Flawed Classic Displays Mumia's Panther Passion
http://www.tbwt.org/home/content/view/214/40/
10 May 2004 Written by Todd Burroughs and Ollie Johnson
Book Review:
We Want Freedom: A Life In The Black Panther Party. By Mumia Abu-Jamal, South End Press, 267 pages. $18.00 paperback; $40 cloth ISBN: 0-89608-718-2 (paperback); 0-89608-719-0 (cloth)
Mumia Abu-Jamal invites conflict. So does the Black Panther Party. Both inspire virulent, even violent, debate about race and resistance in America. It's no wonder that Abu-Jamal's "We Want Freedom" is a powerful literary and political event.
As a teenager, Abu-Jamal was a member of the Black Panther's Philadelphia branch from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. His new book, released on April 24, his 50th birthday, provides an artful synthesis of scholarship and personal observations.
Abu-Jamal is an internationally known radio commentator, newspaper columnist, and author of four books. Convicted of the first-degree murder of a white Philadelphia police officer more than 20 years ago, he wrote "We Want Freedom" from death row. He began his journalistic career at The Black Panther, the Party's national newspaper.
He explains in dramatic, precise and often poetic prose how Blacks have confronted white supremacy directly throughout American history. He writes that the Party was founded during a time when many American Blacks "saw themselves in the villages of resistance and saw their ghettoes as little more than internal colonies similar to those discussed in Frantz Fanon's analysis [in his classic book, "The Wretched Of The Earth"]."
Abu-Jamal is clear on the Party's lure during a time of great youth-led social change:
"It meant being part of a worldwide movement against U.S. imperialism, white supremacy, colonialism, and corrupting capitalism. We felt as if we were part of the peasant armies of Vietnam, the degraded Black miners of South Africa, the fedayeen in Palestine, the students storming in the streets of Paris, and the dispossessed of Latin America."
Abu-Jamal gives a valuable social history of Philadelphia to show why the Party could, and would, take hold there. He takes nearly one-third of the book to make clear the idea that African Americans had fought-and not always nonviolently-for their freedom. Abu-Jamal points out that such battles spanned from the beginning of the African slave trade to the self-defense organizing of the Louisiana-based Deacons For Defense and the Watts rebellion of 1965. The Black Panther Party formed shortly after that event. Abu-Jamal argues the Party was popular in Philadelphia because Black residents there "came of age with the deeply felt knowledge that they could be beaten, wounded, or killed by cops with virtual impunity."
Abu-Jamal describes the rally where the Philadelphia Panthers first appeared publicly:
"[B]etween fifteen and twenty of us are in the full uniform of black berets, black jackets of smooth leather, and black trousers We thought, in the amorphous realm of hope, youth and boundless optimism, that revolution was virtually a heartbeat away. It was four years since Malcolm's assassination and just over a year since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The Vietnam War was flaring up under Nixon's Vietnamization program, and the rising columns of smoke from Black rebellions in Watts, Detroit, Newark, and North Philly could still be sensed, their ashen smoldering still tasted in the air."
Abu-Jamal tells familiar stories with great skill-the naiveté of Panther leaders, the state-sanctioned murders of Chicago Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in 1969, the FBI's role in the Party's split between supporters of co-founder Huey P. Newton and Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver. He is unapologetically critical of the FBI's "snitches" (Earl Anthony, George Sams, Louis Tackwood, William O'Neal, et. al.) sent into the Party to disrupt and destroy it. His history of the FBI clearly shows how decades of practice infiltrating progressive movements served the Bureau well when Black leftists donned black berets and black jackets and began to act in ways they thought would make the late Malcolm X, their new Black nationalist martyr, proud.
In addition to extended personal recollections, another of the book's highlights is Abu-Jamal's commendable voicing of Panther women's experiences. One of the women recording her Party experiences to Abu-Jamal is Naima Major, who recalled how, at 17-years-old, she sought out the Party to escape what she called "petit bourgeois mediocrity":
"I went to a 'Free Huey' rally at the federal building in SF [San Francisco], and met many brave Panthers. Went on a mission with Kathleen Cleaver in Hunter's Point because my beloved was one of her self-appointed guards. Captured body and soul by the rally and the love and energy of Black people. My favorite retort to almost anything soon became, 'And how does that free the people?' I was dogmatic and insufferable, but could dance you down at a house party!"
The memories and views of Afeni Shakur, Barbara Easley Cox, Audrea Jones, Safiya A. Bukhari, Regina Jennings, Frankye Malika Adams, Kathleen Cleaver and Elaine Brown scream for a Panther anthology all their own and make many Black scholars, such as this book's reviewers, even more impatient for Cleaver's forthcoming memoir.
Abu-Jamal remembers not only working with Party women as fellow warriors, but also working under its strong Black female leaders. He posits that although the Party was far from being free of sexism, the idea that it was misogynistic is a historical projection from outside critics and disgruntled Party members.
