spectator section?
And the press says this way, Bobby.
Some party members got ahead of me with shotguns, pistols
and wound up on the actual floor of the California State
legislature.
REPORTER {VOICEOVER}: They're heavily armed.
Whether their weapons are loaded or not, nobody seems to know.
NEWSCASTER: The armed group, who said
they were members of the Black Panther Party,
retreated to a service station several blocks
from the capital.
l remember this one cop came down on a motorcycle,
and he's seen all these guns, and he
got on the-- on the thing.
And that's when they started to swoop down
‘on us from everywhere.
You have no right to take my gun away from me.
You don't know the constitutional right?
Sure we do.
We're well aware of the constitutionality.
I would like to have my gun back.
Why do you believe the legislature is racist?
Because, you know, you're a part of it.
Isn't it obvious?
This is a white system.
SHERWIN FORTE: The news got to everyone
in the black community who had a television, everyone
who had a radio.
It was in every newspaper across the nation.
It put us on center stage.
RONALD REAGAN: I don't think that loaded guns is the way
to solve a problem that should be solved
between people of good will.
And anyone who would approve of this kind of demonstration
must be out of their mind.
MICHAEL MCCARTY: When I heard about Sacramento,
I was like, damn, these brothers are bad.
They're here up in Sacramento, in the capital, packing?
MOHAMMED MUBARAK: The boldness, the courageousness about it,
the arrogance of it-- that put a whole new face on things.
I said man, I want to be part of this, whatever that is.
TARIKA LEWIS: Yeah, I walked into the office
and told them I wanted to join the Black Panther Party,
and they kind of laughed.
I didn't know that there were any other women
in the party at that time.
But then I asked them, could I have a gun?
ERICKA HUGGINS: I was a student at Lincoln University
outside Philly when I first heard about the Black Panther
Party.
I found my friend, John Huggins, and I said,
we need to leave this stupid campus.
We have work to do.
We got in John Huggins’ little hooptie car
and we drove across the country from New York,
and when we got to the west coast
we joined the Black Panther Party.
MAN (VOICEOVER}: What we want, what we believe.
WOMAN (VOICEOVER): Point number one, we want freedom.
WOMAN (VOICEOVER): We want decent housing.
MAN (VOICEOVER): We want an an education for our people.
MAN (VOICEOVER): We want an immediate end
to police brutality.
LANDON WILLIAMS: People joined for all kinds of reasons,
but the Panthers have a 10 point platform or program that really
was sort of like the fundamental sort of organizing tool
and orientation tool.
JAMAL JOSEPH: The civil tights movement was basically
a southern movement.
So when you had an organization like the Panthers
who were taking on things like housing and welfare and health,
that was stuff that people in the north
could relate to and rally behind.
PHYLLIS JACKSON: Our attack was not
only against white supremacy, but it was also
about capitalism.
We actually thought that the way in which capitalism created
a working class that was kept absolutely destitute--
was that was wrong.
‘So we took the position that in order for us to free,
that system had to be dismantled.
We could not be free ina system that had oppressed us
in the first place.
So you have to get rid of that system.
WILLIAM CALHOUN: We were not after the church folks.
We were not after the Muslim folks.
We wanted the brother on the comer,
the brother who's getting his head banged in every weekend
by the police.
We wanted the brother who was going to jail-- just
snatched out of this car for a traffic ticket
because he was black.
That's who we were after.
WOMAN (VOICEOVER): We get calls from Atlanta, Nashville,
Raleigh, North Carolina, from Washington, DC, Bridgeport,
Connecticut-- every city, small or large, you could think
of wanted a chapter of the Black Panther Party.
{music playing}
We would send members of the organization
to help connect them to us.
But it was destabilizing in the sense
that it was somewhat chaotic, the way the party was growing.
And it was too fast and too big.
WILLIAM CALHOUN: There was no screening process.
There was no, why are you here?
What do you expect to have happen while you're here?
What are you trying to accomplish?
There was none of that.
Members came from whoever just came in off the street.
The downside, of course, was we had no idea who
any of these people were.
We didn't have time for a whole lot of, who are you?
What are you doing?
We need-- you want to do this?
Fine.
Here.
Go.
Uh, this week on “Firing Line", my guest
is Mr. Eldridge Cleaver, the information minister
of the Black Panthers.
MARK KURLANSKY: Eldridge Cleaver comes out with this book,
"Soul on Ice,” a series of his essays from prison,
and the New York Times says that it's brilliant,
it gets on to the best seller list.
So when Eldridge joined the Panthers,
the Panthers had gotten themselves
a star, a literary star.
ELDRIDGE CLEAVER: I've been called
by the National Review, the (? gogols ?) of the Black
Panther Party.
And all of this is an attempt to undermine the party
or to give ita bad presentation to the public.
CLAYBORNE CARSON: Huey Newton always had this vision.
He was the visionary of the party.
Bobby Seale, he had the personality.
Eldridge Cleaver was the person who
made the party credible to black intellectuals,
to the white, left intellectuals.
You know, all of them loved Eldridge Cleaver.
They understood what he was talking about,
or at least they thought they did.
FELIPE LUCIANO: Eldridge had this incredible ability
to encapsulate a thought in a few sentences
and form it into an artistic statement that pointed right--
that stabbed right into the heart of the enemy,
and he did that all of the time.
lapplause)
Now, was he always correct?
No.
And I say that Ronald Reagan is a punk, a sissy, and a coward,
and I challenge him to a duel.
I challenge him.
I challenge him to a duel fo the death or until he
says Uncle Eldridge.
Was he insane?
Fuck yeah.
That boy was crazy, and he got a lot of people hurt.
And I give him his choice of weapon.
He could use a gun, a knife, a baseball bat or a marshmallow,
and I'll beat him to death with the marshmallow.
That's how I feel about him, see?
MARVIN X: Now see, they are not going
to be able to control Eldridge.
Eldridge was a Rottweiler, uncontrollable personality.
Who could be in an organization with Eldridge
and he not be the leader?
Nobody.
And that's basically how it ended up.
NEWSCASTER (VOICEOVER): A pool of blood marks
the spot where 23-year-old officer John Frey was found
fatally wounded from four gunshots.
The shooting happened at 5:00 AM,
approximately where I'm standing, on 7th Street
in the heart of Oakland's Negro ghetto.
The suspect, charged with murder and attempted murder,
is Huey Newton, 25-year-old leader of the Black
Panthers for Self Defense.
Newton is hospitalized in serious condition
and under heavy guard.
We went up to Highland Hospital and it
looked like every police in America was there.
We didn't know for sure if Huey was dead or alive.
We didn't sleep that night.
Nobody slept that night, I don't think.
LISE PEARLMAN: As he was handcuffed
to a gumey going into surgery, he was arrested for murder
and expected to face execution.
Alot of the other Panthers were
in jail because of the protests that they'd done in Sacramento,
so Eldridge was the only available spokesperson
for the Black Panther Party.
ELDRIDGE CLEAVER: The Black Panther Party
demands that Huey P. Newton be set free,
and we wish to make it very clear
that if he is not set free, there
is little hope of avoiding open, armed war
on the streets of California and sweeping across this nation.
We said, well, Huey's in jail.
He's facing the death penalty.
What can we do?
I think the initial slogan was Huey must be set free.
Eventually it got shortened to free Huey.
CROWD: (CHANTING) Black is beautiful
Free Huey!
Set our warrior free.
Free Huey!
Black is beautiful.
Free Huey!
Set our warrior free.
Free Huey!
KATHLEEN CLEAVER (VOICEOVER): It became a huge movement.
CROWD: {CHANTING} Free Huey!
Black is beautiful.
Free Huey!
Set our warrior free.
Free Huey!
Black is beautiful.
Free Huey!
Set our warrior free.
Free Huey!
NEWSCASTER (VOICEOVER): Today there
were a number of free Huey Newton rallies
across the nation.
You did not have to be a member of the Black Panther Party.
All you had to be was a human being.
People of all kinds took up that cry, Free Huey.
ELDRIDGE CLEAVER: The Examiner made a report back here
in the last Sunday's paper that we were anti-white,
that we hold no bones-- this is a quote-- hold
no, pick no bones about being anti-white.
This is & bold faced lie.
We don't hate nobody because of their color.
We hate oppression.
We hate murder of black people in our communities.
The people just turned out.
They wanted to help us, they wanted to give us money,
they wanted us to come speak.
It was this gathering of connection
to the Black Panthers that was different to before.
MAN: (SINGING) We've got to free Huey.
We've got to free Huey.
Everybody!
We've got to free Huey.
ERICKA HUGGINS: We were a phenomenon-- the way
that we walked and talked and dressed.
We had swagger.
