questions at the meetings. as he said in the book, he tried to advance the position of the executive branch. not his own views. i never saw him favor his own position and never saw him misunderstand an argument. up next on booktv open california in 1966. prolife of rations in over sixty cities across the country and political ideology and inner workers. this is just under two hours. [applause] thank you. thank you to everybody for coming out. it's an honor and pleasure to be here to discuss the work. we started this project about

fourteen years ago. it's very exciting to bring it to fruition and get a chance to share with you. i want to thank them for having us. i want to thank my coauthor, wall do martin who fourteen years ago saw a project that really needed to happen. and i was organizer for a long time and i had said to turn it to a bigger project and work together on this for fourteen years and been there every step. it's been an amazing partnership and so thank you, waldo. i want to thank professor taylor for coming and moderating this event. i want to thank billy who is here, the chair of alumni association, it's about time for the black panther party and other former panther members in the audience. and i want to give a very special thanks, we are very honored and we are lucky to have

here with us tonight chairman bobby seal. the founder huey newton of black panther party. he's in the process of producing a important film. there are several films about the panthers, different aspect. they haven't done justice to the broader history. this is a really important project that he's taking on. and we're fortunate. he's going get a chance to talk to us about that as well. he's coming up as a special guest to speak after waldo. so let me jump in, this is a big book, and i'm not going take a lot of time here, i want to give you the outline of the project in our argument. and run through some of the photographs. we're lucky to have fifty photographs in the book. a few of them here. i'm going share with you

tonight/this afternoon. we started this project asking why in this moment in the mid '60s after the tremendous success of the civil rights movement and really the demonstrate i have power of nonvie -- violence. why this moment in the late '60s did the black panther party and revolutionary claims and a challenge to america as empire. why did this politics become so influential and important? why did so many young revolutionary in cities throughout the country take up arms and did candidate their lives to revolution? and the black panther party. and so i'm going touch on a few themes that we develop in the book to give you a taste. the first thing is that when one of the things that was

surprising to me when we look at this in the mid 60s there was debates rigorous debates happening in cities throughout the country, l.a., san francisco, oakland, chicago, new york, a real ferment of people asking how do we take the gains and success and the power of the civil right movement and translate to the kind of power that can challenge poverty? civil rights movement had been tremendously successful and dismantling jim crow and dismantling segregation. it didn't provide an insurgent means to really transform poverty. it didn't provide a way to change -- it didn't reach the full goal that the participates and the civil rights movement were aspiring to. of freedom of power, and so what you had in the starting really in '66 it became very big

cause. the question of black power. how do we build black power. asking the question and trying to think about it. and what there were at love different times of approaches. one important kind of the receipt call answer to this is to say we're not just going to it's not that we want to be part of america. america as institute is impurial power. we need challenge that imperialism. not only in africa but in internationally. and so there were organizations in the bay area that were asking that question on a small scale. one organization of the panthers called revolutionary action movement on both bobby seal and huey newton participated in the revolutionary action movement through a variety of idea from there. there was different kinds of answers; right.

and nothing emerged to tap the power of disruption. and what huey newton and bobby seal did that really started to provide an answer to the black power question was that they created a way to stand up to the police brutality. and if you think about that moment, '65 the reboll job. some of them very large. these really expressions of resistance to -- containment police and strategy. you had massive migration to black folk in the city and north and west. the job that attracted people during the war had fled. and municipality had responded with containment policing. we're not going deal with poverty. we're not going deal with it -- we're going contain it. right so you had many young people living in ghettos who were just really being

brutalized and fed up with it. didn't necessarily have recourse through institution alized. despite the moment of civil rights you had only six congressman nationally who were elected as national congressman. you had very little access of black people to elite universities. you had -- almost exclusively white police departments. not only in the bay area but most cities in the country and fire department and exclusions from the political apparatus and machines. so on a local level it was very little. so in the moment of civil rights tie yomp, the reality there was little institutional recourse. people were asking how do we do with a civil rights movement? how to we improve standing up and making business as usual impossible? how do we create a source of

power? and bobby seal and huey newton figure odd autoway do did -- initially those armed patrol were completely legal. they study the law, they knew what distance they needed to stand when the guns could not be load in the car. when a felony could not carry a handgun. all the very specific legislation around when and where it was legal. and they emulated tactic being done in l.a. with alert patrol and started to patrol the police and stand up and this drew the local following in oakland of young adults who said that's power. that's standing up to our aggressor. we're going join in. we're not going talk about revolution and antiimpurialism. it gives us a way to actually stand up against brutality.

when this really changed to a bigger scale, right. there was small patrols in oakland standing up and following the police and patrolling the police. when it changed when a young man was killed in north richmond on incorporated area north of oakland, and neighbors -- shot in the back and there was a lot of evidence that this was unjustified murder. but there was no official recourse. people tried petitions, they tried talking to the politicians, they tried to talking to the sheriff, and basically the story was sorry. you know, we're not going to do anything about this. and they didn't have a response. they went up with some of the delegation and pretty soon you had not one, not five, not ten, but hundreds of black people

rallying in north richmond and bringing saying we're going create our own govern mans. this puts the party on a whole different scale. because now this is really seen by the political establishment as a threat. and what happened, of course, that the state steps in and said okay we can't have this. we're going to restrict the right to bear arm. so in an interesting nra in the period is in favor of some restrictions on second amendment, and ronald reagan and the assembly pushed through this legislation to restrict the right bear arms and make this initial strategy of policing the police that had built political power the panthers used to build

political power possible. this puts the party on the map. chairman seal and the delegation of panthers voted assembly and protest this legislation. they go armed before the law as passed and newspapers all over the country, all over the world, all the sudden know about the black panther party. huey newton on the throne. i'm not going have a lot of time to talk and detail the issues. another key piece of what the black panther party did. it came out of malcolm x. if you look at the program and compare it with malcolm x 1963 program. there's important differences but there's a lot of learning and development. the idea is that the black panther party said we have a legitimate representative in the black panther party. the united was not governorred in our interest, the community

has to governor in our own interest, and we're going take that on and make it happen. and the idea was not just about standing up to the police. it never was for the party from the beginning they were very much about community stewardship and local self-govern mans and community self-govern ens and it was through the strategy of armed self-defense a lot of what became the sector of the party's practice in '69 and on ward was free breakfast for children and community programs that were about taking care of the community. here you have the war on poverty, the government -- and yet you had children starving. here in the united states the wealthiest country in the world. and so the black panther party took it upon themselves say we're going feed the children of our community. the breakfast program they had

liberation schools, this top picture new haven free clothing program. i want to say a word about the gender of the party. the party was attacked by the federal government not only as an organization, but really the history, the history and the political possibility of the party was attacked. and if you look at the medal and document of j. edgar hoover thinking about the party it makes it clear that the challenge is to really make the party impossible to support. and did if you look at, there's the -- just to give an example. illustration there's a memo from a special agent in charge in san francisco who writes to hoover and says, you know, hoover is

directed impulse to, you know, create that program to attack the breakfast program in san francisco. he said, you know, the program has all kind of support from the black church and the liberal and shouldn't we really, you know, leave the program a i loan and focus on the armed part of the politics and hoover gets back with this scathing memo and says you missed the point. you missed the point. the point is exactly that these are the programs that have broader -- from the black community and from nonblack. and that's exactly why they need to be destrond vilified. and so the whole intention is vilification. out in a lot of ways. one way i want to touch on briefly is vilification in term of gender politics. there was a heavy attack on the party people may know the book black -- a super woman where,

you know, angela davis was called "do it for your man revolutionary "and they came back ander to it apart. but that line -- that line of attack in the party was really e epitomized is distortion. i don't want too far in the other distribution. it wouldn't be a reflection. the part was perfect and gender dynamic in the party were great. there's really, really strong writings sort of the theoretical writings that take stance on gender and sexuality. look at huey newton 1970 essay. but, you know, the reality was

very complex. and one of the things we try do in the book is pay attention of some of the spes -- to give a nutshell sort of assessment of, you know, how we see gender playing out in the party. the party started it didn't have a strong sort of masculine project in the sense of this was about standing up to the police and being proud of black masculinity. masculine. ..