Newton As More Visionary Than Flawed
Perhaps the most important contribution of "We Want Freedom" is its perceptive, sensitive analysis of Huey P. Newton. If the Party is a "Malcolmist" party, as the author argues, Abu-Jamal is clearly a "Newtonist," since he shows great admiration for the theoretical ideas of Newton. Abu-Jamal discusses how Newton's personal background and experiences contributed to his complex personality. Newton's fear, courage, brilliance and other traits led to his outstanding leadership qualities. They enabled Newton to play the central role in creating the Party and stamping it with his vision. Newton's political and ideological evolution was reflected in the Party's growth and transformation. Abu-Jamal links the organization's different stages (nationalist, internationalist, intercommunal and others) in large part to phases in Newton's development.
Abu-Jamal's emphasis on Newton's fascination with the law and his legalistic approach to politics, i.e., reading law books, referring to the constitution and United Nations in the Party's 10-Point Platform and Program, defending Panther activities [such as policing the police, carrying guns, etc.] as legal, constitutionally protected activities is very important and needs further exploration. Abu-Jamal notes that Newton's bold attempts to work within the law were routinely characterized as illegal behavior by law enforcement and the mainstream media.
However, Abu-Jamal's presentation of the Party is unconventional-and, perhaps even controversial-by his historical de-emphasis of Panther leaders other than Huey P. Newton. Curiously, Eldridge Cleaver, Elaine Brown, and David Hilliard seem to be more prominent Panthers than Bobby Seale in Abu-Jamal's account. Abu-Jamal is probably correct that Newton was the most important Panther despite his imprisonment from 1967 to 1970, and exile in Cuba from 1974 to 1977. But, unfortunately, Abu-Jamal underestimates the indispensable role of co-founder Bobby Seale. Abu-Jamal's perspective may reflect his personal recollection, but that does not make it historically correct. By most accounts, Seale was the person most responsible for transforming the Party from a local group to a national organization during Newton's imprisonment.
Abu-Jamal compares Newton and Cleaver when writing of the Party's bi-coastal "split," in which both men wound up leading a separate faction in violent opposition to the other:
"[B]oth men were fashioned in ways that made them particularly vulnerable to the FBI shenanigans . Both were remarkable men, with abilities and strengths that made them indispensable for the tasks thrust upon them by history. Yet, like all other mortals, they had vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and tendencies that, when exploited, could open the door to disaster."
This sympathetic view glosses over the violently abusive, egomaniacal and misogynistic qualities of both men. Abu-Jamal is aware of Newton's largely negative portrayal in Hugh Pearson's "The Shadow Of The Panther," the controversial 1994 book that has been largely discredited. Abu-Jamal, who doesn't mince words about describing the Party's decline, nonetheless seems determined to counter Pearson's sketch of Newton by not delving deeply into his teenage hero's considerable problems and violent actions.
Although Abu-Jamal tries hard to divide history and personal perspective in "We Want Freedom," the filter is clear: he is unapologetically answering negative portrayals that he feels disproportionably dominate the public image of, and the scholarship about, the Party.
Substance In A Time of Superficial Commemoration
Even with these flaws, he has combined social history and memoir with stunning results. "We Want Freedom" represents a major contribution to our understanding of the Party and the Black Liberation Movement. His penetrating study has properly placed the organization within the centuries-old struggle of African and African American armed resistance to slavery, white supremacy, and racial oppression.
This book should inspire scholars and activists to continue investigating and documenting the experiences of Black power leaders and organizations. It should also persuade us to revisit events such as the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in 1970 and the contemporary need to build interracial coalitions of liberals, progressives, radicals, and revolutionaries around a program of social change.
Writing from a maximum-security cell he says is the size of a bathroom, Abu-Jamal has done a great service. Unlike much of today's Black activism, the Black Panther Party was neither an armchair study group nor a paper organization feeding on televised press conferences and so-called "leadership summits"; it was an international organization of local chapters committed to serving the people, defending the people, fighting for the people, and struggling with the people.
During this decade full of Civil Rights Movement anniversary nostalgia, the Black Panther Party-a group as controversial, subjective and powerful as this book's author-should also be remembered and celebrated, regardless of the conflicts those recollections create.
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Ollie Andrew Johnson III, Ph.D. (johnsono at alfred.edu) is the NEH Visiting Lecturer in African American Studies at Alfred University. He is the author of Brazilian Party Politics and the Coup of 1964 (Florida) and co-editor of Black Political Organizations in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Rutgers). Johnson contributed a chapter to The Black Panther Party Reconsidered (Black Classic Press), edited by Charles E. Jones. Todd Steven Burroughs, Ph.D. (tburroughs at jmail.umd.edu) is an independent researcher/writer based in Hyattsville, Md. He is a primary author of Civil Rights Chronicle (Legacy), a history of the Civil Rights Movement. Burroughs is also is a contributor to Putting The Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching (Teaching For Change), a K-12 teaching guide of the Civil Rights Movement. He is writing a biography of Abu-Jamal.
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For Editors/Fact-Checkers:
Black Panther Newspaper Quote is from Mumia's "That Another Hand Reach Out To Pick Up The Gun," The Black Panther, April 6, 1970, page 17, Vol. 4, No. 18 (according to Mumia Abu-Jamal's FBI file, Vol. 2).
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