It was a rhythm.
It was a rhythm to how we spoke.
It was a rhythm to how we walked,
and the people recognized it.
We stood out.
Outside of that, on the street, they'd-- ooh that's a butt ugly
person.
Ooh, they ugly.
But in the Party it was just something that gave them
this tremendous sex appeal.
JAMAL JOSEPH: The Panthers didn’t invent the idea of black
is beautiful.
People had started wearing afros and dashikis--
but one of the things the Panthers did
was that urban black is beautiful,
and that look just blew people away.
JULIAN BOND: If you were a young black man living in the city
anywhere, you wanted to be like this.
You wanted to dress like this, you wanted to act like this,
you wanted to talk like this.
You wanted to be this.
It's a standard of aggressiveness, of militance,
of just forcefulness that's the sort of standard we
haven't had in the past.
REPORTER: But figuratively speaking, you're
not about to become a Panther.
No.
Not today or tomorrow, at any rate.
Maybe the day after.
(MUSIC BILLY PAUL, "AM I BLACK ENOUGH FOR YOU?")
This brother here, myself, all of us
were born with our hair like this,
and we just wear it like this.
The reason for it, you might say,
is like a new awareness among black people
that their own natural appearance-—
physical appearance, is beautiful.
Black people are aware now.
They're proud of it.
It's pleasing to them.
Dig it?
Isn't it beautiful?
All right.
flaughter)
KATHLEEN CLEAVER (VOICEOVER): You're
talking about people who are teenagers-- 17, 18, 19,
20-- that's the bulk of the Panthers are teenagers.
So the fact that we were So young
and the fact that this hadn't happened before-- I'm
not certain that we recognized how startling it
looked to other people.
WOMAN (VOICEOVER): Dear Mr. Newton,
I'm a 13-year-old black girl and { want to be a Black Panther.
I wish you would fill me in.
Does it matter what your religion is?
What are some qualifications to be a Black Panther?
P§-- write me back personally.
RITA WILLIAMS-GARCIA: I was taught
to be proper-- behave yourself.
Um, you're going out in public, to always know
that the white man was listening.
With the Black Panthers coming to the scene,
it was just a completely different message.
As a 12-year-old, you know-- what?
You had this whole other portrayal of self,
and just digging it.
KATHLEEN CLEAVER (VOICEOVER): Photographers took advantage.
I mean, they took our pictures.
They put them on newspapers.
They put them on magazines.
And that look that we projected-- you know,
the big Afro, the leather jacket,
the shades-- that became a hit.
And obviously, photographers were drawn to the Panthers.
Well, we hear a great deal about the Black Panthers.
Black Panthers.
The Black Panthers.
The Black Panthers were absolutely unique.
The Black Panthers.
NEWSCASTER (VOICEOVER): The Black Panthers.
NEWSCASTER (VOICEOVER): Black Panthers.
NEWSCASTER (VOICEOVER): The Black Panther Party.
Black Panther movement.
NEWSCASTER (VOICEOVER): Black Panther Party.
NEWSCASTER (VOICEOVER): Black Panthers.
I think the Black Panthers really understood the media.
They knew what we were after.
They knew what we were focusing on.
The Panthers has amounted to--
The Black Panther Party.
Many people know of the Panthers.
JIM DUNBAR: You might say that we exploited the Black
Panthers.
But I think there's a lot of evidence
that they used us to their advantage.
They were able to establish their legitimacy
as a voice of protest.
The Chairman of the Black Panther Party.
And here he is.
We have a film of your breakfast program.
Is this without sound also?
Uh, yeah.
I think so.
All right.
Would you-- would you comment on this?
Yes.
BOBBY SEALE (VOICEOVER): Yeah, this
is a free breakfast for children program,
and they're preparing the food there early in the morning.
It's about two hours work in the morning.
These party members primarily set this whole program up,
and then we get involved as many of the community people
as we can.
MAN (ON VIDEO): Who all wants tea?
Put more tea in, little brother.
Come on it, little sister.
Yall can sit down and get something to eat.
DAVID LEMIEUX: Studies came out saying
that children that didn't have a good breakfast in the morning
were less attentive at school and less inclined to do well
and suffered from fatigue.
l mean, there was all sorts of scientific reasons
to have a good breakfast in the morning.
And we just simply took that information,
and a program was developed serving breakfast to children.
RITA WILLIAMS-GARCIA: After my father came home from Vietnam
and was discharged from the army and couldn't get work,
we were going through a very hard time.
Food was kind of-- you know, just the everyday necessities
were hard.
I was embarrassed to go, but when you went,
you know, kids are all laughing, and then all of a sudden
the stigma-- or whatever you thought
was the stigma-- went away, and you really
got to see that yes, this is what the Black Panthers are.
We were showing love for our people.
You know, if you have a child, if you'd know that hey,
these men and women are going to feed my child in the morning,
that's a big deal.
BEVERLY GAGE: The breakfast program actually really caught
on.
It served about 20,000 meals a week
to young people in 19 different communities.
So it wasn't a fly by night thing.
It really, actually was making a difference.
DONNA MURCH: Just at the moment that the Panthers are turning
toward survival programs-- towards free breakfast
programs, free clinics, and free food programs that
will help them reconnect with the black community
and build their membership, and repudiating this earlier
advocacy of armed self defense and police patrols--
J Edgar Hoover attacks the Panthers.
Hoover saw any form of black organizing as a threat
to the status quo as he saw it.
Change that would have involved equality,
that would have put power in black people's hands,
was very much a threat to Hoover.
He started something called COINTELPRO,
directed against what he called black nationalist hate groups.
M. WESLEY SWEARINGEN: COINTELPRO was the abbreviation of Counter
Intelligence Program.
J. EDGAR HOOVER (VOICEOVER): The purpose of this new
counterintelligence endeavour is to expose, disrupt, misdirect,
discredit or otherwise neutralize the activities
of black nationalists.
M. WESLEY SWEARINGEN: Neutralize could
mean making somebody an informant
or putting somebody in jail or having somebody killed.
Hoover was sending letters to various offices
almost on a weekly basis to come up with new ideas
to go after members of the Black Panther Party.
JEFF HAAS: 245 of the 290 COINTELPRO actions
were against the Black Panthers.
One of the mandates was do not make this program public.
Do not tell anybody that it exists.
SCOT BROWN: FBI has a memo that states
the objectives of counterintelligence operations.
One is to prevent the rise of what
they call the black messiah-- a single charismatic leader that
could unify the movement.
They want to prevent the appeal of radical political movement
to black youth, and they wanted to isolate
these groups to prevent them from gaining respectability
in the black community.
And they were very explicit in stating these goals.
We were followed every day.
We were harassed.
Our phones were tapped.
Our families were harassed.
My parents were both visited by the FBI.
J. EDGAR HOOVER (VOICEOVER): We must create suspicion
with respect to their respective spouses,
and your imagination and resourcefulness
must be employed in order for the Bureau to be successful.
LANDON WILLIAMS: They would send letters to my wife,
and the letters would say that Landon
is sleeping with this woman or sleeping with that woman
or sleeping with the other women.
Then when I got arrested, the FBI came to me and said,
ha, look.
We've got all this evidence.
All these people are gonna flip and turn on you.
We're gonna execute you, because we got you now.
We're going to execute you.
But if you will be an informant for us, then we'll let you go.
WILLIAM O'NEAL: My recruitment by the FBI
was very efficient-- very simple, really.
I'd stolen a car and went joyriding over the state limit,
and they had a potential case against me,
and I was looking for an opportunity to work it out.
And a couple of months later that opportunity
came when the FBI agent Roy Mitchell asked me to,
uh, go down to the local office of the Black Panther Party
and try to, uh, gain membership.
The FBI wanted to destroy the Panthers.
They absolutely saw the Panthers as the vanguard
of a very, very threatening and violent revolutionary movement.
They absolutely wanted this organization to be destroyed.
The FBI was coming around my mother-in-law and my wife,
and uh, um, for me to stop that kind of activity,
I stopped going home, and a lot of other people
did also, to protect their families.
You could kind of in a sense say that we abandoned our families
for the Panther Party.
You might have a three bedroom apartment
that might have 10 Panthers staying there and sharing
bedrooms.
The living room was basically also a bedroom.
BLAIR ANDERSON: We called them Panther pads.
Somebody would be on 24 hour security.
Somebody was responsible for cleaning the place.
Often it was a rotating list of responsibilities.
It was a sense of community that we created.
{music playing}
The rank and file was the every day members
that did the daily work of the Party.
They the ones that made the Party,
the back breakers, the ones you put all the work on.
JAMAL JOSEPH: Panthers realized we have to live together
te protect one another, and we have
to also be committed to this thing, to this cause,
to this movement, 24 hours a day.