>> if you go back and look in the newspaper, in that first -- you remember that early image of the wicker throne, there are images from that same photo session of lemon posing with women in the delegation in sacramento, so, you know, women played a variety of roles, and were central in the party throughout its history. what happened was as the party had all kinds of problems, you know, in terms of gender dynamic, and the society; right? in many ways struggled with the issues industry didn't -- stridently. if you look in the paper, there's debates about gender die

namics from lots of voices, mostly women, some men, debating gender dynamics in the party early on in the history. look at the 1999 front of fascism conference, there was a major part of the conference with a panel on gender dynamics which ended up being a contentious center of what the conference ended up being about. the issues were heavily debated, and i am not -- i would be the last person to say up here that the party has, you know, gender dynamics to figure out. what i want people to understand is the issues were complex and tested early in the party. there were a lot of women who were running the party day-to-day in the party history, and, certainly, i think, that the party was well ahead of the society in large in debating these issues. i'm going to go very briefly through, you know, what

happened, and is that following, really, the assassination of martin luther king, the party explodes and spreads from, you know, basically a local organization until february 1968, february 1968, first chapter outside oakland opened in los angeles, and that's pretty much it until -- until april, and within -- by the end of 1970, you have chapters and nccfs in 68 cities throughout the country. 68 industries, and most of the chapters, dozens and thousands of members who dedicated their lives, not just a rally, but that's what i'm goinged too -- going to do with my life and be a panther. this spreads to 68 cities throughout the country, and it's growth from people coming to the party saying we want to be panthers. you have your finger on the

solution to what black power is and the party has to turn down and put brakes op the process of growth this. this is -- one other point, i'll run through the cities and show dynamics visually in the different cities, but the repression of the party started from the beginning and got very heavy by 68; right? the year of the most intense repression including death, armed conflict with police was 69, the years the party grew the most quickly, so there's -- there's a puzzle there. there's a puzzle there; right? it was not just repression that ended the black panther party; right? the party had resilience to it. you have los angeles, this is on the top front -- carter, john huggins on the bottom, and they are killed in january 69, and

the party in los angeles continues to grow very rapidly, but by the end of the 69, you have december 8th, 1969, you have a war where panthers defend the offices and the first swat team, hundreds of police with military weapons are botching the offices, firing, you know, not just from rifles, but from carriers into the building, and they hold off the attack for six hours, and here's major mobilization, this is just to give you a slice. look at the faces. these are not panthers or even potential panthers, many of these. folks rallying after the attack. over 10,000 people rallying, many of them are middle-aged,

many actually have more moderate politics, and here's some of the prisoners from l.a. shootout. this is seattle. fred hampton, very vibrant leader from chicago, is assassinated in his bed by the local police working with the fbi, and organizations like the urban league and the naacp turn out in force in protest. here on the top a rally in new york. on the bottom, ohio, who knew there was a national committee to combat fash schism, but here's ohio, washington, d.c., detroit on the top, new orleans,

a raid here in the new orleans office, below philadelphia, omaha, just to give you a flavor of the threat of the party so i want to close with a couple words about why and what that might say more generally about insurgent movements. you know, there's different kinds of politics, and a lot of political power is built from the low end people network, and they work with each other and be organizing work, and there are only -- there are limits to those powers and organizing, and institutionalized power usually used to build and consolidate power for people in charge of those institution, and so there's many moments in history where people have been able to make a transformative change,

not through the slow process of networking and organizing, although that's been a part of it, but they passed the power, and that's what you see in the civil rights movement; right? the -- the line was we're going to take the slow road; right? eventually, segregation will, you know, sort of wither away; right? lots of politicians said that, but the civil rights were not going to wait because they knew waiting would not get them where they wanted to go so the civil rights movement put bodies on the line, stood up to power, and disrupted business as usual, and the party did a similar thing; right? in a very different way; right? the party was not saying we'd like to -- [inaudible] that was not working to challenge police brutality; right? what the party did was tap the power of disruption. we are not going to sit by and

be brutalized by the police. we are not going to sit by and wait for government handouts. we are going to govern our own communities and take that power into our own hands, but what the party did when it was steaning that disruption as a source of power is they were able to pose that politic in a way that drew broad allied support, and you think about the nccp, they were not supporting the power, but they also knew that given there was limited access to, you know, higher education, that there was very limit representation, that there was extreme poverty, that there was not representation on the police force or the fire department or political parties, they knew they didn't want the young activists standing up doing something to get killed in their beds, and that that was a threat to them as well. what the party did was articulate politics that not only drew support from more

moderate black politics, but drew support from non-black groups in the united states and internationally, and that allied support was crucial to being able to sustain self-defense in the imperialism of the black panther party as a source of power from changes of below. i'll run through a few examples of the allies here. this is the young lord's party, a port reiian organization that emulated the black panther party in new york. they wanted a breakfast program, and they ended up doing a takeover of a church in their neighborhood working with church members because they don't get space to run the breakfast program, and ended up they got a lot of support on the program. the -- here's an ally mobilization from women's liberation movement, freeing huggins in new haven, and here's

talking at the -- at a rally in yale in new haven, a lot of the key supporters, if you look, also, like -- who were the lawyers and who were buying the papers and some of the supporters for the program, there were a lot of -- a lot of antiwar folks; right? they were not-black, who saw their own states threatened by the vietnam war and particularly the draft, and the party really became a lightning rod where a lot of those folks provided really key support for the party. here's a rally in tom hayden, don, and abbey hoffman shutting down yale university in support of the trial. here's berkley.

here's -- [inaudible] here's a rally for the chairman in sweden. hundreds of people in sweden mobilized to remove people from prison. the embassy, the north vietnamese working with the other vietnam in exchange of about a hundred pows for the release from prison. the premier of china meeting with newtop, tun tens of thousands rallying in the street saying "down with [audience boos] "down with -- [inaudible] i'll end it there, and we'll talk about it in a broader topic. thank you. [applause]

>> first off, i want to thank, and thank you elizabeth for putting this program together. like josh, this has been a long time -- a labor of love and a struggle, but i have to acknowledge that josh is -- josh's energy, his brilliance, and his commitment made this project. i waiverred, josh would say, get up, brother, and he was the key author. he was the principle author, and he laid down the tracks, and i throw in some drum, some in, you know, a little of this and that, pushed it around, and after awhile, we said, hey, this is a book. i really want to give kudos to

josh who is the principle author, and i am, indeed, a co-author k but a lot of -- author, but a lot of this were the conversations we had over the years in person, on the phone, hours where we worked through ideas, where we talked about how this particular history might be written. i also want to pay homage to the chairman here, i look forward to what he has to say, and needless to say as a genuine american hero in thinking about how we treat people who have given their lives to better, not only america, but the world, he's one of those people we need to honor. also, i want to thank all the party members and fellow

travelers and sensitive and empathetic folk who are here and folk who just decided i wanted to be here. what i want to do in a hopefully brief way is say a little bit about the context, sort of the scholarly historical context that we worked in and what we were trying to do because we not only are sort of academics, but we see ourselves as people in the real world. we wanted to write a book that most people could pick up and read and be excited about, so that's what we aim at, not sort of a dry scholarly tone, you know, that would only be good for propping up a door or something like that. [laughter] we wanted it to be a book that would engage and stimmew -- stimmew late, but, also, to take the party very seriously.