MOHAMMED MUBARAK: The rank and file--
whatever orders that came down from our captains
and lieutenants, we did that, because that spirit was
in us to stay in this movement to our death,
or if it meant going to jail.
So whatever they told us to do, we did it.
{music playing}
ORA WILLIAMS: was in labor, cooking breakfast
for the breakfast program.
So I was between contractions flipping pancakes.
PHYLLIS JACKSON: I would spend all the day
answering the phones, even after l had my son, when I came back
to work.
l used to have to jump him up and down really heavy,
because it just wouldn't stop crying
as I'm answering the phone.
You name it.
I cleaned freezers with a toothpick.
And that's how I'd answer the phone-- Black Panther
Party national headquarters.
Black Panther Party central headquarters.
Can I help you?
WOMAN (VOICEOVER): Dear Huey, when
I joined the party l was thrilled about becoming part
of an organization that believes in the quality of men
and women.
It bothers me that there are brothers who still view women
as sexual objects.
We should have no men in the Black Panther Party
who feel this way-- or women, for that matter.
CLAYBORNE CARSON: One of the ironies of the Black Panther
Party is that the image is the black male with the jacket
and the gun, but the reality is the majority of the rank
and file at, by the end of the '60s are women.
Everybody knows that all the people don't have liberties,
all the people don't have freedom,
all the people don't have justice,
and all the people don't have power, so that means none of us
do.
ELAINE BROWN: The Black Panther Party certainly
had a chauvinist tone, and so we tried
to change some of the clear gender roles
so that women had guns and men cooked breakfast for children.
Did we overcome it?
Of course we didn't.
As I like to say, we didn't get these brothers
from revolutionary heaven.
"Black Panther Newspaper"?
MAN: Panther paper!
OMAR BARBOUR: The paper was the lifeblood of the Party.
That's why we survived.
We sold the papers at $0.25 back then.
It cost maybe $0.12 to print it.
The other 12 and 1/2 cent went to the various chapters
and branches.
That's how we basically survived.
WILLIAM CALHOUN: The Party paper went
places Party members would never get to go to, and be reaching
people we would never see.
But the paper get there some kind of way or other.
So if was very important to get the paper out.
Los Angeles, 2,850.
New Haven, 3,000.
WILLIAM CALHOUN: When we were loading boxes or bundling
papers or whatever we were doing,
we did it in an assembly line fashion,
and we would just start singing, you know it. (SINGING)
Ain't no mountain high enough.
Ain't no valley low enough to keep me
from getting this paper to you-- or whatever we would do.
We would change the lyric just a little bit.
You know-- (SINGING) It's your thing.
Do what you want to do.
Why do you keep tell me what the-- and then
we'd say what to do.
MAN: Panther paper!
This man needs some help with finaudible) human beings.
ORA WILLIAMS: In the paper everything came together.
We had the platform-- the ten point platform was in there.
You know, it was. the first thing you
see when you open up the paper.
We want an end to the robbery by the white man
of our black community.
That's what we talking about, like number 3.
Number 4, we want decent housing fit to shelter human beings.
You dig?
I can dig that.
And it explained who we were and what-- what we were about,
what our goals were.
REPORTER: Tell me, ma'am.
Do you read the Black Panther Party newspaper?
Yes I do.
REPORTER: Why?
Because I'm black and I'm proud.
REPORTER: What do you like best about the paper?
Because they're a proud people and ! love them.
IMUSIC THE LAST POETS, "BLACK Is"
FELIPE LUCIANO: For me there was only one reason
to read the Panther newspaper, and that was
to see Emory's illustrations.
His paintings, his caricatures, his illustrations
literally gave us the story.
IMUSIC THE LAST POETS, "BLACK Is"
EMORY DOUGLAS: Well to me, you would respond to the artwork
because it was a reflection of them in the artwork itself,
because you were putting them on the stage as the characters
and the heroes in the images.
They could see their brother, or they could see their uncle
in the images.
Through the breakfast programs, through the other programs.
that we had, the health clinics, people
come in and talk about how they can't pay their bills
or they need child care-- that teardrop symbolized that pain
that I observed.
Even through their pain there was
this strength and determination and conviction
to still battle on.
So we're trying to put that into the artwork itself.
FELIPE LUCIANO: Emory was our social realism.
He gave you a sense of bravery, resilience, courage,
and most of all, beauty.
That was what I loved about Emory.
It was Huey and Bobby's idea to draw a pig drawing that
would symbolize the police.
So the first pig! did was one on the four hoofs.
It just came to me one night, why don't I
stand it up on two hoofs?
I'll put a bandolier-- a gun bandolier
on with the holster and a badge and the flies around it,
and that became the symbol-- icon of the pig.
It took on a life of its own.
CROWD: (CHANTING) Revolution has come.
Off the pigs!
Time to pick up the guns.
Off the pigs!
RON MCCARTHY: That rhetoric didn't bother us when
it was spoken by the Panthers.
CROWD: (CHANTING) Power to the people.
Off the pigs!
Power to the people.
Off the pigs!
But when it was picked up by college students,
them saying it, that definitely bothered us.
CROWD: (CHANTING) Power to the people Off the pigs!
Power to the people.
Off the pigs!
PAT MCKINLEY: I was a sergeant patrolling in the projects,
and there was the cutest little girl.
So I stopped to say hello, and I said hi, honey.
How are you doing today.
And she looked at me and she said, fuck you, pig.
And I thought, we have lost it, man.
We have fiat lost it.
HOWARD SAFFOLD: Anybody that criticized
the police, especially that didn't have fear of saying it,
probably made the police angry.
It was us against them.
That became the theme.
WOMAN (ON FILM): We have seen the pig on the scene.
We know what he's like.
We know what he's capable of-- just being a damn pig,
oinking and beating and walking the street.
ELDRIDGE CLEAVER: The police must be brought under control
by any means. necessary, including
through force of arms.
These racist, gestapo pigs have to stop
brutalizing our community or we're going to take up guns,
we're going to drive them out.
CLAYBORNE CARSON: That tendency to keep
escalating the thetoric-- that was
a major part of the growth of the party,
but it was also a destructive force,
because you were always upping the ante.
GROWD: (CHANTING) I say guns, pick up the guns,
pick up the guns and put the pigs on the run.
Pick up the guns.
Boom, boom, {inaudible)
CLAYBORNE CARSON: It brought all the repression down on them
before they were prepared to handle it.
I just want to deal with black, and black liberation.
My sin is picking up my damn gun--
and I'm a mother-- having my baby
in one hand, my gun in the other,
and then I'm here motherfuckers to get what's mine.
lpolice sirens}
NEWSCASTER: The voice that called
for justice and brotherhood has been stilled.
Men of all races now must join together in this hour
to deny violence its victory and to fulfill
the vision of brotherhood.
The effect of the death of Martin Luther
King on the Panthers was overwhelming in the sense
that once King was assassinated, and the way
he was assassinated so publicly, it shattered many, many people.
WILLIAM CALHOUN: They'd killed their last chance for me
to be peaceful with them.
They'd killed their last chance for negotiation.
They killed the man who walked through hell
to try to get along with you, and you kill him?
That was our champion.
You killed whatever hope I had in you,
and I have no more use for you-- none.
KATHLEEN CLEAVER: I believe that there
was a decision made that some response on the part
of the Black Panther Party has to be
made to what happened to King.
DONNA MURCH: Eldridge Cleaver was
worried that if the Panthers didn't take decisive action
they would cease to be the vanguard.
So we had this idea of actually actively attacking the police.
He goes and he approaches members of the Party
in Oakland, and all of the older people refused to participate.
They knew that this would be suicide.
But the youngest member of the party, little Bobby Hutton,
decides to follow Eldridge into battle.
ELBERT “BIG MAN” HOWARD: Little Bobby called me-- Big Man,
I need a weapon.
I gave him a Winchester 12-gauge pump shotgun that I had,
and I told him, well, be careful out there, you know.
Watch yourself.
And he said OK, I will, and he left.
And then first thing in the morning, I, uh,
have the radio on.
SPEAKER: The Oakland police stated
that they were fired upon during a routine investigation
into a suspicious person, and after a short search cornered
Hutton and Eldridge Cleaver in the basement of a nearby house.
KATHLEEN CLEAVER: A tear gas canister blew up,
and the basement they were hiding in caught on fire.
They decided they didn't want to burn to death.
They would rather surrender.
Eldridge told Bobby Hutton to take off all your clothes
so they can't see you're concealing a weapon.
When you surrender, take off everything.
But Bobby was embarrassed, and he just took off his shirt
and he kept on his pants.
Bobby Hutton came out with his hands
in the air-- first member who walked out of the house
and was gunned down.
ELBERT "BIG MAN" HOWARD: My heart sank.
He was only 17 years old, and one of the first people
to get killed in the party, and so young.
In essence, I felt that I went out and got
my little brother killed.
What if I'd not given him the weapon?
Those are some of the demons that, uh, were in my closet.
Shot down like a common animal, he died a warrior
for black liberation.
In the name of brotherhood and survival, remember Bobby.
That could have been my son lying there,
and I'm going to do as much as I can.
I'm going to start right now to inform white people of what
they don't know.
For the Black Panther Party, it was crisis and chaos,
because this was the first time that this had ever happened.
There had been no Panther murdered by police.
HUEY NEWTON: We want non-violence,
just like Martin Luther King-- but non-violence on the part
of who?
To sit and watch ourselves to be slaughtered like our brother?
We must defend ourselves, as Malcolm X said,
by any means necessary.
KATHLEEN CLEAVER: After the loss of Bobby Hutton,
Eldridge was ordered to surrender to San Francisco
police to go back to prison, but on November 28, 1968,
he didn't turn himself in, and he was not to be found.
REPORTER: Mrs. Cleaver, do you know where your husband is?
No.
REPORTER: When was the last time you saw him?
Sunday night.
REPORTER: It's rumored that Eldridge is out of the country.
Do you think this is possible?
No, I don't think so.
NEWSCASTER: And so the mystery remains--
where is Eldridge Cleaver?
It's entirely possible that his wife and lawyer really
do not know.
To the law, he is simply a fugitive from justice.
KATHLEEN CLEAVER: He had gone to Algeria.
There's nothing the United States government
can do to us in Algeria.
They don't have diplomatic relations with Algeria.
We could function openly, politically, in Algeria,
so we opened our international section of the Black Panther
Party.
MARK KURLANSKY: The Black Panthers
were welcomed by all sorts of liberation movements.
The North Vietnamese, who were moving into a newer embassy,
gave their old embassy to the Panthers.
And the Black Panthers, of course, uh,
loved being accepted like this.
YOHORU WILLIAMS: In Eldridge Cleaver's successful attempt
fo establish an international wing,
he's able to do some things that are very important.
Malcolm X and other black nationalists
had talked about forging those types of alliances.
The Panthers actually did it.
MAN: (speaking french}
INTERPRETER: We wish you victory in your struggle.
Thank you.
(speaking french)
INTERPRETER: And we hope to receive you
in liberated Saigon.
And tell them that I hope to receive them in Washington, DC.
KATHLEEN CLEAVER: At that time America
was being demonized considerably because of the war in Vietnam.
So here we are, black Americans who are opposed to all of this.
We're the counter to the United States.
We were able to connect with North Koreans,
with Vietnamese, with the Chinese,
and with also many African liberation movements.
And many people came to see us there.
ELDRIDGE CLEAVER: We came over here
to do what we can to communicate to you
what's happening in our struggle in the United States.
I think a lot of what draws these groups together
is a kind of anti-American sentiment.
If you want to really shake the American establishment,
you want them to think that they are in danger,
that a revolutionary new world is on its way.
Um, the Panthers are certainly the people
you're going to support.
Since the United States of America
is the backbone of oppression in the world,
the blows that we strike against the empire there will also
aid the liberation struggles in Africa, Asia, and Latin
America as we aid ourselves.
NEWSCASTER: Face the Nation-- a spontaneous and unrehearsed
news interview with the chief of staff of the Black Panther
Party, David Hilliard.
Your minister of information is now
in exile-- Eldridge Cleaver.
You speak with him often on the phone.
Is that correct?
Well, you know ! do.
They tap the phones.
The phone Is probably hooked up through the White House.
The leaders of the party, its national leadership,
sits with David Hilliard.
Bobby Seale is in and out of prison,
Huey Newton is in jail-- at this point for a number of years--
and Eldridge Cleaver is in Algeria.
David was someone who was considered
a, um-- you can say he was a sound storekeeper.
He kept the shop in order.
Richard Nixon is the chief spokesman
of the American people, and if the man is not
responsible for the people in government
like the FBI agencies or the local police,
then he should stand up and, uh, let the American people know
that they do not endorse the kind of campaigns that's been
waged against black America.
finterposing voices)
FLORES FORBES: Nixon is elected with a sense of a mandate
to crack down, and he feels that it
is his personal charge after the ‘68 election to repress.
This is a nation of laws, and as Abraham Lincoln has said,
no one is above the law, no one is below the law,
and we're going to enforce the law.
And Americans should remember that if we're
going to have law and order.
FLORES FORBES: The Nixon administration
gives J. Edgar Hoover even more of a sense that he can
repress without restriction.
Do you feel the nation is in trouble?
I think very definitely it is.
But what is the answer?
The answer is vigorous law enforcement.
That's the only answer.
How about justice?
You hear a lot about justice with law enforcement.
Justice is merely incidental to law and order.
NEWSCASTER: FBI director J. Edgar Hoover today
asserted that the Black Panthers represent the greatest
internal threat to the nation.
Hoover said the Panthers have perpetrated numerous assaults
on police and have engaged in violent confrontations
throughout the country.
CLAYBORNE CARSON: When Hoover identified the Black Panther
Party as the number one threat to the national security
of the United States at a time when
they're fighting in Vietnam, you know, of course that was crazy.
But it was politically very effective,
and it says to law enforcement at the local level,
we can take the gloves off now.
We don't have to respect the civil liberties
and we can go after them with everything we got.
RONALD FREEMAN: One of the executive orders of the Panther
Party was that we was to defend ourselves
from unwanted attacks, and not allow the police
to just forcibly come in.
If the tear gas is thrown, here's
your water and your eye mask.
Keep this on you.
OK.
Nobody's coming in the front door-- nobody.
No gas.
Nobody gets on the roof, (inaudible}.
‘Well, just wish they would come tonight.
Yeah, well, ! want them to come.
finterposing voices)
The Panthers were a criminal organization,
were violent, and they wanted to kill cops.
That's all needed to know.
REPORTER: About 40 policemen artived on the scene
and began surrounding the Black Panther headquarters.
They were trying to change government as we know it
to terrorist activity.
We took a very proactive stance in combating what we considered
a terrorist organization.
think the FBI manipulated the police,
and the FBI arranged for the Black Panthers
to get guns through informants.
They would convince the police that the Panthers had weapons.
They had to go in and be ready to be shot at,
so the police went in and shot at them first.
MOHAMMED MUBARAK: You'd hear about raids taking place
against Black Panther offices.
They were coming to kill us.
REPORTER {VOICEOVER}: Police say there
was sniper fire throughout the early morning hours,
so they moved in cautiously and then began shooting.
REPORTER (VOICEOVER): The Black Panther police shootout
lasted 30 minutes.
It was obvious that the government
had made a decision that this was all-out attack on the Black
Panther Party.
Every significant office is going to be raided.
It's going to be bombed.
It's going to be shot.
They're going to be mass arrests.
REPORTER (VOICEOVER): In the pre-dawn hours in Chicago
today, police and Negroes fought a--
REPORTER (VOICEOVER): Police and Black Panthers clash
in Houston, New Orleans, and other cities.
For the Black Panther Party it was a crisis situation,
because we didn't have the resources to handle
all these arrests and all these trials.
WOMAN (ON TV): Contributions to Panther Defense Fund?
Contributions to the Panther Defense Fund?
They're trying to either wipe out the Panther Party
by jailing all the members and wiping them out economically,
financially, or violently, through killing them.
After all, they're just-- they're just Negroes, you know.
In other cities the Panthers were under physical attack
from police departments.
But New York City, it was going to handle its Panther problem
differently.
They created a conspiracy case that
allowed them te arrest the entire leadership of the New
York City Black Panther Party.
ANew York grand jury has indicted 21 alleged Black
Panthers on charges of plotting several bombings in the city
tomorrow.
GERALD LEFCOURT (VOICEOVER): On April 2, 1969,
in, uh, pre-dawn raids, 21 Black Panthers
were charged with all kinds of terrorist activity.
REPORTER: These are some of the men the police are accusing
of being involved in the plot, which
could have wounded or killed scores of busy New Yorkers.
12 men were arrested today, two are already in jail,
and seven more are still at large.
And so the Panther 21 started.
JAMAL JOSEPH: ! had just turned 16 years old,
but I had already become a section leader.
When they first kicked in the door of my grandmother's house
at 4 o'clock in the morning, I thought wow,
I'm important enough to be arrested.
I'm a real Panther now.
There was a feeling that it was a badge of honor.
GERALD LEFCOURT (VOICEOVER): This
was the most important place in the nation
at that time for the Party.