to suggest that how most americans think about the black panther party needs to be radically revised is a vast understatement, and i have to sort of pay attention to my text; otherwise, we'll never get out of here because i'll start preaching, which we don't know. in fact, the black panther party, in my way of thinking, was an extraordinary revolutionary movement that added hype, fought value lantly for root and branch change, systemic change, change from the bottom up, grassroots change. they fought this in the capitalist political economy of the united states, and, indeed, they sought and united with those engaged in systemic change and political and economic arrangement. the black panther party fought for a domestic antiglobal socialist system committed to the kinds of things that everybody in here cares about,

equality, justice, and human rights. from where josh and i sit, this is the historical truth. fighting for revolutionary change is extremely difficult. it's ouch very, very messy, and the history in politics of the party confirm these particular positions, but when we go to the dominant historical narratives, the dominant popular cultural narrative that shape how many, perhaps, many, most americans think about the party, you run into a barrage of misinformation and misinterpretation, and it's imperative that we understand that, and as josh was sort of laying out, sort of the official vilification, the official denigration, and how that then

folds into the history and popular culture, so in popular understanding, for example, among a lot of people, the black panther party with its ultra black radicalism and its gun toting thug rights movement, and i get this from my mother whom i love, right, so i know it is out there, killed off the beloved community of the civil rights movement. put another way, the black panther party epitomized the bad black 60s as the distinct from the good black 60 #s when black people were nonviolent, civil diso bead yents, knocked in the head, committed to integration and civil racialism, the view of the civil rights movement and the black freedom struggle in general, which is totally off base; right? the the bad 60s led not only to the unraveling of america, but the death nail of the civil rights movement. as a his tore can, this reminds

me of the salacious old school view that black reconstruction after the civil war killed off reconstruction. you know, when black people started participating in politics, actively trying to take control over the lives, this was the problem, okay? we see this happening in the way in which a lot of scholarships and a lot of popular culture treat the party. the party -- the party is blamed for the violence that others perp trait against. it is blamed for errors and wrongs that others perpetrated. you know, the victims is, you know, being victimized; right? we vigorously, obviously, dissent from this kind of view, and what we argue is that they spearhead and further the expansive growth and expositive

growth of the freedom struggle in the late 6 os and early 1970s, and in our view, the party helped push forward in crucial ways the struggle epitomizing black power, were very different in fundamental ways k but, obviously, they built on that movement. also as josh laid out, several myths must be put to bed. first, the party's brand of national black radicalism was libber rationist, neither immigrationist or separatist, and it was certainly not separatist as many accounts wrongly suggest. the party was key and, you know, based on coalitions ever progresses, people of color, and like-minded folk, whether they were black or white, interested

in a similar and kind of politics. the party was humanist. it was appty racist. it was open to working with progressives and non-blacks including whites and people of color. the charge that i often get when i teach that the party was racist is wrong and pernicious in theory and practice. the revolutionary black nationalism of the black panther party was broad and inclusive. it was not narrow. it was not secretary -- sectarian. another way you encounter this in the american mind is sort of this notion that the late 60s, early 70s, you know, this unraveling, sort of this attack on american empire represented the triumph of good over evil; right? evil. when, in fact, the bulk and majority of the evil is being

perpetrated by the empire; right? so once again, you know, the power of state and the power of mainstream historian and conventional sort of narratives are used to vilify the party. what josh and i spent over a decade doing was what psychology lar -- scholars do. we sifted the evidence. we spent years working through whole range of documents, and what we tried to do was to offer a historical assessment that is clear-eyed, but a counternarrative to this, what i think and what josh agrees, is this dominant historical narrative that seeks to misrepresent the party. what we try to do is not just provide a counternarrative, but

what we think is of what accurate narrative, and we think about the party in a variety of context. the party as thee most important expression of black power politics in this period. it's a commentary op the relationship between the civil rights movement and sort of black power, sort of this notion of an enduring black freedom struggle. how do you situate the party in that, sort of thee transformative moment of the late 60s and early 70s, so to reiterate two points that josh already laid out so eloquently, first, we emphasize the party is antiimperial politics were thee most important reason for the party's period of explosive growth and greatest impact in 68 through the early 70 #s.

second, we show that the party's growth and impact owed its ability to improvise and sustain a better political practice and ideas that created a broad based of allied support for the party among a broad range, among blacks, within progressive communities of color, among liberal and radical whites internationally. we also want to acknowledge that we are not the only people who've ever written books on the party; right? there's an expanding body of work, and we read literally everything that we could get our hands on, so what we do is we not only read that material, but we created our own understanding and offered our own views of sort of the history, but a history informed by this large body of work, so the way

historians talk about it is a synthesis trying to bring together all the work and put it in perspective. by reducing the book, in its essence, what we try to do, and i think we did an okay job here, is provide a serious -- we take politics very seriously. we take the politics of the party very seriously. whether you disagree with the particular tactic or strategy, this is what made the party. you know, there are limits remitting the party, but for us, the party was ultimately about its politics. as the final thing i want to say is that this was a moment in history that's very different from our moment; right? one of the key things we try to do in the book is to bring to life why, how, and with what

consequences the party spearheaded and contributed to a revolutionary moment; right? one of the challenges that we acceptedded and labored long and hard to meet was to capture and represent in a compelling a way as possible that historical moment. the late 60s and early 70s when global revolution, even revolution within the united states seemed desirable and even possible. our present historical moment, as you know better than i do, probably, is very different; right? up like the late 6 # 0s and early 70s, today, as we sit in this room in 2013, while millions around the globe and many even in the united states might desire revolutions, the sense of revolution as possible stalls, and the sense of revolution as impending is lacking. in "black against empire," we

try to reivying rate -- revying rate the history of a by gone era that is so alive even though in historical memory and consciousness as well as popular memory and consciousness of, you know, presented in ways that we fundamentally disagree with. the final thing i want to say is it's a good read, okay in [laughter] as a historian committed to a narrative and the art of story telling, okay, we try to write a book that, you know, you would want to buy and actually read. [laughter] so it's a page turner. [laughter] without further adieu, i want to give the microphone over to chairman bobby seal. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> thank you, thank you. right on time. this book, will the me tell you, i mean, i read, just reading this script a year before it was out, and it really helpedded put together a structure, an understanding of the politics in our history, the politics and interconnected and interrelated with how the fbi and counter intelligence program from the president of the united states on down, at the time we're really talking this heavy point of this with richard m. nixon,

the one who blacklisted, the one threatened, and the film that i'm producing that we're going to produce. we have a campaign to raise funds for the initial development funds before we get to hollywood, but the point is this here. we, in our research, we got a hold of what was now public watergate tapes. remember nixon used to tape everything? their public access now. we got ahold of one where hoover is talking to nixon in their own voice, and you can talk to mitchell, mitchell, the united states attorney general at that particular time. we got to get rid of the black panthers and so and son, yes, yes, yesterday, sir, said hoover, i will definitely talk to them and so op.