It was spreading all over the east coast-
from New Haven, Baltimore, everywhere, it was spreading.
This group, 21 people, was the leadership
of the New York area, all tied up in court with $100,000 bails
which none of them could make.
JAMAL JOSEPH: We were facing 360 plus years in prison,
and I began to feel and accept the fact
that I was going to spend the rest of my life in prison.
REPORTER: The Black Panther Party
is riddled with informers who are
intent on creating situations in order
to bring forth such indictments in an attempt to destroy--
Are you saying that they try to frame them?
No question about it.
I mean, I told the jury that maybe the police
started the Party.
People who've come back to New York
are going to work full time until the Panther 21
and the people accused are allowed to get a fair trial.
We spent a lot of time building awareness
and doing fundraisers.
And then we had to have high profile fundraisers,
because this kind of money that we needed
couldn't come from the black community.
We would wind up doing fundraisers
at places like Jane Fonda's townhouse
so that we could raise money for the Legal Defense Fund
We'd all be in our leather jackets.
We all would have our berets.
Some of us would be packing.
Some of us wouldn't.
The only people that would speak would be the two people
that was designated to speak.
They would speak.
The rest of us would just line the walls, fold our arms,
and look like Black Panthers-- like, you know,
we was ready to kill somebody.
And them stars, they loved that shit.
They just ate that shit up, you know.
JAMAL JOSEPH: After a 13-month trial
where New York state spent millions of dollars
and put dozens of witnesses and hundreds of pieces of evidence,
a jury deliberated for three hours.
SPEAKER: The jury have considered all the counts
and charges against the defendants
and have found them not guilty.
(cheering}
MIKE GRAY: There were 156 not guilty verdicts.
It was astonishing.
Courtroom erupted.
The city erupted.
There were people dancing in the streets as word spread.
Come on over.
Jury, defendants, everybody, we're all here-- 640 Broadway.
REPORTER: Most of the defendants have been in jail
for more than two years, unable to raise
the high bail set for them.
The trial lasted eight months.
REPORTER: The jury reached its verdict
of innocent on all counts in less than four hours,
concluding the longest criminal proceeding in New York state
history.
What it was on the part of the jury to me--
I don't know how each individual juror feels-- but together they
have rejected, once and for all, a society which
refuses to allow change.
They said, you must allow people to get together and think
about changing life and the way they live.
And it's a beautiful victory.
FEMALE SPEAKER: Even as the New York 21 are being acquitted,
you're seeing smaller trials, other trials pop up really
all over the country.
Some of them result in acquittals, some of them
result in convictions, but this really
consumes most of the Party's energy.
People were afraid to join.
They knew that it was infiltrated.
They knew that they would be watched immediately.
They were afraid of being prosecuted unjustly.
Nobody wants to go near such an organization that's so hot.
TOM HAYDEN: I was part of planning
a demonstration against Vietnam at the 1968
Democratic Convention in Chicago.
Bobby Seale was invited to speak.
The revolution in this country at the time
is in fact people coming forth to demand freedom.
(cheering}
TOM HAYDEN: He then left and didn't have anything
to do with the demonstrations or riots or confrontations
in Chicago, but he was arrested ‘on the advice of the FBI,
and he was later indicted for that speech.
JEFF HAAS: Bobby Seale asked to have
his-- to postpone the trial until his lawyer, Charles Gary,
could come to Chicago.
The judge refused, and then Bobby said well,
I'll represent myself.
REPORTER: It started when Seale demanded
to cross examine a prosecution witness,
accusing the judge of denying his constitutional rights
to defend himself.
The judge ordered him to sit down and be quiet,
but the fiery Black Panther leader continued to cry out.
GERALD LEFCOURT: The judge told the marshals to hold him down,
and that started several days of insanity.
BOBBY SEALE: This stuffis a lie.
We have a right to (inaudible).
l'll represent myeslf.
MIKE GRAY: He kept insisting on his right to represent himself,
and the judge's response to that was
to order the bailiffs to put gaffer tape over his mouth
and tie him to his chair.
I mean, it couldn't have been more definitive if they had
put a sign on him saying slave.
You know.
BOBBY SEALE: (muffled speech
JEFF HAAS: But it turned out Bobby could make noise and say
things through the gag.
BOBBY SEALE: (muffled speech
Stop the trial.
MIKE GRAY: One of the most amazing phenomena of that time
was outside the federal court building there was a plaza.
It was right in the heart of town,
right in the middle of the loop.
And these kids were coming down from the courtroom, and they--
with fire in their eyes, having just
seen that madness up there.
And all of a sudden, one day this black orator--
who at that time was 20 years old--
starts talking to these people, and all of a sudden
it's like a magnet.
The deputy chairman of the Illincis Black Panther Party,
Fred Hampton.
lapplause)
And I just want to tell you that the chairman of the Black
Panther Party is going to be ungagged
and they're going to have to take those chains off him.
Bobby Seale's going through all types.
of physical and mental torture, but that's all right,
because we said even before this happened and we're
going to say it after this, and after I'm locked up.
and after everyone's locked up, that you
can jail a revolutionary, but you can't jail a revolution.
Right.
You may run a liberator like Eldridge out the country,
but you can't run a liberation out the country.
You might murder a freedom fighter like Bobby Hutton,
but you can’t murder freedom fighting.
MICHAEL MCCARTY: Whatever It was, Fred had it.
When he got up in front of a group of people,
the words just flowed.
You were awash in the words, OK?
It was like that.
And I don't care how many people were there-- it's
like he was talking to you.
That's a dangerous person.
He wasn't above us.
He was one of us.
I'm the deputy chairman of the State of Illinois Black Panther
Party, Fred Hampton.
DENNIS CUNNINGHAM: By the time he was 17,
he was the head of the NAACP youth branch.
He was already experienced by the time the Illinois
chapter of the Panther Party was formed,
so he was a natural choice to lead it.
We say all power to all people.
JEFF HAAS: Fred spoke in the People's Church
in August of 1969, and was in the crowd.
Toward the end of his speech, he said, everybody stand up,
and we did.
And he says, now raise your right hand.
Say this-- lam a revolutionary.
CROWD: I am a revolutionary.
And I couldn't say it, because I thought to myself,
I'm a lawyer for the movement.
I'm not a revolutionary.
And then he said it again-- lam a revolutionary.
And by the third or fourth time, I
was saying a revolutionary as loud
as anybody else in the room.
We say white power to white people.
CROWD: White power to white people.
Brown power to brown people.
CROWD: Brown power to brown people.
Yellow power to yellow people.
CROWD: Yellow power to yellow people.
Black power to black people.
CROWD: Black power to black people.
We say Panther power to defend our Party.
MIKE KLONSKY: A lot of us thought
that we were on the eve of a revolutionary situation
here in the United States.
We used to call, uh, the Panther Party
the vanguard of the movement, because they were out
in the forefront.
They were kind of setting the pathway.
Uh, the things that uh, that we would
face some repression for, they would face it
10 times as great.
They were, uh, sacrificing their-- oftentimes
their lives in the struggle.
FRED HAMPTON: And these people, this class
have divided themselves.
They say I'm black and I hate white people.
I'm white and I hate black people.
I'm Latin American and ( hate hillbillies.
Im a hillbilly and I hate Indians.
So we're fighting amongst each other.
MIKE KLONSKY: Fred Hampton, here in Chicago,
was the main voice for racial unity.
FRED HAMPTON: The Black Panther Party
stood up and said that we don't care what anybody said.
We don't need to fight fire with fire.
Yes, we better fight fire with water.
Yes, we're going fo fight racisim not with racism,
but we're going to fight with solidarity.
We worked with organizations such as the Young Lords--
a Puerto Rican street gang that had become political--
and the Young Patriots, hillbillies,
Appalachian white boys.
Bob Lee, who was our deputy field marshal,
had a meeting with them, and he was explaining
why we should work together.
LANDON WILLIAMS: The coalition that Fred
was building in Chicago represented
the Latinos, the poor whites and poor blacks.
But also, because he had been in the NAACP,
he had linkages with folks who in the congregations, or church
folks, and with working class folks.
So Fred was building a broad-based coalition
in Chicago, and that was the threat.
J. Edgar Hoover most feared young whites uniting
with the blacks' struggle.
And he was most afraid of, uh, what
he called a black messiah, uh, rising up out of this movement.
MIKE GRAY: Fred Hampton was very good at running
an organization.
He could delegate responsibility.
He could spot talent.
The one thing that he failed to spot,
however, was the FBI plant-- who was, of course,
his personal bodyguard.
WILLIAM O'NEAL: 1 routinely supplied
whatever floor plans or diagrams. \ could, uh, to the FBI.