it's important to understand this. this is your united states government right on down. when you start talking about what the black panther party was about, how we evolved, i mean, we popped upright in the middle of an already op going nation war movement all across -- we popped upright in the middle of that. founded the black panther party, october 22, 1936, the day we named it. we already written a ten point program, had the search and find a name, and we did fient -- find a name, and we decided to go out and patrol the police as the first issue, but this ten point platform programmed to look at the whole thing. we was talking about, as i had discussed with numerous times up until that time, we're going to organize a mass membership organization, organize and unify

votes in the community, and at some point, we'll be able to have enough people voting so we take over the political seats. we need them. you can't talk about black problem with this and that, the political recreates is important. we look at what happened in 1954 with rosa parks, we came back, they was in law school too. wait a minute, you know what it's about? the racest legislatures made racest laws and said we have to get up, move to the back of the bus and a white person wants to sit down, get up, give the white person that seat, but you have to read hi did, gebothom, a federal court district judge in philadelphia, a prolific writer as connected with the laws and latist book was shadows of

freedom, but he articulates and shows you a history of how laws are made in the country, not just the state level, but federal level ect. based on white supremacy connected with another they had of black seniority, how the laws are structured, and this that copfection, you can see the laws being the backbone in the structure, the very structure of constitutionalled racism in america and all discriminatory and racest practice, ect., that's what it was about. here we are, a new organization, looking at this stuff, and i'm telling you, either we got -- you said we have to capture the imagination of the people so we patrolled the police. really, our patrolling of the police was imitating another group in los angeles. the only group in los angeles is they didn't have guns to defend themselves, law books, tape

recorders, walkie-talkies. this is a group and a month later, community alert patrol, cap, they had cap, they were out observing the police, tape recorders, ect., in los angeles, california. why? what sparked the riot? a black mother and whites beaten by several police and that sparked the riot. i looked at that situation as it evolved, ect., 70-80 people killed, 200 some odd wounded, 5,000 arrested. my course in the u.s. is how can we organize 5,000 people? we have to be able to organize 5,000 people. this is before the black panther party starts. i'm telling you, this is 1965. there i am trying to get this thing going. i created the black history group, council, ect., campus organizations, organized in the

community, antidraft programs to tell black folks, and after divesting the abstract work, documented in all the wars in all the people who caught in this country, from the very inacception, from the very beginning, people don't know that you have to read and understand and check history out. la fee yet from france was adviser to george washington, went up into the new england area to tell the clonians, you rag tag and get butts whooped because the king over there in england is paid and got the german soldiers, shipped them here to beat you up. you got others sitting around, you need to promise the slaves some freedom and train them to help you fight because you rag tag. you don't know what you're doing. that's what lafeyette was saying to in effect they did promise the blacks their freedom, and then they did train thousands of them, and when the show down

came with the soldiers landing in rhode island, who kick their butts? those black saves. it's important to understand. when i studied history and understand that stuff, you know what i mean, i saw the civil war following the emancipation proclamation with a military tactic because it was just freeing slaves in five states with having resistance. you know what the line says? all everybody black men will be ticketed. in effect, 168,000 black men was enlisted into the union army documented by debois as black reconstruction. 38,000 died. two years later, when the war was over, who kicked the confederates' butts? those black folks. i mean, prior to them being enlisted, coming across the lines and give us some guns, we'll help you fight. why? i mean, that's important

history. the first black congressman in the reconstruction ten year reconstruction period evolved, it's important history. so, me, as a young man figuring this stuff out in the 60s, studying people's history, discovered, wow, not only proud and understanding something, we were not docile or stupid. we were profound to read frederick douglass and everything and the underground railroad, oh, my god. i'm saying something. i'm an engineer. i work in the engineering department in this period, 1962-63 -- 1960 i started there. jay edgar hoover, ronald reagan politics called me a hoodlum in the thugs, i resent it to this day.

you don't call me a hoodlum. the process and all three stages of exhaust houses exhausted in the program. i come up through the united states air force, structure repair high performance aircraft, what have you and ect.. i was raised a confident builder. i was an architect at age 15, 16, i was the one who did all the planning for my father, adding rooms and dens to people's houses in the san fransisco bay area. i was no hoodlum. i loved my work. i loved the high-tech work, but i got interested in my civil human rights struggle. hear dr. martin luther king speak, and he was talking about how all businesses in the country would not hire businesses of color, categorized them all. got to the company, and we want our boys with bread companies to, boycott the bread companies, boycott wonder bread company and boycott them so consistently and

so profoundly we want to make wonder bread wonder where the money went. [laughter] dr. king, open auditorium, 7,000 people hit the floor. i'm just one young student being impressed, being inspired by dr. martin luther king. this is something. you know, time as things evolved, killed malcolm x, ect., i'm upset. i have a one-man riot for ten minutes. there's nobody else rioting when malcolm x is killed. crocodile tears down my face when they killed mol come, murdered malcolm x. you know, i mean, i was upset earlier than that too by nelson mandella sentencedded to prison in early and for the rest of his life. i wanted to work in the community, i created one of the first youth jobs programs in

northern california. that's the first program i helped create. i worked for the city of oakland and so on, but it got to the point to do something. we wrote the ten point platform, and education, appointed by stopping the exploration of the community, and health care, a point about all black men and women -- [inaudible] i mean, this is -- this is what was going on. they are the formers, we wanted to -- we chose that as the first tack tim -- tactic, the first platform to go out on. because we already had rampant police brutality, not only were the african-american community, but what most impressed us and

got us to get going was this prior to that was what? a protest movement, an antiwar, antidraft protest movement that got stopped # four blocks from my home and opened from california. 10,000 people in the rally. me and you got up around the them, watched the proliz, let the hell's ape jells riding their motorcycles, plowing into all the peaceful prozesters civil rights movement and they go in, weighed in, and viciously beat the protesters. that coupled with babies bombed in birmingham, others, and so we're going to have an organization, but stand on the right of self-defense. we went out to patrol and observe the police as the first issue. not for any macho purposes, very political what we were talking about doing. if we capture the imagination of the people, then maybe we

organize them better, unify them, unify their votes and take over some political policy. why were were after the political policy? at that time, we estimated the best information we had was less than 50 people of color dually elected to political office throughout the whole of united states of america. can you imagine, have you took time, i took time to imagine that and figure it out. i looked up, wow, we have 50 counties. we have 50 counties in california alone. each one of those counties, the sheriff is legislated, not appointed, elected. oh, that's important. woah, what's going on here? you imagine all the counties and all the other cities; then all the city councils they can be elected to, halftime city coup sill, ect.. woah. i added that up and estimated that's tom 500,000 political seats one can be elected to in the united states of america.

500,000. woah. it's less than 50 people of color. this is the middle of the 1960s. we're going to patrol the police to try to capture the imaginations of the people and start oging them politically. go after the political policies, we want them to seek the majority, change the races laws in the city's charters, changed the laws in the community level, ect.. that's very, very important. that's what we will do with that, and they jump up, 14 of us, we really train this group, and only one person talks, ect., we train and our guns were loaded, some think they were unloaded. they were loaded. i would never go out in the street with an unloaded gun. those were the two to be used in a particular time in a particular situation, but more importantly, we had the law books with us. we had the tape recorders. i put a tape recorder and hung around little bobby's neck,

little bobby was a long shotgun. when we got to the cops, i punched the record, two buttons on the old tape recorder to push, never forgot it. we walked up, 50-60 people gathered around us. you know, it's the night life area, 17th street there, bbq, liquor store, one dress the nice, she saw us walk up in the uniform, and we all had guns. those with handguns carried the program, the ten-point platform program. those were long guns, just carried the long guns. a shotgun i bought him, a bump shotgun, and here we have the law books, and, of course, we walk up, the passenger side door, arrested in the back there, hand on the back of the trunk, and i just assumed this guy must have only arrested this

guy dealing with him for a ticket or something, but he's -- the police had the passenger over, he's on the passenger side, he's actually talking to the radio. he doesn't see us walking up. we get off the curb. everybody lines up, stands off the curb, boom. old man come out, what they got in their hands out there? what them sticks? they ain't no sticks, them guns. guns? i'm getting out of here. no, no, no one leave. stay right here. you are citizens like we are, we are observing the policemen here brutalizing us, and the cop gets out of the car. nobody leaves. you have no right to observe me, says the cop. california supreme court, says every citizen has a right to observe a police officer carrying out duty. the reason for the particular rule a 810, and we observe you weather we like it or not. oh, the sister on the sidewalk, said, well, go ahead on and tell

it, brother. [laughter] is that gun loaded, the cop said, if it's loaded, good enough. he said you have no right whatsoever. stand back, reported something, and therefore you can want remove property from me without due process of the law. step back, you can want touch my weapon. a tall brother said, man, what kind of negroes is these? [laughter] it was never done before. with that gone roaded, like i said, if i knew it's loaded, that's good enough. we knew the law. riding in the car, you can want have a live round in the chamber. you can have it in the magazine, but you couldn't have it in the chamber where it could fire. long gun, shotgun or rifle, did not apply to a handgun. i carried army preponderate 45 # holster, and i had live rounds in the chamber. i say when you inject a round off in the chamber, woah, all

the other brothers, five or six of them had long guns, oh, that's right, we had rounds in the chamber while we were riding. then you go, oh, my god, jacking it around, upsets the whole thing, people on the sidewalk say, oh, mid go, you got to get them back. another brother out there, he ran, hid behind the car, says don't shoot this way, brother. [laughter] the cop, he was not afraid. it was pissed because he looked up and there was 14 of us. one sister with these long pretty earrings and big afro, a black beret and jacket, ect., and the .44 pistol richard had given her, and there she was, and the cop got arrested, put in the car, and looks, and stops to ensure a woman got in the car and drove off. ladies and gentlemen, i'm

chairman of the black panther party, and we pass out temperature-point platform programs. we have a new organization in the community, organize the people politically in our communities, vote these structures out of the political seats to have real people involved in the community, ect., blah blah blah blah blah, and kids run around the corner with other kids, see, i told you, i told you. the kids say they the new black police. they were real proud, you know, because we run another police off as they put it, but that's how we did that. you see the politics there. this was not about macho. i don't have time for that. that's cheap. the growth of the party evolved, really, explosion growth was after dr. martin luther king was killed.

six weeks before dr. martin luther king was killed, dr. reverend ralph called me, chairman seale? i said, yes, sir. dr. king, i'm calling on behalf of dr. king and he would like to know if you'd be willing to participate, you, the black panther party, have a representative who is trying to pull together a hundred or more different organizational groups around the country says the dr. reverend, and not only would we want you to help us and work with everybody, but keep the committee together, work together, and we can fry to hammer out the first order of business, hammer out an outline, a goal of a plan for economic liberation as the plan. yes, as chairman of the party, we'll definitely participate

with you and your organization, whatever you want. i had a great republic for dr. king. my friend, oh, he puts them in the newspaper. i went over, oh, man, what are you doing? i said, chairman, you cannot put dr. king in the party and cull him a boot licker. the man goes to jail, chairman, you know -- asaid nonviolence is peaceful protests. they have a constitutional right to peace of the protest. i said black folks, white folks, everybody has -- what we support is their right to have that. in other words, if we have a peaceful rally, we have a peaceful rally, but others come down, we will defend ourselves, therefore defending our lives and right to exist, ect.. all right, chairman. i said, okay, thank you, man,

don't do that to dr. king. i'm just saying we were called to be the working coalition with over 38 different organizational groups in the united states of america. black groups radical friends, 10-12 organizations, young hispanic brothers, puerto rican brothers, young brown beret brothers, ect., we did that. i'm talking about face-to-face coalition powers. this is what they were afraid of. more important, they were afraid of the free breakfast for children program, afraid of the free preventative medicare health care clinics where we got the support, afraid of the acin- anemia testing program. you have to understand the dynamic of the politics. dr. king was killed, only had 400 members of the coast, and in the next six and seven months, i had 5,000 members and the ncff,

nationals committees and frame works, that's 68 frame works, talking about the same basic programs. think nixon was elected in 1968. next month, a meeting with jay edgar hoover. by the first week of december, hoover's on national television saying the black panther party is a threat to the security of america. this is before nixon is even sworn in. they are already on getting ready to move. by january 17th, carter and john huggins are murdered and killed as documented in this book, how it was and who the actual murders was above and beyond the us organization putting up two brothers called the snyder brothers. the real name of the real killers are in this book well researched.

they never went to jail and never went to prison. one of those killers wound up in their los angeles district office of the fbi as reported by another fbi agency who wrote a book called "fbi secrets" after he retired. this is important to understand. what were they doing. by the end of the 1969, we'll be rid of the black panthers, says john mitchell, and what was happening by the end of that year? by the middle of that year, i'm in jail. i mean they got charged not just in chicago, but connecticut. when you read this book, you are going to read and talk about the -- the new york 21 and the new york chapter, and the counterintelligence program with the fbi and what they were doing to us. well documented.

a lot of the information comes from the senate investigation hearing that finally came down against the fbi for attacking all of our chapters and all our branches. 41st and central that josh mentioned, 41st and central was a two-story building in los angeles, california. you know, that's 360 degrees in my film. this is where we depight that. it's going to be something, but all this, i was in jail at the time. i'm just saying the murder of fred hampton down to the trial of myself and huggins in new haven, connecticut, and how they, the counterintelligence program were already talking to the district officers, fbi, and telling them that they're writing back that maybe we can get some kind of torture program going against the black panthers. a day before, a day before i have to arrive and speak at yale

university, george sands, which we now realize was nothing more than an operative for the fbi because he came in the party as a body gaitered for carmichael, but the thing is he goes to new haven with this homeless guy that happened to beg party members or something for money or something and hung out. he brings him up. immediately, when he gets there, to the trial, when he gets there, ties the guy up in the chair and beats him. he orders huggins to boil water, takes the water and scalds the map to make him say he's an operative for the fbi or something p. that's what he does. landon williams eel its me after the thing was over, i never went to the party. i went there, huggin's apartment. that's why i did.

i talk to landon, i said, you're family's not in the party. i said i kicked george sands out of the party six months ago in san fransisco for beating somebody up in san fransisco. yeah, but chairman, he beat somebody. i don't give a damn, get rid of him. why you let him in the party? you know, he wanted to keep him in the partiment i said, no, you're not going to follow by directives, you going to go follow his. yeah, i know i lied for multiple leadership in the party, but you're wrong. so the next thing i know, boom, i'm back in oakland, california. what, in effect happens is, we find out later that landon told him to take the man out of here, beat him up, take him back, and take him back to wherever. you have to read trial transscripts. i'm probably the only one who have these trial transscripts.

i'm going too long here. after he kills this man, he goes to six chapters of the black panther party. all this money to fly on plaps to hop to chapters to indianapolis, denver, colorado, another in ohio, ect. and so on up to chicago. every time he gets to a chapter, sands the one who killed alex, he leaves, and the next day the fbi and police raid that chapter, nec day. all six of them, including chicago. i'm just trying to tell you it was a dynamic piece, but in the final analysis, you answered the question. we won that last shootout, and i'm going to tell you how we did it politically, not in terms of the amount of bullets fired. power to the people, thank you very much. [applause]