-- that started in June, 1969.
I mean, they had a floor plan and keys to the Black Panther
headquarters.
December 3, 1969, there was a rally at the People's Church
on the west side of Chicago.
And it was one of those rallies where Fred
gave one of those speeches.
FRED HAMPTON: I don't believe I'm
going to die in a car wreck.
I don't believe I'm going to die from slipping
on a piece of ice.
I don't believe that I'm going to die
because I've got a bad heart.
Why don't you heal for the people?
Why don't you struggle for the people?
Why don't you die for the people?
Close to 12 midnight, William O'Neal
came and picked me up and brought me back
to our apartment.
Chairman Fred had been running 24/7 trying to organize,
so he fell asleep.
Il was 8 and 1/2 months pregnant with our son,
so I fell asleep too.
NEWSCASTER: Police attached to the Cook County State's
Attorney's office raided a Chicago apartment
shared by two high ranking members of the Black Panther
Party before dawn today.
The police were acting on a tip that a supply of weapons
was in the apartment.
MIKE GRAY: The state's attorney recreated
the layout of the Panther apartment
and, uh, made arrangements for them
to produce his version of what happened.
He stands up.
I stepped over and I put the machine--
In short bursts.
We realized that there are still some people remaining--
And before I could get past the threshold,
there were three shots fired from the rear bedroom.
The immediate, violent, criminal reaction
of the occupants in shooting at announced police officers
emphasizes the extreme viciousness
of the Black Panther Party.
So does their refusal to cease firing at the police officers
when urged to do so several times.
REPORTER (VOICEOVER): When the 15-minute gun battle was over,
two Black Panthers were dead.
Police and Panthers differ about what happened.
In the apartment, we received no warning,
no tear gas-- nothing to offer us to surrender or come out.
Bullets start coming through the walls-- plaster flying.
Saw bullets coming, \ mean, looked
like the front of the apartment, from the kitchen area.
They were-- the police were just shooting.
This cop stepped to the door with a sub-machine gun
and you could see was a silhouette.
And the muzzle flash as he fired, you know,
a fully automatic weapon into, uh, a room
that was barely six feet wide.
DEBORAH JOHNSON: I laid on top of Chairman Fred,
and I could feel even through him the mattress vibrating.
You could feel the bullets gong into you.
I just knew we'd be dead, everybody in there.
Cop stepped back in and, uh, fired off another round, hit me
in the hips.
Everything was like this, it was just going so fast.
We told them we were wounded, and they said
come out with your hands up.
One of them grabbed my robe and they swung it open and say
oh, what do you?
We got a broad here.
And then another one grabbed my hair
and slung me into the kitchen area.
I heard a voice say, he's barely alive.
He's-- he'll barely make it.
They started shooting again.
I heard a sister scream and they stopped shooting.
Police said he's good and dead now.
(police siren}
The police made what must be a historic type of blunder
in leaving the apartment open.
So right away people went in there.
stepped into the living room and there
was blood, Fred’s blood, pouring from-- all the way
from the bedroom in the very back of house,
out into-- from the kitchen into the living room.
MIKE GRAY: It was like a slaughterhouse
and there was blood all over the place.
When we lifted the mattress up to look underneath,
three 45-caliber machine gun slugs fell out of the mattress.
Only one shot came from a Panther weapon,
because Mark Clark, a young kid who
answered the door was shot in the heart
as he answered the door and the gun
dropped and went off through the ceiling.
All of the splinters were coming into the apartment.
So we said, this was a shoot-in.
It wasn't a shootout.
There's gas that the police department
uses as standard equipment that nobody can stand
to stay in the room with it.
They could have shot four canisters of gas
and then waited outside for everybody to come out.
REPORTER: Then this was, uh, this was planned?
This was a plan to get Fred Hampton?
All indications to me personally
that this was, uh, obviously a political assassination.
I don't think anybody would have expected the police
to commit just murder.
It takes a certain kind of guy to carry that out.
They lied about what happened that night.
Much of what they said happened couldn't
have happened the way they say that it happened.
REPORTER: Today many blacks came to the house
where Fred Hampton was killed to see for themselves.
MAN (ON FILM): Don't touch nothing.
Don't move nothing because we want to keep everything
just the way it is.
They fired through the door and hit the brother
through the door.
The brother was shot four or five times,
though after they came through the door,
they shot him again to make sure he was dead.
This is where our chairman had his brains blown out as he, uh,
laying in bed sleeping at 4:30 in the morning.
I do not intend to quibble about that account.
NEWSCASTER: Do you know that it’s the truth?
The account that we gave of the events is the truth.
It was a death squad that did this raid.
It was a police death squad, and the whole thing
was set up by the FBI.
The FBI gave William O'Neal a $300 bonus
because of his information being so valuable and not available
for any other source.
Internally, the FB! was bragging and taking credit for the raid.
Publicly they were denying any knowledge or participation.
NEWSCASTER: The funeral of the slain Panther leader
was marked by angry eulogies, including
one from Ralph Abernathy, head of the non-violent Southern
Christian Leadership Conference.
Enjoy your peace, Freddie, because there
will be no peace in this land until freedom comes to all.
We are going to trample these streets with our feet.
lapplause)
The last message that I think that Fred would've, uh,
wanted everybody to hear-- and that is 1 am--
CROWD: I am.
Arevolutionary.
CROWD: A revalutionary.
lam.
lam a revolutionary.
lam~
MOHAMMED MUBARAK: We didn't know when it was going to happen,
but we felt there was something about to happen.
We were filling up sandbags, fortifying the headquarters,
putting sand in the walls, putting sandbags
around the entrance to the office.
Well, we were actually trying to build a tunnel to the sewer
line.
If the police attacked us, we were
going to escape into the sewers, and you know,
we were going to set charges on the building
and blow the building after we left.
It seemed like it was more-- it was more, uh,
police presence around.
We were getting stopped more.
We were getting harassed more.
PAT MCKINLEY: ! think they found out
that it was a different climate for them here.
We'd stop them, we'd search them, we'd shake them down.
And I think we did establish that we
were the dominating force.
RON MCCARTHY: The Special Weapons and Tactics concept
was formed in 1966.
The original SWAT team in the United States-- or anywhere,
for that matter-- was the LAPD SWAT team.
And in, uh, this particular case, this was the first time,
uh, the SWAT team was activated to serve a high risk warrant.
It was decided that a no-knock warrant would be utilized,
and surprise would be the element that you would use.
Avery close friend was working intelligence, and he told me,
he said, Pat, these guys think they're going up
against some street hoodlums.
He said, they're not.
They're fighters and they're shooters.
Don't be at the deor.
am on watch on the roof, and it's a real quiet night.
Everything is just still.
You don't hear anything.
The access to that roof on the other side-- pow!
It breaks open.
By the time I was swinging around
I'm seeing the lights on me.
They had a big light, and I'm hearing
the whole-- freeze, freeze!
Still, drop it!
And the front door blew open-- went boom!
Well, Pat had went in the gun room.
We had a Thompson sub-machine gun,
put it down with that Thompson-- wa wa wa wa wa wa wa.
-making machine gun noises} And he sprays across the-- across
the roof.
You could see it in the light from the street.
And I was seeing, it was like-- at the time,
man, I'm going to tell you, that instance,
it was the best music I ever heard.
And then all of a sudden my gun just went off.
I don't know what happened.
The gun just went off, you know, so we had them
in flank in front.
And then Paul Redd got down.
He got busy, and we drove them out the front door.
Three officers were down and the gun fight
continued as the officers were drug out of the way
by other officers.
Peaches and Tommy were two sisters that were there.
They went into the communication,
which is, you know, start calling the news media
and calling national headquarters
and calling everybody they could call.
MAN (IN HELICOPTER): Five minutes after 10,
about four and 1/2 hours after the original raid this morning.
REPORTER: All right.
Running down the street now toward the building.
Going to see what's going on.
There are police officers, look like Vietnam combat uniforms,
with automatic weapons, calling us back.
Shotguns everywhere you can look.
MOHAMMED MUBARAK: Ilcoked at the TV.
Channel 5 had it on live.
So I'm feeling like I can sneak in the back
and join them some kind of way-- it's crazy as I'm thinking.
REPORTER: There's a large group of people right now.
They're putting the pressure on the police
to allow us to stay so we can witness this.
ROLAND FREEMAN: When the police was
trying to creep up on the side, you
could see them, their reflection, through the windows
across the street.
When they got close enough, they would tell me,
OK, throw it now, throw it now.
Then they'd throw the damn bomb out the window and the police,
they'd blow up and they'd run back and shit.
We see this little cloud of smoke come, and it just moved.
And that’s the tear gas.
Back in those days everybody smoked all the time.
So what we did was we put the cigarette butts in our nose
to filter out the fumes.
REPORTER: We're looking right at the Panther headquarters.
The devastation is astounding.
The whole front of the building has been shot up-- bullet holes
all over the place, front door smashed down,
screens ripped out.
I got shot here, got shot in the arm,
missed-- they missed my head here.
I got buckshot all in me.
They shot that room up, you know.
So this arm was dead.
So now I'm up there with just one arm,
bleeding all down the face and stuff.
But I'm alive.
felt free.
felt absolutely free.
And I was a free Negro, you know.
l was making my own rules.
You couldn't get in.
I couldn't get out.
But in my space, I was the king.
In that little space I had, I was the king.
And that's what I felt. You understand?
That's what I felt.
(gunfire}
We had riflemen across the street-- on the roofs
across the street.
They were shooting into the-- well,
the shooting ports of the building
that the Panthers had created.
Panthers, on the other hand, were shooting back out.
Tommy had come downstairs and she was laying behind me,
like in aT.
You could see, uh, a sunbeam went across her legs like that.
So like, you need to move.
And she-- you know, she didn't, she just kept talking and shit.
Next thing, you hear a shot go off.
The bullet went through both her legs, like that.
So you know, at this time we had pretty much got shot out.
You know, we were saving enough bullets
that when they came in the door that we
would have some bullets to shoot back with, you know.
And I mean, it was like-- it wasn't
like it took no brain scientist to figure out,
well, this shit is over with.
We were talking about giving up, and, uh, you know,
all the brothers saying well, man, I'm ain't
going out there, man.
I'm not giving up.
And for like 30 minutes, it just want around.
Oh, I'm not going out first.
And I'm nat going out first.
We'll die in this motherfucker.
I'm not going out first.
Peaches said I'll go out there.
And I said, Peaches.
She said, no, I'll go.
REPORTER: There's a white flag coming out the door.
It's a woman.
She's holding her hands up.
WAYNE PHARR: And she went outside and Peaches gave up.
And when they didn't shoot Peaches there,
we came out one at a time.
That's how that went.
It was a big glorious shootout, but after they raided us
they had all the players locked up.
All of the main players was in jail.
CROWD: (CHANTING) We want Huey out today.
We want Huey out today.
NEWSCASTER: For about three years,
the Black Panthers have used Huey Newton's name
for a rallying cry, demanding that he
be freed from jail, where he is held on a charge of killing
a police officer.
The words “free Huey Newton” have been chalked
and spray painted on a thousand fences and walls.
This spring, the California Supreme Court
found some errors in his trial and ordered a new trial.
(crowd chanting)
When the case was given to the jury,
they were sequestered for four days to deliberate.
It was extremely tense.
You could feel the energy and the tension in the air.
People were talking about doing all types of things, you know.
And Oakland could explode, you know.
Matter of fact, every city across America
could explode that day.
The Panthers had been getting ready for guerrilla warfare,
and they said the sky's the limit
if the jury convicted him.
CROWD: We want Huey!
We want Huey!
NEWSCASTER: Shouting we want Huey now,
the crowd got their wish.
At this hour Huey Newton is a free man.
(cheering}
TARIKA LEWIS: Everybody was just jubilant that day.
Finally he gets to walk out of that jail a free man.
The sky was the limit and the sky turned blue.
The image that was mobilized to create the Free Huey movement
gave Huey almost mythic status in the Party.
He had become an image and not a man,
and that gave him power that ultimately proved dangerous.
WOMAN (ON PHONE): Come to the clinic
tomorrow for an appointment.
FLORES FORBES: He came out focusing
on returning to the survival program, the breakfast
program, the free health clinics, free food
program, and the sickle cell anemia research program.
l remember Huey P. Newton saying the Black Panther Party
was not going to last.
He said the organization was going to get destroyed,
based on the way we were.
We were very aggressive, and we kind of
realized that this wasn't going to last long.
HUEY NEWTON: We know those are not revolutionary programs.
They are, at best, survival programs.
We know that the people are in jeopardy of genocide,
and that if they do not survive then
it won't be possible to bring about revolution.
We were really trying to connect more
with the people in the community.
And this was, um, this was a big push.
And there was probably some people who were not happy.
We have a breakfast for children program here.
But that's not what the Black Panther Party is all about,
you see.
I don't agree with saying that the Black Panther Party, uh,
supports breakfast for children and that's
all that we're about, you know.
Don't talk about this other thing.
The Black Panther Party is for overthrowing the United States
government.
Those people who were on the other side of this issue
politically did not see the Black Panther Party
as a vehicle for social service.
We saw it as a vehicle for political transformation,
tadical change-- for revolution.
So we couldn't get excited about survival.
ELAINE BROWN: Eldridge Cleaver, who--
while sitting comfortably in Algeria--
was assailing the Black Panther Party as being weak,
and it didn't have any more muscle,
and it was a reform organization, a breakfast
for children club, and he denounced the Party
and he denounced the administrator-- chief
administrator of the Party at that time, who.
was David Hilliard.
He wanted to have even more blood shed, which was not
endearing us to the community.
JAMAL JOSEPH: There were also problems with the Panther 21
case.
There were legal fees.
And there became questions about how much of the money
that was raised for the Panther 21
was actually getting back to defend the Panther 21.
We wrote an open letter really criticizing national leadership
and Huey P. Newton.
And the response of national leadership--
and in particular Huey P. Newton--
was to kick out the Panther 21.
They were expelled from the Panther Party.
Eldridge came to the defense of the Panther 21.
J. EDGAR HOOVER (VOICEOVER): The Black Panther
Party has split it into two factions, namely the Cleaver
and Newton supporters.
This dissension offers an exceptional opportunity
to aggravate and possibly neutralize
through counterintelligence.
The FBI was picking at Huey and picking at Eldridge.
And I don't know who else they were picking at
to create this sense of distrust.
J. EDGAR HOOVER (VOICEOVER): In the future,
submit counterintelligence proposals against the Cleaver
faction in the Black Panther Party designed
to widen the existing rift, effectively
driving a wedge between Newton and Eldridge Cleaver.
Ensure this mailing cannot be traced to the Bureau.
What we thought the FBI wanted to do
was kill us, blow up our offices, shoot us.
I don't think we understood exactly how
insidious their project was.
They created a culture of paranoia
which was incredibly destructive.
In this sense, it was the ultimate intelligence success,
being able to pit the Party against itself.
And the Panthers internal conflict
would soon erupt in the mainstream media.
Good morning.
Yes, it's AM all right, and this is
Jim Dunbar with Nancy Fleming and Gary Bentley.
We had become aware of some sort
of a rift that had come to pass between Huey and Eldridge.
We had booked Huey and arranged the call from Eldridge
in Algeria to take advantage of that.
We've got lots of things coming up here on AM this morning--
lots of things that you'll like to see,
and we're looking forward to them too, right here on AM.
JIM DUNBAR: I'll not try to sugarcoat this.
We thought this is a wonderful opportunity to build audience,
and so we decided to go ahead and put the two of them
together.
Huey's goal in having Eldridge on the show
was to show people that he and Eldridge were on the same page.
And Eldridge sabotaged that, so Huey was livid.
He was embarrassed.
He was furious.
And so within 10 minutes or so he called back.
It was a split in the party, and within days we
began to feel just how bad it was.
Someone has to be disciplined, and my recommendation
is to discipline Eldridge Cleaver--
not for the criticism itself, but,
uh, the way in which it was presented.
WILLIAM CALHOUN: The word got back to us
that Eldridge had put out the edict that the streets were not
supposed to safe for Panthers.
Whether he said that or not-- he was in Algeria, we were here.
Who knows?
It was chaos.
JAMAL JOSEPH: It was certain chapters that stayed with Huey.
Many of the people who followed Eldridge leave the party
and go underground.
And then some people just were confused and frustrated
and walked away.
They don't know which faction of the Black Panther Party
to follow or if they should deal with Panthers at all.
CLAYBORNE CARSON: The Party had leaders who at that point
were not worthy of the dedication of their followers.
And I think that that was probably
the worst aspect of the Party, is
that I think some of the followers
felt betrayed by their leaders.
And the split becomes so deep that it erupts, in some cases,
into violence, into fights and into shootings, uh,
between Panthers.
BEVERLY GAGE: This is exactly what the Bureau, in fact,
wanted to see happen in the first place.
This was part of what the COINTELPRO operations were
really all about.
J. Edgar Hoover, in particular, says
we've been pitting people against each other.
That's all worked out really well.
But you know, now we don’t even have to worry about it anymore.
Now they're just going to keep it going on their own
and we can step back a little bit
and just let them play it out.