>> thank you so much. we'll invite panelists to come to the stage, take a seat, and as we do that, we encourage you to please give your questions to elizabeth, that she might have for our panelists, and i will ensure -- >> [inaudible] >> that's okay. >> [inaudible] >> okay, yes. we want to ensure the questions are answered. okay. i'm sure he'll be back. until then, i want to, first of all, i want us to show love to the authors. [applause] yes, yes, yes, yes. okay. as we collect the questions, i'm just going to open up the dialogue with a couple questions, and my first one, while you indicated that you

know as historians, you guys sifted through a lot of text, and we know there's several memoirs about written by former members of the black panther parties along with scholarly texts, and my first question for you all is how did these texts shape your book? >> i think history is always hard to write. it takes a lot of time and reflection to try to get into how people lived and experienced history, and put it in the broader context of the times. we talked about in the presentations this was particularly challenging with the black panther party because so much was done by the states, specifically to vilify the party, and to distort and have the case of history, and so in some ways, you know, while i'd

love to take, you know, lots of credit, i think that, really, the credit is due much more broadly to the hundreds of both former panthers and also young generation of scholars who tried to unpack this history over the last couple decades. there's been an astounding 90 dissertation and accs and dozens of memoirs by former panthers that unpacked in detail parts of the history. ..

tried to not only do our own research. we worked with archives all over the country, and created two major archives, which we'll talk about. but really benefited and drew on and built upon this vast wealth of research that hundreds of individuals have done over the past couple decades to make sense of the broader politics of the party. >> all i'll say is we stand on the shoulders of the people engaged in struggle, who have shared they're stories with us and made clear that -- there are lots of books out there. we wanted to write in a single text a synthetic, comprehensive, full, and thorough story. the problem is, we have to sift through a lot of the material

and figure out in the way in which we want to write the history, what works, what really fits, because you can't put everything in there the book would have been four times as big. so we have to pick and choose among evidence, and what we tried to do is to be balanced to be thorough, and quote-unquote, you know, as clear as we could be. >> the next question is for you, chairman seale. do you ever regret now all of the -- it's not on? i'm sorry. can you -- the next question is, do you ever regret now all of your sacrifices that you have done for us? >> no, i don't regret. die regret? i'm trying to figure that out. i cussed out hoffmann in the

great trial because he violated my right to defend myself in the courtroom while my lawyer was in the hospital here in san francisco. and i was in chicago, and this man is trying to try me. and he denied me my motion for a rights to defend myself, and then he cussed out my lawyer, and now i'm asking you to do this. he wouldn't do it. the sixth amendment of the constitution of the united states of america says i have a right to legal counsel of my choice, my choice, not his choice. so for seven weeks i got in an argument i was chained, shackled, and gaged for three days. the first day i was in a metal folding chair, cuffed to the leg of the chair, handcuff wed metal handcuffs and i had cables in my mouth, and i had a get to tee, - goatee, and there was a big

argument, if mr. seale says -- if he would just indicate he will not disrupt this court anymore by shaking his head up and down -- what he wanted me to do -- i said mmmmmmmmmmm -- this is where i was coming from. and then i remembered something. that i had read. a person pulling at their chains is acting in the manner of a free person. so, the metal cuffs and the metal chair and the jury sitting there, clang, clang, clang, ain't going to have court today. and send this jury out. put the court in recess. the second day they had big mahogany wooden chairs. those metal chairs never bothered seale. so they strapped my arms down, not with handcuffs-but with the

straps, and my legs. so, talk about sacrifice and being beat up in the jail, chained, i mean, you're there. you know you might get killed in this situation. you know what i mean? 28 of my party members died. they did the ultimate sacrifice. and policemen who came in and murdered my black panther party members, literally, all across the country. the year of 1969 every black panther party chapter got attacked, in one way, shape, fashion, form. remember, i told you, john mitchell said, the united states attorney general under nixon, by the end of the year of 1969 we'll be rid of the black panther party. so, i hate to my -- we had to defend ourselves in, what, 12 or

14 policemen died in those attacks. we still got mitt cal prisoners. 12-14 political prisoners to this day who went to jail under the operation of the fbi, and somehow or another we still got to work to get them free. so when i do my film, i'm not just doing my film for the sake of doing a film. i'm doing my film so i can raise enough money, i want to get these guys -- i need to raise a good million dollars to put them all under the innocence project et cetera, and i went to the menendez program based on them going to jail and see how many of the political prisoners we can get out of jail. [applause] >> our next question: how much of the material from the back came from members of the black panther party or those who were associated with the party? >> that's a good question.

i think we relied very heavily on the newspaper, and so most of that material is coming from the party and party anybody members. we real relayed very heavy, as the initial question asked about, memoirs and biographies, autobiographies and we relied on a broad base of interviews that are available and interviews we had access to. so, it's hard to quantify or put into sort of a percentage so we tried to get as close to the original source as possible.

you know, there is also a way in which another project we're interested in, is thinking about sort of a way of thinking about the history and writing about the history, totally from the ground up. and what we are doing in this book is thinking about a party as an organization and as a set of institutions and practices. so there are different ways to think about the history. >> most of the book is based on people's participation in events and their recollectionsment one of the thing that was a struggle was how you -- how do you distinguish between the facts and how do you distinguish between conflicting stories? especially when these are such charged politics, and people have very, very different recollections, and often times those wrecks are folked, today,

40 years of intervening politics. how do you make sense of is? so we did a lot of talking to these people, but one thing we wanted to do is get the politics right and be accurate about the taxes and put it in a broader perspective. so almost exclusively we relied on facts we could document with accounts that were very proximate to the events. so we used the interviews and the relations and the conversations with people today to get a feeling for what was happening and to check off analysis and to guide our story, but if you look at the footnotes -- and there's a lot of pages of footnotes -- are you'll see every statement we make is backed up with a pretty widen gaugement -- wide engagement with the facts. there war lot of interviews done and a lot of evidence created by the party itself that happened right at the time of the events in question.

>> okay. this particular question is detailed in your text. but the question is, please confirm the origin of the party's name. >> the origin of the black panther party name. we wrote the platform. i said -- i was in jail when i was writing seeds of time, and time and -- but i went back and did some research on the day that judge stat gave hughey and i probation after we had the fight with the police in berkeley, california, and it was october 10th. that's the day. and when i talked to judge staton and made our statement to keep us from going to jail, me and hughie -- they're were getting ready to put us in jail for fighting a policeman in berkeley. but you have to understand, said to the judge, i was just reciting a poem. in the preliminary hearing those

cops got on the stand and lied. the guy walked up to me and said, you're using obscene language, and i told him, f-u. and i said who are you? he was not in uniform. he was didn't even show me a badge, your honor. the next thing i know i'm being tackled by him and then there's the uniform cop is grabbing at hughey got out there and boxed him like hi was sugar ray leonard or something. so i'm getting my butt beat on the ground, judge, by three or fur undercovers now. and finally my brothers and some other guys and asian guys two hippies kicked them off. and i'll had my knife, a scout knife, somebody wrote, bobby seale pulled out his city let

city let to switch plate. it's a scout knife. i got five or ten of them. the two and a half inch blade, very legal, and a cork screw in there, a can opener in there. that's what a knife was. i said i'm not going to have it. so that was that situation. but my point is, when i told judge all this stuff, he looked and shook his head and gave us one year probation. we got down and hughie meet me at the war and poverty office. we have been talking about putting together a new organization. we took a few notes last week. i says, you meet me at the war and poverty office. we're going to finish writing this ten-point program and that's when we wrote the ten-point platform and program, the first draft. got down to october 22nd. we still didn't have a name.

i had stencils, et cetera, all ready to go, but i left the section out to put a name there i had received the day before in the mail, and i was doing my mail, and i received michigan phloem lounge county freedom organization. the lounge county freedom organization had a logo of a pouncing panther. no words that said black panther or nothing like that. just a logo of a pouncing panther. lounge county freedom organization. in those days, any organization in the country that pops up, i would write to them and tell me to send information on what whatever is going on. so i'm telling hughey -- he says, i what you doing with this panther? i said, don't know. it's a logo. here's more information. i says, do you n. he says oh, yeah, the white citizens council, a fightingcock. a rooster, as a logo. i said, yeah, panther would kick a rooster's bootie, and with

that hughey laughed and went to the law brew library, came back to my house and said the nature of a panther is, if you push him in the corner, he'll go left or right to get out of the way and sooner or later he will -- and we were just like that, we are cornered, and he said what you saying? i said, i don't know. i got to name this damn organization, hi said what about the black panther isn't that right i said, good, a political party, says, okay, boom, boom, boom. i said, wait a minute, we said we were going to go out here and take a position of self-defense. so, -- he says the black panther party -- shook hands and, boom, i says, okay. i'll met you at the war and poverty office tonight and well print up a thousand copies of this stuff. at the war and poverty office where i work. my point is, he came down.

and we collated and stapled, et cetera. my brother came by. he was an ac transit bus driver, and i said what you coming down to me at my work place. he was likes when you growing to come home, blah, blah, blah. and he left. so we got everything named, and we need officers. i said, okay, we have officers. i said now we're a political organization, we got to have a chairman. he says we have to have a chairman. he says, what about ministers? i said, okay, fine. give me -- i got a silver dollar, i'm going to flip it. so i flipped the silver dollar, heads i'm chairman. click. heads, i'm chairman, and i got ready honda it to hughey and he says i have a right to flip. i said, there ain't by two of

us. i'm the chairman. you're automatically the minister's assistant. oh, okay, you're right, you're right. and then hughey says who is the designated led lead center i said i'm the leader, the programs organizer. but we really need a leader. i says, look, hughey, you want to be the leader, you can be the designated leader but i am also a leader in the party. you and i shake hands we always run this organization together. right? right. i says, okay, so we elect a multiple leadership framework, and you want to be the designated leader, fine with me in my head is was thinking, hughey is seven years younger than me. rap the youths jobs program, and one of my things was developing leadership, and i knew hughey was are articulate, brilliant, and all that kind of stuff, but there was certain things about hughey that he needed to learn and know.

so, my position of saying, you're the designated leader was like, i'm going to see to it that hughie really developed some real leadership here, because he has never run an organization, whatever. never put one together, and that was the name of the party in the beginning. >> our next question is, how was the war on drugs related to the destruction of the black panther party? >> there was no destruction from my organization of the black panther party in terms of the war on drugs. i you want to talk about huey newton's last day, the last year or so huey became addicted to drugs, i addicted to cocaine, but you have to remember that organization did -- there was no 5,000 memberness the organization then. when i left and resigned from the black panther party, there were approximately 200 people. and three weeks later, half

those people were gone. so it was 100 -- if it was 100 or 60 people left. one of the people here sitting right there, stand up. just stand up. this is steph feign edwards, the director of the film we're putting on. graduated out of ucla, made several films, also a former black panther party member and he was there the last part. the black panther party was over when i resigned. literally. because all of the organizing that went down, all across the country, huey didn't do that. i did it. huey was in jail when i organized those five thousand people. huey was in jail when i traveled -- the methodology of community organizing all across the united states of america in this period. the whole tenure -- i was the head political education

instructor, one of the primary speakers of the party, i believed in multiple leadership in the black panther party. so i had a committed chapter, and each branch. deputy minister, et cetera. i'm just saying these are the kind of things that had to go down, and did go down in that expansion and growth of the black panther party, as fast as it expanded i was there i'm the well that canned the retreated of each chap her. i i want 50% of your leadership here on such and such a treat. you're going to deal with the expanding of the sickle cell anemia program, the demographics of voter registration, organizing, et cetera. this is the kind of stuff. you cannot come in my party talking bat bunch of mythical crap, et cetera, et cetera. in my organization i taught you basic dialect and application. quantitativele decrease. i'm a mathematical person.

i got all a's in math. i'm an architecture, engineering design. i come from a high-tech framework, so i understand the mathematics of what we had to do, and taught black panther party members to do so even the most uneducated, ill illiterate guy i could make him understand thele qualitative need for change. >> we have a lot of questions. but the good news is i read the majority of the rest of the questions and the majority of the questions are answered in the book. so, therefore, i don't feel really bad that we haven't gotten to all of them because the book is so full in terms of the questions you have posed. so, the last question i think gets at many of the questions that were presented, could you speak about the legacy of the party? >> the aggression -- the legacy

of the black panther party is manifested in its grassroots community programattic organizing. that's our legacy. that's our true legacy. and the foundation of where were we coming from. organized from the grass roots up. this where is we came from. when we say all power to all the people, that became our slogan. the coalition politics, we were in 38 different associational groups in the united states of america, including sdlc and dr. martin luther king, jr. and others. all our radical friends, movie stars, people like sammy davis, jr. people don't know that carroll o'connor in "all in the family"

donated lots of money to us. and these are important things to understand about people. osi davis and wife, ruby dee, they were very close to us. even people liar richard pryor, popped in, et cetera. san afford brown came over. these are people who understood our programs and everything we put together. you have to understand, the ten-point platform and program is one thing. but out of the ten-point platform and all of the organizing and all of the chapters and branches, black panther party members, beyond me, came up with numerous programs, winston-salem, north carolina, the one and primary group with the free avalanche program, with a nonprofit entity. got the money, donations, for free program for the african-american community in winston-salem, north carolina. plus all the other programs they

put together. sister audrey jones, now known as dr. dunham, george state yoo, -- georgia state university, she created way back the free pharmacy program. you see, we had 22 different programs. you have to remember, the cooperative housing program never got beyond my architectural designs of it. you know what i mean? but we had the legal aid service, the free buses to prison program. huey came up with a that program while he was in prison. i'm just saying, we had 22 of these different programs, various community service programs, right on down to our youth school and katz so on. these are programs so programattic organizing was the key, because what? these were real programs. it wasn't just political talk standing on the corner. they were real.

they did real service and you were able to unite the people and get them and understand our black panther party newspaper, just over 400,000 circulation in the country. pretty good at a time when jet magazine was the only 800,000 at the time. you see what i'm getting at? imjust saying, our legacy to me, and the organizing that went on, to me these brothers and sisters -- i taught them a lot, et cetera, blah, blah, blah. my point is they became, for that period in that contemporary period, the best grassroots community organizer in the world. i'm telling you. they'll knew how to put it together and we defended ourselves. 28 of us died. so many was wounded, and we still got political prisoners we still trying to get out of jail. >> if i can add something to that. i think the legacy of the black panther party continues in several kinds of ways, and to build on some of what chairman

seale has said, on one level you have to think about the children who went through the breakfast programs and how those services -- on another level, think about the organizers who really cut their teeth you. think of people like congressman barbara lee or larry little, who -- or bobby rush, who has become important sort of political leaders within established politics. i want to argue that the greatest impact and legacy of the party is actually not even in those direct affects to the individuals that participated, but really in helping to create a sea change in politics in the united states and globally. let me just say a couple things about that. one of the thing wes argue in the book is that today, if you have the same level of exclusion, politically and economically, in the black community, if you still have no access to higher education, if

you still had no black studies curriculum, if you still had completely white police departments and fire departments, if you still had only six congressional representatives at the national level, if you still had exclusion from the political machines and local electoral power, and you still had a draft, and the capacity of the government to impose participation in the military, you would still have a revolutionary nationalist politics leak the black panther party today. what the party did was created a politic that within that political context was able to stand up and make politics as usual impossible in a way that such broad allied support, very broad allied support, and it was irrepressible. and so what happened in that period -- it was not the repression alone that stopped the black panther party. repension was not working.