In the midst of all of this turmoil,
the Panthers decide to go ina really radically new direction.
Bobby Seale, the Black Panther leader,
has been in trouble with the law for many years.
He's been in prison on some charges, acquitted on others.
And now he's trying to make a new career for himself.
He wants to be mayor of Oakland, California,
where the Black Panther movement began.
WOMAN IN CROWD: It was nice meeting you.
WOMAN IN CROWD: OK, nice meeting you.
All right, then.
How you all doing?
YOHORU WILLIAMS: The Panthers decide
to call members to Oakland in an effort
to run Bobby Seale for mayor of Oakland and Elaine Brown
for city council.
STEVE MCCUTCHEN: Don Seale, member of the central committee
of the Black Panther Party, called me
at the Baltimore chapter office and told
me to begin closing down all of our programs.
So we were instructed fo cease and desist all Party operations
and to bring as. many Party members
from Baltimore out to Oakland as possible.
Ultimately they roll the die.
They assume that if they're successful in this campaign,
this might help to transform one American city.
This might be the blueprint for the future.
But they do roll the die.
The numbers were dwindling, and therefore
the force of the Party was dwindling.
So it only made sense to consolidate everything
and to say, what can we do with what we have?
We laid down the guns two years ago.
We don't need guns, we said, because we
knew we had the ability to really organize and educate
the people and show them, really,
some of the concrete things we can do in the community.
PHYLLIS JACKSON: Initially, the idea of Bobby running for mayor
seemed ridiculous.
NEWSCASTER: Black Panther leader Bobby Seale
ran second in his race for mayor of Oakland, California,
but Seale polled just enough votes
fo force a runoff with the conservative incumbent John
Reading.
PHYLLIS JACKSON: I think we were shocked
when he ended up in a runoff.
But as we got into the campaign and as he
started doing his campaign runs, as Elaine started
doing her campaign speeches, as people started getting--
we started galvanizing people's enthusiasm,
it started looking like he might win.
IMUSIC CHARLES WRIGHT, "EXPRESS YOURSELF")
PHYLLIS JACKSON: Part of the strategy for the campaign
was to increase the number of black voters
on the rolls in Oakland.
We sent people out into the community going door to door,
walking the streets, registering people to vote en masse.
ELAINE BROWN: And we went to the churches,
and we went to the dope houses, and we went to the streets,
and we went everywhere where the people were,
trying to organize people to vote for Bobby and Elaine.
DONNA MURCH: They run an amazing campaign.
Bobby Seale used to tide buses in Oakland
and do stump. speaking on the bus.
And they really took it to the streets in a different way.
PHYLLIS JACKSON: Bobby had made a promise
that he was going to give away 10,000 bags of groceries
with a chicken in every bag.
And that was a takeoff on FDR's a chicken in every pot.
BOBBY SEALE: We counted up and we found out
last night it was 6,882 bags we actually gave away last night.
And I think that the voter registration is
running neck and neck with it.
I'm sure of that, because of a lot of-- oh, it blew our minds,
so many black people in the black community's
unregistered to vote.
DONNA MURCH: It was amazing, because they
were able to register between 20,000 and 50,000 people
to vote.
They basically turned their survival programs
into a get out the vote apparatus.
DONNA MURCH (VOICEOVER): But in the end, it wasn't enough.
NEWSCASTER: Mayor John Reading of Oakland, California
was reelected yesterday in a runoff against Bobby Seale,
the Black Panther leader.
Don Oliver has that story.
NEWSCASTER 2: Looking at the mood in Bobby Seale's
headquarters, you would have thought he won.
You know what somebody told me?
What did they tell us, Bobby?
They say, we don't care how the election goes.
Bobby Seale is for finaudible).
And they told me this, it blew my mind.
You're still our mayor, and we're going to inaudible}.
lapplause)
Power to the people.
FLORES FORBES: Plan A was for Bobby to win, Elaine to win,
and our slate to win.
There wasn't-- as far as I could remember-- a plan B.
Once we lost the campaign there was kind of a, um--
there was a void.
YOHORU WILLIAMS: It was in theory a great idea
that you could marshal this army of organizers
to come to Oakland.
But for the most part, when all the chapters come back
to Oakland, uh, the Panthers as a national phenomena
really, um, cease.
JEFFREY OGBAR: After the elections in Oakland,
Huey Newton is known to have some erratic behavior.
People who were very close to him
would say that it depends on the day you meet him.
Some days Huey Newton could be a brilliant, thoughtful
political strategist and committed to the liberation
of the black people, and another day he
could be self-serving and thuggish.
I was one of the folks who oriented new Panther members,
and I oriented them by telling them
about what a wonderful person Huey was
and about how he was the leader of our party,
never knowing what the hell he was.
We had created the cult of the personality around a fucking
maniac.
He surrounded himself with former prisoners,
and they became his inner retinue.
FLORES FORBES: Around 1973, we created a special unit
that would protect our leaders and do
other kinds of activities related
to what Huey Newton called the sterner stuff of politics.
We're going to take over the underworld,
the underground apparatus. of the city of Oakland.
We were shaking down the drug dealers, pimps.
Some people were like, stick up men.
It was bringing in revenue.
ERICKA HUGGINS: As he became more and more addicted
to multiple substances, I don't think he wanted to live
and I don't think he wanted the Party to live anymore.
From there on, you know, he was less and less the Huey I knew,
and more and more listening to his demons.
LANDON WILLIAMS: If Huey wanted to see you
or you wanted to see Huey, you had
to come to his penthouse, which meant that you went up
in his elevator, which meant that you were searched
before you got up there.
And when you got up there then you
were confronted by this. maniac in his penthouse
who did all kinds of things to people-- physical assault,
sexual assault, pistol whipping, threatening to kill.
He also became very abusive to the people around him.
He abused people like Bobby.
FLORES FORBES: There were changes in the organization.
Bobby Seale left.
There were a lot of people who had been in the organization
from the beginning, and, and they left.
ERICKA HUGGINS: Then there was a time
when he was violent with me, and that was why
l left the Black Panther Party.
I said goodbye as left, but ! left.
ERICKA HUGGINS (VOICEOVER): Dear Huey, I've been in the party
for 9 and 1/2 years, but I've come
to a crossroads in my life.
One path is the Party and the other path
is my personal happiness.
ELAINE WOOD (VOICEOVER): I know you're busy,
but ! see our party falling apart
and nothing is being done to stop this from happening.
ELAINE WOOD: It was absolutely devastating
for me to leave the Black Panther Party.
I felt guilty that 1 hadn't, um, you know,
stayed to do something-- I wasn't sure what.
There was no other life.
There was no other thing greater.
Then I learned to live in a world
where there was no Black Panther Party.
WOMAN (VOICEOVER): Our children are growing up.
Half the children don't know their parents,
or their parents don't know their children.
I want to spend more time with my son.
MAN (VOICEOVER): So many are on the verge of leaving because we
suffer from loneliness, lack of personal lives
and extreme poverty.
Everybody wanted this gun toting
image of the big black-- big bad black Shaft guy
Jumping through the window and then, you
know, beating everybody up.
I refute that as the image that was put upon us.
I'm not Shaft.
You know, as a black man, that's all am.
I'm just a black man.
MAN (VOICEOVER): Dear Huey, you know
I trust that I have felt a virtually infinite respect for,
belief in, support of the Black Panther Party.
I meant well-- Gad knows I meant well and tried-- them too.
Haven't we all, one way or another?
The great strength of the Black Panther Party
was its ideals and its youthful vigor and enthusiasm.
The great weakness of the Party was
its ideals and its youthful vigor and its enthusiasm.
That sometimes can be very dangerous,
especially when you're up against the United States
government.
MUSIC GIL SCOTT HERON "WINTER IN AMERICA")
MAN (VOICEOVER): If there's anything
I can do that would truly progress the people,
let me know.
I may not be a member of the Black Panther Party,
but I will always be a Black Panther.
All power to the people.
Peace and freedom to the world.
JAMAL JOSEPH: We made mistakes.
We charged ahead too fast and were too arrogant sometimes.
We certainly underestimated the police and the government
in terms of their response to the Black Panther Party.
But I think what remains true, the central guiding principle,
was an undying love for the people.
MUSIC GIL SCOTT HERON "WINTER IN AMERICA")
MAN (VOICEOVER): The Black Panther Party platform
and program-- what we want, what we believe.
We want decent housing fit for the shelter of human beings.
We want education for our people.
JAMAL JOSEPH: We want an immediate end
to police brutality and murder of black people.
We what land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice,
peace.
MUSIC GIL SCOTT HERON "WINTER IN AMERICA")
{music playing}