'69 is the year of the most repreparation by the state on the party. what changed was the political context changed. by the early '70s there were 30 black congressmen. there were affirmative action programs created under nixon. nixon was the one that brought affirmative action at the federal level you. had access to elite higher education you. had the creation of integrated police and fire departments, changes in the democratic political machine that brought in local black electoral representation, and not only that but repeal of the draft. and rolling back and ending of the war. so the bases of support that made it impossible to refresh press the revolutionary black nationalamy. of the black panther party were eroded. i don't want to say those only affected the party. the party was part of a broader challenge to imperialism. but we cannot understand today's world without understanding the

broad transformation of society that happened in that moment and we can't understand that change without understanding the role that black panther party created in that process. >> black nationalists. revenge black nationalists, advocating in some circles and contexts. there's separatist black nationalis that been advocated in some circled and frameworks. there's a basic seen phobia. but the black nationally. ism is not what i chose. my nationalism is what we put the black panther party,es based on black unity in the black community as one status and level which is necessary, et cetera, but black unity only as a catalyst to help humanize the world.

it's about the corporate idiots who control, run, and buy out our politicians politicians andn you get town the it iny gritty, every-day jobs that people need, and the right ring pup pups to this very day, from the black panther party days to right now, that's what they're about. and we got to change that dynamic. we have to change. everybody progressive politician -- when worked on capitol hill after the black panther party there were 22 black congressmen at that time. i worked with the congressional black caucus and worked on capitol hill and for john conyers, and with congressman ron dellums and whose seat right now barbara bra -- barbara lee

holds. congressman bobby rush was part of the illinois chapter of the black panther party and he's a united states congressmen. two people that come out of our ranks and a lot of other people there. right now you only have 89 congressmen who are basically progressive voters. we need 400 progressive types to get rid of stuff and curtail the corporate runny mitch -- rich from screwing over the african-american people. so our goal is humanizing the world. not some revenge. we're not talking about revenge politics. and so i want you to understand that revolutionary black nationalism in that context. >> on behalf of the museum here in san francisco, we thank our

authors, joshua bloom, and waldo martin, jr. for their amazing text, black against empire, he history and politics of the black panther party, and we want to offer a special thank you to chairman bobby seale because it's because of your leadership we can be here today to have this conversation. so thank you. [applause] >> any books you have or -- this book, black against empire, that waldo and josh have written and put together, definitely please get to that. i have some seeds of time books. the next seeds of time book will sea seeds of time, the eighth defendant. the next one after that will be a third level. i'm still writing three sequences. the first book this story of the black panther party.

so i have arch original posters of memorabilia in the back, and the dvd i have, the dvd is of public enemy. i helped produce that. i'm part of the production of that. with my company, read cinema productions, and that's a hour-long -- hour-1/2 long documentary featuring myself, kathleen cleaver, the wife of eldrigkn cleaver, and the man who wrote the musical score for eddie murphy's coming to america, a former black panther member out of new york, and of course, jamal joseph. he has written his book, baby panther, and has written several screen play. he educated himself, became the head of some program at columbia university, et cetera.

great, beautiful, talented, inspiring brothers and sisters just like yourselves who are all concerned about our human existence and our human survival on this earth. so we got enemy more biehla. i'd be happy to autograph it and everything they have with the book. thank you very much. >> you're watching become tv on c-span2 2. >> up next, we sit down with valerie adams. in her book she examined eisenhower's use of civilians in helping craft foreign and domestic policy. >> what role do civilians play in domestic and international policy? >> well, for advising purposes, for presidents, an important role, and i think that president

eisenhower did an excellent job in utilizing the resources of civilian advisers. the 1950s was a time of tremendous technical change, and with the tension of the cold war, eisenhower had rely on those experts in science and technology in government and politics, to come together and give him sound recommendations to how to develop a strong national defense, because, quite frankly, the united states was a new territory at this point in the cold war. how do we guard against a possible surprise attack from the soviet union? what resources do we have? we don't have to tax the american people so heavily. and so what eisenhower did was he used some of the best minds in -- the president of mitt and cal tech and state department

employees, in order to give him recommendations how to proceed. and in doing that -- it's an ad hoc committee, they're not democrats and republicans but all have the best interests of the nation, and he can ultimately make his own decision, but having these civilian ad hoc communities help inform him. he was able to get buy-in from a lot of people, and i have some'm humanity he didn't know everything in an age where technology was changing so rapidly. a lot of these people have worked together on various other organizations and commiteeses and groups. a lot of them came from world war ii where the united states utilized some of the bigger engineering schools for the manhattan project and the radiation laboratory so it's a network of people who had experience serving the government, even though not in an elected official capacity.

in his national security adviser was very well-connected and was able to craft really good commitees, and perhaps the most important would be one that happened in the mid-part of his tenure as president, called the killing committee, the technological capable panel but james kilowatt the chairman so it's known as the killing committee two things that came out of that commit eye was an emphasis on intercontinental ballistic missile technology, or icbm program, what eisenhower called bigger bang for your buck, and probably what the audience is most familiar with or has name recognition with is the u-2 reckonnance plains and some might remember the cuban missile crisis and the u-2s first brought back the

photographic evidence that the soviet union was placing missiles a in cuba. >> how did these commitees get along with the actual administration? >> guest: deposited on the committee. the first two committees i looked at in my book got along very well, and eisenhower had a lot of oversight in picking the committee members in having known the committee members. the third committee kind of came to him from some political pressure. the third committee was looking at whether or not the united states federal government should allocate resources for fallout shelters. eisenhower didn't believe the united states should. that resource, that money should be used for active defense, novelty the passive defense. he was also concerned with the kind of message it would stoned both our allies and the soviet union if we embarked on the massive fallout shelter program.

and so that committee disagreed with eisenhower, and many of the members leaked information to the press, which indicated the united states was in the gravest danger, eisenhower had not prepared us, our defenses were weak and that did go go over will with eisenhower and we can look at that committee as the end of him using these civilian ad hoc commitees. my interest in the topic when i was a graduate student stems from my interest in science and technology. as used by presidents, and then as i was revising my dissertation for the manuscript, the war on terror had just begun, and i started to see a lot of parallels between the cold war and the war on terror, and the challenges that george w. bush faced in terms of preparing for the long haul. something that eisenhower spoke

a lot of. and so i began to look at the role of civilians being played out in presidencies after eisenhower, and my conclusion was that each president really used them differently. and the commitees really were a reflection of presidential leadership styles. one thing that really did surprise me was how good eisenhower was at creating a team spirit, and that came back to his early days at west point, and he really was personallable, people liked him, he really felt -- he made you feel like he was listening to you, you had good ideas, valid ideas, he would consider those idea, even if he had in mind what he was really going to do. he really created a team spirit where everybody felt like they were contributing to his presidency. and that harkens back to his leaper showed as a general, i'm sure, but i was really surprised

how much effort and conscious effort at that to make everybody feel like they were part of the same goal. the book title is "eisenhower's fine group of fell lows." but national security policy that adheres to the great equation. so what i want the readers to come away with is an understanding how important the great equation is to any presidency, and the great equation is that we need a high morale. we can't be scared to death. we can't cower inside, afraid of a biological attack or nuclear attack. but we also have to make sure our finances are in order. we can't overburden the american people, paying for a heavy defense program, and then finally we do have to make sure that our national security is secure. that we do have what we need without having the overkill. and for that it's the great equation, and it's the difficulty for the president to

make sure that we balance that high spiritual morale, financial responsibility, and yet still have strong defense. >> in this high-tech digital stage, all we ever get is static. the veil of distorsion of lies and half tooths. when we need the media to give us a dictionary -- criticismment and wade interference. a mediate that covers power, not covers for power. we need a media that is the fourth estate, not for the state. and we need a media that covers the movements that create static and make history.

>> author, host, and executive producer of democracy now, amy goodman, taking you calls, facebook and tweets, in department, sunday, at noon eastern on book tv on c-span2. >> here's a look at some of the latest headlines in the publishing industry.